PackRat and April Fools Day 2009
I will fully admit that I’m addicted to Facebook. (That’s why I chose to write my honours paper on Facebook and censorship.) I’m also addicted to PackRat, an application created by Alamofire Inc. I recently celebrated my first year anniversary of playing PackRat. I currently have 53 feats. I had a subscription for a few months too, but since I’m in debt from my student loans I cut it. It’s really an unnecessary expense and I haven’t had as much time to play lately because I’ve been concentrating.
Anyway, long story short. My friend Jessie, who is also an avid packratter, was telling me about the awesome new features of PackRat and I should check it out. I logged into PackRat for the first time in weeks. I was surprised to see that they have a new menu bar functionality. I thought, oh, this is a nice new streamlined look. The top bar said something about there being new features that I needed to upgrade to. Since I’d been gone for so long, this seemed plausible. It’s also similar to how Wordpress makes you upgrade your database tables with each update. I went for it…
and got this message:
I was absolutely shocked! I could believe the message though, because my boyfriend also has a PackRat account (which he signed up on of his own accord) and I use his pack to store things. He will also buy me things with his credits on it. I knew it would look bad if they were truly analysing my data for the change over.
I was on MSN with Jessie and our conversation was something like this:
Me: *copy and paste of the message above* OMG O_O I’ve been banned!
Jessie: oh no! contact them
Me: Woe is me, how could this happen, etc.
Jessie: (who obviously already knows it’s a fools joke) Click on the contact button!
And then, of course, I do, and I discover it’s all a trick. I’m an April Fool. They got me!