April Fools' Day 2008
April Fools' Day 2008 marked the second time that a prank on an April 1st in the history of SydLexia.com. Syd pretented that he had to close down the site because of a cease and desist letter from Nintendo. While less elaborate than the first prank two years before, the ploy still caused quite some confusion.
The preparations
In order to make the fake cease and desist letter look as believable as possible Syd went through about 20 different real cease and desist orders. As a result the wording in his final version is similar, if not identical to what can be found in legitimate C&D orders. He then printed the letter out and scanned it back onto his computer.
The prank
On April 1st Syd posted the scan of the fake cease and desist letter from Nintendo on the main site and announced that he was going to take the site and all its content down. He apologized to his forum members and all the fans of the site and promised to keep the forums up for as long as possible.
What gave the whole announcement even more credibility was the fact that only four months earlier Syd had indeed received an automated email by an IP monitoring agency on behalf of Nintendo of America, in the which the company, called Cyveillance, asked him to remove sexually explicit pictures of Princess Peach, a Nintendo trademark, from the site.
While those who were around during the first April Fools' prank figured it out pretty quickly, some people did indeed fall for the fake announcement and there were no less than three threads on the forums dedicated to discussing it.
