Special Report by Fay Stoker
CHICAGO, IL - Dozens of middle school children from a
small Chicago suburb near Arlington Heights, Illinois were being closely monitored on
Tuesday morning by area parents after one pre-teen caused complete mayhem on Monday by grossly overreacting to a five day old broadcast by TV show personality, Stephen
Colbert, aimed at spoofing Apple's iPhone.
Stephen Colbert hosts the wildly popular Comedy Central news show, "The Colbert Report". Colbert jokingly reported news on his August 14th show claiming; "Your iPhone's kill switch doesn't remove undesirable software -- it kills you!" In a segment entitled "Threat Down", Colbert named the iPhone as "The number one threat in America." due to the reported kill switch put in place by Apple to remotely delete malicious applications stored on the device. The boy allegedly spotted the video clip in a link emailed to him by a friend from Gizmodo.com, a wacky gadget review website.
Sources say it was the convincing comments made by Colbert that caused twelve year old Kyle Dambuss, to panic and start spreading the faux story to friends via MySpace as if it were credible news. The story created hysteria for area parents receiving frantic messages at work from worried children urging them to discard their iPhones immediately because it contained a fatal kill switch. Over two dozen parents in the community were alerted to the iPhone risk by phone and text message from extremely frightened and dyslexic youth. Sample text: "mom dont use ypur ipphome it cab kill yiu!!"
"I've never experienced such a fast spreading nightmare of misinformation," said area resident Dotty Dambuss, "I was in such denial when my son Kyle first called me wailing like a baby. I've never watched The Colbert Report, so it was hard to know if it really was a joke. The interwebs are not a good place for kids who are home alone all day, especially a kid like Kyle taking anti-depressants and watching those addictive YouTubes."
Dambuss admitted that she and several other neurotic parents in her community, including close friend and City Council member Iota Idler, feared the worse being recent iPhone 3G adopters. City police quickly stepped in to inform overwrought parents that the broadcast was nothing more than harmless satire. One officer manning phones, confirmed receiving a record number of frantic calls inside of a two hour period on Monday morning.
"I feel like a total idiot for starting this mess," middle schooler Kyle Dambuss said, "I
really thought my Mom was gonna get killed by her iPhone. That sounds so stupid now. I did call
Target to ask about that Zune thing Stephen Colbert talked about. Turns
out it's not a cell phone at all or even a cool MP3 player from what
the guy on the phone told me." (Kyle Dambuss pictured on left)
Dotty Dambuss confirmed things were returning to normal in her home Tuesday morning, expressing relief that her iPhone contains no internal flaws to be concerned about. "Especially not some deadly kill switch," Dambuss said. She indicated that Kyle was not eating and feeling a bit melancholy, but otherwise recovering nicely.
[Watch Colbert iPhone Spoof Video] [Colbert Report Official Site]
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Posted by: F006 | October 27, 2009 at 03:58 AM
Like so many things on the internets, this article is full of typos. The family's name isn't Dambuss, it's Dumbass. I know this because Kyle once mowed my lawn. Well, most of it, anyway. The Dumbasses are good people, unlike the L'Mebrains down the street.
Posted by: Ace Deuce | August 19, 2008 at 11:26 PM
This isn't real. I don't believe it. The guy's name is mad buss spelled backwards but not all the way!
Posted by: Dumbass | August 19, 2008 at 09:36 PM