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

a whole chapter of my tumblr memoir will be “lizard election 2016”

it was the first project i ever led myself, and i thought i’d be fired for sure by the end of it. completely worth it. would do it all again.

my only regret, echoed by @zacksultan and a few of the other creatives, was that we didn’t get BuzzFeed and other press in the war room with us at the time. it was magical.

Rick is so bad with time. He's so... so bad with time. He didn't know how old Luke was when writing the books which is why Luke had a crush on Annabeth because he thought Luke was younger, his timing with Nicos age doesn't make sense, he kept switching Hazels age in SON, and don't get me started on Hazels story in general??

She was birn in 1938 right? Grew up while World War 2 was happening. But for some reasin Hazel... died when Wirld War 2 was still happening. At 13. Doing the math, it's wrong. World War 2 ended in 1945. Hazel died in 1951! RICK SUCKS AT TIME, PLEASE GET BETTER AT IT, WTH!!

It's the wizard law version of a limited liability clause.

@theorphicforest Dionysus type shit. He explains to his kids, in vivid detail, how to evade your taxes and then adds "or so i've heard, I wouldnt know myself" at the end jsut in case shit hits the fan

hermes' life advice to his children: tell them the most realistic yet atrocious lie and follow it up with something like that and watch it all go to hades at the end

will the holy moly help with my adhd. better question. when i get adhd meds can i CALL them holy moly

im saying that you can

i procrastinate so much. like i havent even finished my sketch for jason grace and i alr have ideas for loucil fanart, an EPIC: the musical poster idea, and a new oc

The Titan’s Curse

I'm going to eat gummies in the shower. will update you on it

guys the gummies have slightly melted in the heat and steam. I forgot about the steam.

anyways they taste fine except they have like condensation on them

im nauseous now. uh

sighh thinking about those gummies again .... I miss them.....

"""monthly""" thinking about the gummies post I guess

lets play a game of "is that sound my parents or a robber who is gonna wake me up from my nap just to make me feel pain when he shoots me"

good news guys! it was just my family