You
should know better to trust the Internet on April 1st. Reddit announced that it
was introducing “Headdit,” or “Hand Equivalent Action Detection.” This new
technology allows Reddit users to use facial expressions to navigate through
the site, instead of all that pesky clicking and typing.
Users
can nod to go through links and comments, frown to downvote, and open links
with a surprised expression. In addition, if you hold your cat up to your
computer screen, it will initiate “cat mode,” whatever that may be. All of this
is explained in a cute little promotional video that Reddit made.
It’s
not a surprise that this was all just a hilarious April Fools’ Day prank.
Clicking on the Headdit option turns on the users webcam and records them
making fools out of themselves. It’s only a matter of time before we see a
blooper reel full of people contorting their faces and hoisting their cats into
the air.
This
was a pretty funny prank that Reddit pulled, and I’m not surprised that people
fell for it. Technology is getting far advanced enough that people are ceased
to be amazed at what their computers can do. Even though this technology seems
a little silly, it could happen one day.
In
my opinion, it would be more strenuous and annoying for me to have to make
certain facial expressions than to just click and type what I wanted. It would
still be cool to try out the facial recognition, but I would definitely not
want to use it every day.
This is such a great prank! I think that looking back, we could see that it wouldn't make sense for a company to put the money into getting facial recognition like that for a function that they didn't need, but like you said it probably sounded very believable in the moment because of the power of the internet. Reddit does a good job of creating a community online and by engaging in such interactive campaigns like an April Fool's joke, they create a friendlier atmosphere on their site. They allow all of their users to connect as they see how they mutually fell for the joke.
ReplyDeleteI think their prank idea was extremely intelligent and it will gain a lot of attention for the site itself which could potentially drive new users to visit. By challenging their users to interact with their site, these people will be spending more time on the site than those who just scroll through to read articles.
ReplyDeleteI saw this on the morning of April Fools Day on Reddit, and I even turned my webcam on to mess with it. The basic rule of the internet on April Fools Day is to never believe anything a company says they're "rolling out" on that day, because it's most likely bogus; that's why I'm surprised some people fell for it. However, it was a hilarious idea from Reddit, because like you said, they'll probably have a pretty good reel of people doing stupid things. It's funny how people would allow Reddit to access their webcam because of how anonymous the user's (such as myself) are on the site.
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