Thread by @aaronreynolds

It’s entirely possible to construct inclusive, funny April Fools pranks that everyone can enjoy.

Let me tell you about my favourite one.

At my old workplace there were a lot of computers and they were all exactly the same. Same model, same keyboard and mouse, same software on all of them, and most importantly, the same desktop picture: MacOS’ default mountains image.

The sameness was company-mandated. And since the computers were all communal, this made sense. I might have favoured one of the computers and always used it, but it was never going to be Aaron’s Computer.

So for April Fools one year I modified the mountaintop photo to add a teeny tiny kitty cat on the top of the mountain. And then I made a folder with 200 copies of the normal desktop photo and one copy of the modified one.

I told MacOS to use this folder for wallpaper, changing the photo every five seconds. And I told it to select the photo randomly.

So every once and a while, a tiny kitty appeared at the top of the mountain for five seconds and then vanished.

I put this folder on every computer that I could without anyone noticing me. I was in early, so I got to about 80% of them.

The results were hilarious.

“Wait, did you see the cat too?!”

Once I took a screenshot of the desktop, rotated it 180°, set it as the desktop, and then in system preferences rotated the monitor 180°.

“Why do the apps open upside down?!”

My team practiced doing a simple regular task in this setup so we could act like nothing was wrong.

https://twitter.com/one0nine/status/1377623985937129472

That one WAS somewhat disruptive to work, and it directly inspired Mountaintop Kitty Cat.