LIVEUpdated Mar 31, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC
Welcome to the worst day on the internet! As Chaim Gartenberg pointed out years ago, brands and a holiday dedicated to hoaxes are rarely a winning combo. If you’re a company with any kind of social media presence in 2025, you really, truly only have four options on April Fools’ Day:
Don’t do an April Fools’ joke. Put the time and energy into doing something productive that will materially benefit the world (or, less idealistically, your business) instead. Or just don’t do anything. Abstaining entirely would still be a net positive over the drain of resources and mental energy.
Do an April Fools’ “joke,” but actually follow through on your stunt. This is arguably not a prank since you’ve actually created a video game skin or a real product that people can buy — but it doesn’t really hurt anyone.
Do an April Fools’ joke, but be extremely clear from the start that this is a dumb joke and you have no intention of doing the thing that you are “humorously” pretending to do. Does this defeat the purpose of doing an April Fools’ joke because you’re not “fooling” anyone anymore? Absolutely. (Please see my first two points.)
Lie to your customers, successfully tricking them into believing you are making some product, rebranding, or service you are not. By doing so, you will almost certainly annoy everyone once your deceit is made plain for the extremely small gain of pointless PR. The aphorism goes that there is no such thing as bad publicity; the seemingly endless line of companies willing to make fools out of themselves has proven this false time and time again.
So far, we’ve seen a couple of dating sim spinoffs, Razer’s translation headset, and a few other things, but we’ll keep the list updated here.
If you see anything that particularly sticks out for good, bad, or just unusual reasons, send it to us.
Jay Peters
April Fools’ 2025: Duolingo’s five-year global cruise.
Dominic Preston
April Fools’ 2025: The 3310 Overture.
Nokia’s iconic 3310 was first resurrected as a modern(ish) handset, and will now be immortalized by the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Well, that may not be entirely true, but the Royal Albert Hall’s April Fools’ Day prank imagines a better world than this: one where classic ringtones get the full orchestral treatment, Snake II players are projected, and an organist creates a bit-crushed composition on a T9 keyboard.
Jay Peters
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The developers of Palworld and PUBG: Battlegrounds have announced details of dating simulators set in the universes of their respective games.
The Palworld dating sim, technically called Pal♡world! More Than Just Pals, was actually announced ahead of April Fools’ Day last year. But yesterday, developer Pocketpair released a second trailer for the game and published an official Steam listing, so it seems like it’s a bit closer to actually releasing.
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Jay Peters
April Fools’ 2025: “Zoomer gibberish.”
Razer’s April Fools’ prank is the “Razer Skibidi” headset, which it says is “the world’s first AI-powered brainrot translator headset.” Razer even made a mock translator you can try on its website.
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