The exact origins of April Fools’ Day, which is celebrated on the 1st of April each year, remain a mystery, but it has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures. Traditions on the day include playing practical jokes or tricks on others, and saying “April Fools!” at the end to let the person or group know they were the subject of an April Fools’ Day hoax. In my humble opinion, every day is April Fools’ Day due to the prevalence of disinformation, propaganda, and fake news.
Some historians have linked April Fools’ Day to the ancient Roman festival Hilaria (Latin for joyful or cheerful and linked to the English word hilarious), which was celebrated at the end of March by cult followers of the great goddess Cybele. The festival involved people dressing up in disguises and mocking fellow citizens and even magistrates, and was said to be inspired by the Egyptian legend of Isis, Osiris and Seth.
Another theory historians have is that April Fools’ Day started in 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which the Council of Trent called for in 1563. In the Julian Calendar, like the Hindu calendar, the new year began with the spring equinox around April 1st. People who continued to celebrate the new year during the last week of March through April 1st, because they were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1st, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes and were called “April fools”. According to History.com, “These pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as ‘poisson d’avril’ (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.”
Media and major brands have ensured that April Fools’ Day is embraced and has a long life despite the exact history being shrouded in mystery. The origin of fake news is also a bit difficult to pin point, but its use throughout history has been uncovered with time. One of the first records of fake news occurred in the 13th century B.C. when Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, also known as Rameses the Great, spread lies and propaganda portraying the Battle of Kadesh as a stunning victory for the Egyptians. He depicted scenes of himself thrashing his foes during the battle on the walls of nearly all his temples. However, the treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites reveals that the battle was actually a stalemate according to historians.
There is even evidence of fake news in the Bible. In approximately A.D. 33, when the soldiers guarding Jesus’ tomb after he was crucified came to report to the chief priests what they witnessed at the tomb, the priests paid the soldiers to lie. “When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept’ “ (Matthew 28:12-13 NKJV).
From my research, the term “fake news” was first used in the late 19th century, and not coined by President Donald Trump in 2017 as he would like us to think. Some media publications used the term to boast about their own journalistic standards and attack those of their rivals. One example comes from 1896 when a writer at one San Jose, California newspaper lambasted the publisher of another newspaper stating, “It is his habit to indulge in fake news. … [H]e will make up news when he fails to find it”, as per an article by The Christian Science Monitor entitled, “Surprisingly old words that seem contemporary”.
In the 21st century, both the impact of fake news and the use of the term has become widespread. This is due to the increasing openness, access, and prevalence of the Internet, especially via social media. The universe of “fake news” is much bigger than simply false news stories. The term has evolved in recent years to become rather generic and inclusive, encompassing things that may have been considered separate categories at one time. Fake news can be divided into two types, misinformation and disinformation. According to University of Michigan Library, “Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is mistakenly or inadvertently created or spread; the intent is not to deceive. Disinformation is false information that is deliberately created and spread ‘in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth’ “. So, disinformation is knowingly spreading misinformation.
Here are four ways that fake news can fool you, as identified by neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin PhD in 2016. 1) “Lies are tucked in among truths”. An effective technique is to have several verifiable facts and then add one or two statements that are untrue, which then tend to be accepted by default. 2) “Websites masquerade under misleading names”. Two examples mentioned are one from a 2014 congressional election in Florida where the local GOP office created a website with the name of their Democratic opponent, which fooled people into donating money to the Republican candidate when they thought they were contributing to their own candidate. Another example was a white supremacist, neo-Nazi hate group that created a website using Martin Luther King’s name to defame the civil rights icon. In 2022, we call that clickbait. 3) “Numbers are given without context”. The example given is about the safety of air travel using an unsubstantiated statement, “More people died in plane crashes in 2014 than in 1960.” The statistic is correct, but uses a less relevant statistical factor, time, because there were so many more flights in 2014 than 1960. 4) “Claims rest on false sources”. Many times, unscrupulous writers count on the fact that most people don’t bother reading footnotes or tracking down citations to verify the information.
While April Fools’ Day is only celebrated once a year on the 1st of April, fake news is trying to fool us one way or another everyday. I was even a victim of it earlier this week when I hastily shared a post from Facebook that I thought was legitimate to a small group of friends. Fortunately, a couple of my friends called me out and said it was “fake news” before I shared with anyone else. While it is almost impossible to prevent fake news, we can, however, strive to prevent its spread like my friends did with me. Before sharing, commenting, or liking content on social media or the Internet, check it for blatant spelling and grammatical errors, and fact-check the information. If you have any doubts, rather opt out.
