iPhone Girl Becomes Internet Superstar

[nskripchun]

The short: guy buys brand new iPhone and discovers photos on it, apparently taken as a test at the factory where the iPhone was assembled in Shenzhen by a Taiwanese company. Besides pics of the factory, there was also a photo of one of the workers at the factory, a smiling young girl.

He uploads to MacRumors.com and the power of the internetz takez ova. Poor girl...

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007631.html


iPhone Girl Becomes Internet Superstar

After a British iPhone 3G customer found pictures of a Foxconn Chinese factory worker giving the "V" sign on his phone, the "iPhone Girl" has become an Internet superstar. The story, and photos, has gone "viral" traveling across the globe seemingly instantaneously reminding us how small the world has become.

The story behind "iPhone Girl" is this: A British iPhone customer turned on his new iPhone only to discover a picture of a cute young Chinese factory "girl" assembling iPhones. In the photo she gives the victory (or maybe peace) sign. The iPhone owner reported his finding on MacRumors.com along with posting three pictures of the "girl" he found on his phone.

Then came the questions - and there were plenty. Some questioned the girl's age, and whether a harmless snapshot may be a small glimpse into child labor abuses. One person snapped up the Internet domain iPhonegirl.net and others have created Facebook and MySpace user accounts under the same name.

Meanwhile in China the story captured the attention of Internet users. Interested Chinese Internet users took it upon themselves to track the factory worker down to Shenzhen, China and the company Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that makes iPhones for Apple. There is now a Chinese-language iPhone Girl Web site.

Questions swirled on message boardss, would "iPhone Girl" would be fired for the photos? The Internet breathed a sigh of relief when representatives from Foxconn weighed in confirming that "iPhone Girl" was a worker at its plant and declared the photos were a "beautiful mistake." In an interview with China Daily the company gave assurances she would not be fired.

According to a Washington Post report Foxconn says the young woman in the photo is a migrant worker from Hunan province and is overwhelmed by the media attention and wants to quit her job, go home, and remain anonymous.

The Internet, being what it is, has commented on the "iPhone Girl" expressing a range of emotions from concerned, indifference, to the absurd. One Gizmodo reader deemed "iPhone Girl" a 5.5 out of 10 on the cute scale.

Is it only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists claim "iPhone Girl" is really a marketing stunt and that the iPhone assembly worker in the photos is just a cute model on par with Lin Miaoke, the girl who lip-synced "Ode to the Motherland" at the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony?

If she is just an assembly-line model, then who is the real "iPhone Girl"?

[nskripchun]

Another story from the China Daily with additional details.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-08/27/content_6973364.htm


Cute face of 'beautiful mistake'
By Chen Hong (China Daily)

She might have done nothing more than flash a smile to her colleague testing an iPhone camera on a Chinese production line. But her "angel-like" smile has attracted the attention of iPhone users across the world.

The "iPhone-girl" frenzy began last week when her photographs appeared on MacRumors.com, a popular forum of Apple product fans.

Markm49uk, a British netizen who posted the photographs, said he found the mystery girl smiling at him from the screen when he unpacked his new 3G iPhone. He found two more of her photographs in the photo album.

The round-faced Chinese girl, in pink-and-white uniform, makes a "V" sign while working on an assembly line and smiles from the iPhone screen.

The girl's beautiful face has become a permanent fixture on the new iPhone because one of her colleagues apparently forgot to delete it from the memory of the master copy.

Then began netizens' search for her, making her instantly popular and prompting even the global media to report the incident.

Many people fear that the girl could be penalized by her employers for posing for the home screen. But her employers Foxconn, a Taiwan-funded company that makes iPhones for Apple in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, has given an assurance that she or her supervisor would not be penalized.

In fact, Foxconn has described the incident as a "beautiful mistake".

"She is an assembly worker in the mobile phone testing department and she is still working there. But she has requested us not to make her name public and we will respect her decision," Liu Kun, Foxconn Technology Group spokesman, said. He, however, told China Daily that the girl was a native of Hunan province.

