tbh no april fools gag tumblr ever pulls will ever be as good as the lizard election of 2016 staff put more effort into that than the rest of this website combined and it shows
for those of you who werent here in 2016 on april fools that year the entire fucking website was transformed and there was an election for a position that wasnt even ever specified and the candidates were four lizards (or three lizards and a salamander as a scandal would later prove) and it was called decision2016
each lizard had their own 3d models and tumblr blog and campaign and there was also a tumblr blog dedicated to reporting on the election and they made like whole ass news broadcasts with a guy in front of a green screen
you could vote for your favorite candidate and there was a built-in function that let you make and post a campaign poster
in case anyone was wondering the winner of the election was mop. relatable and reliable. #Mop Could
lest we forget
This was absolutely the biggest April Fools effort I ever witnessed while on staff. I already posted about this in an ask but here’s more of the shit that went down behind the scenes.
- Like all April Fools, this was done entirely through volunteer work on Staff. No one was forced to work on April Fools, it’s always employee-initiated and driven, even if it needs approval from leadership.
- The prank almost didn’t go through because leadership felt that the lizards weren’t relatable enough, so the compromise was to give them hats.
- The video updates on the Decision 2016 blog were greenscreen Fiverr actors that were all recorded months? Weeks? in advance? I wasn’t on creative so I don’t know all the deets about how those were made.
- As mentioned in my post, the victory speech by Mop was one of our designers screaming as loud as she could in a closet near the end of the day. The full audio was never posted but staff kept passing around the scream on slack and laughing about it for months afterwards
- There was a “war room” dedicated to advancing the election narrative as votes came in, posting updates in real time and also pushing changes to code as necessary (for bug fixes and what not)
- The votes were real and the “election” was decided by real users, even if the graphics and whatnot were exaggerated for comical effect. Mop won because Mop won. Democracy at work
- Someone brought in their own lizard to celebrate the proceedings. It was a bearded dragon
- This was the culmination of what was probably the most cohesive and imaginative (and largest) creative team Tumblr ever had. Unfortunately almost all of them are now long gone, and Tumblr Creative is now just a skeleton crew compared to their peak
- Wretched Tooth Doesn’t Like To Talk About Himself
- People drew porn of the lizards and posted it on Tumblr. Staff saw it and were sending it to each other on the company Slack. We thought it was great. I mean, terrifying, but great
- This picture of David Karp is my favorite photo of David Karp I have on my phone
@crybabimeiri your Joseb piece for me made me want to go take pics of them together in-game as I can’t stop thinking about it CRIES I love them so much and you did that piece so so so well ;_; thank u again!!
Held within our little hands were a million grains of sand. We’d pluck out a yellow leaf and scream,“We’ll grow a mango tree!” While the nannies would cry, “You’ll get bugs all over you, darling!”
Held between our little fingers were five more fingers of someone else’s hand, we’d run and play, and fall every once in a while. We’d smile and we’d cry, our young bloods filled with rush that would never die.
Held within our little hearts was the joy of swings and sparks. The undying energy and the up and down of a see-saw.
“Ring-a-ring-a-roses,” we’d sing for the pleasure of a fall. Grew up just to find out it’s a death song. Such was our childhood, merry and simple. When broken pencils and crayons were more painful.
It is currently 3:50 am and all I want to do is sleep and forget about this reality for a while. I can’t believe that 7 year old me dreamed of being able to stay up this late.
