Jimmy Kimmel Makes A Total Mockery Of Our iPhone Obsession

Yesterday, I was marveling at the weirdness of my Twitter feed during a certain part of the day. Mob attacks had taken place in the Middle East, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed, and Mitt Romney was being criticized by many for a hasty press conference that sought to politicize the Middle East skirmish, and YET, tweets about the new iPhone 5 probably outnumbered tweets about unrest in the Middle East 3-1. Maybe that says something about the people I follow, or maybe it’s a broader reflection of our culture: We’re completely obsessed with Apple and the iPhone. After all, many of us probably found out and were following news about the ambassador’s death ON our iPhones.

Still, it’s insane how gullible we are as consumers when it comes to the iPhone. There have been quite a few upgrades over the years, and while each has given us incremental improvements, to the average person, there’s not a stark difference between the last several new iPhones.

In a remote segment taped last night for Jimmy Kimmel’s show, the late-night host sought to exploit that gullibility, handing out new iPhones to people on the street and asking them what they thought of the iPhone 5. The catch? He was showing them iPhone 4s.

Here are the results, which essentially show that — when it comes to the iPhone — we’re all kind of dumb.