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JohnBooty

I told a coworker that I was dismayed to learn that Mavis Beacon wasn't real. She had a good laugh at my expense.

her: "Really??? You thought she was a real person? JOHN. Come on."

me: "I thought she was a real person, like Orville Redenbacher. I didn't know she was made up like Betty Crocker."

her: "WAIT, BETTY CROCKER WASN'T REAL??"

oh, the laughs

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Back in the 1980s, when my company Zortech was located in London, my partner set up a "Meet Walter Bright" with the tech press there. After all, my picture was on the Zortech ads and the compiler manual.

When I arrived at the meet & greet, the journalists thought I was a model (!) hired to be a figurehead. I had to show them my passport to convince them that was my real name, and answer a bunch of tech questions to show I knew all about C++ and compilers.

It was a very amusing experience for me, especially that some people thought I was handsome enough to be a model, LOL.

When I first got internet in the 90's I became aware of an art collective that was fronted by a personality name "Netochka Nezvanova". I got the impression that this kind of thing was nothing new. Maybe your last name "Bright" and programming skills were such that they thought you had to be more than one person!

https://anthology.rhizome.org/m9ndfukc-0-99

They thought "Walter Bright" was a made up marketing name, like Mr. Goodwrench.

P.S. I still have the green shirt!

when I finish my next compiler I'm going to hire someone on Fiverr to steal--I mean, alter slightly--the George Brazil Plumbing guy (https://www.google.com/search?q=george+brazil+plumbing&tbm=i...), put him on the website, and call him Walter Bright just to complete the circle

What a great story. Also how nice is it that at one time journalists could ask something smart enough to discern your knowledge of C++

I wonder how handsome you would have to be to play a model playing yourself.

This is a great story. I'm wondering if any of them had techie friends that set them up.

"I'm going to interview Walter Bright!"

"Oh yeah? You know that's not a real person, right?"

I think I would do that if I ever got the chance. "You think the guy who created Linux is named Linus? Really? Well, okay I guess"

Ima hafta call baloney on this one ... If WalterBright was real he would'a wrote a language ... even better than C! Maybe throw in some memory management. Just sayin'

Plus, "Zortech" ... wth kind of name is that? Someone couldn't make this stuff up as fiction! And a journalist that knew the right question to see if you knew about C plus plus ... You almost had me til there.

What can I say?

https://walterbright.com/1988DDJDec.jpg

Anyone could have scanned that ad /s

6MHz!

Dashing!

Although, of course, being the sexiest software engineer is a little bit like being the tallest person in the Lollipop Guild...

My friend ordered clothes from an ad only syndicated on Instagram. Initially we all laughed at the concept because a lot of people had seen the ad but know that Facebook Ads is full of people just reselling junk from Alibaba, and so, ignorable. And when its jewelry or clothings, the assumption is that its trust funders selling to their friends, having really no product market fit.

And yet, as soon as he started wearing the clothes people thought he was a brand ambassador and model. Because it was really just another "impression" for a brand people otherwise ignored.

Funny outcome. The clothes are a decent style.

"Zortech" is a great name.

Yeah I suppose for people who read through an entire alphabetical listing, you might be better off being the last thing they remember instead of the first thing they see.

> me: "I thought she was a real person, like Orville Redenbacher. I didn't know she was made up like Betty Crocker."

Ettore Boiardi, aka Chef Boyardee, was a real person as well:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Boiardi

I would not have guessed that! I like that he last lived in Parma, Ohio.

There's probably a list somewhere. Aunt Jemima? Uncle Ben? Colonel Sanders? Betty Crocker? The Quaker oats guy?

A couple lists from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_characters_in_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Male_characters_in_ad...

Unfortunately they mix the obviously fictional in with the less obviously fictional (like cartoon characters with more plausible characters).

Wendy Thomas is real though.

I didn't make the list, just found it. Fortunately, it's Wikipedia so you can edit it if you want.

It says female/male characters in advertising; not necessarily fictional.

The name is real (and maybe the portrait is close enough) but the character in commercials isn't.

He was in the commercials.

The one I was most surprised to learn was a real person was Chef Boyardee.

From Wikipedia:

> After leaving his position as head chef at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Boiardi opened a restaurant called Il Giardino d'Italia in 1924 at East 9th Street and Woodland Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. The idea for Chef Boyardee came about when restaurant customers began asking Boiardi for his spaghetti sauce, which he began to distribute in milk bottles. Four years later, in 1928, Boiardi opened a factory and moved production to Milton, Pennsylvania, where he could grow his own tomatoes and mushrooms. He decided to name his product "Boy-Ar-Dee" to help Americans pronounce his name correctly. The first product to be sold was a "ready-to-heat spaghetti kit" in 1928. The kit included uncooked pasta, tomato sauce, and a container of pre-grated cheese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_Boyardee

There was an Oscar, as in, winning an.

And there was a Tony, but there wasn't an Emmy or a Grammy.

damn i thought those were the founders

Colonel Sanders was the real founder, although not a real Colonel.

He was technically a real Colonel, just not a conventional one.

a convolutional kernel, maybe

He was a Kentucky Colonel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Colonel

Oh boy wait until you hear about the Cream of Wheat guy

Mr Kipling

Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders

Dave Thomas of Wendy's was also a Kentucky Colonel.

Peter Norton?

He's real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton

And then there is John McAfee who passed recently in a Spanish jail cell.

Was assassinated.

I learned to roll up my sleeves from seeing Peter Norton's photos.

I just assumed she was a software developer who decided to teach typing. Then I realized, she doesn’t have to code it herself…maybe she hired someone to program it for her.

It never crossed my mind that she was not an entrepreneur until I read this comment.

Yeah unlike a lot of other fictional characters, she was actually portrayed with photographs, unlike illustrations ala Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben, etc. I think a lot of people thought Mavis Beacon was a real person!

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