In case you didn’t notice, our little playground was purposely hijacked this morning. Anyone coming to the site who tried to click a post from 8am until 2pm got this assy splash:
Seems legit.
If you clicked the “wallet” link, you got an equally assy splash that declared “haha, got ya!” and reminded you today is April 1st.
We made this especially cruel by continuing to produce content; rather, we had pranks within pranks but the worst part of it all was that you couldn’t read them. Man, we’re just cruel.
Unfortunately (and maybe not unsurprisingly), many of you didn’t click the link (good on you, not clicking dodgy links at work) and proceeded directly to the outrage stage. The assault started early on Twitter:
@going_concern You’re doing it wrong. Your April’s Fools prank shouldn’t make ur site unusable for half the day.
— Curtis (@CurtIsSirLeo) April 1, 2014
@going_concern But you can’t read it without giving Bitcoin?
— Louis Thomas, CPA (@LouisThomas440) April 1, 2014
@adrigonzo nice April Fool’s joke but can I just read GC instead of looking at the bit-shit login?
— PwC ASSociate (@PwCASSociate) April 1, 2014
And then it hit the tip box:
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS UP WITH THE BITCOIN SPLASH PAGES??? IF IT’S AN APRIL’S FOOLS DAY JOKE, REMINDING US OF WEB 1.0 IS LAME, NOT FUNNY.
MAKE THEM GO AWAY OR GO FUCK YOURSELVES WITH A CHAINSAW.
Others were a little more polite in their emails:
Would you turn off the damned Bitcoin thing already? Â I’d like to take a break from closing to check out some of the articles!!
Still others were just plain confused:
what is the deal with the bitcoin add. The add is obscuring all of your content and says “Going Concern is not transitioning into a Bitcoin-based registration system. In order to receive one year access to this content, please make a Bitcoin donation of .41 BTC into the following wallet:”1F1Aaz…” We thank you for your continued support!
I’ve tried two different computers on different networks and my cell phone on a 4G connection, so I don’t think it is a virus or something. Please get rid of this crap!
And helpful about informing us:
When I open an article I’m getting redirected to donate to a Bitcoin wallet for a year’s subscription to GC…
We have to say our favorite was an email we got from a highly regarded financial journalist and GC fan who is apparently not all that into Bitcoin:
What is this? Did your site get hijacked? I can’t read anything. And I don’t own any bitcoin. (Nor would I give you any if I did.)
As mean as it was for us to shut off the site for a few hours, this taught us a few things. One: you guys hate splash pages. Two: putting GC behind any kind of paywall would be a terrible, terrible idea (don’t worry, we already knew that). Three: some of you are working so hard you don’t even know what day it is.
Rest assured things are back to normal and I haven’t turned to some Bitcoin nut despite a few tweets I spit out leading up to this that may make it appear otherwise. Just so we’re clear, anything written here before 2pm should be read with extreme professional skepticism otherwise it’s business as usual from here on out.
Happy April Fool’s! No hard feelings?
A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Going Concern: