I'm with the people who didn't think that this 'joke' was funny in the slightest and that it was done in poor taste. I'm sorry, but maybe my sense of humour just isn't as puerile as what would be expected on TEH INTERNETS, but I wasn't laughing then and I'm not laughing now. If you think that I'm being a stick in the mud or a 'moron' because of that, to you I say "pfft". I have a sense of humour and I can take a joke, but my sense of humour is not akin to that of a particularly juvenile pre-schooler's and I expect the joke to be, you know, actually funny. Also, like Malintex_Terek has pointed out, the [at the time former] staff seemed to be going out of their way in saying that it wasn't a joke, and at the very least implied in their postings that Griffin was seriously power tripping 'for realz'. So forgive me for not automatically brushing it all off like paltry nothings and/or responding with infantile spam. If you seriously think that makes me a moron, that's your problem, not mine.
However, while I didn't think that this 'joke' was funny, neither did I flip the hell out about it. After I saw that the board was becoming something similar to what could be scraped out from under the sludge at the bottom of Narutofan's oh so illustrious barrel, I pretty much just left it alone and decided to wait until it sorted itself out. Whether or not it was a joke I figured it would get sorted eventually, and if it didn't then I'd just leave.
In any case, I'm not going to be all hatin' on the staff for this or act like OMG! THE END IS NIGH! because AP was effectively down during the duration of the 'joke', but at the same time I'm not going to be all "oh those AP staff, they are teh lawls! three cheers for them!" over this either. Yeah, it's over and it was in the past, but hindsight doesn't make the 'joke' any less un-funny or immature now than it was then, and I still feel that it was done in incredibly poor taste. Take that however you like.
~ jj ~