Fake Steve Jobs returns | Hacker News Reader

Fake Steve Jobs returns

fakesteve.blogspot.com

43 pointsnewsio14 comments

I never thought Fake Steve Jobs was that good. Among other details, I refuse to believe that Steve Jobs' reaction to the backdating "scandal" would be anything other than annoyance at how his time and attention was wasted on it, but FSJ worked it up to be this huge melodramatic depressive period.

But whatever fun there was in the blog was ruined when it turned out this guy was just another business journalist. Then it suddenly clicked that he couldn't get into Steve's head well enough to pull off the character. After that revelation, the flaws in his characterization became even more apparent--ah, that's why Fake Steve Jobs is commenting vividly on things that are fascinating to tech industry journalists but probably beneath the real Steve Jobs' notice.

Then it suddenly clicked that he couldn't get into Steve's head well enough to pull off the character

So, wait. When you were judging the writing based on the writing, you thought one thing. When you were judging it based on the guy doing the writing, you, uh, figured out that the writing was worse than you thought before you acquired some extraneous information?

FSJ was never supposed to be about what Steve Jobs would actually think about. It was always poking fun at what people said about Jobs -- and since the most prominent people saying things about Jobs are tech journalists, it's fine for a tech journalist to write it.

It's more that FSJ pretty badly mischaracterized Steve, but the flaws were easier to shrug off when I couldn't easily pin down why in particular he was mischaracterized that particular way.

That he is back only shows that he couldn't make it on his own - he needs Steve Jobs fame. I could never see anything positive in that approach.

Just for the record, the first two return posts were posted before the WSJ story broke. Both the post about heaven and the one that clearly refers to harvesting body parts (and the first comment made it crystal clear). Make of that what you will.

I'm curious to see how this turns out. I was under the impression that he burned his bridges with FSJ after his CNBC stunt:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jan/15/steve-...

Although, he did hint he would be back after Steve's recovery in this ARS interview:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/07/the-real-dan-lyons...

His writings for Newsweek have been fairly uninspired. Especially compared to his skewering of the cultures at IBM and Yahoo as FSJ, most of his columns felt far too "safe". Not that I can criticize someone for dumping blogging to move to a well paid magazine gig, but it seemed crazy for Newsweek to hire someone like Lyons and then force him to write from a straitjacket.

The first few return posts have totally recaptured the voice, so hopefully FSJ finally has an outlet where he can write without tainting the Newsweek "brand".

He already had a paid magazine gig, he just changed it for another one.

I really enjoyed reading Fake Steve way back in the day (which was, what? 1 year or so ago?) - but once he started blogging as other Jerry Yang, Schmidt, etc it the whole thing went down hill rapidly.

Revealing his real identity and effectively shutting down the Fake Steve blog didn't help matters.

I doubt the old flame will be re-ignited here.

This is supposed to be the same guy? The writing quality is down and the voice is all off. Or maybe I only read his good posts before?

I found the bits about David Pogue begging Steve to take his whole liver, and whatever other organ parts he needs, pretty darn funny.

Fake Steve has been on a leave of absence too, of course.

Yes, I've noticed him coming up on my RSS feed ever since the liver transplant news.

I'm waiting for the fake fake Steve Jobs to return

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