April Fools' Day 2006
The April Fool's Joke 2006 was the first prank played on an April 1st in the history of SydLexia.com. It consisted of an elaborate scheme set out by Syd to trick people into believing the site and its forums had been hacked by an angry Maddox fanboy. The prank was a huge success with most of the forum members and a lot of site visitors falling for it.
The setup
The preparations for the eventual prank started March 9th. cybersst, who together with Dr. Jeebus and Spanky McCracken was one of the few people who were in on the joke, was given a fake account called maddoxownsyou. Syd then had him post some threatening and annoying messages, so that the IP couldn't be traced back to him by his moderators, whom he hadn't told anything about the forthcoming prank.
The first post by maddoxownsyou was a poorly written series of insults on March 9th. The post was modded and the fake user was set on notice by Syd. March 17th brought the second staged offense with a seemingly angry maddoxownsyou spamming the forum with "sydlexia sux, maddox rules" polls which finally ended in him getting banned. With a convincing motive for an attack now set in place the actual prank could be executed.
The prank
On April 1st, Syd made changes to both the main site and the forums to convey the impression that SydLexia.com had been hacked. The main site displayed animated GIFs of New Kids On the Block band members and proclaimed that "if u diss maddox, u better watch outt" (sic), tying in with the fake maddoxownsyou posts. [1] The color scheme of the forums had also been changed so that the boards now appeared in an ugly red and pink, with the SydLexia.com banner reading "Total Nonstop Gayness" instead of the usual "Pop culture ate my brain".
On top of everything Syd changed his own account to "Syd Loseria" and started making threads triumphantly announcing that maddoxownsyou was now in full control of the site and its forums. Forum members started trying to contact Syd to tell him about the situation, but nobody could reach him. With Syd nowhere to be seen everybody believed that the hacker had somehow managed to shut him out.
Most of the forum members initially fell for the staged attack, some tearing into the seemingly responsible Maddox fanboy. Tebor apologized for the happenings and promised that the problem would be fixed as soon as possible. Valdronius figured it out and even played along pretending that his account had been taken over by maddoxownsyou. Eventually the rest of the forum also realized that they had probably been fooled by Syd and speculation began as to who had been in on the joke.
The aftermath
Syd later apologized for the joke feeling that it might have been a bit too much, but the prank was generally well received and people congratulated Syd on the brilliant execution. No hard feelings were had.
