Posts

@LemonDrop & @Ereiam
 
It gave me nausea to use the site, too.
 
It was also “forced” on me, too.
 
I also had absolutely no way to turn it off short of scripting something for my own browser.
 
And I am pretty sure it caused more inconvenience for me than for you. For example, I had to give up probably 90% of the stuff I do when I volunteer here because I simply could not find the buttons I needed and my muscle memory wasn’t getting me through some of the more complex tasks. So I was not just having trouble enjoying the free images that others share here, or the community here, I also was unable to do the very things I had volunteered to help do here.
 
I personally don’t like April Fools day. My family didn’t celebrate it. It’s not really a part of my life, except when other people are celebrating it.
 
It’s like Christmas.
 
Or Easter.
 
Those are also “forced” on me. And they make my life significantly more inconvenient than any problems a website being unusable for a day and a half has ever caused me.
 
But it is a part of the society that I live in, so I know it happens and when it happens I participate in a sociable way.
 
Whining about it for weeks afterwards certainly isn’t sociable. Or, it’s a kind of sociable, but it’s not the kind of sociable that I want to be.
 
But that’s probably because I don’t have to personally be satisfied by everything everyone else enjoys to be able to enjoy it with them.
 
I don’t have to have a personal stake or have my personal preferences acknowledged and respected by people having fun doing something I don’t enjoy to be able to allow them to enjoy it, even if it inconveniences me.
 
I can watch the superbowl with others, even though I have no interest in it. I might periodically poke fun at the intensity that some of my friends show toward the game, but I don’t whine about the problems the Super Bowl caused for me for weeks afterwards.
 
I don’t go to Super Bowl sites and turn their social media threads celebrating the Super Bowl into ongoing examinations of how disrespectful fans of the Super Bowl are, or how the Super Bowl didn’t give me a way to “opt out” of the traffic or the advertisements or the other interruptions in my life that it caused. I don’t gather together with people who ALSO were inconvenienced by the Super Bowl to hold hands and commiserate about how the Super Bowl and the people who enjoy it didn’t show any consideration for my personal needs.
 
Instead, I get drinks with my mates and cheer with them when the local team wins the ball tournament even though I find the tournament itself incomprehensibly and offensively boring.
 
And even though I don’t own any ball tournament swag, I don’t turn their celebration into a discussion of how unfair it is that some people don’t enjoy ball tournament.
 
It’s like St. Patrick’s day. I’m legitimately Irish. But the holiday is a pain in the ass in just about every possible way.
 
But I don’t go to my local and sneer at people drinking green beer and wearing “Kiss Me I’m Irish” hats.
 
Because that seems to me a pretty asshole thing to do when others are having fun.
 
Admittedly - VERY admittedly - of those events last way the fuck longer than I like.
 
Christmas I believe would be a lot more fun and tons more sacred for everyone involved if it lasted 3 days. Add a week for the commercial aspects. Then you’ve got 3 holy days spread out around the Solstice so everyone’s religion’s own personal interpretation of “the day” gets respected and they can do what they want with all the joy and splendor the day entails.
 
But, that’s not how society treats those days. And it really only means that I don’t get to listen to the music I like, or my favorite radio station, or go to my usual stores without being inundated by the reminder that I am a non-Christian living in a Christian majority society, without any option to “opt out” of their holidays.
 
So, in all honesty, if I had an option to turn off the April Fools event so that I could continue clicking the buttons I normally click here for that day and a half of the event, then I wouldn’t turn it off.
 
Because that would be like turning off Christmas. Or turning off Easter. Or turning off the Super Bowl.
 
It meant I could not participate in the site in the way I usually enjoy, so I found a new way to enjoy this community and this site, and I simply didn’t try to do the things that made me physically ill to try to do. Like work on reports or aliasing or helping artists.
 
For me, I don’t understand why people are so selfish that they can’t just let other people enjoy things that they like, even if they have no “hooks” into the thing that their friends are enjoying. Let everyone have fun, participate in the fun to the best of their ability, or just go do something else for awhile and come back later when the thing is over so you can do whatever the normal is with your friends.
 
