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Twitter Meme: How The Rumor Started That Bill Clinton Is Announcing The iPhone 5

This article is more than 10 years old.

Here's one for the dedicated memicists and rumorologists out there. A couple off offhand tweets that simultaneously mentioned Bill Clinton and the iPhone during the former president's speech at the Democratic Convention tonight (see bottom of tweet stack below) turned into the idea that, before he terminated his lengthy nomination of Barack Obama, he would pull the new iPhone 5 out of his pocket and announce that as well.

@Chris Pirillo  even went so far as to canonize it: "RUMOR: Bill Clinton has been asked by Tim Cook to unveil the new iPhone next week. #ObviouslyFake". And, @freshyill (Chris Coleman) speculated that, "Tim Cook is freaking out right now about how Apple can possibly follow Clinton’s speech with the iPhone 5 announcement."

So here it is in real time, how these rumors are born. Two unrelated things, the election and the iPhone, each with a charge, got annealed together. Not hard to imagine an internet meme popping up tomorrow on Reddit with a picture of Clinton and the words "ONE MORE THING..." at the top, and "...THE NEW iPHONE," below. Fun stuff, but complete fantasy.

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