Private Universe

April Fool's Day

So I technically finished with my month of self-study as of the end of March, but apparently my self-study gears are still spinning.

Yesterday I posted on Facebook that I actually enjoyed April Fool's Day for what is probably the first time ever. I achieved this by having almost no face-to-face human contact all day. (I saw some other humans while walking Baxter, but they were - as always - distracted by his cuteness.)

Because my gears are still spinning, I started to wonder why April Fool's Day is more fun online than in the Real World. Here's what I learned:

On past April Fool's Days, people walked up to me and said absurd things. I didn't react to the absurd things in any immediate or obvious way, so then they said "GOTCHA" and laughed. Sigh.

The thing is, lots and lots of people walk up to me, NOT on April Fool's Day, and say absurd things. This happened a lot in graduate school (some philosophers argue very hard for very weird claims). It also happens whenever I tell someone what my degree is in, when they say "My philosophy is..." and then say some weird thing or other. (Yes, random dude, actually I minored in Why Humans Are Actually Descended From Space Aliens.")

I also hear absurd things sometimes when I talk to people about politics, religion, morals, vegetarianism, higher education, yoga, the environment, health care, or basically any topic that is more interesting than the weather. People believe all kinds of bizarre stuff and are happy to tell you about it. I don't mean my friends so much - I tend to make friends who have beliefs that are roughly closer to mine, for better or for worse. Just acquaintances or strangers that I get into conversation with.

Last time I was waiting for the shuttle to the airport, I was a captive audience for some guy who had written a self-help book, all about making your wife happy by not allowing her to make any major life decisions. Or something. I was checking my watch a lot (where's the damn shuttle??) so I may have missed the finer points.

So I have spent a lot of time perfecting my Polite Non-reaction for when people say absurd things. It doesn't mean that I believe them. It is a blank expression with the blandest "oh, really?" that I can come up with.

I have used it a lot and it has saved me from some pointless, energy-wasting confrontations. Maybe it would be better to point and laugh at every single silly thing people say, but sometimes you can't (if they are your teacher or your grandmother or something) and sometimes it's just not worth it (because the shuttle's coming in two minutes and with any luck you'll never see Self-Help Man again).

It is practically reflex now, and it is hard for me to remember that it is okay to react to the silly stuff just because it is April 1. So all fricken' day long, it's HA HA you're so gullible. Sigh.

If the prank happens on Facebook, by contrast, I don't have my politeness cranked up so high, and also, if for a brief minute you aren't sure whether something is real or a prank, you can take a minute to gather your thoughts. GMail Motion, for example - it's clear from the goofy video that it is a prank, but upon hearing the concept, my first thought was, hey, we have voice-to-text software, and we have the Kinect for the Xbox, which enables you to play video games by moving your body. How long can it really be before we have technology to translate a gestural language (American Sign Language, for example) into text? We're not there yet, but it's not a dumb idea...

posted by Jaime_sama @ 3:21 PM