The pointing an laughing at one or a few people is always assholish. A good prank involves everyone laughing together, and if it is targetted at anyone in particular they have to be comfortable with being the target.
Jokes that are aimed at a widespread audience get a pass because there will always be someone who doesn’t like something or feels foolish when they feel tricked no matter how lighthearted the joke is. So a game company announcing something ridiculous for their game needs some leeway when someone takes it personally when they fall for an announcement that Fortnite is removing dances or there would be no room for humor.
Widespread ones can still be mean spirited of course, but tricking people isn’t what makes it so.
gerryflap@feddit.nl 1 year ago
I’m also autistic, and usually pretty bad at spotting jokes. But most April’s fools jokes that I’ve come across were just lighhearted fun and pretty obviously fake. Just real enough sometimes to make you go “really?! oh nvm it’s April 1st…”. What kind of mean spirited jokes are people making?
someacnt@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah, honestly this sounds like some people are doing mean-spirited jokes with the cover of April fools.
OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah I saw a great one about how there’s a new book in a series my partner and I read that we thought was done for…saw the date, had a quick laugh about how silly we were to believe it so fast.