Image by Alex E. Proimos via Wikimedia Commons
Thanks to the wonder of the world wide web, few mistakes and mishaps go unnoticed these days, and many of them even go viral. For the April Fools’ Day that’s in it, we share some of our favourite foolish fails.
Social media’s dumbest criminals
Facepalm-worthy statuses are a regular occurrence on Facebook and even the professionals get it wrong sometimes, as evidenced by the oft-spotted social media marketing fail. But the biggest social networking blunders come from the criminals who forget that their deviancy is best kept to themselves.
Earlier this year in the US, a man was taken into police custody when he shared his own wanted photo on Facebook and, back in 2012, another woman faced up to three months in jail for a status update. The woman in question was on probation for drunk driving when she boasted on Facebook that she had passed a breathalyser test after getting drunk on St Patrick’s Day. Doh!
You had one job
There’s not one but two websites dedicated to showcasing the innumerable ways the human race can find to mess up the seemingly simplest of tasks. Browse them and weep.
Fail! You’re on camera
With most of us these days carrying a video recording device in our pockets, fools are never far from YouTube stardom.
Of course, failing on video isn’t solely a 21st-century phenomenon. Scarlet for you, Bill Gates.
Failure to Photoshop
Photoshop is an incredible, vast photo-editing tool that can achieve wonders. That is, some creations that are wondrous, and some that make us wonder WTF? But even with all the technology Adobe has to offer, a South Korean newspaper published this image of US president Barack Obama ‘shaking’ the hand of South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
Yahoo answers some tough questions
We’ve already explored the crazy questions web users out there have asked Google, but that infographic doesn’t even come close to the queries being asked of Yahoo’s hive mind.
Damn you, autocorrect!
To be fair, sometimes failure comes not as the result of human error but from the interfering technology that thinks it knows better.
Texting fails via Damn You Auto Correct!
Animals are fools too
When the online community isn’t laughing at the failings of fellow humans, we turn our attention to bumbling animals. So cute, and so foolish.
Of course, failure isn’t all bad – the Science Gallery even has an exhibition to celebrate it – and just when we think we’ve seen it all, the internet will show us those who fail again, and fail better.
