Google's Mic Drop Function Will Change the Way You Email on April Fools' Day
Type, reply, drop the mic, walk away.
Corporations love jumping in on April Fools’ Day, and Google is no exception. In fact, they might be one of the most prank-happy corporations out there. But this year’s April Fools’ Gmail prank isn’t so much a prank as a much-needed practical solution to exiting endless email conversations. Sure, it has flaws, but its basic function is simple: type your message, hit the “mic drop” send button, and walk away as Gmail sends your last message and archives the entire thread.
However, it’s not perfect. For one, mic drop doesn’t work on corporate accounts. So if your office uses Gmail as its email hosting service, you don’t have the options to drop the mic and walk away from work conversations, which, honestly, is probably what everyone wanted to use it for. Sure, you can still dodge emails from family members with a GIF, but we know you really came here to drop out of massive inter-office threads.
The second major flaw is Google’s choice of GIF. We’re warning you now, it’s from Minions. If, like many sane people, the tiny yellow babbling suppositories made infernally popular by Despicable Me cause you to experience short, violent spurts of rage, close this article now, and hope that mic drop goes away after April Fools’ Day. When you hit the orange mic drop button, it sends this GIF.
ADULTS SHOULD NOT ENJOY THIS MOVIE.
Fortunately, it archives the thread after you hit send, and you don’t have to see the GIF again. Here it is in action, in a predictably family-friendly Google interaction about dogs or something.
Do people seriously send emails about naming their pets?
It’s a fun little feature, sure. In the world of other corporate pranks, Lyft’s “Prank Mode” will let you force a poor Lyft driver to play along with a prank of your choosing on a friend that rides with you, which seems coercive to people who probably aren’t as happy with their job as they could be. We just have one question left for Google. Why Minions? Why? Why? Out of all the mic drop GIFs available to you, why Minions, especially in a world where this exists?
There's nothing more American than saying "fuck it," and dropping something expensive.
And with that, we’re out.
