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Why are people pretending to be dead on Instagram?
Ahmed Simrin, 15, is one of the millions of teenagers who uses Instagram. He doesn't post pictures on his page every day (there are two total), yet somehow he's managed to get nearly 3,000 people to follow it. That doesn't make him a social media influencer, by any means, but his Instagram page quickly stands out when you realize one of the photos has over 22,000 comments and 4,000 likes. This type of engagement is typically only seen on accounts from celebrities. His viral picture, posted in October 2017, isn't anything out of the ordinary, either: It's Simrin simply standing next to his friend, each staring directly into the camera, with a caption that reads "Fresh out the oven." But then you look at the comments, and it would appear that poor Simrin is no longer with us. There are thousands of users telling him to rest in peace. "RIP, you'll be missed." "RIP, bro." "You died way too young." "I can't believe you're gone." The list goes on and on.
17 corporate pranks that aren't April Fooling anybody
It's (ugh) that time of year again. That magically obnoxious season wherein every tech startup, thought influencer and blog worth its weight in snark attempts to pull a fast one on the rest of us with a clever April Fool's Day prank. Only problem is, they're rarely clever, usually terrible and almost assuredly obvious to anyone with a functioning brainstem. Don't believe me? Here are 17 of the weirdest prank pitches to come through the Engadget tip box this year.
Adorable family convinces Grandma a chocolate phone is an iPhone
Nothing says Christmas like pulling adorable pranks on your loved ones. One intrepid YouTube user took the holiday season as a chance to convince his grandmother than she'd just been given a brand new iPhone. There's just one catch; Grandma isn't interested in one of these fancy new devices. Her luddite monolog while she unwraps the iPhone box is worth the time you'll take watching the video, but the look on her face when the family tells her to bite into her new phone is simply glorious. Don't worry Grandma. It's only chocolate. Enjoy.
Prank your friends with a Camera RickRoll
Rickrolling is almost as old as the world wide web itself, but filling someone's iOS Camera Roll with photos of the beloved Rick Astley is something I've never seen done before. This new take on the rickroll requires you to gain access to your friend's device, which might be a bit tricky, but the eventual payoff will definitely be worth it. [Photo via Brownpau]
The Daily Grind: What was your favorite April Fools' Day prank?
You might not have noticed, but yesterday was April Fools' Day, and in the MMO industry that means a lot of studios blowing off steam by being abnormally silly and trying to trick players with weird promises. Some people like the goofs, some don't, but I'm willing to bet that there was at least one that got your nod of approval. So what was your favorite April Fools this year? Did you get genuinely tricked by anything or find yourself laughing in delight at the cleverness of developers? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
This is not a prank: ThinkGeek and the business of April Fools'
Snow was falling in the form of those soft white, potato-flake chunks you usually see in films. I'd barely finished my morning cup of coffee and without that crucial mental aid, I was having a hard time finding the entrance to ThinkGeek's ranch-style headquarters in Fairfax, Va. In the blur of 8:57 AM on a Tuesday in this winter-like spring, every window of the sprawling complex looked like a door to me. So I chose one and, miraculously, was spotted by Chris Mindel, a senior buyer for the company, who let me and my videographer inside the toy-filled halls. It was then I noticed the sign on the open door and burst out laughing. It read: "This is not the door you're looking for." I'd had Willy Wonka on the brain before, but it was clear now I needed to switch, or at least integrate, gears. This was well-informed geek territory I was treading upon -- hallowed Star Wars-quoting superfan territory -- and I'd just been granted a one-day golden ticket to explore it.
