Why is “iPhone Shower” trending? Accidental damage turns into a Twitter meme that refuses to go away

So, why is #iPhoneShower trending?

The accident in question happened in early 2021 and fans of the voice actress were quick to poke fun at it — they started drawing the anime characters that she voices in situations where they are straight up giving their iPhone a bath. It may seem mean-spirited to some, but considering this is a passionate community of fans — it’s more likely a warm-hearted poking.
So, why is it resurfacing now? Well, the Internet does as the Internet does — sometimes you get lambasted for “necroposting”, at other times it’s simply funny to bring back an old fad, with the punchline of the joke being that “We are bringing it back, lol”.

My best guess — one of the original memesters had their sketch drawing of the accident backed up to Google Photos and they were reminded of it through a “2021 stories” notification or something. So, they re-shared it. From this point, it just became funny that the meme is getting a secound round of popularity — especially since it picked up in media popularity, too. (Yeah, that includes us, the irony does not allude me).

The meme resurfaced with its original #iPhoneシャワー hashtag, but English-speaking users were quick to pick up on the trend and are currently pushing to bring #iPhoneShower back in trending as well.

Here’s a mantra that any modern smartphone user should remember:

Most smartphones are water-resistant, but not water-proof

While smartphones can do just fine to fend off jets of water or submersions for some amounts of time, they are not great at fending off against tiny particles or steam for a long time. In the case of Moeka Koizumi, small amounts of steam made its way through the iPhone’s seals, which was pretty much enough to smudge up the camera lenses from the inside.

So, here’s your cautionary tale — today’s mainstream modern smartphones are meant to survive accidents, but not be used as a rugged, mil-grade machine would be. Also, water-resistant seals are known to degrade over time, so there’s no guarantee that your smartphone will even hold that IP 68 rating after a couple of years.

Here’s a video we made on the topic: