Alas, it’s April 1st — the day where we have to discern whether what we read, hear, and see on the Internet is true or a damn April Fool’s joke. We hand out awards for the funniest and meanest pranks we’ve come across today after the jump. Let us know what hilarity we’ve missed out on in comments.
Best Prank That Made Us Rethink an Annoying Tween Celebrity: Funny or Die has been transformed into Bieber or Die, a website that is all Bieber, all the time. Now that we know the teen heartthrob has a good sense of humor (“I ride on yachts, I sign lady lumps, and I pay people to slap them”), we might have to change our anti-Bieber stance.
Best Prank Uniting SciFi Geeks, Hipsters, and Ayn Rand: Locus Magazine’s L. Ron Creepweans, the writer who only contributes on April Fool’s Day, has let us know that Prometheus award-wining science fiction writers Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow have been tapped by the Ayn Rand estate to write Atlas Rebound, the Atlas Shrugged sequel. With a premise that features the teenage children of the Galt’s Gulch founders rebelling and developing their own political philosophy, Rejectivism (obviously), complete with socialized medicine, a ban on individual automobiles, and extensive art subsidies. Sounds like a hipster utopia to us.
Best Prank Referencing Uncle Jesse (But Not Aunt Becky): CBS’s CEO Les Moonves unveiled the Eye’s Fall 2010 line-up, which is just carbon copies of their other hit shows, along with a dig at Alex O’Louglin. Meanwhile, ABC began running ads for new spin-off shows on their website, including a TGIF line-up featuring Empty House (the kids have moved out, but Uncle Jesse’s still in the attic.)
Best X-Rated Prank on Public Transportation: Our friends at Improv Everywhere — the brilliantly warped minds behind the No Pants Subway Ride — have decided to one up themselves with the No Underwear Subway Ride. For serious. As a result, the video evidence above is probably NSFW.
Best Prank Involving the Midwest: Not to be outdone by any other, Google has planned a multi-tiered April Fool’s Internet attack. At 12:01AM they released a statement on their blog proclaiming to the world that Topeka and Google have officially switched names and they added a 3D option to the Google Topeka Maps street view.
Best Prank Intended to Horrify Emerging Artists: The sly pranksters over at DeviantART have changed all of their users icon pictures to something Gaga or Twilight related. Now their users look like they belong on MySpace instead of wandering the streets of Williamsburg.
Best Prank Related to Serving Sizes: Starbucks annouced the launch of two new beverage sizes on their company blog today, the Plenta and the Micra. Not that it would last us more than 5 seconds, but we just can’t get over how cute and tiny the Micra is!
Best Prank for Making Foodies Cry: Earlier this morning, a bunch of “forthcoming” In-N-Out Burger locations started popping up around the city. This ruse was elaborate — there were even In-N-Out Burger “workers” hanging around Broadway and 22nd Street in uniforms. The villains behind the prank? Those assholes at CollegeHumor.