The 5 best pranks to play on anyone with an iPhone
Do you feel like having some fun at the expense of your iPhone-toting friends? There are a number of nasty things you can do to anyone with a mobile phone -- switching contact numbers, for example -- but there are a few special tricks you can pull on those with the iPhone, and here are the best of the best. Note: These tricks apply to iOS 7, so if your friend is still stuck on iOS 6 or earlier, you're out of luck. Auto incorrect This one has been around for a while, but it's still one of the most confusing for people who don't know about the iPhone's auto-shortcut feature. Grab the victims phone (preferably without them knowing) and head to the settings page. From here, go to "General" and then "Keyboard," and find the "Shortcuts" menu. Here you can manipulate your friend's text input to do pretty much whatever you want. You can set any single word to automatically change into another word or even an entire phrase. You can make some mild tweaks like changing "are" to correct to "our" and "there" to "they're," which will simply make your friend appear as though they never passed fifth grade English class, or you can get a bit more brutal... The old switcheroo This is one of the easiest to pull off and it takes just a few seconds. Under the Accessibility menu, invert the phone's colors and then back out to the home screen. Believe it or not, there are plenty of iPhone owners who don't even know that this feature exists, which will lead to a whole lot of confusion once they try to use their phone. Unclickable icons You're going to need at least a minute or two with the victim's phone for this, so make sure you won't get caught before you begin. Start by taking a screenshot of the user's home screen (home button + lock button). Then, hide all but one of the user's home page icons on another page or in a folder and tuck it away somewhere that it won't be seen unless searched for. Keep the top-left icon in place, or else the phone may push all the icons from the next page onto the home screen, which will ruin things. Now, set that home page screenshot as the home screen wallpaper. Ta-da! You've now made a home screen populated by unclickable icons! Note: If the user has the parallax 3D effect enabled, they might figure it out sooner than usual, but you should still get at least a few laughs out of it. The never-ending text This is a great trick you can play on an iPhone owner without ever needing to touch their smartphone. There's nothing that boosts an iPhone user's anticipation like the "your chat partner is typing" animation during an instant message conversation. The evil geniuses at Miscellaneous Mischief ripped that animation from the messaging app and created an animated gif out of it. Now you can send the image to your iPhone-owning friends and watch their frustration build as your "message" never comes through. Evil and easy; a perfect combination! Lock them in! This one requires access to the user's device and a few minutes of your time as well, but the results will definitely be worth it. First, go into the Accessibility menu and turn on Guided Access. Now go into whatever app you want to lock the victim into. Triple-click the home button to enable Guided Access, which will prevent the user from stopping the app or backing out to the home screen. The phone will prompt you for a passcode as well, so only you will be able to free your friend's phone from the app you have chosen. Want to really mess things up? Open a music app like Spotify, crank the volume all the way up, press play, then use Guided Access to block the areas of the screen that control the tunes. Now after you lock the app, there is no way to turn off the music. The phone won't respond to being put in silent mode or the volume controls on the side, and it also can't be turned off with the power button. Try this in a public place like a restaurant to really cause a scene. Or, you can just use the screen-blocking feature to write a cheeky message on the screen. [Header image credit: Siraf72]
The Daily Grind: Have you messed with other players?
Sometimes, something beautiful happens in shared chat channels. I was playing Final Fantasy XIV and wandering through Coerthas when someone asked at random whether Halo or Metroid would win in a fight. This prompted no shortage of people explaining that those games were not eponymous, which just spun off into more comedy like the original speaker asserting that The Legend of Zelda is about a green guy named Zelda, since why would you name a game after someone who needs to be rescued? It's Super Mario Bros. not Super Princess Peach Is Kidnapped. It was a pretty obvious attempt to get people to correct an assumption that didn't exist, and it was pretty funny. It was also harmless, which is another plus. Not everyone who messes with players is that kind; I've seen people teleport someone to a high-level area and then warp away, leaving the other player stranded, or a tank undressing and then pulling the boss just for giggles. Those might be a little less funny, depending on perspective. But today we're not asking about validity; we're asking about the act itself. Have you messed with other players just for the heck of it? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Apple HQ could have Google deliver them some iPads, and I hope they do
Today, Google announced that its Google Shopping Express service -- which will run to select area stores, take care of your shopping list and then deliver the items to your doorstep -- is now available to virtually all of San Francisco as well as a huge chunk of the peninsula all the way down to, and including, San Jose. You pay a small fee for your delivery depending on how large your order is, but overall it seems like a very convenient service... even if you work at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. Based on Google's current coverage area for the service, only part of Cupertino is eligible for delivery, but after searching for Apple's address -- 1 Infinite Loop -- we discovered that it is indeed covered. Apple isn't usually known for pranking, unless you count a bit of rickrolling, but if I were Tim Cook, I'd make a Shopping Express list of a few iPads and a dozen iPods from Office Depot Target. Then, when the driver(s) arrive with the items, tell them they can keep it all to share with their coworkers back at home base.
