Update: iPhone surgery story a hoax
It turns out that the North Denver News story we ran a few days ago about a man having surgery on his thumbs in order to control his iPhone better was actually a hoax. One sign of that was the mention of thumb muscles, which actually don’t exist (this writer consistently failed biology back in high school, so…).
A part of Editor’s Note on North Denver News states:
Strangely, while many readers have grasped that “Surgically alters thumbs” represents satirical social commentary, many on the internet, alas, have not.
Careful reading of the piece makes it clear to any critical consumer of information that the piece is pure humor and not news or reported as fact.
Among the points of the piece: that U.S. society accepts plastic surgery and decorative deformation of the human body for vanity, but not other reasons (consider the Bonds steroid stories); that technology has become a new cult phenomena, in which items are praised or ridiculed based upon tribal allegiances instead of functionality and performance (and we are members of the Cult of the Mac- iPhone division); and we like to pretend that some of our writers have a sense of humor.
FYI, there is no Thomas Martel (aka Tommy the Hammer) or Dr. Ben Fox Spars. The Fox of course, is reference to Fox News (aka Faux News). James Benfly is fictive as well, the nom de plume of one of our writers. And thanks to Franz Kafka, who must be smiling upon this whole episode.
So we’ve been had, sorry. Although the satirical value of the piece still remains, if that’s of consolation to anyone…
Written by dennis on August 12th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on News and iPhone Fakes and iPhone News.
