There was a movie premise floating around Hollywood a couple years ago about a married couple who decide to play a joke on their friends and family by telling everyone they were getting divorced. Only problem is, everyone gets excited and/or starts saying "I never thought you were good for each other anyway." The couple then begin to have doubts about their relationship after the joke backfires.
No idea what happened to it, probably ended up on the Lifetime Network starring Valerie Bertinelli. But it's an important lesson in understanding the blowback you can suffer when a joke goes bad.
Take Mookie Jones, for instance. The hobbled Syracuse freshman decided to have a little fun on Facebook this morning for April Fool's Day by posting the following status:
fuck this school I'm tranferin.I can't take this shit anymore,its time to go somewere were I can play
It's April Fool's Day so it's safe to say this was a prank. But the problem (or great thing) about April Fool's Day is that many people forget it's April Fool's Day (as noted in these comments...suckers.) And for Mookie, his message generated some...curious responses.
So Mooks relented and admitted the joke:
ok I was playing,it was apose to be a april fools joke,but it turned out to be a lot more sserous,sorry folks,I would never jus give up like that
And of course, a few folks decided to continue taking things seriously:
not that funny ur teamates didn't bother to show up for Oklahoma and u joke like this, I wonder what Jimmy B would think?
face it u suck
Alrighty then. But like any good jokesmith, Mookie has come to terms with the blowback and moved on...
Dan the man said don't listen to you dudes and keep ballin,so I think that's wat I'm going to doo
Keep on dooing what you doo, Mookie. Just doo it.
H/T: Evan