http://onion.com/1I0NLuI

Waiting to see what kind of April Fools jokes are on this board tomorrow

There will always be a few that fall for them. That fake report/sarcastic post is kinda played out as an April Fool's Day Joke though, I hope there's something fresh.

Best one recently was the NPR 'article' about a study which showed 'People only read Headlines'. If you actually clicked to article in order to read it, it clearly stated it was a joke and to not spoil it for others, yet literally tens of thousands of people commented on facebook/social media about how true this is and how bad people are who do this.

I always thought the Onion should do some hard-hitting expose on April Fools, like completely blow the lid off of some small-town corruption or social injustice given the fact they only do satire.

It can be dangerous though. Those not who don't get that type of humor could jump off the deep end and do drastic things. Most in here should remember reading about the "War of the Worlds" broadcast and the panic that ensued over that "entertainment" program.

(03-31-2015 03:24 PM)Pony94 Wrote:  Waiting to see what kind of April Fools jokes are on this board tomorrow

Could you tell?

(03-31-2015 06:06 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  It can be dangerous though. Those not who don't get that type of humor could jumped off the deep end and do drastic things. Most in here should remember reading about the "War of the Worlds" broadcast and the panic that ensued over that "entertainment" program.

That panic never really happened, at least to the extent commonly believed. Per wiki -

Quote:Historical research has strongly suggested the panic was less widespread than newspapers had indicated at the time. "[T]he panic and mass hysteria so readily associated with 'The War of the Worlds' did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension", American University media historian W. Joseph Campbell wrote in 2003. He quotes Robert E. Bartholomew, an authority on mass panic outbreaks, as having said that "there is a growing consensus among sociologists that the extent of the panic … was greatly exaggerated".[24]

This position is supported by contemporary accounts. "In the first place, most people didn't hear [the show]", said Frank Stanton, later president of CBS.[4]

Five thousand households were telephoned that night in a survey conducted by the C. E. Hooper company, the main radio ratings service at the time. Only two percent of the respondents said they were listening to the radio play, and no one stated they were listening to a news broadcast. Ninety eight percent of respondents said they were listening to other radio programming — The Chase and Sanborn Hour was long the most popular program in that timeslot — or not listening to the radio at all. Further shrinking the potential audience, some CBS network affiliates, including some in large markets like Boston's WEEI, had pre-empted The Mercury Theatre on the Air in favor of local commercial programming.[4]

Ben Gross, radio editor for the New York Daily News, wrote in his 1954 memoir that the streets were nearly deserted as he made his way to the studio for the end of the program.[4] Producer John Houseman reported that the Mercury Theatre staff was surprised when they were finally released from the CBS studios to find life going on as usual in the streets of New York.[3]:404 The writer of a letter the Washington Post published later likewise recalled no panicked mobs in the capital's downtown streets at the time. "The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast", media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow wrote in Slate on its 75th anniversary in 2013; "Almost nobody was fooled".[4]

According to Campbell, the most common response said to indicate a panic was calling the local newspaper or police to confirm the story or seek additional information. This, he writes, is an indicator that people were not generally panicking or hysterical. "The call volume perhaps is best understood as an altogether rational response ..."[24] Some New Jersey media and law enforcement agencies received up to 40 percent more telephone calls than normal during the broadcast.[31]

I'm not one to usually knock Wikipedia but you're gonna have to come up with another source beyond it to back that up.

(03-31-2015 08:57 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  I'm not one to usually knock Wikipedia but you're gonna have to come up with another source beyond it to back that up.

It's a well sourced wiki entry, which is why I posted it instead of the articles it's sourced from.

This article from Slate backs up the claim, here is an NPR article addressing it, and a BBC article commenting on it too.

Without a doubt, it concerned a lot of people and surely a select few freaked out. But, it was not some nationwide panic like people want to remember.