This past week a horde of April Fool's jokes have come by from big businesses to individuals.
Online "news" outlets have posted articles recounting the top April Fool's jokes of 2017.
Across outlets, there have also been columns condemning April 1 as something everyone hates to perpetuating the problem of "fake news."
As an idea, April Fool's is great. People don't inherently mind being fooled. Most of us enjoy magic tricks and a good photobomb hasn't ever hurt anyone.
The problem is that as with many things, the overall reception of April Fool's day is determined by the lowest common denominator, which unsurprisingly is pretty low. This is why April Fool's day isn't that well received.
Many people, often myself included, have a poor sense of what is funny and what is not.
This has resulted in great "pranks" such as fake robberies, kidnappings, bomb hoaxes and other outstanding "pranks" resulting in jail sentences (although the pranks are not necessarily executed on April 1).
The whole problem has been aggravated by YouTube, where many prank channels have started one-upping each other.
Many of these pranks have hired actors as their supposed victims in order to get away with things that would otherwise be illegal, resulting in two further problems.
First, some people have been imitating YouTube pranksters, without realizing they used actors or how the prank worked resulting in everything from kids accidentally setting themselves on fire, hanging themselves to sexual assault investigations.
Secondly, in some cases, it's been unclear if something is a prank resulting in a massive waste of police time as a result of investigating fake kidnappings etc.
This is all, of course, at the extreme end of the scale, but while many of us don't mind being fooled, we often don't enjoy being made to look stupid, scared or just annoyed. Even simpler things, such as throwing a pie in someone's face, is not a prank but is just rather rude.
A good prank is one everyone can enjoy, including the people being subjected to the prank and anyone witnessing the prank.
Finally, sometimes a prank can result in something productive.
Several years ago, Google Maps played a prank on people by showing them they would be able to catch Pokemon on their phones wherever they go. Now, several years later, the Pokemon Go app, created following the prank, brought in millions of dollars in revenue ($35 million in just the first month).