By Mike Lavelle
One interesting annual celebration is April Fool’s day, on April 1st. This is a day when hoaxes, pranks, and practical jokes are celebrated. It is one of my favorite days, although I don’t really celebrate it much, but I do love the TV show Impractical Jokers.
On one hand, there is an innocence to many (but not all) of these pranks as it sometimes provides a brief period of levity in an otherwise serious time. The best pranks are the ones where everybody laughs, even the recipient of the action.
April Fool’s day has roots that go back to the 1600s and is celebrated around the world. I am reminded of my days in the military where we did not necessarily observe April Fool’s day – rather, pranks and such were a regular occurrence, especially towards people new to the unit.
As some of our former military serving readers know or have experienced, people have been sent to look for a gallon of prop wash, five yards of flight line or shoreline, keys to a certain aircraft, a couple of grid squares, batteries for the sound-powered phones, some relative bearing compass oil, or to find a metric crescent wrench. They’ve also been told to go to com and get a can of squelch, that they were going to be on lookout for the mail buoy, go to admin and get 5 copies of the id10t form, test the shock absorber on a M1 series Abrams tank by jumping up and down on it, or given the number to Kentucky Fried Chicken and told that Col. Sanders wants them to call him right back.
I am sure our readers can provide many more examples, especially from other fields, like hospital workers, first-responders, construction trades, and union workers, among others. Much of this is a form of socialization, in good fun, as a way of welcoming a new person to the unit. I bet if we went back far enough, there was a Roman soldier who was sent to supply for a scabbard for a left-handed gladius.
On the other hand, in a much more serious manner, there are many who seek to fool us, unintentionally or deliberately. The unintentional fooling can be the forwarded emails that link to something asserting this or that “fact.” Many times there have been those that have caught my attention and I investigated them only to find out that it was not true or misleading. Accordingly, there are websites where you can “fact check” some of these claims.
Unfortunately, the more intentional “fooling” would include the social security scam calls (got one this week), the (fake) grandchild who needs money, the fake computer repair scams, and even calls for donations from dubious organizations. I consider myself an experienced good deal getter and am one to research products, and it dawned on me that I fell for something advertised in a “crowd funded” site. An item was being advertised and it seemed very legitimate and there were lots of media articles hyping it and seemingly validating it. Eight months later, after seeing a pattern of reasons why the product was not ready (repeatedly), and other signals raised by websites that look into these sorts of things, I was likely “fooled” (along with many others). What was promised and alleged was not, in fact, true. My lesson learned is if it is not actively being sold in a store, I am not interested.
I was once fooled by a door-to-door solicitation for magazine subscriptions to help at risk youth (10 dollars), and once bought a product on eBay that I lost money on because it was delivered in a non-functional state. It seems there is always a new scam, or a new trick, or a new twist that even the most-savvy and experienced of people can fall for – and there is always a novel one right around the corner.
The day that I wrote this, I saw a news segment on “deepfakes,” which is the technology that produces fake videos of famous people saying or doing something. While it looks completely real, it is totally fake. It is a new twist on deception – now one has to be careful of videos showing a political figure apparently saying or doing something.
The ancient Roman saying ”caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware), applies very well to our time, to both products being hyped or “truth” claims being pushed via social media. We live in a time where scams, false claims, and deception operate on many levels, even ones that look or are legitimate.
Otherwise, in line with the song lyrics from The Who, “I’ll get on my knees and pray we don’t get fooled again.”
Mike Lavelle is retired and formerly worked part-time as the editor at The Vail Voice. He lived in the Del Webb community in Vail but now resides in Sierra Vista.
