Fake Steve Jobs Finally Unmasked

On 8/7/07 07:25 AM, "Shawn King" <shawnyourmaclifeshow.com> wrote:

> None of us have any real idea who Steve Jobs is. But we've all heard enough
> horror stories that we *think* we can imagine what he's like and FSJ tapped
> into that *brilliantly*.
>
> Unfortunately, even though Lyons is putting a brave face on it, I don't
> think FSJ can survive too much longer. When he was unknown, he could say
> anything without fear of repercussions. Now that we know the guy behind FSJ
> is a "real" person, he can be held accountable for what FSJ says - and Lyons
> won't risk his job over that.

It doesn't matter, at least to me, whether he can still pull it off or not.
The truth is, as soon as FSJ became "some guy", I yanked it off my feed. Not
because the quality of writing will be any worse, but because it will just
be "some guy".

Honestly, it was FSJ's anonymity that made him cool. Being a "real" person
means that I'd forever filter everything written through what I know about
Lyons.

It's like a magic show. You know you're being fooled. No matter what David
Copperfield and his ilk want us to think, we all know it's a trick. Penn &
Teller even show us how some of them work. But it's okay. You know you're
being tricked, and it's cool. While you wonder "wow, how'd they do that?" Do
you really want to know? Do you really want something as cool as a magic
trick or illusion reduced to an reliable, repeatable series of steps? No,
because then it's not fun. It's the trickery, it's the being fooled that
make it fun. It's the fact that you've been tricked so well, and with such
style that makes it cool. If you know how it works, then you aren't amazed,
you're analyzing their performance of the trick. There's a difference, and
it's rather huge.

Sometimes, for minor things like FSJ and magic tricks, it's okay to be
fooled. Really.

--
John C. Welch

At 5:25 AM -0700 8/7/07, Shawn King wrote:
>"While few people know how Steve Jobs talks in private, Lyons's ability to
>uncork Jobs's id into a stream of consciousness that seemed vaguely credible
>made it a must-read."
><http://db.tidbits.com/article/9105>
>
>No offense Adam but I think that is *slightly* off.

Ironically, that particular sentence was added by Glenn during
editing. Something that's not always obvious about TidBITS, but is
true of many professional publications, is that the bylined author
isn't always the person who actually wrote every word. I of course
saw the addition, and was fine with it.

>FSJ was channeling what we *thought* we knew about Jobs.

I think that's largely true, although I also think it became
self-fulfilling fairly quickly, since when FSJ was anonymous, it was
easy to think, even if you knew it wasn't true, that he was the real
Steve Jobs.

>Unfortunately, even though Lyons is putting a brave face on it, I don't
>think FSJ can survive too much longer. When he was unknown, he could say
>anything without fear of repercussions. Now that we know the guy behind FSJ
>is a "real" person, he can be held accountable for what FSJ says - and Lyons
>won't risk his job over that.

Yeah, that's my fear too, though I also agree with John Welch's
comment that the veil of anonymity was key, and without that, the
excitement is gone.

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

On 8/10/07 5:54 AM, "Adam C. Engst" <acetidbits.com> wrote:

> At 5:25 AM -0700 8/7/07, Shawn King wrote:
>> Now that we know the guy behind FSJ
>> is a "real" person, he can be held accountable for what FSJ says - and Lyons
>> won't risk his job over that.
>
> Yeah, that's my fear too, though I also agree with John Welch's
> comment that the veil of anonymity was key, and without that, the
> excitement is gone.

I asked him that directly when we interviewed him on Thursday night (obvious
plug - you can listen to that show at this URL
<http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com/QT/stream.mov>) and he says that won't be
the case. And if you heard some of the things he said (it seemed like he was
almost channeling Fake Steve Jobs during the interview) you'd have to
believe him. :)
--
Shawn King
Host/Executive Producer
Your Mac Life
http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com