A.P.R.I.L. F.O.O.L.S. One sketchy story
Sorry to disappoint everyone who thought they had yet another reason to despise New York City's children of privilege: Our March 30 feature article on Sindergarten, the "twisted, drug-fueled phenomenon that's sweeping Manhattan prep schools," was a hoax concocted by Radar prankster Teddy Wayne (who has previously pranked military recruiters as well as actor Willie Aames and the Milwaukee power tool company for us) and written under the pseudonym Edward Wain. A few astute readers called our bluff, but the majority bought the idea that high schoolers really were renting out school buses, taking the club drug Foxy, and pretending to be little kids.

Jossip.com felt compelled to write about the story not once but twice, and we also fielded requests for more information from NYC high schoolers and TV producers alike.

Don't say we didn't give you a chance: the acronym HAPPY APRIL FOOLS was spelled out in the first letter of each word in the ungrammatical, misspelled caption for a sindergartener's picture of a pony ("Hes A Pretty Pony Yes A Pretty Really Itty Little Firey Orange Outstanding Lovely Shetland"), and, for true Radar obsessives, the author buried his real name in the same paragraph ("An artsy-looking student with fashionable retro glasses clutches a Teddy bear—"Mr. Wayne"—and conducts a dialogue with it in a baby-voice...").

Immature? Sure, but no more so than the behavior of the fictional sindergarteners, who probably have a real-life parallel somewhere out there, or that of readers so eager to tear down the latest alarmist craze, fake or not, among easily targeted rich kids.