So Dan Lyons Called | Hacker News Reader

So Dan Lyons Called

daringfireball.net

52 pointsblasdel16 comments

Gruber’s reply was unbecoming and mean-spirited. Gruber routinely awards people the title “Jackass of the Week” for having opinions he disagrees with or for making erroneous predictions. When he himself whiffed hard on his Google Voice post he had to know that some ribbing and criticism was headed his way. He should have been prepared to handle it graciously.

Capitalizing on Gruber’s mistake, John Lyons writes a post that primarily ridicules _Apple_ for its obsession with secrecy and for its contemptuous relationship with the media. Yes, he does make fun of Gruber, but it’s from the point of view of Fake Steve. Lyons himself isn’t saying Gruber is a “dipshit”, he’s saying that he bets that’s how Steve Jobs thinks of him.

In return, Gruber seems to really scrape the barrel to find ammunition for a purely ad hominem attack, ridiculing Lyons’ day job and implying that his writing is disingenuous. I takes a serious lack of perspective to call the creator of Fake Steve Jobs a tool of old media.

I think you're reading too much into it. John has posted to Fake Steve articles he enjoys in the past. Gruber receives and dishes out this kind of stuff all the time. I bet if you'd ask him, he just thought the article about him was funny, wanted to link to it and decided to play along a bit.

I think you must have been reading a different piece than I read. Gruber sounded bitter, bitter, bitter to me. The last three paragraphs of Gruber's joke were pretty rancid.

Maybe. Even if Fake Steve is a character, Dan Lyons wrote the words. If he wasn't prepared to take some flack back, he shouldn't have started Fake Steve in the first place. I'm willing to bet both writers are fine with the exchange, possibly even amused by each other. Frankly, we'd all be lucky to be roasted by either one of these guys someday.

You could be right. Maybe Lyons get together every Thursday at a bar and rib each other over who had the harsher blog post while they sip on Deus Brut Des Flandres. Maybe they have pet names for each other’s kids, and give them noogies at get-togethers.

Maybe it is all fun and games, but they don’t write about that stuff on their blogs so it’s impossible to tell. From my point of view Gruber’s reply doesn’t read as friendly or jocular. Lyons calls Gruber a egotistical, obnoxious fanboy and jokes that Apple hatched a wide-reaching conspiracy just to trick him into a journalistic mistake. Fair enough.

Gruber “jokes” that Lyons writes limp, insincere, watered-down articles for a failing magazine. Maybe Gruber misjudged his tone, but ouch. I’d be hurt if Gruber wrote that about me. I’d be hurt if a _friend_ wrote that about me.

The whole thing is written according to one of Dan's FSJ schticks. The form of this "So Foo Called" schtick obligates the recipient of the call to treat Foo with casual, but brutal condescension.

They don't have to be drinking buddies for this to be a sincere form of flattery.

It's quite likely, as others have pointed out, that you're interpreting the exchange a little too literally. Gruber's retort is quite weak though, not so much because it's mean-spirited or logically flawed - it's just not nearly as well-written and amusing as the original. This outcome should have been obvious to Gruber - Lyons writes a popular humor blog, Gruber does not. Trying to respond in kind, however good naturedly, ends up simply restating that well-known fact.

Lighten up guys. Gruber's trying to be funny here and he mostly succeeds. I'm 100% certain that Lyons read this and thought it was hilarious. Journalists being hypercritical professional whiners, there's nothing Gruber's saying about Newsweek here that Lyons and his editors probably haven't said to eachother over lunch a hundred times already.

That reads like it ought to be on a blog called Fake John Gruber.

Oh, snap. Nothing burns like six days later.

Why the drama?

Edit: oh -- http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/08/dear-gruber-youve-been-pwne...

Not entirely undeserved.

I’m not sure if it’s “drama” or “teasing fun”. With those 2 it can be hard to tell.

Some blogger catfight over an Apple fanboy apologia?

How on earth did Apple manage to turn consumer electronics into a drama-rich soap opera? And more to the point, why?

It's a joke.

It's funny, but kind of hollow. I'll take Gruber over Lyons any day, but Newsweek is also the home of Steven Levy, not to mention Michael Isikoff.

Gruber sure can take a joke. What a trooper

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