anatomyofahoax:

Let me reiterate: I, an individual with no previous worldwide recognition save for a frontpage Reddit post, managed to alter the behavior of people in Russia, Japan, Uzbekistan, and Italy within the course of 24 hours, all from the comfort of my home while exerting next to no effort.

This guy took several hours during his weekend to fake a leaked photo of a Sony smartphone. It got picked up by roughly 1,000 websites, some were suspicious, some were not.

He explains the hoax and his motivations in the linked article.

Utterly entertaining story for a quiet Saturday evening.