You’d have to be blind (or not addicted to the Internet) to have missed the story going around this week about the man who surgically altered his thumbs to be able to operate his iPhone better. Quite a few sites seemed to take it seriously. But the originators have now come out to say it was a joke.

Well, no one could fault you for thinking “maybe it could happen”. The Internet, and the world it talks about, is one strange place. But lately I’ve noticed the news feeds taking on a more drastic tone. It seems that anybody can say anything and have somebody believe them.

The iPhone thumbs story had a whiff of satire to it, for several reasons. The iPhone just came out and has had a massive amount of media frenzy around it. In these days of plastic surgery jobs and outrageous body mods, another story about somebody messing with their own design doesn’t raise an eyebrow. And remember the Boing Boing story about implanting a magnet in your finger to give you a ‘sixth sense’ about electronics? So altering your fingers to better manipulate technology even has a familiar ring to the geek audience.

But of course, a little skeptical thinking makes the story fall apart. Thumbs are a sensitive part of our body – just try to get through your day without using them! And if you had that much trouble pushing buttons with them, you could always buy some cheap plastic thumb caps. Office workers have those little rubber grips they use to fan through stacks of paperwork, for instance.

What’s worrisome is that, in the information age with our cascading mounds of news reporting, truth and fiction gets manipulated with equal ease. If you have a crack-pot physics theory, all you have to do is link to half a dozen sites that “prove” your point, and you have a bogus story all set to go out and clobber the social link sites with. You can Photoshop a photo, buy some votes on Digg, and instantly have a false-hood inserted into the public consciousness. Quite often, most people will only have time to scan the story, maybe even just browse the headline.

I could offer some examples, but I’d like to hear from the public. So, anybody have a comment to share about a time when they found a hoax? I’m sure we all have at least one instance we can point to. Maybe it’s time we set up a community service that verifies the source of stories – a kind of “secure shield” for information instead of money…

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