NYT Exposes the Identity of Fake Steve Jobs

mattatwork writes "NY Times writer Brad Stone figured out the real identity of Fake Steve Jobs. With classic nick names like 'freetards' and 'beastmaster' Fake Steve captured an audience of 700,000 visitors to the site and around 50 emails a day. According to Daniel Lyons, the senior editor at Forbes magazine who maintained the blog, there is no definite plan for the future of the site. 'Mr. Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year, when a small group of chief executives turned bloggers attracted some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it." Mr. Lyons says he recalled trying out the voices of several chief executives before settling on the colorful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.'"

And as they say on Ebaum's World

[LameAssTheMity]

Fake, everyone knows Steve Jobs isn't real.

Re:Solved?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just imagine the reporter in full Nancy Drew mode poring over clues.

Break out your magnifying glass kids, we're off to solve the Mystery of The Fake CEO Blogger!

John Howard: Prime Minister

[Trentus]

A few years ago, a friend directed me to http://johnhoward.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]. It's one of the few web pages I've actually laughed out loud at. It's written in a great style.

Tragedy

[fishthegeek]

I feel like a tiny bit of myself has been killed today. I will never experience the same innocent joy that accompanies reading a fake CEO blog again. Damn frigtard reporters.

Next assignment:

[Anonymous Coward]

The New York Times is now working on the identify of an even more prolific online writer, "Anonymous Coward".

thanks NYT!

[godawful]

i'm glad someone killed the child-like wonder FSJ had instilled in my life, next assignment? an exposé on proving santa claus isn't real, just in time for xmas

Re:This needs quoting

[__aaclcg7560]

OMG! The Fake Steve is a dog! That means the Real Steve has to be a cat! The Mac OS X naming scheme makes perfect sense now! :P

A better quote

[chebucto]

From the same post on the blog:

One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn't come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media. Brilliant.

File under "It's funny, laugh"

Re:thanks NYT!

[catbutt]

an exposé on proving santa claus isn't real, just in time for xmas

maybe more appropriate and useful would be to show that jesus isn't real.

Re:And as they say on Ebaum's World

[antdude]

Are you saying he's a robot?

Re:Bill Gates

[arth1]

Yeah, but the Fake Steve Jobs was fake...

Re:Darn.

[Simon Garlick]

The thing that blows my mind is that there's an editor out there who can WRITE.

Re:Next assignment:

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't lie. I once thought Anonymous Coward was a single person with way too much time on his hands.

This is borderline lolcat!

[Lethyos]

“Fake Steve Jobs is fake!” Shocking!

Re:John Howard: Prime Minister

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell is that?

Re:John Howard: Prime Minister

[GaryPatterson]

Since Google is broken and no other Internet search engine can apparently be reached from your computer, I'll help you out. John Howard is the Australian Prime Minister. That's Australia, the huge island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans (west of California), about the size of the USA. It's not Austria, the small country next to Germany (in Europe, which is across the Atlantic Ocean, east of the USA). Normally I'd not bother with such detailed information, but it'll save you asking again, or having to work out how to search for information on the Internet.

Re:John Howard: Prime Minister

[dbIII]

Yes, but when it comes down to it he's not hugely relevant so is ignorable internationally - his government has pretty well been in caretaker mode for the last decade and his foreign policy is "me too". Even a major US newspaper got his name wrong and called him Mike Hunt when he was visiting the USA - possibly misled by an Aussie that was playing a bit of a joke. The last Prime Minister we had that we would expect people to notice is Malcolm Fraser - very tall, face like an Easter Island statue and memorable for running around in a US hotel with no pants on.

Re:Good job, New York Times.

[MillionthMonkey]

Every day people are dying, and we're reading Slashdot.

Well, none of us have real Jobs.

Re:Solved?

[Ohreally_factor]

I admit it. I blew up a van. The same van twice, in fact.