What used to be a novel and creative impulse to stir things up has become a ritual over at Google, and fans of such pranks can rely on something zany every year. Just like the holiday appropriate logo that Google displays several times a year, the April Fools day joke is no longer a creative impulse. It's an expectation, it's just what they do, and it will be institutionally perpetuated in perpetuity.
This illustrates the contextual difference between a prank and a joke. In the context of a joke, you are primed and waiting to be served the punchline. With a prank, the punchline happens whether you realize it or not.
Such is the fate of a prank that bears imitation; it becomes a joke. It's become so stale that Google is planning pranks a year in advance now. This may be a hoax, but supposedly next year's Google "prank" has already been leaked at the following site: Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
