Rumors of Fake Steve Jobs' Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

A fairly momentous event occurred today in the world of online media when the identity of the mastermind behind the fantastic blog Fake Steve Jobs was revealed. In case you haven't been following the genius that is Fake Steve Jobs here's a quick description: an anonymous writer pretends to be the famously egoistic Apple CEO Steve Jobs by adeptly satirizing Jobs and many other Silicon Valley luminaries. The author, now revealed to be Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons, riled up the technology journalism set for the last year or so with his incisive and amusing commentary on the tech industry and a wide range of other topics including Lindsay Lohan, child labor, and the technology journalism set itself. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, perfectly encapsulated their collective frustration at being incapable of discovering Fake Steve's identity with his public failure of a witch hunt. To get a sense of why people cared so much about the identity of some random asshole pretending to be Steve Jobs, I'd recommend reading this gem, published on iPhone D-Day, or this vicious skewering of Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer.

The debate amongst the digerati is now centered on whether Fake Steve will continue to be entertaining post-reveal. The random jackasses clogging up the comments section of the NY Times article outing Lyons are mostly dubious about the prospects of FSJ. I'm not so sure. While the anonymity of Fake Steve certainly added to the blog's appeal, Lyons is clearly a gifted writer. Maintaining the interest of his recently acquired audience will be a true test of skill, but it seems patently unfair to Lyons to attribute a majority of the success of Fake Steve Jobs to the vicariousness engendered by anonymity. Sure, it was amusing to guess at who the author was and obviously the whole mystery aspect, which undoubtedly added a lot, is irrevocably gone. Those two attributes alone didn't make the blog successful however. Lyons' acerbic jabs at pretty much everyone made the blog a joy to read, and I expect him to continue to be successful as long as he doesn't start to pull any punches. Lyons, still in the voice of Fake Steve naturally, seems as if he's relishing the challenge. I for one will be interested to see whether he can keep it up.