Ghost Mail Weekender

Happy Sunday Voornaam,

Another year, another group of unsuspecting people falling for product launches and news stories on April 1st. Here’s a roundup of our favourite April Fool’s pranks from 2025:

KZN newspaper The Witness got the population of Howick up in arms with a story about the city secretly approving a dramatic rerouting of the uMngeni river. This plan would essentially steal the Howick Falls and create a new “Maritzburg Falls”.

TravelStart offered passengers the chance to book one plane ticket but bring as many “travel companions” as they wanted. According to their social media post: “Book a ticket and pack in as many as you can (don’t forget, they’ve got to make it through security too… good luck! 😉).” Fortunately, they also reminded would-be travellers to check the date of their announcement.

Security company Mi7 National Security Group unveiled their new “Tactical Goose Unit (TGU)”. Mi7 joked that the TGU is “naturally territorial, immune to bribery and does not require overtime pay. If you see a goose on the loose, do not engage — assume it’s on assignment.”

Sea Harvest launched their ”pure, salted, untamed essence of the sea itself” - aka canned sea water. “Wild-caught and 100% organic. Sea Harvest Sea Water is hydration as nature intended – no added sugars, preservatives or additives, just a tide of natural electrolytes and minerals to keep you refreshed, energised, and thriving”. Sounds yummy.

And finally, if you were ever on the receiving end of someone telling you to “go touch grass” (which is basically meme-speak for “log off, go outside and live your life”), Yahoo launched the perfect keyboard for you, featuring an agricultural interface.

April Fool's jokes are an attempt by brands to go viral. Some get it right and most don't. But what are the ingredients for something to go viral? How did Adolescence, the latest must-see show on Netflix, get it right? Dominique Olivier explores this in her column this week.
Read on for a terrific story of how Colombia chose to deal with a traffic crisis in the 1990s, as well as the Fast Facts themed around things that we are all getting wrong.
Have a lovely Sunday!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)

Adolescence: why do some things go viral?

Taffic jam? Send in the mimes

TL;DR: If you believe the trend in South America, all it takes to clear up a city’s traffic problems is a few mimes and a herd of zebras.
Back in the 1990s, Bogotá, Colombia, was dealing with a traffic crisis. 1,500 deaths a year, and a city where road rules were apparently more of a suggestion than a law. It wasn’t pretty. Enter Antanas Mockus, a mayoral candidate who figured the best way to stop the chaos wasn’t with stricter fines or more traffic cameras, but with public shaming.
His strategy was to sack the traffic cops and send in the mimes. Yes, actual street performers, armed with nothing but exaggerated gestures and signs that read correcto and incorrecto. They clapped for polite drivers and roasted reckless ones with silent, theatrical disapproval. It sounds like the kind of solution a lunatic would come up with, but the results were striking. Traffic-related deaths dropped by 50%, and drivers in Bogotá learned the hard way that being mocked by a guy in white face paint is somehow worse than getting a speeding ticket.
The Bogotá mime initiative officially ended in the late ‘90s, but its legacy lived on in a different type of black-and-white stripe. Fast-forward to 2001 in La Paz, Bolivia, and city officials asked what if, instead of mimes, they sent out zebras? Thus, the cebritas were born. No, not real zebras - although that would have been impressive - but human volunteers in full-body zebra costumes, dancing, guiding pedestrians, and lying dramatically across the hoods of cars that dared to stop in the crosswalk. Here's the YouTube video:

The programme started with just 24 zebras, but today, there are over 265 trotting through La Paz, with more in other Bolivian cities. The zebras even make school visits, appear in parades, and occasionally star on TV (which is, honestly, the career trajectory most influencers dream of).
At one point, the zebras used whistles and flags to enforce rules, but organisers soon realised that made them feel a little too much like “civilian police”. So now, it’s all about positive (and often comedic) reinforcement - gesturing wildly, playing dead on rogue cars, and making traffic safety look like an improv show.
As a result of this unusual initiative, drivers are reportedly more cautious, pedestrians feel safer, and navigating the city just feels more, well, fun. In 2023, the programme even won an international urban innovation award, proving once and for all that the best way to civilise a city is with a flair for the dramatic.
Over to you then, OUTsurance Pointsmen.

Dominique's fast facts: Things we're all getting wrong

An assortment of facts that will only take you five minutes to read.

Searing does not seal in moisture in meat; in fact, it causes it to lose some moisture. Meat is seared in order to brown it and affect its colour, flavour, and texture.

Seeds are not the spiciest part of chilli peppers. In fact, seeds contain a low amount of capsaicin, which is one of the main compounds which induce the sensation of burning. The highest concentration of capsaicin is actually located in the pith to which the seeds are attached. For more on chillies and why we eat them, check out this recent piece by Dominique.

Sign language is not a universal language. Each country generally has its own native sign language, and some have more than one.

Listening to Mozart or any other kind of classical music does not enhance intelligence. A study from 1993 reported a short-term improvement in spatial reasoning, however, the weight of subsequent evidence supports either a null effect or short-term effects.

Phil Collins did not write his 1981 hit "In the Air Tonight" about witnessing someone drowning and then confronting the person in the audience who let it happen. According to Collins himself, it was about his emotions when divorcing from his first wife.

The forbidden fruit mentioned in the Book of Genesis is never identified as an apple, as widely depicted in Western art. The original Hebrew texts mention only fruit.

Bulls are not enraged by the colour red used in capes by professional bullfighters. Cattle are dichromats, so red does not stand out to them as a bright colour. It is not the colour of the cape but the perceived threat by the bullfighter that incites the bull to charge.