Husband plays funny fake news prank on his wife

Pete says:

I know my wife has this "AP Mobile" news app on her phone and receives text message alerts whenever something big is happening around the world, I decided to play a little prank on her.
This morning I changed my name in her contact list to "AP Mobile" and sent her a short and sweet message and waited for her to turn her phone on. Her mouth almost came down to the floor.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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GuabaMan

Great Joke.

I always hope for a news like that, i wonder how much the world would change.
Anonymous

The world wouldn’t change at all.

20% would deny the reports.
20% would say the images were photoshopped.
20% won’t even care enough to get off the couch.
20% would say the democrats are just trying to raise taxes under the guise of alien defense.
And the last 20% would just blog about it.
- YarbroughFair
  
  I would buy the domain, aliensexclub.com
  
  Lane, aliensexclub.com
  is available!Just $11.99*/yr
  Select the domain names below that you would like to register:
  (GoDaddy)
  - jacques45
    
    What group did the aliens used to belong to that it’s now their ex-club?
- Anonymous
  
  you are such a buzzkill.
- Anonymous
  
  what would the other 20% do?
- Anonymous
  
  “20% would say the democrats are just trying to raise taxes under the guise of alien defense.”
  
  No, no, no… the Republicans are in charge of increasing defense spending. The Democrats would try to raise taxes for programs to study and understand the aliens. This could end up being more of a 10/10 split between the two.
- Anonymous
  
  which 20% do you fall into?
- Anonymous
  
  This guy knows exactly how the world works.
paychecktopaycheck

Great prank. And to all the commenters going off about what would happen if this was real…Stop being so nerdy. It’s just a prank.
Chong

There are SO many possibilities.

Do it rarely enough, and don’t build up a pattern, it could last a while.
- Anonymous
  
  What percentage would sit at home working out percentages and statistics on it?
- Anonymous
  
  Why wold 20% of people NEED to get off the couch in response to a change in historical information? Is there some urgent need for rioting that must happen to deter an invasion of alien aggressors from happening 64 years ago? I, for one, don’t think I would get off the couch if that’s where I happened to be when I heard it.. Of course, I also don’t believe couches or sitting down to be inherently evil.
burritoflats

“Her mouth almost came down to the floor”

I wonder if her jaw dropped at the same time her mouth came down to the floor.

Cute prank. Good one!
sonny p fontaine

I Want to Believe…
spool32

Well played, sir!
purplehayes

A similar, yet sports themed, prank but on a much grander scale

http://soccerlens.com/the-curious-case-of-masal-bugduv/20613/
Scissorman

I’ve played the name change prank a few times. The disappointment in peoples eyes when they learn the truth can nearly cut you in half.
desiredusername

Silly lovebirds!
Phikus

Now THAT’s an April Fools prank.
mr. lee

I’m embarresed to say I tried to slide open to view further…
- Anonymous
  
  Haha, wow, so did I! thought i was alone.
Antinous / Moderator

One year, I convinced a friend of mine that his favorite television star had shown up in a gay porn video. I created a spoof BBC page, and he spent most of the day online trying to track the video down.
El Chairman

Don’t you see? That message was REAL! The lizard/alien infrastructure intervened and this is the cover story!
dpucca

I couldn’t get my wife’s iPhone away from her long enough to pull a prank like this. Sigh.
- Anonymous
  
  I had to get up at 5AM to do it, but then I got so excited about my prank I couldn’t fall back to sleep. -Pete
- Anonymous
  
  I use Google Sync to sync contacts, if your wife were to use this then all you would have to do is try to login to her Gmail account and change the name there. Then it would get pushed to the phone.
Anonymous

am i the only one who thins it should say 1pm EDT (for eastern daylight time)? sorry to be such a stickler for details. i thought this was awesome and creative!
TEKNA2007

Funny, as in, “funny haha get your sheets you’re sleeping on the couch for a year you bastard”
SonOfSamSeaborn

News by text? What is this, 1997?
Anonymous

That is absolutely brilliant. Did she kill you when she found out?
Anonymous

This only works on iPhones because of their lame notification systems. On Android, it would have marked this as a text message instead of a news application notification and wouldn’t necessarily have produced the annoying pop-up.
Anonymous

Obviously faked: The Eastern Time Zone in North America is on Daylight Savings Time (EDT) on April 1, not Standard Time (EST). The time stamp in the AP post would therefore have said “8:23AM EDT”, not “8:23AM EST”. Busted!
Anonymous

My wife didn’t find this as funny as I did when I read it to her! Who’d have thunk! :)
Anonymous

Ah great counter-joke would have been the wife turning to the husband, say ‘Well, guess it’s time’ and take off her human disguise.
- Anonymous
  
  That may not be a bad thing. Steamy..alien action.
DisneyBoy

A friend of mine used the “Find My Phone” messaging feature to send his wife a fake warning saying that her phone was about to be wiped due to a security breach.

He was in the dog house for the rest the of the day.
Maintane

Gotta say though, this sorta prank could really be used for evil. replace the UFO story with a threat that read “nuclear weapon detonated over Washington” and watch the victim shit themselves…
rks1157

I saw this post through Flipboard which originally displays just the image. My jaw did some dropping too. Deviously clever. It made my day.
ascii

that is really, really smart and cute. almost as cute as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5410lezol5k
Sparky

*Applauds* Hahahaha, I doff my cap to you.
Anonymous

Am I the only one who is more concerned about the kitty pr0n behind the message?
Anonymous

Loving this April fools prank
randyman

If I was presented with that incredible news, I would be utterly heartbroken to have it yanked away.
Anonymous

ahhahahaha that was soo funny!!