DOS_patos
Unverified Legion of Trill member
- The YouTuber Jonathan Morrison posted selfies to Instagram that he said he'd taken with a Google Pixel 2 phone in portrait mode.
- But Morrison lied, and actually took the pictures with the new iPhone XS.
- Morrison, a tech reviewer, was demonstrating how people let their loyalty to a brand color their judgment of a new product.
- In a video explaining the stunt, Morrison encouraged his followers to get rid of their "preconceived notions."
With a little bit of trickery and misinformation, Morrison — whose channel has 2.5 million subscribers — took on the bias of Apple and Android fans.
His followers took to social media to praise the Android device for its photo quality while using Morrison's photo as a pretext for taking jabs at Apple's newest iPhone, the iPhone XS.
But what consumers didn't know is that Morrison had taken his Instagram selfies not with an Android phone but with an iPhone XS. His fans had unknowingly praised a photo from the Apple-made camera they had professed to hate so much.
Morrison knows something about this kind of smartphone tribalism. Over the past eight years, Morrison has faced his fair share of criticism from smartphone fans who vehemently disagree with his takes and accuse him of favoritism, one way or the other.
When his recent review of the new Apple phone did not mention "beautygate" or the charging problems that other users had experienced with their new iPhone XS, followers left comments calling Morrison an "Apple shill" who was giving the tech giant "a free pass."
"The point is, bugs happen. It's not just Apple — it's Google, it's Samsung, it is most companies out there," Morrison says in his video. "The thing is, though, Tesla (and other companies') problems don't get as much clicks as iPhone problems."
See Morrison's full YouTube video, where he revealed his bait-and-switch.
We've contacted Morrison for more insight into the prank.
