iPreg Test Apps tries to advertise a fake iPhone application that you piss on to get pregnancy results.  Yes, someone actually spent time on this.  No, they didn’t actually make an application you can load onto your phone and pretend to piss on.

It appears that this is mostly a gimmick to run advertising on the site and then after you click through you are presented with some amazon purchase links to actual pregnancy test.  A pretty clear sign that they are leveraging the Amazon affiliate program.

I do hope that someone tries to piss on their iPhone.  A secondary choice may be to print out the HTML for their web site and use that paper to determine if I pregnant or not.

Upon initial examination, it seemed that TechCrunch had done us all a favor and listed all of the Internet Annoyances for us. You may actually want to view their post as it is akin to someone handing you a cellophane layover of a map of your garden noting where all the land mines have been placed.  We recommend you ignore the commentary and merely take note of the warnings.

The first thing you will notice is that TechCrunch takes immense pleasure in the apparent game of pissing where we drink, but if you take a moment to look closer they go from skimming the surface of the septic tank to putting on Mike Rowe’s knee high slickers to jump right in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUB8Dio0Xk

(Oddly enough, Mike Rowe’s interaction with the septic tank seems to be a perfect metaphor for dealing with Internet Annoyances.)

TechCrunch initiated their very own Internet Annoyance and then proceeded to list & grade said Annoyance in their own list.  Not surprisingly, they gave themselves an “A+”.

TechCrunch and modesty go together like Legos and Lincoln Logs.

As we all knew, Google would roll out some announcement that would do its best to annoy us enough to make the news.  This year is no different; Google has announced that it would be changing its name to “Topeka”.

Does Google feel that they must do something on Internet Annoyance Day or fear that they would break one of the Seven Seals?  That could be seen as going against their “Don’t Be Evil” stance, but so could a lot of things.

If you want to participate in something original and funny, we suggest that you ad-lib your own version of The Aristocrats. Even Bob Saget is able to pull this off:

Sadly, the first attack on the internet during Internet Annoyance Day came to this humble writer’s attention while idling across the waves of single day deals.  Our beloved purveyors of Bag of Crap and Screaming Monkeys have sadly joined the Piñata of Hate by filling it with Bags of Crap.

Woot, we have idled by when you sold us “Charades Deluxe“.  We may not have been so quiet when you tried to push a “Box of 15 Marian Heath Christmas Cards” onto us.  Those who did purchase those clearly did so to move a Woot Off along.

This sad step onto the moist field of feces would best require your “Flush Light” to help you find better sense in such hard times.

As the day or reckoning slowly approaches, so does the angst of knowing that the so called “internet pranks” will be thrown upon us as if we all decided to stand beneath a Piñata of Hate.

Instead of glorious candy, we shall be showered with the marketing wrapped sugar coated stones of “comic relief”.

Like children on Halloween, we know that most of you will be giving out wax lips which we will wonder why you bothered to put into our pillow case.  We will think, “I don’t know what to do with wax, I would have preferred raisins…and I hate raisins.”

Come this April 1st, known as April Fools Day, please participate in the safest form of bad shaniganary:

Abstinence.

If there’s one prank that we do welcome on Internet Annoyance Day it’s one like SlideShare tried to pull. Some programmer somewhere must have been coding late at night when they realized it was almost Internet Annoyance Day. Not having any creativity, energy, or time to invest in a suitable prank, they took the easy road like many are doing today.  They decided to add *100 to their code and increase the views on all the PowerPoint presentations users uploaded. On top of that they sent out an email to let everyone know “omg you’re getting views, your e-peen is huge!”  Of course new media douchebags ate it up.  I guess we should have expected something like this from a company that builds a “business model” around PowerPoint presentations.

So here’s to you SlideShare. Kudos for pissing off your users to the point where they jump ship to your competitors.  This just means that next year we won’t be seeing your lame attempts at humor anymore.

I think this video is a perfect metaphor for Internet Annoyance Day:

There is one difference that must be made well aware of:

Internet Annoyance Day does not taste like bacon.

