Fake Steve Jobs hoaxes TechMeme/bloggers

It’s all over TechMeme that Fake Steve Jobs has lawyers after him. This is so obviously a hoax it’s laughable. I bet that not a single blogger bothered calling Apple PR to check this story out. We are such suckers sometimes.

I don’t even need to call. First of all, anyone who knows lawyers knows that they’d never send out such communications the weekend before Christmas. Lawyers don’t work then. Can we have some common sense please?

Second of all, Apple PR would never pull such a stunt like this right before taking a week off for Christmas. It’d cause too much work over the Christmas break. Can we have some common sense please?

Geesshhh.

Serves you right for believing a single thing that Fake Steve Jobs writes. The dude is FAKE. Get it? You probably believed it when he wrote he loved me, didn’t you? Can we have some common sense please?

Bloggers, when are we going to stop repeating things just so we can get onto TechMeme? When are we going to start doing real work and start calling PR (I bet most of the bloggers on TechMeme don’t even know how to contact Apple PR) and waiting for a confirmation?

At least Scott Karp called it right.

If you believe a fake blogger you deserve all the slime attached to you that you get.

Comments

  1. colin says:

    Robert – you base your entire assumption that it was fake based on the fact that “lawyers don’t work the week before christmas”? Of course they do – the people that picked the the Tony Clifton reference showed more aptitude than that.

    In any case, he picked your bailout from PodTech pretty well, or was that fake as well? ;-)

  2. colin says:

    Robert – you base your entire assumption that it was fake based on the fact that “lawyers don’t work the week before christmas”? Of course they do – the people that picked the the Tony Clifton reference showed more aptitude than that.

    In any case, he picked your bailout from PodTech pretty well, or was that fake as well? ;-)

  3. colin: it was fake at the time he reported it, yes. And certainly the WAY he reported it. I didn’t care about what he said about me, but when he said that PodTech was going out of business that’s just totally false. That’s mostly what I bristled about.

    You obviously don’t work with many corporate lawyers, do you? Name one that’s at his/her desk right now on Sunday night before Christmas (or on Saturday when FSJ started reporting this “story”). Go ahead. Name one.

  4. colin: it was fake at the time he reported it, yes. And certainly the WAY he reported it. I didn’t care about what he said about me, but when he said that PodTech was going out of business that’s just totally false. That’s mostly what I bristled about.

    You obviously don’t work with many corporate lawyers, do you? Name one that’s at his/her desk right now on Sunday night before Christmas (or on Saturday when FSJ started reporting this “story”). Go ahead. Name one.

  5. colin says:

    Robert: me. :-)

  6. colin says:

    Robert: me. :-)

  7. How To Grab Market’s Attention During The Holidays Season, Lesson Number One, By Fake Steve Jobs

    Forbes’ s senior editor Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, is currently offering one of the best yet impressive lesson of viral marketing to the Blogosphere. A masterpiece of buzz, FSJ’ s latest posts about Apple willing to sue him

  8. frivmo says:

    Wow. That a single person believed this to be true (or even possibly true) blows my mind. Lyons is a good blogger/marketer/satirist, in that hints of what he posts are true, or are at least believable, but much like Nostradamus and other prophets, he needs only to get about 5% of his predictions/claims correct for people to take everything seriously.

    Duped bloggers (or ones who wanted to stay on the fence while still opening up the possibility of a Techmeme listing) have called this a “marketing ploy” or a “hoax,” but in no way is this different from every single post on FSJ. My impression is that Lyons saw an opportunity to juicily parody the ThinkSecret scandal, and when it got a huge response, he smartly continued to fan the flames.

  9. frivmo says:

    Wow. That a single person believed this to be true (or even possibly true) blows my mind. Lyons is a good blogger/marketer/satirist, in that hints of what he posts are true, or are at least believable, but much like Nostradamus and other prophets, he needs only to get about 5% of his predictions/claims correct for people to take everything seriously.

    Duped bloggers (or ones who wanted to stay on the fence while still opening up the possibility of a Techmeme listing) have called this a “marketing ploy” or a “hoax,” but in no way is this different from every single post on FSJ. My impression is that Lyons saw an opportunity to juicily parody the ThinkSecret scandal, and when it got a huge response, he smartly continued to fan the flames.

  10. John Seals says:

    I hate to say it but it’s things like this that keep people from taking bloggers seriously. It seems to me that this kind of thing happens a lot less in the “dead-tree” media.

  11. John Seals says:

    I hate to say it but it’s things like this that keep people from taking bloggers seriously. It seems to me that this kind of thing happens a lot less in the “dead-tree” media.

  12. Brian Clark says:

    John, go look into “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. You think satire is something new that pesky bloggers came up with?

  13. Brian Clark says:

    John, go look into “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. You think satire is something new that pesky bloggers came up with?

  14. John Seals says:

    Brian:

    I guess I more bemoaning the overall lack of “fact checking” that goes on.

  15. John Seals says:

    Brian:

    I guess I more bemoaning the overall lack of “fact checking” that goes on.

  16. Roy says:

    As Apple continues to churn out inferior products masquerading as cutting edge gadgets (iPod and iPhone etc) whilst trapping people with its own software restrictions, after standing on the shoulders of real innovators like HTC for example, people everywhere will try to boycott Apple as the monopolizing pile of poop they’ve become!

  17. Roy says:

    As Apple continues to churn out inferior products masquerading as cutting edge gadgets (iPod and iPhone etc) whilst trapping people with its own software restrictions, after standing on the shoulders of real innovators like HTC for example, people everywhere will try to boycott Apple as the monopolizing pile of poop they’ve become!

  18. [...] of this tale, there should be no doubt left that the folks who believed this got suckered.  As Robert Scoble so accurately pointed out, “Serves you right for believing a single thing that Fake Steve [...]

  19. Brian Clark says:

    >>I guess I more bemoaning the overall lack of “fact checking” that goes on.

    Oh, I see. Yes, the fact that bloggers reported this as “fact” is pretty disturbing, but I guess that’s what happens when media gets opened up to the masses. :)

  20. Brian Clark says:

    >>I guess I more bemoaning the overall lack of “fact checking” that goes on.

    Oh, I see. Yes, the fact that bloggers reported this as “fact” is pretty disturbing, but I guess that’s what happens when media gets opened up to the masses. :)

  21. [...] whether it’s yet another move by Fake Steve to stir up more drama in the Apple buzz world as Scoble and a crowd of others claim it [...]