Hi,

You may have seen the story last week about Apple working on new EarPods with Biometric and Bluetooth Location features. All the news items I saw, from the Daily Mail in the UK to the evening news in the US.

100’s of Blog posts and 1000’s of tweets.

All sourcing this post on up and coming anonymous social network Secret.

https://www.secret.ly/p/uvvnhatfbvfdrlfzypihnshsbq

I wrote it

I made it up. I wrote it 5 minutes after I woke up on the 1st of may. I was blurry eyed, I had a headache, I was using the toilet and worrying about my blood pressure.

I’d been messing around with secret as an outlet for comedy. The anonymous nature makes it a fun place to post things you can’t on twitter. I’ve been posting a few jokes there for a week or two. Because of the way Secret works, your posts only go to your friends and so I’ve been posting stuff there to try and give my friends a laugh. I like jokes and funny ideas and so Twitter and Secret are great for this kind of stuff. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it art but it’s a place I can test my creativity in a way I like to.

I was sitting there doing my business thinking what today’s joke would be. I take medication for ASD related stuff that can sometimes raise my blood pressure, so I was wishing I had an iPhone accessory that would measure it. I looked around on Amazon and eBay and couldn’t find a good one at a price that it was worth to me. I was then thinking I wish Apple had a way to build one in to the phone. I started thinking how that would be possible. You can get the pulse from the camera with an app, but blood pressure is another thing. I thought jokingly you could wrap the headphones around your arm and measure it that way. From that, I thought a fake iPhone rumor about it would be a funny idea.

The idea of Apple including a free heart pressure monitor, something that would cost >$100-$200, seemed ridiculous to me. I added the iBeacon thing to stretch it further and the audio jack port moving idea as some contrived logic to make it sound believable. Like the strait man of the comedy sketch. When small numbers of people in my “circle” started commenting (I don’t know who they are) I played along with vague descriptions of how I would know about this.

This vagueness caused people to collectively fill in the gaps. I made this mistake of not correcting people and playing up to the comments. Without releasing it, I had begun not just joking with a few friends, but accidentally trolling a far larger audience.

I didn’t aim for it to be so popular, I spent next to zero effort on writing it or spreading it.

I didn’t add it to Reddit, I didn’t push it to be popular anywhere else. I never expected it to get out of my ”Circle” of friends. The feeling you get from Secret is that is far more closed and personal that it really is.

I want to stress this point, I didn’t want this to be big. I don’t want to gloat. I’m here cap in hand, head low, tail between my legs.

I’m reminded of the XBOX 720 fake rumors. That was a case of someone with a larger goal. What happened was not my goal.

The moment I read my words on macrumors that evening, I didn’t feel amazed in my achievement or punch the air. I certainly didn’t think I was smart for fooling people in to believing something or tricking people in to publishing it.

The first thing I felt was fear.

I was scared that coming clean about it will piss a lot of people off and I’ll just get hate tweets and mail forever. Scared I’ll be known as that asshole that likes to trick blogs in to publishing BS. I instantly had that guilty chill, had it is still with me now and is probably what is making want to write this and not just try and forget about it.

Fake Rumor Gets Verified



The worst part is that the story just came out of Apple hiring an expert in making products that are exactly like I described.

I’d never seen the patents that Apple filed about the Earbuds.

I just made it all up on the shitter…



This might be a little paranoid. But one thing that worries me is with this timing, if I’m close enough to the mark with my guess, is that Apple might think someone they trust is leaking stuff, and someone might get in trouble for it. I made it all up. If I’m close. It’s a lucky guess. I’m not vain enough to think that Apple hired someone based on my rumor. It was likely in the pipeline for ages. But it gave false verification to the fake rumor and made things even more complicated.



Some posts are even suggesting that this “leak” is causing other manufacters to respond which sounds ridiculous. But again, fills me with fear that I might have even taken a small part in directing how Samsung spends their R&D money.



I don’t want to be like that XBOX 720 guy. But I wanted to come clean about how it happened and say sorry to anybody I’ve pissed off.

I’m still amazed just how easy it was for it to get big without trying.



Sorry

To everybody. I’m sorry this joke got out of hand. I’m extra sorry to those people I didn’t correct in the comments and left messages of support for me. They thought I was someone who lost a job and sent me their best wishes. I’m sorry to Apple for making them look like jerks. I should have corrected it or made it clear it was a joke. I’m sorry to the people who pushed this to bloggers. I’m sorry to all the publishers for causing you to fill your site with my nonsense.



I must point out, most sites did say it was a “Wild” rumor or “Sketchy” Some sites took it at face value and trusted my post.

(Some like The Daily Mail decided to add their own BS for some reason?)

But I’m sorry to everybody to believed this to be real and the post to be from someone who needed support.

I’m just someone who thought they were funny and made a lucky guess and was too dumb to cut it off early before it got silly. I was a jerk.

I hope Apple does come out with a device like this. Because regardless how much of an accidental troll I am. It would be a pretty neat device.

I’d like to finish with saying this.

If you don’t have anything nice to say. Don’t say anything at all.

I’m going to stay anonymous. I would just get attention and twitter followers I don’t deserve and a lot of hate which I do deserve but don’t want to deal with personally.

I’ll think twice from now on about what I say online. I suggest for some this act as a warning that they should too.

I expect a lot of people to be really pissed at me. But I’m not worth it the effort. I’m really not.

Thanks for reading and again to everybody, I’m sorry.

DMx

(There will be grammar and spelling errors, I’ll try and fix them as I see them.)

If anybody wants to get in touch or ask questions, please use the questions page on this tumblr.

Questions:

Have Apple ordered you to be silent?

No. I have never worked for Apple, I have had no contact with Apple. I doubt they really care anyway, but I’m still sorry for any stress I caused anybody at Apple or who works with Apple.

Can you verify it is you that uploaded the secret?