Perhaps it’s because I don’t consider other people enjoying something I don’t understand as any kind of statement about me.
 
It’s not personal.
 
It’s like a fan run convention where everyone putting it together tries their hardest to do something that will be fun for everyone, and the least I can do is either try to participate in it and have fun, even if my personal tastes or my physical needs aren’t being “respected” by the event.
 
MiniCon has a dance? Sure, that sounds fine. I wish they’d do something else but … you know what? As long as people are having fun that means there’s more fun for everyone. And I am not being handcuffed and forced to go to it.
 
I can opt out.
 
But maybe I’m ok with people doing things that I don’t enjoy, and can enjoy people enjoying what they enjoy even though I don’t enjoy it, because it’s social. I recognize it’s not personal.
 
But that’s just my take on it.
 
So, even though I really found the site damned near impossible to use for the most part, so much so that I felt physically ill when I tried to do some things, I found it funny, and enjoyed it.
 
It’s not like I need this site to get to work in the morning. So I just opted out of the parts of this site that I found unpleasant to use.
 
I mean - be fair.
 
If people break their backs and sacrifice weeks putting something together for my entertainment, at no cost to me and really only a day and a half of no more inconvenience than “Oh, well, ok, I’ll wait until later this week to do that thing”, then I try to enjoy it with a becoming grace.
 
Because a few people really broke their backs to put this together and … let’s be fair … the site didn’t absolutely completely fucking die. It kept working! After a complete and utter rewrite of the site just a few months ago, a few talented and devoted volunteers managed to put together an actual full blown holy shit they pulled it off and the site didn’t completely break April Fools event!
 
That’s pretty damned impressive. Even if the result made me physically ill, I am deeply thankful that they went to that effort for this event.
 
And so I do not continue to bitch about it happening 10 days later.
 
But, you know, whatever.
 
You do you.
 

 
Just please try to do it with a becoming grace.

@LemonDrop  

 
Thanks for summarizing my experience of this event. It started as funny to me as well, until the headaches and nausea began to make themselves felt (no, I’m not exaggerating, but I wish I was).

@Exhumed Legume
 
Always good to learn something new i guess. And man did this topic go off topic.
 
But it IS a april fools topic i suppose…

@Twilestia  

Not exactly – name of a goddess and the (spring equinox) festival in her honor.  
April was apparently named “Eostre’s month” by Anglo-Saxon pagans.

@Exhumed Legume  
Isnt eostre just the name for April rather then the various festivals that happened during that period?
 
And that in itself being from one single source, a christian monk-saint. And he only used it as a means to declare what date Easter should fall on, using Eostre as a justification?

@LemonDrop  
Well, basically, church holidays were mixed with European pagan celebrations to make the faith easier to sell to the natives.
 
Thus, Eostre became Easter, the various winter solstice festivals became Christmas, Samhain became Hallowe’en etc.  
And, in my country, midsummer became a memorial day of John the Baptist.
 
 
But we’re veering dangerously off topic. :P

@Exhumed Legume  
Well I am not sure if that was the origin of it or what, but the Christian holiday is based on the day they believe Jesus was resurrected, and that is what is celebrated on that day (not as much the bunnies and stuff). Same can be said for something like Christmas, the whole Santa thing is definitely another holiday tradition sorta mushed into it whereas the religious celebration portion of it is more about Jesus’s birth. I’m not a holiday expert so I have no idea how all those things somehow came together, but yeah it just shows how arbitrary it is and how people can really think whatever they want when celebrating something. Here on Derpi people celebrate the anniversary of MLP and the site’s creation after all, all that matters if it’s important to you or not.

@LemonDrop  

You mean the pagan fertility festival, Eostre, right?
 
I mean, if a serious Christian thinks eggs and bunnies have anything to do with Jesus’s resurrection, I’ve got a bridge to sell ’em. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All holidays are pretty much relics of the past and now are nothing like what they once were anyways. Only religious people give a shit about something like Easter for its original purpose, everyone else just treats it like a whatever secular holiday formed out of its own thing. In general they are just an excuse now to have a day off of work and to promote disgusting levels of capitalism where people buy meaningless specially branded “holiday” items which most will throw out the next day. They are a waste of time and resources and most sane people can see that, but people can celebrate whatever they want as that is what personal freedom is about.
 
