Switching Day

A traditional Apollonian (and later, Shirerithian) event in which people pretend to be other people, to general merriment.

The inspiration for Switching Day came in a chat back in the year 2000, during the early Apollo era. The discovery that people can change their ICQ names in a chat led to everyone using the name "GSquid" in order to confuse the real GSquid, Scott Alexander. This eventually led to a discussion of whether people could be told apart from their imitators, and the Flying Islands of Jasonia had the first Switching Day.

During a traditional Switching Day event, each of the people participating is randomly assigned another participant, whom he must imitate for the rest of the day, going so far as to use a login similar to that person's own. Usually this devolves into a good-natured caricature rather than a true imitation. At the end, everyone guesses who was whom, and the person who gets the most right wins a prize.

There may have been a Switching Day during Tymarian times, and there was definitely one in Shireroth around the reign of Kaiser Mors III. There is a feeling that Switching Days should traditionally occur on Halloween, although this has only happened once before.

Particularly noteworthy Switching Day portrayals include when John Sager and Jason Steffke were both randomly assigned to play each other during the height of their mutual hatred, and when Eoin Dornan was "Sick'Hair Lum'Eth" and "Kaiser Jaundice XXIII".