Wave Hoax Tricks Gullible iPhone Users Into Microwaving Their Phones

[Phil the Nervous]

Predictable and boring responses incoming. No, haven't bought a phone in two years and still pretty happy with what I have. Just don't think much of people who revel in the misery of others, just find it a bit sad.

On the contrary, I am exclusively rejoicing in their desire to post this loss on the internet. And get a thousand favorites out of their hardship. You just sounded a little butthurt, that's all

Actually, this is interesting on another level, These people seem to be technologically incompetent, however they have achieved enough in life to go out and buy expensive phones. That would suggest that they *are* competent at whatever they do, and one at least has spun this loss into a popular twitter post. That would suggest that intelligence is varied for different tasks, e.g. a great communicator/an incompetent tech. Which means- people aren't necessarily smarter than other people, but instead are 'set' for different tasks... nah, that can't be right.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Surprised by the number of people who think it's fine that people fall for a stupid hoax and screw themselves out a a few hundred quid. Glad everyone here is so clever. If you strain your brains really hard you might do something useful like cure cancer, or maybe work out why the thing you're looking for is in the last place you look. Or shit your pants. Could go either way. Best pack a spare pair, just in case.

Edit: Sorry, I have to edit this. Is there a line where it's okay to beat someone for being too weak? To be openly repulsed by someone for being too ugly? To bully someone for being too uncharismatic? Or do we only think it's okay to be a **** to people for being a bit slow?

There is a fine difference between beating someone for being weak and not having sympathy for people who willingly decide to be stupid. People here aren't being entertained by people who are mentally incapable to learn. No, those people can learn, can think, can research but they decide not to. If they don't care enough about themselves, why should anyone else do?

 

[OldNewNewOld]

There is a fine difference between beating someone for being weak and not having sympathy for people who willingly decide to be stupid. People here aren't being entertained by people who are mentally incapable to learn. No, those people can learn, can think, can research but they decide not to. If they don't care enough about themselves, why should anyone else do?

Surely people willingly decide to be weak? You can always get stronger - just keep lifting the heavy thing (which, in this scenario, is replacing the research that stupid people aren't doing). Why should the strong care that the weak are so lazy?

Except that this problem could have been solved in under 30 seconds by a simple search on google. Also the weak don't really take selfies of their beaten up face and post it on twitter to brag at how weak they are.

 

[the doom cannon]

snip

sorry, no sympathy for anyone that believes everything they see on their twitter feed. there was just recently a viral thing about Kanye West scoring 100 pts in a handicapped basketball game and ppl thought it was real. No sympathy at all.

 

[ace_of_something]

I swear something similar to this has happened before.... even baring the fact that getting thru 6th grade science should teach you that plastic melts. It's a software adjustment, how on earth would that effect it's PHYSICAL hardware ability to absorb energy?

I just hope no one has had anything hurt other than their pride.

How old are the people who did this anyway? In their teens?

Well, my 70 year old mother didn't fall for it so...

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

Oh wait...

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2014-ebola-outbreak#conspiracy_hoax

What the...what???

Ok, someone has to explain THIS ONE to me

/a made an anime charter for the ebola outbreak... because internet.

/b proceed to make up stories about how how ebola was created by white people in order to cull undesirables.

a Nigerian forum then proceeded to say it was a Euro/American raciest death cult preforming witchaft, eating the hearts of victims, worshiping a goddes of death, and not paying parking tickets.

How did I miss this?
Oh internet, will I ever get bored with you?

 

[Vault101]

I know I shouldn't find this amusing

I KNOW its an asshole thing to do

....but, when I see people lining up for the next Iphone this just...makes me smile...just a bit

[sub/]I'm a terrible person[/sub]

 

[PMAvers]

I always said people who buy iPhones are idiots...

Could've been worse. They could've bought a Android device.

 

[Eri]

I always said people who buy iPhones are idiots...

Could've been worse. They could've bought a Android device.

Oh snap son.

 

[Waaghpowa]

It's situations like this where I'm not sure if people are really this dumb or if this is a joke.

