iPhone

2007viral eventclassic

Published September 2, 2026

The iPhone is Apple's smartphone line first shown by Steve Jobs in January 2007, and one of the most reliable meme engines in tech. From #bendgate and #hairgate on the iPhone 6 Plus to Phil Schiller's 'courage' quote and the Face ID jokes that followed the iPhone X notch, each new launch handed Twitter and Reddit a fresh scandal to riff on.

tech humor memessmartphone memesconsumer culture memeshashtag memessilicon valley satire memes

Overview

The iPhone works less like one meme and more like a rolling supply of them. Every September launch delivers a hardware quirk, quote, or design choice that gets flipped into hashtags, screenshots, and image macros within hours1. The '-gate' suffix became the standard tag for whatever problem users found first, starting with #bendgate on the iPhone 6 Plus in 20142. Days later, #hairgate followed for beard and hair getting caught in the aluminum seam34. Even a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 defect got the same treatment as #gapgate around the same week5.

Face ID on the iPhone X pulled the same reflex, with jokes casting the screen notch as Bert from Sesame Street's unibrow and wrestler John Cena riffing on not being able to be seen8. Phil Schiller's line that removing the headphone jack took 'courage' spawned an r/apple shitpost of users replying with the single word 'courage,' and the joke is still trotted out whenever an Apple product drops a port7. Tech reporters cover the meme cycle almost as closely as the products themselves6.

Origin & Background

Platform
Apple keynote / Twitter (meme spread)
Creator
Apple
Date
2007

Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. He pitched it in three parts: 'a widescreen iPod with touch controls,' 'a revolutionary mobile phone,' and 'a breakthrough Internet communications device,' before revealing that all three descriptions pointed to one product1. The device shipped that June and helped set off the smartphone era.

The iPhone itself was not a meme at launch. What turned it into one was the launch ritual, an annual keynote with a huge online audience watching in real time, ready to screenshot any awkward quote or design choice6. That feedback loop is what later produced #bendgate, #hairgate, the 'courage' bit, and the notch discourse27.

How It Spread

Enthusiast communities formed quickly around the device. Cydia, an open-source alternative to the official iOS Installer.app for jailbroken devices, was released in February 20089, and the r/iphone subreddit was launched on January 25 of that year8. The jailbreak scene gave the iPhone its first sustained online subculture before the meme cycle kicked in.

The first meme wave that reached mainstream news was #bendgate in September 2014. MacRumors forum user hanzoh posted a thread titled 'iPhone 6 Plus slightly bent after 2 days' on September 21, and Twitter user SeanPincombe coined the #bendgate hashtag in reply to a Wario64 tweet linking the thread8. Within a week, the tag was tweeted over 37,000 times, and an Unbox Therapy video demonstrating the bend hit more than 7.4 million views in under a day2. Complaints about hair getting pinched in the seam between glass and aluminum then produced #hairgate, following a 9to5Mac community post titled 'My iPhone 6 Plus is yanking out my hair,' with Twitter user Peter Phillips credited for coining the tag43.

The iPhone 7 event on September 7, 2016 removed the 3.5mm headphone jack, and Apple's Phil Schiller framed the decision as 'courage,' a word the r/apple crowd immediately turned into a one-word reply format67. The iPhone X keynote on September 13, 2017 unveiled Face ID and the screen notch, drawing a John Cena 'you can't see me' tweet that pulled more than 330,000 retweets and 560,000 likes in its first days8. Each September launch since kept the pattern going.

How to Use This Meme

There is no single template. iPhone memes track Apple's launch calendar. When the company holds an event in September, users watch for a hardware flaw, an awkward marketing quote, or a design choice worth mocking, then attach it to a '-gate' hashtag or a one-word reply format27. The joke usually peaks on Twitter and Reddit's r/apple within a day before tech sites write it up36.

Frequently Asked Questions

iPhone

2007viral eventclassic

Published September 2, 2026

The iPhone is Apple's smartphone line first shown by Steve Jobs in January 2007, and one of the most reliable meme engines in tech. From #bendgate and #hairgate on the iPhone 6 Plus to Phil Schiller's 'courage' quote and the Face ID jokes that followed the iPhone X notch, each new launch handed Twitter and Reddit a fresh scandal to riff on.

tech humor memes smartphone memes consumer culture memes hashtag memes silicon valley satire memes

Overview

The iPhone works less like one meme and more like a rolling supply of them. Every September launch delivers a hardware quirk, quote, or design choice that gets flipped into hashtags, screenshots, and image macros within hours1. The '-gate' suffix became the standard tag for whatever problem users found first, starting with #bendgate on the iPhone 6 Plus in 20142. Days later, #hairgate followed for beard and hair getting caught in the aluminum seam34. Even a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 defect got the same treatment as #gapgate around the same week5.

Face ID on the iPhone X pulled the same reflex, with jokes casting the screen notch as Bert from Sesame Street's unibrow and wrestler John Cena riffing on not being able to be seen8. Phil Schiller's line that removing the headphone jack took 'courage' spawned an r/apple shitpost of users replying with the single word 'courage,' and the joke is still trotted out whenever an Apple product drops a port7. Tech reporters cover the meme cycle almost as closely as the products themselves6.

Origin & Background

Platform
Apple keynote / Twitter (meme spread)
Creator
Apple
Date
2007

Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone on January 9, 2007 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. He pitched it in three parts: 'a widescreen iPod with touch controls,' 'a revolutionary mobile phone,' and 'a breakthrough Internet communications device,' before revealing that all three descriptions pointed to one product1. The device shipped that June and helped set off the smartphone era.

The iPhone itself was not a meme at launch. What turned it into one was the launch ritual, an annual keynote with a huge online audience watching in real time, ready to screenshot any awkward quote or design choice6. That feedback loop is what later produced #bendgate, #hairgate, the 'courage' bit, and the notch discourse27.

How It Spread

Enthusiast communities formed quickly around the device. Cydia, an open-source alternative to the official iOS Installer.app for jailbroken devices, was released in February 20089, and the r/iphone subreddit was launched on January 25 of that year8. The jailbreak scene gave the iPhone its first sustained online subculture before the meme cycle kicked in.

The first meme wave that reached mainstream news was #bendgate in September 2014. MacRumors forum user hanzoh posted a thread titled 'iPhone 6 Plus slightly bent after 2 days' on September 21, and Twitter user SeanPincombe coined the #bendgate hashtag in reply to a Wario64 tweet linking the thread8. Within a week, the tag was tweeted over 37,000 times, and an Unbox Therapy video demonstrating the bend hit more than 7.4 million views in under a day2. Complaints about hair getting pinched in the seam between glass and aluminum then produced #hairgate, following a 9to5Mac community post titled 'My iPhone 6 Plus is yanking out my hair,' with Twitter user Peter Phillips credited for coining the tag43.

The iPhone 7 event on September 7, 2016 removed the 3.5mm headphone jack, and Apple's Phil Schiller framed the decision as 'courage,' a word the r/apple crowd immediately turned into a one-word reply format67. The iPhone X keynote on September 13, 2017 unveiled Face ID and the screen notch, drawing a John Cena 'you can't see me' tweet that pulled more than 330,000 retweets and 560,000 likes in its first days8. Each September launch since kept the pattern going.

How to Use This Meme

There is no single template. iPhone memes track Apple's launch calendar. When the company holds an event in September, users watch for a hardware flaw, an awkward marketing quote, or a design choice worth mocking, then attach it to a '-gate' hashtag or a one-word reply format27. The joke usually peaks on Twitter and Reddit's r/apple within a day before tech sites write it up36.

Frequently Asked Questions