Life Imitates Pranks: The Strange Case of Jaden Smith in a Dress

Back in March, I decided I would take full advantage of writing for a well-trafficked media website to play an April Fools joke on people.  I actually had several gag articles in mind, but ultimately, only one got written--both because I found myself short on time, and also because a few I had planned were too scandalous.  Ultimately, I just went with a joke article about Jaden Smith playing as Pollyanna in a new remake.  Few if any have accused my sense of humor of being subtle, and here, I wrote in an intentionally silly way that should have tipped everyone off that that this was a joke--as if the date didn't.  Yet the reaction the article got was, above all else, strange.  It got shared multiple times; almost certainly by bots in some cases, and it registered on IMDB.  Yet nobody commented on the article, or remarked on it being a joke.  Then, things got stranger.

I had always wondered how my supervisors would take this, and there were times I considered asking them, ahead of time, if it was okay to do it.  I abstained from asking just because I felt the more people I could pull the joke on, the better.  The very next day, I got exactly one mention of my work as part of a general email from my supervisors:

Glad to see my work being read!

So, I figured either we had one long piss-take that the world had taken at my joke instead of chuckling or calling it out, or they just didn't read it.  Only recently did I learn of a third, more paranormal possibility; that somehow, unbeknownst to myself up until recently, I am clairvoyant on the matter of men in drag, and the reason my joke didn't get treated as such was that, in fact, it wasn't such.  As it turns out, Jaden has been seen in a dress. 

A rather Lolita dress at that.

 That was recently, but apparently he's been interested in such clothes for quite some time.  From the way that article is worded, it sounds almost like he's a young, black, male Lady Gaga. 

Yet what if there's more to it?  Could it really be that I psychically concluded a hidden truth, and this young, audacious actor really is going to star in a remake of Pollyanna?  I don't know.  It sounds crazy.  Still, if in fact, I do have the power to predict such things, I'm just going to say, Joss Whedon as Princess Peach in a new Mario movie.  Make it happen; forces that be.