TV iPhones should be marked “This Way Up”

There’s a nefarious disorder spreading through the country, conducted via the insidious vector of television. Symptoms include disorientation and confusion. Those affected can be recognized by one simple behavior: holding their iPhone upside down.

Reader Mark has sent us proof of this terrible affliction from no less than five different television shows, with stars as diverse as Minnie Driver, Charlie Sheen, and Kevin McKidd. We’ve searched in vain for some sort of Kevin Baconesque connection between those infected, with the hopes that we could suss out a Patient Zero, but no luck so far.

Mark offers his own theory about the source of this disruption:

They have to be doing it on purpose. I have been a TV producer for many years and while I’ve never worked on these shows, I can say with authority that there are smart people who are paid to make sure everything done on shows and in commercials is correct. So the only way something so dumb and obvious like this is that they are doing it on purpose.

We wonder if the condition has a compulsive need to cover up the distinctive Apple logo, the way that many televisions obscure the icon on what are clearly Mac laptops. That, or the actors involved are having trouble with the iPhone’s symmetrical, featureless outside.

While we concoct these theories in the hopes that we can return peace and order to the country, we fear that we may never know the true source of this terrible disease. Hit the jump below for more gruesome pictures of iPhones held the wrong way, courtesy of Mark.

Minnie Driver on The Riches:

Callum Keith Rennie on Bionic Woman:

Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men:

John Hodgman on The Daily Show:

Kevin McKidd on Journeyman: