As roughly 7 trillion blogs, news sites, Usenet groups, RSS feeds, and a group of monks chanting in Nepal have noted, Forbes writer and blog-hater Daniel Lyons is the critter behind the Fake Steve Jobs persona.

I’ve got a summary here, and you can find a lot more on the Intarwebs this morning. Mad props to the New York Times and Brad Stone for cracking Lyons’ shell of secrecy like an egg.

I have enjoyed the Fake Steve posts over the past year or so that they’ve been running. Count me among the shocked that it turned out to be Lyons channeling the spirit of Steve Jobs.

The reason for the shock should be obvious if you look at some of Fake Steve’s choicer barbs: Steve Ballmer is Monkey Boy, Bill Gates is Beastmaster Bill, Eric Schmidt is Squirrel Boy, Jonathan Schwartz is My Little Pony. Lyons had a little problem with bloggers engaging in nasty name-calling a couple of years ago:

Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It’s not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can’t even figure out who his attacker is.

I think they know now.

Posted in Opinion |