April Fool's Day lowers its profile

I can remember when the Martin twins, Sharon and Sheila, brought noisemakers to the Met Lounge to celebrate the "eve" of April Fool's Day. Pretty innovative. Pretty consistent with the irreverent inclinations of the Martins, whose patriarch Willie has left us. I'm sure Willie is sharing his trademark "love ya" in heaven.
April Fool's Day is certainly not a holiday. So what is it? One could easily Google the topic or perhaps to to Wikipedia. I don't care so much about the history as I do about assessing its present. April Fool's Day does not seem to get the attention it once did. Google changed its name for a day but it isn't unusual for Google to apply some sort of wrinkle on its home page. It doesn't qualify as a prank because no one was fooled.
Pranks are waning in our culture. Pranks that can be genuinely hurtful are especially on the wane. The trend has developed at the same rate as political correctness. And it has mirrored the growth of our litigious tendencies. An ambitious prank might bring a lawsuit today. People are less inclined to laugh at ambitious pranks or to think them justified by any criteria.
I remember when Keith Kirwin discovered a major winning lottery ticket (called "Megabucks") and thought he had hit the jackpot, only to be deflated when learning (belatedly) it was a prank. It's my understanding that it wasn't taken in stride real well. I was even called as a media person on this, and I was allowed to come and go (at DeToy's Restaurant) and collect the info without anyone tapping me on the shoulder to let me in on the joke. I eventually found out through a phone call from the spouse of one of the perpetrators.
Based on what I learned about that incident, it could be grounds for a lawsuit.
Large companies have "employee manuals" nowadays that have no sense of humor at all. They encourage behavior that would make us into faceless, humorless automatons. Pranks are so contrary to the contemporary corporate ethos. Is it fair to say they're tied to the old chauvinistic male culture?
If in fact pranks recede, that's fine with me. They can be retired along with cigarettes and the "cocktail hour." Perhaps they have been historically tied to the fraternity and sorority culture. I viewed that culture only from a distance when in college. I never cared for it but I've never claimed that my tastes should be universal. I saw that culture as one in which social acceptance was based on so many arbitrary things. It seemed like a culture of tribalism with divisions drawn for no rational reason.
I knew a sorority member once (from Concordia of Moorhead) who evaluated her peers on the silliest of criteria.
"Hazing" is quite consistent with a prankster mindset but there is absolutely nothing funny about that. I have been mystified by hazing and those occasional sensational incidents when someone is seriously hurt. Young people join the frat culture voluntarily so all I can do is continue to shrug my shoulders. As for the far more innocuous April Fool's Day, I'm always "on guard" when that day arrives, lest I come upon some jackpot lottery ticket, so I'm not too fearful of getting hurt.
In a sense I deal with fake lottery tickets every day. This is with those Nigerian email scams, which have such a warm tone with how they befriend me. If only I could receive like communications from "real" people!
As for the Martin twins, I'm sure April Fool's Day remains vibrant and relevant for them.
Love ya!
-Brian Williams - Morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com