Hunger. Joy. Sadness. Fear. Expectation. Exaltation. Curiosity. Love. Desire. Mucking about.
These are basic human traits. We are all born with it, and education, circumstances, opinions, ego, establishing a “professional” identity and many other factors surgically remove some of these traits from us. But why? Who said that adulting has to be boring? Who said that adulting means splicing out quirks, whimsies, personality traits and personas we had as children?
We at Mapmygenome strongly believe that embracing that child within is imperative to stress-free adulting. All human traits mentioned above must always be held close and true. Especially the last one - Mucking about!
Needless to say, that makes April 1st our absolute favorite day of the year! And boy do we go all out and embrace the traditions of that day! Over the years we have jumped at the chance to prank not just our team members, but our customers and society at large on April Fool’s day. Psst…yes our CEO is in on this too…in fact, most of these are her ideas!
After a highly successful prank we pulled off this year, we thought we’d share some of the fun (and oft childish) pranks we’ve enjoyed over the years!
“Being the proud decendants of mammoth”
- Our Advanced Research Group ( Known as Arega after one of the oldest towns in Portugal which has significance in this study) for Genomepatri has come up with some outstanding results. We wanted to share this with you. For more information and details on the article published, we request you to go to our website http://mapmygenome.in/mammothtrap
2016 - A visit from our most famous investor, odd cakes and our biggest publication ever!
2016 was a fun year for pranks! Sometime around the 20th of March, our CEO sent out a company-wide email stating that one of our marquee investors - none other than Mr. Ratan Tata would be coming down to our office to meet the team! This was such a covert prank that even our CEO’s own assistant wasn’t in on it! What’s more - our CEO herself wasn’t in town at the time, so this was a HUGE moment for the rest of the team to step up and welcome Mr. Tata to our office. Come April 1st, the team assembled in the conference room bright and early, dressed in their fanciest business attire, fresh haircuts, manicured nails, a veritable smorgasbord of expensive fruity perfume odors - Ready to open the door and welcome the man of the moment into our little office. Suddenly the conference room phone rang - It was the CEO, calling in to check on the preparedness of the team and ensuring all was in order, just before announcing to the team that they had been played!! Some anger, some anguish, one very very pissed off executive assistant, and some knowing looks shot across the room. After a good laugh, the CEO told the team that to make up for this prank, she had ordered cake for everyone.
But the prank was not over yet. Unbeknownst to the team - one wily character from office had carefully removed the cream from the cake and replaced it with a rather unpalatable mix of eggless mayonnaise and chili powder, and smothered it into the layers of cake! In hindsight, I guess we now know why the CEO pulled off this prank when she wasn’t physically in office. Hmm….
If you thought that was all - man are you wrong! This was just for our team! To the world at large, we shared our latest “Publication” in none other than Nature Genetics - one of the most coveted journals in the field. A publication (and accompanying press coverage) that proved once and for all that Indian’s possess genetic variations in some made up gene that makes them superior than the rest of the world in the sport of cricket! Even though the “paper” basically wished people a happy April fool’s day - this got so many people excited! We had congratulatory messages and kudos’ piling in from leaders in industry and academia alike, journalists asking for a copy of the paper to run a story, social media followers chanting “We knew it!” like cultists! Just goes to show - India is such a cricket crazed nation that we will believe anything as long as it “proves” that we are the undisputed kings of this game!
2018 - Paradigm shift in DNA testing! Voice2DNA!!! No seriously!
You read that right! We now DNA is found in every cell of the body and can be obtained from blood, semen, saliva, hair, skin…you name it! Back in 2018 we told the world that we had shattered the glass ceiling here and created a technology that could get your DNA….from your voice!
Stop chuckling. You all believed it then.
Beggars belief, but once again, society at large believed it! Yes this time around it was pretty evident in the corridors of academia and relevant industry that this was but a hoax, perpetuated by the CEO through a video announcement on YouTube. However a lot of people fell for this too - I mean c’mon, DNA through your voice pattern and tone? Now that was a fun one
“The revolutionary app will analyze your voice early in the morning and map it to your DNA. Now anyone can get their Genomepatri with just a "Good morning message" recorded on the Voice2DNA app. We have compared this with 100 people who already did their Genomepatri. This will bring cheer to all those who regularly send "Good morning" messages to thousands of people every morning on Whatsapp in this new financial year. Please hurry and pass on this message. Mapmygenome will send this app for free to only 1000 people. First come first served. #genomepatri #knowyourself #App #playstore # #AprilfoolDay #Voice2DNA #Whatsapp #genetics #genes #health #lifestyle.”
2022 - Beauty might well be just skin deep after all
I mean we know that’s not true. As a genetic testing company we know that several “afflictions” that contribute to the all encompassing definition of “beauty” come from deep deep within. We also know that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or in some cases those of the beer-holder (sic). But this prank truly opened our eyes. A quick poll online revealed that several people actually don’t go much beyond skin tone in their quest to define “beauty”. It’s not a racist thing either - some like dark skin, some like light skin, most people with dark skin wanted to get fairer, most pasty folks wanted dark skin…all possible permutations and combinations you can think of. That just took our mischief genes to a whole new level of expression and we announced the launch of a cream that could alter DNA to let you choose your skin tone. No kidding. Read the article (pay close attention to the gene names!).
Queries flooded in, we had a good few chuckles along the way, and rather hesitantly announced that it was nothing but a prank. Maybe we ought to have monetised this?