April Fool's jokes streak across the MMO community
It may be the weekend, but that's never stopped pranksters in the past from pulling off truly epic April Fool's jokes. Many MMO studios, bloggers, and fan site operators are lining up to take a shot at the jester's crown today, hoping that their blatant (and entertaining) lies will at least amuse, if not trick, players. It would be fool-hardy (har har) to try to round them all up, so suffice it to say that office clowns have been quite busy thus far. From Star Wars: The Old Republic's announcement of playable ship droids and City of Heroes' offer of ludicrous marketplace sales to Blizzard's focus on educational kids games and StarCraft 2's playable supply depots to SOE scaring visitors with Chatdy, the gags are flying fast and furious. We might be the most impressed with a deeply detailed wiki entry for a Guild Wars mission called Annihilator 2: Searing Day, during which players are sent into the past to save Gwen from the G-1000. If you've spotted any other pranks, please share them in the comments!
Create an April Fools pranklet with iPhoneception
Looking for a cute and harmless April Fool's day prank for your iPhone. Consider iphoneception. It's a site that creates one of four special effects that mimic the iPhone's home screen, making users think that something deeply weird has happened to their unit. Best of all, at least in terms of pranking, it can be installed and run on any unlocked iPhone (i.e. one that doesn't use a passcode). That's because it's just an interactive web page -- so you don't need an Apple ID to add it to a friend's unit. You select the effect you wish to use (there are four, including explosions, gravity, kittens, and zombies) and create a homepage bookmark for it. Launch it from Springboard, press the lock button, and your prank is ready to go. The video that follows shows the effect in action. Incidentally, it was recorded live from the iPhone using a beta version of Reflection, which will offer recording features when it's released. Hat tip: Henry Kuo
iPhone 4's Operation Doorbell reveals mystery ringer
One of our readers sent us a story that was too good not to share. James, an iOS developer living in the UK, cleverly rigged his iPhone 4 against the peephole in his front door to catch a prankster that had been ringing his doorbell and running away every morning. His story is below. For the past week, every single morning between 8 AM and 9 AM, someone has been ringing the doorbell to our flat several times and running away. We knew it was another resident of the flats -- as the outer door is locked and requires a buzzer to get in, our doorbell is obviously next to the internal door. I tried many times to catch the culprit, but the best I could do after leaping out of bed and rushing to the door was to hear the sound of footsteps running on one of the lower floors. I'm not a morning person, as I'm usually up late learning how to build apps. I then came up with a plan to simply wait by the door and watch through the peephole. This was a failure, as not only is craning my head to watch the peephole for an hour uncomfortable, it also prevented me from being able to carry on my usual morning routine of massive coffee consumption. Then I had a brainwave! I noticed the camera on my iPhone 4 was the same size as the peephole. With a bit of fiddling and adjusting the zoom I was able to stick my phone to the door using blue tac, thus providing a convenient window to the outside world and the ability to capture a pic of the culprit to use as evidence. I had planned to try and stream live video from the peephole, into my iPhone and stream it to my iPad or MacBook. Sadly, I never managed to go that far as I couldn't find an app for that. [Commenter 'FromOZ' points out that AirBeam (US$3.99) will stream from the iPhone to the iPad, so that would have worked here. –Ed.] Sure enough though, this morning my girlfriend and I were sitting by the door, coffee in hand and able to chill out and watch the iPhone screen from a distance. As we hoped the culprit approached our door and rang the doorbell several times. I hit the camera button and got a great pic, catching him red handed. Turned out to be the kid next door on his way to school! After grabbing the pic and quickly opening the door with a loud "HELLOOO!" and watching the poor rascal's skeleton leap out of his body in shock, we were able to show his mother the picture and peace was restored. Great story, James, and it only goes to show that people are finding unconventional uses for iPhones all the time.
