Swedish News Hosts Report Fake News About Banana Phone Study

Fueled by Balkan teenagers and gullible uncles, the fake news "epidemic" continues to spread across America, and experts are still trying to evaluate the degree to which it influenced the outcome of the US presidential election.

Meanwhile, just this week, another fake-news-driven conspiracy theory, Pizzagate, rattled both the political and restaurant worlds, serving as another poignant warning of how baseless claims made on the internet can have scary real life consequences.

For a less terrifying reminder of how real it can get, just ask the morning hosts of Swedish TV4 show Nyhetsmorgon, who recently reported the results of a fake American scientific study identifying bananas as the most popular fruit to use while pretending to answer a phone call.

According to The Local, the Nyhetsmorgon hosts, admittedly with some skepticism and a little chuckling, delivered the (obvious) results of the fake study on air on Thursday.

"The research—which someone has done seriously, namely John Hopkins University in Baltimore—shows that most people use a banana," one host said, according to a translation by The Local.

"More than anything, it's interesting that someone conducted this research," the other added.

The study actually came from The Onion, which has a history of fooling (often foreign) news agencies into believing it is a real news source. In The Onion's story, a fictitious researcher said, "Our research found that when subjects simulate the act of answering a phone, the banana is their preferred fruit nearly 100 percent of the time."

The made-up researcher also said that almost no one uses apples, grapes, or peaches as fake phones, though The Onion notes, "a pear remains the most popular fruit to say "Breaker, breaker!" into and then imitate the static of a CB radio." Can't argue with that.

Both hosts mimed holding bananas to their heads and taking phone calls, laughing as they did so. However, it's more fun to imagine the Swedes nervously and skeptically peering across the Atlantic to America, wondering in all seriousness what is going on with the world's largest economy that just voted a reality TV star to be president and is devoting resources to studying what fruits make the best fake phones.