Lightening the Gloom

In 2004 at the age of 37 Jane Fraser joined Citigroup and became known for her April Fools' Day pranks. Her predilection for practical jokes doesn't seemed to have harmed her career. In 2021 she became the CEO of Citigroup. Her mischievousness continues.

In early 2022, Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser startled her senior team with a request: Please sign these waivers to go skydiving.

Executives questioned the sanity of the bank’s leaders all jumping out of a plane. Does the board know, one of them emailed. I’m not sure my heart is healthy enough, another replied.

Karen Peetz, the chief administrative officer hired to repair Citigroup’s relationships with regulators, tried to calm the kerfuffle. She said she’d gone with her old bank and it was great.

After watching her team squirm for a while, Fraser emailed again: April Fools’.

It was March 31.

In business it requires excellent judgment to discern when humor crosses the line. Hopefully it's reflective of the judgment that will be needed to overcome Citigroup's problems.

Fake and Funny

Today is April Fool's Day, and the web is rife with hoaxes that are variations of fake pictures, videos, words, in fact any information that can be digitized. (Google's April Fool's "MentalPlex" antic is from the year 2000.)

Personally, I most admire practical jokes that were concocted before the Internet era, such as the famous Caltech pranks that included assembling a running Model T Ford in a dorm room, or the one where a student's door was plastered over so his room "disappeared."

The following isn't really an April Fool's joke because it originated a month ago and (almost) everyone knew it was fake from the beginning. WSJ: Stressed Over Getting Into College? Just Invent Your Own School

In the Reddit chatroom the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts is the most exclusive college you’ve never heard of. Why? It’s not real.

It is, however, perfectly suited to this high-anxiety moment for high-school students around the country waiting to find out if they have been accepted to college. The fake school’s founders channeled their college admissions stress into inventing a university of their own.

High school seniors from different parts of the country were commiserating over the stress of college admissions, and SRIIOTA was born. The website material grew spontaneously as more participants added to the joke.

Boomers shouldn't worry: the country is in good hands.

The Joke Backfired

Volkswagen made an April Fool's joke related to the intense interest in electric cars. Unfortunately the joke backfired:

Volkswagen AG’s U.S. subsidiary said Tuesday the company would rebrand itself as Voltswagen of America to promote its electric car strategy, but a spokesman for the parent company in Germany later said the move was a joke.

The name change, which immediately lit up social media and online news sites, was originally intended as an early April Fools’ Day stunt to get people talking about VW’s ambitious electric car strategy.

Too bad, the Volkswagen-with-a-K nameplate on my 1967 Beetle could have become a collector's item.

April Fool's Day Should Be Retired

Causing someone to believe that fake news--the more ridiculous the better--was true used to be a lot easier. People in general used to be more trusting because, IMHO, people were more trustworthy.

April Fool's Day was understood to be a day off from integrity, when one could freely dispense falsehoods without damaging one's reputation. It was a day of lighthearted fun.

The President of the United States has been called to task for his exaggerations, if not outright lies. But every President has lied, and perhaps President Trump will indeed end up to be the worst prevaricator ever to occupy the Oval Office.

What's different this time is that we have found that we cannot trust anyone, even the institutions that are supposed to value truth above furtherance of any cause. Lying is not the only form of deception. News organizations have been proven to leave out key information that doesn't fit the narrative---it's as if a prosecutor doesn't reveal that the defendant had an alibi---in the furtherance of a partisan agenda.

It's time to retire April Fool's Day. It ain't so funny any more.