Magazine explains technical error that led to Donald Trump’s name being replaced with the text “Someone With Tiny Hands”

Beware what you download.

At least, that’s the lesson that can be learned from what Wired magazine is going through at the moment. The well-known pop-tech publication recently published an article about Donald Trump in which the hopeful Republican nominee’s name was replaced with the phrase “Someone With Tiny Hands.”

The text is in reference to an insult fellow Republican nominees have made about the size of the candidate’s hands. Mr. Trump has publicly defended the size of his hands, even going so far as to ask a debate audience: “Do these look like small hands?”

What happened with Wired was not an editor going rogue; rather, it was a technical glitch (per the folks at the publication). You see, it appears as though one of the magazine’s employees downloaded an anti-Trump joke extension in the Web browser Chrome, and left it open while working on the article.

For those unfamiliar, extensions are downloadable add-ons for web browsers that perform extra functions, often for the purpose of adding features or improving productivity. Within this niche market, there is a sub-sect of joke extensions, and the one that the Wired employee downloaded offered the feature of replacing every instance of Donald Trump’s name with the phrase “Someone With Tiny Hands.”

Now, when this employee received the article for layout (she’s a graphic designer), the browser add-on automatically switched the text within the file. Upon review, the magazine’s editors thought it was an inside joke and moved it along, not considering the fact that it would be streamlined through to publication.

“Our production team thought the phrase was a meta-gag, and let it through,” Jason Tanz, the journalist who published the story, explained. 

Believe it or not, that’s the story. You can read the full explanation at Wired.com