Dear iPhone Users – Addendum

Original post here.

Rumours, hoaxes, conspiracy theories. Like many other teens who grew up on the internet, that part of the web has always captivated me – the hushed tones, fighting the power, uncovering the REAL truth. The subculture of secrets is hard not to find fascinating. ¹

As I grew up with that seedy underbelly running parallel to everything around me, one thought became lodged my brain: What sort of bollocks could I get people to believe?

And as I stand here, having complained about default iPhone ringtones, I have a question:

Firstly, how?

I can’t purport to be an expert on hoaxes and conspiracy theories, but I believe you’d need a demographic of believers – you want those who are paranoid, reactive, prone to exploding at perceived sleights, and who’ll do anything to protect friends & family. And there’s one demographic who fits that to a tee:

Oh Facebook mothers, how I love you. The neurotic blob keeping local Facebook communities alive with constant concerns about weird people walking about and odd looking vans.

So the hoax idea? It’d have to hit what gets to them the most: Strangers, lawbreakers, sob stories. And it’d have to be presented in a way that would appear as if came from one of their own:

I feel like all I’d need to do is post a doctored conversation image like this (stay safe hun xx) to a local group and then wait for it to propagate. If I was dedicated I could post about it to multiple local groups repeatedly under sockpuppet accounts. Then I make fake celebrity social media posts about it, create doctored images of news websites, call in to local radio & daytime TV shows to warn people about it and–

The responsible, adult part of my brain steps in. This is disinformation, plain and truly, and it absolutely goes against my values.

Yet on the other hand, there’s a part of my brain that still thinks I’m 16. Indestructible, untouchable, infallible. It chimes up to remind me that it’s still a totally cool idea, and it’s not that harmful. It’s not like you’re pushing something that’ll generate a hate mob or get kids to drink bleach, and it could actually work!

It’s an odd square to circle. Even if 16yo me brain says wot if it worked and you got to write a mediocre Guardian article about it, we’ve all seen how even with the best intentions lies & hoaxes have spread further beyond their aims and caused more harm than imaginable.

That, and it’s easier to just remind someone repeatedly that changing their ringtone could make life better.