Aug 05 2007
Fake Steve Jobs Unmasked
Fake Steve Jobs Comes To Forbes.com – Forbes.com
It was too good to last this long, but last it did. Fake Steve is no longer a mystery. It’s Dan Lyons, Senior Editor at Forbes.
“A posting on the New York Times Web site Sunday named Daniel Lyons, a technology writer for Forbes, as the author who conceived and writes the blog. “I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,” Lyons, 46, told the newspaper. “I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.”
A lot of people knew this. So it is amazing that it has been secret for as long as it has. Good for Dan. He got a book out of it and FSJ will live on at Forbes.com.
Dan and I went to prep school together. We were on the wrestling team together. Then we worked at the Lawrence Eagle Tribune in the early 80s as cub reporters, then PC Week, then Forbes. He is, doubtlessly, one of the funniest humans on the planet, as anyone who has read his novel, Dog Days, will attest.
Preorder the book based on FSJ — Options — it goes on sale in mid-October.
And the Times gets no glory for ending the party.
Fake Steve last wrote:
“Well it had to happen. Honestly I can’t believe it’s taken this long. But as you may have heard, I’ve been busted by a newspaper reporter. My cover has been blown. Guy named Brad Stone, who works for the New York Times. Have you heard of him? Well, tip of the hat to you, Brad Stone. You did the sleuthing. You put the pieces of the puzzle together. You went through my trash, hacked into my computer, and put listening devices in my home. Now you’ve ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina. 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. My only regret is that we didn’t get a chance to see Bigglesworth take a few more swings and misses.”
I’m not saying how long I knew. But it was a privilege while it lasted.
Long live FSJ!!
He could have used “Really Big Type” for today’s post.
Jim
So THAT’S how he got a TPRE…
[...] Lenovo marketing executive David Churbuck is really, really close to Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor recently outed as Fake Steve Jobs. They went to prep school together. They, um, wrestled together. And then they followed each other from job to job. Can anyone say “stalker”? But here’s the really scary part. In a post from February, Churbuck describes, at length, a friend with a popular blog who’s trying to find advertisers. A friend who, like Dan Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs, experimented with Google’s AdSense program and a CafePress store. Except Churbuck persistently refers to the blogger as “her” and “she.” Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider thinks Churbuck was “shielding” Lyons’s identity. I don’t know, Peter. I think there are some deeper identity issues going on here. Let me say it again, folks: prep school wrestling team. You know what that means. [...]
It won’t be as much fun now that it’s on Forbes.com….
Btw did you see Valleywag’s post on you – way funny
Eric
the question is: did YOU know it was him all of the time?