Breakfast Topic: Are you an Azerothian prankster?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Back in the good ol' days, our guild was much smaller and tight-knit. We had enough for a solid 25-man raid, with a handful others who just liked to call us "home." Some guildies knew each other in real life or were roommates who liked to have fun and play pranks on each other. While I glad to not be a part of it, I did enjoy hearing the creativity they came up with, especially when it involved something in game. The most memorable prank was back in the golden days of yore, back when mounts were items in your bag, guns and bows took ammunition, and gold wasn't fished in fountains. Someone logged onto a low-level alt and commented the character wasn't where he had left him. He shortly discovered that he had no gear, no gold for a flight path, no hearthstone, no mount, was nowhere near a bank, and had to run through high-level mobs to get anywhere remotely close to bank access. Watching him discover all these atrocities one at a time made for a very entertaining evening. With authenticators bringing heightened account security and Blizzard making items such as mounts "learned," pranks such as this are hard to recreate. This just means pranksters have to be more creative. Do you and your friends pull fast ones on each other? What epic in-game tales and pranks were you in on or have you heard about?
The Daily Grind: What's the cruelest prank you've played on a new player?
We all intend to be nice to the newer players, really we do. It's not as if anyone forgets that we were new at one point, not knowing our aft launcher from our elbow in Star Trek Online. And yet for some reason, after the right barrage of questions about how you loot things in Final Fantasy XI, where you can get travel powers in City of Heroes, or how to train pistols in Fallen Earth... well, eventually you just snap. You give someone advice that isn't just bad -- it's malicious. Almost every veteran has done it at least once, ranging from assuring a player that the dragon is totally soloable to explaining that black dye is cheap and unwanted. So what's the worst thing you've ever pulled over on a new player? Was it something that got the character killed, or even worse, something that forced the player to throw away what could have been a long-term benefit? And in the unlikely event that you don't have a cruel sense of humor, have you ever been on the receiving end?
Breakfast Topic: LFG Chillmanders, PST to guildmate
I don't think that I've been in a single guild that didn't enjoy pranks. In vanilla days, we had that one mage, the one who made a warlock summoning macro. In the middle of trying to summon people to Molten Core, he'd pipe up with "Now summoning %t, please click the portal!" Approximately 6 seconds later, guild chat would invariably flood with obscenities spewed by the unfortunate 7 to 10 people who were now located in Thunder Bluff and the warlocks who now had to spend even more shards summoning all those players back again. Or that one rogue who, upon Onyxia's demise, decided to do a victory dance -- in the whelp pit. While loot was being handed out. Later on, I joined a different guild with different pranks -- most of them revolved around the fact that a good chunk of the guild was a bunch of guys that lived together or near each other. These guys all had each other's account information -- yes, it was a bad idea. No, you should never, ever share your account information with anyone; it's not only a security issue, it's against the ToS. However, there is also another reason you shouldn't share account information that was beautifully illustrated by the guild. See, we often grouped together to raid Zul'Gurub, AQ20 or AQ40 -- and if we were short a tank, one of the guys would log on his buddy the tank's account and tank the raid for us. That's pretty much why they were sharing accounts, so that we would have fill-in options if someone couldn't show for a raid.
Eight cruel iPad wallpaper tricks
Pranksters, start your engines. Gizmodo lists eight tricks you can play on your iPad-owning, smug and self-satisfied friends to wipe the grins off their mugs. They've got a full gallery of options here; I especially like the SPOD screen, and the Wishful Thinking version shown here (multitasking! Flash! VERIZON!!) is quite funny. If you like the Blue Screen of Death or the Bloody Hand (which is oddly reminiscent of a certain scene in James Cameron's last big blockbuster), chime in below -- or include links to your own favorite background screens.
