On September 19, 2014, the world got their first real look at the new iPhone 6 when it was first available for purchase. They basked in all its large-screened glory and boasted to their friends on having the newest in Apple technology. It didn’t take long before the dark and disturbing part of the internet called 4Chan, home of small-time online trolls and big-time anonymous hackers, decided to take this small window of ignorance to attack.
4Chan is known for their antics on the internet and in the real world. Residents of 4Chan were responsible for the recent mega-leak of celebrity nude photos, which included the victim Jennifer Lawrence. The mostly vigilante group known as Anonymous also calls 4Chan its home. Anonymous is known for attacking people and organizations through the internet by hacking, which included the American government, the Westboro Baptist Church website, and random sex offenders, rapists, and other people that might go unpunished for serious crimes.
What 4Chan decided to do to the ignorant new owners of the iPhone 6 wasn’t out of a sense of justice, but a sense of trickery. The few 4Chan members that conceived this ruse did this to create a stir, to see if they could indeed trick the gullible users of the iPhone 6. The trick in question is the new feature that 4Chan themselves created, The Wave.
The function of The Wave was that if your phone was low on battery power and you didn’t have your charger on hand, you could use your kitchen microwave to charge it. 4Chan even created a very convincing ad to promote the “new feature.” Within a day there were tweets, pictures, rants, and outrage on how the new Wave feature didn’t charge your phone, but just destroyed it. Many people know that if you put any metal objects into a microwave, it will not end well.
Many of these angry outbursts were aimed at Apple, because many of them still believed the hoax. Soon news stories started covering the hoax, trying to warn as many people as possible before more people nuked their phones. The odds are that the hoax will slow down, which it has, but there might be some new victims that may be unaware of the danger. Just try to remember to not believe everything you see on the internet. Just follow this motto, “False until proven true.”