Chocolate Covered Lard

This is a very serious point to make.  Although bacon is quite bad for us, it is the Zeuss of foods; the Odin to our Thor of stomachs.  Internet Annoyances do not have this godlike counterweight.  I find that on this level it has more in common with the Ukrainian chocolate covered lard “treats”.  Bad for you and the society that may end up paying your medical bill for heart problems, but a select few still seem to enjoy it in the outer realms of Eurasia.

Internet Annoyance Day is the proverbial heart attack brought on by a day of consuming chicken fried bacon en masse in the form of bad pranks and poorly executed jokes.

One of Google's Internet Annoyances

It seems that it has become Standard Operating Procedure for web companies to slap us across the face with an Internet Annoyance every year.

The first that comes to mind, of course, is Google.  It is a foregone conclusion that they will push out a press release touting some new feature, service or corporate appendage that is clearly ridiculous.  This year is no different. [WARNING: Site linked to has auto-playing music.]

We all know that Google does not stand alone in this regard.  Internet Annoyance Day has become institutionalized.

The Populace has come to expect Internet Annoyances from companies to the point where companies must incorporate an Internet Annoyance plan into their marketing strategy.  There are books dedicated to such marketing techniques.

This institutionalization has caused a few unpleasant consequences.  For one, with expectation comes the loss of surprise; we are watching a magician perform with all of the mechanics of their illusions in plain sight and with no misdirection.  The act must be quite good in order to appreciate the pure technique since the method has been revealed.  Similarly, if an Internet Annoyance is to create any amusement it had better be at the core an impressive demonstration of closeup craftsmanship.

Secondly, the institutionalized bacteria of Internet Annoyance has become airborne and quickly taken refuge in the lungs of the populace.  They have taken it unto themselves (ourselves?) to infect anyone that gets near their rancid cough.  Sadly, this “cough” is broadcasted via Twitter, Facebook, email, and all other methods of communique.  That dust you see covering our Tubes is not human dander.  No, no…it is a much worse layer of Internet Annoyances.

This plague has a cure.  The problem is that human nature is at direct odds with this cure: Abstinence.

Internet Annoyance

This fresh year of 2009 is about to be soiled with the droppings of Internet Annoyance slogged throughout the collective lawn we all share.

Instead of turning off our Twitter feeds, closing our laptops, drowning our brains at a dive bar hoping that no Internetties come along to chit chat about their favourite Internet Annoyance, disabling our phones, setting up single day automatic vacation notices for our email, crossing the street such as to avoid even seeing Ritual Roasters, or merely closing our eyes and putting in ear plugs we have decided to protest on this Internet Annoyance Day (commonly referred to as “April Fool’s Day“).

This blog in addition to our Twitter feed @NetAnnoyDay will be used to fight the battle against the onslaught of Internet Annoyances.  We hope to place a glaring red flag into each pile of excrement that will throughout the day litter our collective lawn that is the Internet.

Every year these attempts at corporate, and personal, comedy bring our collective internet experience to a grinding hault.  The internet we wish to actually use is littered with nuggets of irritating annoyances that sucks the oil from the engine and causes the machine to seize up leaving us stranded not knowing whether to hitchhike, wade through the mud as we walk, or merely stuff our heads into a paper bag and wait for it all to just end.

You can help bring a stop to this:

As was posted on Laughing Squid, “Please remember to celebrate through abstinence.”

Like people who are tone deaf, but do not realize it, many geeks and marketroids think they are able to create comedy.  Unless you have hired Woody Allen to be your ghost writer, you may want to reconsider.  Internet Annoyance Day has become the de facto day in which people assume they must make attempts at comedy.  To go back to the tone deaf singers, it is like the internet has become one large Karaoke bar with no exits.  Singing poorly at a Karaoke bar can be good fun, but only when you have chosen that experience.  We are stuck in this Karaoke bar when all we want to hear is the jukebox.

Pranks like those perpetuated on Internet Annoyance Day are generally based on the idea that they are unexpected.  This has now become impossible.  We are flooded with too many “jokes” such that our default response is now to expect an Internet Annoyance rather than factual, interesting, or otherwise useful tidbits. (Albeit some can be occasionally useless, but none-the-less fun nuggets of memedom.)

If you truly wish to grab hold of the spirit of April Fools’ Day, then pick a random day in the year and execute with wit.  Please save this day from total Internet Annoyance and have a safe April 1st by practicing abstinence.