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Okay, since it's been outed on Your Mac Life, (I had to let Shawn do it first, there's a reason), I have to give a good friend of mine, Sam Crutsinger, the award for Best April Fool's Joke. It was brilliant, as it played on both greed and MacMac dreams, and he had an answer for everything, as we'll see...

Technorati Tags: April Fool's, Humor, Mailing Lists, Your Mac Life

The first post to the YML Mailing List...

My god, I just got back from the Apple Store and it's mayhem. It turns out they're having a birthday party and selling iPods for half price today, but they're not saying anything about it publicly. I just figured they'd do something so I stopped by, but I had no idea.

They were out of the 60GB iPods at the Dallas store in just a few minutes, but I landed a 30GB for $150.

How much you wanna bet there's gonna be a boatload of pods on ebay tomorrow!?

WHEEEEEEEE!

It's a good setup...half priced iPods. Okay, not free computers, nothing outrageous. It's a limited deal, they aren't advertising it so it's almost like a secret. Everyone loves a secret, everyone wants to be in on it. Good hook here.

The first returns look promising:

What is really funny is all the pundits that said that Apple would be announcing some Marvelous new product this weekend. "Open mouth, insert foot"

There's nothing better than when the victims help your cause. But danger! The first doubters show:

So thinking it's what day again, I call the nearest Apple Store. Yes, they are having a sale today, but it's the "Fire Sale" they do monthly. All the returned and demo merchandise goes up for deep discount but no special deals for the birthday. Yes, they did have iPods, but they're already gone.

Maybe I fell for it, but they are having some deals on demo computers... Hmmmm...

Not to worry, Sam's got it covered:

No, this is a must be present sort of thing. They're not talking about it on the phone. I watched one manager giggling his butt off when he hung up on the phone telling the guy pretty much the same thing. They're having some fun today. They know they'll sell out so they're not confirming anything on the phone. The guy said he got authorization from corporate this morning to "deny, deny, deny, but sell, sell, sell!"

I'm surprised the sound of the crowd wasn't a dead give away. I gotta hand it to him though, the guy was a brilliant straight man. He didn't crack up once when he had that phone to his ear!

People sometimes look at Sam and think, "Big Ol' Texas Boy, not a dishonest bone in his body". Ha! I know him too well, he's had to work with so many bat-shit insane people, he can say damned near anything with a straight face. Making the normal crowd noise at an Apple Store into something more...BRILLIANT! At this point, I'm talking to him offline, telling him he's evil. He's cackling, because he's already getting IM's telling him what a bastard he is from people who fell for it. But they're cool about it, they don't let on.

He waits until 1am on April 2nd:

So who wants to admit to going to the Apple Store looking for half-priced iPods? =)

I got IMs, emails, and phone calls wanting more info about the sale. APRIL FOOLS!

It was brilliant. He used Steve Jobs hinting at something special for their birthday during the Macworld Keynote as a setup, and managed to keep it believable for the whole day. That's dedication man.

As Sam said:

Nobody's been willing to admit getting suckered in public, but I've gotten called many a foul name in private correspondence over that one.

The best was Shawn's reply to that post:

People have emailed *me* calling *you* names. :)

When you have people emailing the listmom calling you names, you've pulled off a good one. It was a great joke, and the worst that could have happened to you is that you got some straaaaaange looks at the Apple Store. Maybe giggled at, as someone pointed out what day it is.

To all those people who gripe about April Fool's day? Joke's on you man, it's all good fun.

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