The cause for the friction here is likely due to the April Fool’s stuff being forced on to people who do not wish to celebrate it. There should always be a way to opt out of such things for those people as well as everyone else as something like forcibly changing the color scheme heavily and annihilating contrast does impact site functionality for all who just want to use it like normal, even if they did get a good laugh out of it initially.

@NightStalker  

And yet, with each passing year, VD feels more and more like those damned relationship-havers rubbing it in our faces.
 
You won’t see me demanding everyone stop being all disgustingly lovey-dovey, though…

@CaptainGrumpy  
This made me laugh actually

@Derpy Whooves  

@Background Pony #F843  
Please, in any given thread, post as yourself, or anonymously. Not both.

Wait wait wait
 
People are STILL whining about this?
 
I thought it should be optional too but it’s over, people. Move on!

So what do you think of bagels?

@NightStalker  

 
have you never celebrated a holiday before? Valentine’s Day, for most of us, is known as “Singles Awareness Day”, and Halloween… well, it’s trick or treat innit? if you haven’t been tricked on Halloween at least once, you’re doing it wrong

@NightStalker  
m8 if you lose your sense of humor at a time like this then you’re already lost and I don’t know if we can help you there

@NightStalker  
Some feel that Valentines Day is torture for people who aren’t loved or who have lost a love, and every year we have to deal with people who freak out because anyone celebrating Valentines Day are only doing it to hurt them. Makes it hard to have any kind of community event associated with it.
 
Some feel that Halloween is specifically designed to taunt or tease people who don’t like social situations, intended only to single out introverts who don’t like scaring or prank ing others, and that the entire holiday is just nothing other than endless punishment for anyone who doesn’t “fit in” or who isn’t “normal”. Makes it hard to have any kind of community event associated with it.
 
And don’t even get me started on Easter or Christmas or Thanksgiving.
 
You hate April Fools day. It’s not surprising that you hated this site and most of this community enjoying it and having fun.
 
It’s not fair to you that people had fun that you can’t share.
 
Just like it’s not fair to the people who enjoy April Fools that you characterize them as somehow wanting to make your day miserable, or that everything they were enjoying was stupid miserable shit.
 
What’s your goal here? Do you think this situation will improve if you continue along these lines?

Easter, Halloween and Valentines Day are not designed around dicking with people.

@NightStalker  
Some people feel the same way about Easter, or Halloween, or Valentines Day.
 
Would you prefer that those not happen?

April Fool’s has just become “make others miserable” day, honestly, and that’s not just a commentary on this site’s event, but really the whole atmosphere of the day. I was already not looking forward to April 1 before even seeing what this site had become, because so much stupid, irritating shit goes on and I just wanted to have a normal day.
 
And really, it’s no shocker people got stressed out by this event, because this is a very, very stressful time in the world. Probably not the best world atmosphere to pull something like this. Maybe if this particular event had happened last year, the result wouldn’t have been so volatile. But thousands of people are dying out there. People just wanted to relax with their ponies.

@QuasarNova  
Change “the reason for the event is for everyone to be a part of it” to “the reason for the event is for everyone WHO WANTS TO BE A PART OF IT to be a part of it” and you would be a step closer to perhaps grasping what is actually going on.
 
Not everyone is going to find the gift they want under that Christmas tree.
 
If the thing you unwrap isn’t to your taste, well, sorry, but that’s ok. Come back in a day or two and things will be back to normal.
 
If you do like it? Great, let’s enjoy it together.
 
No one is guaranteed a happy. Sometimes you have to make your own happy.
 
But you don’t get to make it “Not Be Christmas” for everyone else if you don’t like the present.

@Ninji
 
You just described a server update schedule except it lasts a day which I’m sure with all the crap that goes on it’s pretty easily done
 
Besides, the reason for the event is for everyone to be a part of it. Can’t be a part of something if you’re left out of the place it takes part.
 
Whatever it is, all we know is this will be them  

@iTwilightSparkle  
I get confused by you as Starlight and vice versa.

@Ninji  
Don’t give them ideas.