WoW.com's April Fools Round-up
April Fools! Or at least it was yesterday. Some love the pranks, some find the pranks boring, some wish to see the pranks fall down a dark, dark hole, never to return, possibly to be eaten by a grue. Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, we've gathered a short list of Blizzard and WoW-related pranks across the web: Blizzard Pranks World of Warcraft EPEEN: New from Blizzard, the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number system! WoW Armory Tuskarr Invasion: Folks checking out the armory may have noticed their characters transformed to tuskarr, their achievements reported as 'cheesed,' and a whole lot of gear ninjaed and summarily vendored Battle.net Matchmaking Service: Battle.net decides to play eHarmony and place lonely gamers with suitable partners Battle.net Neural Interface: New from the Blizzard Store, the Neural Interface promises a lifelike gaming experience Blizzard Mobile Games: Up for 2010 from Blizzard Mobile Games are Blackthorne 2: Thorne Harder, and Queen's Quest! Diablo Gamer Blanket and Body Pillow: Wave goodbye to the cold as best as you can while swaddled in this Diablo 'gamer blanket!' Diablo Deckard Cain GPS System: Now you can listen to Deckard drone while you drive! Other WoW-related sites El's Extreme Anglin': El reports on the latest Cataclysm feature: Aquariums! MMO-Champion/Paragon/Premonition: MMO-Champion breaks the news that Paragon will be moving to US servers come Cataclysm and merging with the US Guild Premonition. Sponsored by AXE! Nihilum: Nihilum breaks some rules and brings us screens and video from the Cataclysm alpha Wowhead: Wowhead, er, TACOhead brings news of a new in-game item, the Hellfire Kickin' Taco Supreme! Tankspot: Tankspot announces their change to Farmspot Warcraft Pets: Breanni fills us in on some new non-combat pet... er... features coming out in Cataclysm World of Raids: World of Raids reports on the new Observation Deck and Spectate features coming in Cataclysm The Guild: The Guild proudly announces its new foray into the world of animation! Curse.com: Curse.com fills us in on Cataclysm -- exclusively available for the IPad WoW.com: And of course, there's us. Our day was filled with takeover after takeover, from Twilight to Muscle March to Saturn Six -- we've decided to return to WoW news. For now... Love them or hate them, at least they're done for the year, right? Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief and start believing what we see again. Did you laugh? Did you see a clever prank we missed? Or did you hide indoors all day and fervently wait for it to all be over? Let us know -- and check out the gallery below for screenshots from the various sites listed above! %Gallery-89602%
April Fools' Day roundup: 'let me Topeka that for you' edition
Alright, good netizens of Engadget, it's time for us to bring you the sort of hard-hitting news content you can expect only on the first day of April. First on our slate we have the earthshaking news that Google is to officially rename itself Topeka, with the company's official blog urging all future communications to be addressed to Topeka Inc. This is to honor the Kansas town that renamed itself Google in an effort to curry favor with Goog... excuse us, Topeka's 1Gbit broadband program. We also have exclusive and absolutely official confirmation of the forthcoming Android 2.5 update, an inflatable laptop from Toshiba, YouTube's textual deviance, and the hands-down best iPad dock you will ever see. You'll have to come after the break for all those -- they're too hot to handle out in the open. We'll be updating this post as the day goes along, so keep it locked.
April Fools' Day 09: Second Life users pull the other one
April Fools' Day is quite the hodge-podge in Second Life. Linden Lab doesn't generally pull pranks on the user-population (some may disagree with us on that) but there are hordes of different groups and communities, and even a relatively low percentage of hoaxers lead to literally hundreds of hoaxes, almost all of which are spread by word-of-mouth. We'll quickly round up some of the most common gags that are going around this year (a few of which are perennials). Linden Lab is going back to charging for teleportation (the sum of L$1 per teleport). This one's formatted as a press-release, though the grammar is quirky enough to be a tip-off. Besides, this one came around the last two years as well. Linden Lab has been purchased outright by [Microsoft/Activision-Blizzard/Electric Sheep/7-11/NCsoft/AOL/Worlds.com/IBM].
April Fools' Day 09: Running afowl in LotRO
What could possibly top the Battle of Amon Hen "content upgrade" from last year's April Fools' Day in Lord of the Rings Online? How about another chicken-themed prank for this year? That's right, for today's festivities, players get the chance to participate in more Chicken Play activities with a small quest line entitled "The Fox in the Hen House".The quest will start with a piece of mail you'll receive from a concerned farmer. You will then speak to a Town Crier to assume the role of a chicken and run yourself from Gramsfoot to Glan Vraig in the Ettenmoors. Once you've completed this task, you'll earn the esteemed title of "Fool". That's not all though. The day is sure to be filled with various other tricks, so be aware![UPDATE: Seems they've closed the quest, according to lotro.com: Due to the load on our servers caused by the April Fool's chicken session play, we are disabling the quest. Please note if you receive a mail, you cannot turn it in with the quest disabled. We hope you had fun while it was open, and we're sorry the quest bawked!]