Her photograph appeared on the iPhone screen because of "a small mistake during our working process but the outcome has not been negative". On the contrary, "her lovely face has become popular on the Internet and we would rather call it a beautiful mistake", Liu said.

Every iPhone's built-in camera will be tested from now on, and any such photographs deleted, Liu said. "Apple and Foxconn staff have started a joint probe into the incident."

But most of the netizens seem to like the girl with a "very cute" face.

A netizen named Chris Meadows has written: "If I knew my iPhone would come with a photo of a cute, smiling girl, I would almost be willing to pay extra (especially if it also included her email address)."

Netizen ASH has even suggested that Foxconn make the girl its ambassador because her smile shows even assembly line workers can have fun at work.

[nightshade]

I like the sound of that: a beautiful mistake.

[wuwei]

So stupid. American culture is now pretty much retarded, thanks to a generation that's setting new lows in average SAT scores every year.

This shit is like 4 chan type crap instilled with some sort of faux concern with child labor, but in reality just the white man's fantasy to fuck young Asian girls, as well as poking fun at China's poors.

Fuck them.

[kimtae]

So stupid. American culture is now pretty much retarded, thanks to a generation that's setting new lows in average SAT scores every year.

This shit is like 4 chan type crap instilled with some sort of faux concern with child labor, but in reality just the white man's fantasy to fuck young Asian girls, as well as poking fun at China's poors.

Fuck them.
That's pretty much my thinking as well.

[Makulita]

... Seriously, wuwei, what that girl did thar was in nooo fucking way 4chanish. If it was, she'd be topless while holding up a "What's up /b/!" sign.

And from the picture itself, home girl's got a damn nice uniform, spectacular complexion and the equipment in the fore and backgrounds look pretty up to date. Last time I checked, people working in those podunk, bad news slave labor factories didn't have such nice complexions or even looked that peppy... much less have had the balls to pull a stunt like that because it would have meant both their ass and their flow of some cashmoney.

Even the product she was assembling had a higher likelihood of falling into the hands of some upper-middle class white dude than if she were assembling a Motorola W490.

[wuwei]

... Seriously, wuwei, what that girl did thar was in nooo fucking way 4chanish. If it was, she'd be topless while holding up a "What's up /b/!" sign.

And from the picture itself, home girl's got a damn nice uniform, spectacular complexion and the equipment in the fore and backgrounds look pretty up to date. Last time I checked, people working in those podunk, bad news slave labor factories didn't have such nice complexions or even looked that peppy... much less have had the balls to pull a stunt like that because it would have meant both their ass and their flow of some cashmoney.

Even the product she was assembling had a higher likelihood of falling into the hands of some upper-middle class white dude than if she were assembling a Motorola W490.


Nothing wrong with the girl. The people abroad are just blowing it out of proportion trying to make it into an internet fad or whatever by registering the domain names and crap.

[blockthebox]

No, no, no. Everyone is missing the point: The iPhone 3G takes really awesome photos. Proof is in that pic.

[kimtae]

The iphone is a piece of shit but I think wuwei was referring to the outpouring of unsolicited "sympathy" for the poor oppressed girl who is in the clutches of the evil Asian machine. Oh, and the iphone is a piece of shit.

[Pat the Great]

So stupid. American culture is now pretty much retarded, thanks to a generation that's setting new lows in average SAT scores every year.

This shit is like 4 chan type crap instilled with some sort of faux concern with child labor, but in reality just the white man's fantasy to fuck young Asian girls, as well as poking fun at China's poors.

Fuck them.

Okay seriously, if we had an award for "worst post that still manages to use complete sentences" this one would take it, no contest. i don't even know where to begin. is it the vague, contemptuous outrage at young people/white people/4chan/hypocritical liberals? the obligatory reference to white men and asian women? or the way that the sentences don't really seem to join together and, by their powers combined, make a coherent thought?

it's art, really.

on topic: google image search for "iPhone girl" with safesearch off gets three pages before it's decidedly NSFW. not bad, considering.