Microsoft’s Had Enough Of Your Silly April Fools’ Day Pranks, Bans It For Employees

Microsoft's marketing chief Chris Capossela has warned all its employees to not participate in the process of annoying hoaxes

By: News Desk |
March 28, 2019 3:42 pm

While you may or may not be very excited about April Fools’ Day pranks but Microsoft has already announced that it won’t be promoting any hoaxes or rumours. Microsoft’s marketing chief, Chris Capossela, has warned all its employees to not participate in the process of annoying hoaxes or do any public April Fools’ Day stunts.

In an internal memo to the employees accessed by The Verge, Capossela said, “I appreciate that people may have devoted time and resources to these activities, but I believe we have more to lose than gain by attempting to be funny on this one day.”

He added that such publicity stunts have ‘limited positive impact and result in unwanted news cycles’.

When it is about April Fools’ Day pranks, search engine giant Google tops the list as it comes up with a list of pranks every year. However, not all pranks have gone down well with users in the past. On April 1, 2016, it came up with its infamous ‘mic drop’ prank that totally backfired. It introduced a special version of the send button which turns into a gif of a minion dressed as the queen dropping a microphone at the end the email. Many users accidentally ended up clicking on the button while sending official as well as personal mails which were serious in nature. As a result, many lost their jobs and the prank was criticised for being insensitive, reports The Guardian.

An April fool in Denmark, regarding Copenhagen’s new subway. It looks as if one of its cars had an accident, and had broken through and surfaced on the square in front of the town hall. | Source: WikiMedia Commons

April Fools’ Day is celebrated on April 1st every year where people prank each other with jokes and hoaxes. It first originated in the Europe in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII ruled the new calendar to start from January 1 instead of the prevailing New Year celebrations which were till the end of March.

April 1 was thus considered to lay in the change of calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian one. Some European countries accepted the new Gregorian calendar while the others stuck to Julian calendar. Those which refused to change were thus considered as fools and this how the idea of April Fools’ Day came into existence, reports The Indian Express