There also appears to be a lot of straw manning going on in defense of these people microwaving their phone. There's this thing called common sense, metal in microwave = bad.

It's funny that this is the age of information, the internet is readily available and things can be easily found online, yet people like these don't use it.

I work as support for a webhost, you would not believe how often people come to us with a problem that could easily be solved with a 3 second Google search. Not only that, but they come to us with issues that aren't our issue because it's something wrong with their ISP or their devices.

One time I had a woman who didn't understand the difference between a webhost and her ISP. Seriously, webhosts don't give you your internet connection.

Edit: After looking at some of the tweets, I'm convinced that some of these people are lying.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

This is... This is just too funny... I can't... I

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!

 

[Aesir23]

I know I probably shouldn't be laughing. I mean, these people spent $100+ on a phone only to be fooled into destroying it in a microwave. Yet, I can't help but find this completely hilarious.

 

[J Tyran]

Here I was thinking the "now our OS update makes your phone waterproof" hoax was funny but this takes the biscuit, I mean really whats next?

The fact that people actually did this boggles my mind.

 

[Trude]

Just because many of us here on the Escapist are tech-savvy enough to know that this doesn't hold up doesn't mean everyone else is (especially those lacking a physics background). And I'd like to add that if the tech companies out there (Apple first) didn't try their best to advertise their products as magic boxes that "just work", without letting anyone in on the hows and whys, we may not be having this kind of problems in the first place...

Sad thing is, you don't need many smarts to know that microwaves wreak havoc on metal. That's information you should have gained by the time you were twelve.

 

[killerbee256]

I have a distinct feeling that this has happened before, even under different circumstances.

But why is it that there are STILL people out there that don't know better than to microwave an iPhone?

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/consoles/xbox-one-owners-warned-over-console-bricking-backwards-compatibility-scam-1205744 This?

 

[VanQ]

The amount of cruelty being displayed in this thread I find pretty amazing.

And the worst part is not, for me, the lack of sympathy for the poor chaps who fell for it, but the fact that it comes from people who are actively demonstrating they are just as ignorant as the victims.

I'm not going to sum it all up but someone implied that *obviously* microwaves interact badly with, among other things plastic. Which is laughable. Much of the current wireless energy technologies, which are actually a thing, are based on microwaves. How many of the people laughing their ass off here knew beforehand what a rectenna is ? I didn't. Do they even know now ? Why couldn't the latest iPhone have one ? I just learned you can find those in RFID chips.

Does it sound "impossible" to you that Apple releases a hardware upgrade on their latest phones that allows wireless recharging, and use a later software update to enable it, just for the awesome advertising potential ? We're talking about the people who came up with the Siri ads here. "Implausible" ? Certainly. Should the victims have exercised more caution before trusting a random 4-chan spawned JPEG ? Absolutely. But when smartphones behave to mostly everyone like magic boxes that can be supplemented with "apps" (instead of computers with tightly-packed, specific hardware and a locked-up OS), when almost no one can tell how microwave ovens actually work... (I'll bet this is the case for most people here, the reason metal can interact very poorly with microwave ovens is pretty nontrivial.) ...yeah, not surprised.

Just because many of us here on the Escapist are tech-savvy enough to know that this doesn't hold up doesn't mean everyone else is (especially those lacking a physics background). And I'd like to add that if the tech companies out there (Apple first) didn't try their best to advertise their products as magic boxes that "just work", without letting anyone in on the hows and whys, we may not be having this kind of problems in the first place...

I'm sorry, in what universe do you live in where a firmware update can materialize a piece of equipment as intricate as a rectenna?

 

[the December King]

Metal in the microwave IS bad.

However, Campbells has microwaveable soups with metal rings in the packaging to speed up the heating process, so it's not totally unheard of. I'm just saying that it's not so far fetched a concept as all that. Recharging the battery sounds like a real leap, on the other hand...

I still would have looked into the prospect more, and verified facts, before hucking such an expensive device into another. But I do feel sorry for them, a little.

Oh, I know!

They COULDN'T verify anything online- their phones were out of juice, and needed to be recharged in the first place!