Fake Steve Jobs hoaxes TechMeme/bloggers

December 22, 2007 By

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.

Filed Under: Scoble family
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  • colin

    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? ;-)

  • colin

    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? ;-)

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    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.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    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.

  • colin

    Robert: me. :-)

  • colin

    Robert: me. :-)

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  • frivmo

    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.

  • frivmo

    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.

  • John Seals

    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.

  • John Seals

    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.

  • http://copyblogger.com/ Brian Clark

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

  • http://copyblogger.com Brian Clark

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

  • John Seals

    Brian:

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

  • John Seals

    Brian:

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

  • Roy

    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!

  • http://www..arbiummoney.com/bankruptcy/bankruptcyservices/ Roy

    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!

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  • http://copyblogger.com/ Brian Clark

    >>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. :)

  • http://copyblogger.com Brian Clark

    >>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. :)

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