I've been fooled by The Onion.

I regularly check my favorite news aggregation site, DIGG, for interesting articles on the stuff that matters in the world today.  Of particular interest to me are the Macintosh and Apple related articles.  My wife and I used to work for Apple Retail, and we are very fond of Apple as a company and of its products.  The company has established a brand, a reputation, and a cult following based upon its founder's ideal of "thinking different."

So imagine my surprise when I read this gem in the sidebar:

Apple Employee Fired For Thinking Different

At first glance, I thought it might actually be a story about some crazy guy who, literally, lost his mind and tried to form a jihadist movement at the Campus.  I also feared that the pending departure of Steve Jobs from the company might spurn some unexpected and very "corporate" policy changes.  I suspected that this might be the beginning of the end for Apple.

It's a good setup for a believable prank.

So I clicked the forward link and began reading the news article, which featured a picture of a young bearded fellow sitting in front of his Mac looking slightly serious.  I began to read the sad story of what led to this man's termination.

I was reading this aloud to my wife, who was half-paying attention.  It occurred to her as I was reading the last major paragraph—wherein Apple's human resources team carefully outlines the policies and parameters within which its employees might "think different"—that she suspected the whole thing might be a joke.

And that's when I scrolled up to the top and saw the green "Onion" masthead.  I had been duped by the greatest satirical newspaper of our time.  We had a great guffaw and all was right with the world again.