Is
Andy Ihnatko Fake Steve Jobs? Valleywag was the first to
name him publicly as a candidate for writing the faux diary of Apple CEO
Steve Jobs, but now Ihnatko is
being fingered again, thanks to a needlessly elaborate Internet sting. Could the longtime Mac columnist be the man behind the curtain?
- FOR The sense of humor. Ihnatko's writing has verve, panache, and more than its fair share of randomness — traits shared by whoever's writing Fake Steve Jobs.
- FOR The IP address. At first, I was inclined to dismiss the "discovery" by Web developers at Sitening that Fake Steve Jobs has sent email from a Boston-area Internet connection. (The same data that Sitening uncovered through their elaborate sting operation was available, for months, to anyone who bothered to look at FSJ's email headers, and well known among FSJ trackers.) But everyone, in their rush to re-report this old news, has failed to notice the obvious: Andy Ihnatko is a Verizon customer.
- FOR The desperation. For all his cunning insights about Apple and the tech world, Fake Steve Jobs appears to be a naif when it comes to business. He's been hitting up potential advertising sponsors for a while, and he recently begged for help with setting up Google AdSense on the FSJ blog, in a post that was subsequently taken down. Ihnatko's own blog, YellowText, also currently doesn't run ads. Is that because Ihnatko makes enough money from his publishing royalties that he doesn't have to bother — or because, like FSJ, he doesn't know how to insert ads onto his blog?
- FOR The silence. Ihnatko has never written about Fake Steve. Fake Steve has never written about Ihnatko.
That's the case for. Here's why Ihnatko might not be Fake Steve.
- AGAINST The sense of humor. Ihnatko is funny, but Fake Steve is funnier. Way funnier. If it's Ihnatko, he's saving his best stuff for his alter ego, which might annoy his editors at the Chicago Sun-Times.
- AGAINST The IP address. Geotargeting is hardly an exact science. Advertisers who try to use it to target local ads know that it's notoriously unreliable. And even if it's accurate in this case, who's to say Fake Steve Jobs wasn't traveling in the Boston area when he sent those emails?
- AGAINST The insiders. Chris Nolan, the former Silicon Valley gossip columnist who now runs online-content distributor Spot On, insists that FSJ is not a writer, based on her email conversations with him. (Update: Nolan asked me to clarify that she meant a professional writer, which is also how I took it.) Steven Levy of Newsweek, I hear, believes that he's a former Internet-media CEO. And many others believe that FSJ is written by multiple people.
I'm not convinced it's Ihnatko. I'm not convinced it's not. Perhaps Ihnatko, who's agreed to an interview with Valleywag, can clear up matters. We'll see. Until then, the hunt for Fake Steve Jobs continues.
Valleywag
Comments
The sense of humor seems like the big one for me. I read Ihnatko for years various mac magazines, and he was the "wacky" columnist, but not often a truly funny one. Though admittedly, those jobs never gave him much of a chance to create a complete persona for the purposes of parody... and people are better at some kinds of humor than others.
Remember the pic that FSJ released of him holding a MacBook? I remember seeing a wedding band. Andy's not married (I think).
Why hasn't anyone thought of Jack Miller of As The Apple Turns. FSJ is definitely his level of humor.
Congratulations. You've helped to unmask him - now, can you drop it?
I find it amazing how so many people claim to like reading FSJ yet want to "unmask" him, knowing full well that the very unmasking will *stop* the person who is FSJ from continuing.
Are you people *really* that thickheaded? What's wrong with simply leaving FSJ be? I think a lot of it is jealousy - FSJ is funny, popular and original and a lot of so-called "journalists" are none of the above so they want to cut him down to *their* level.
I doubt it's Andy Ihnatko. I've been reading his stuff for a long time, and there are a few reasons I don't see a fit.
1. Focus. FSJ hits Sun, Forbes, and other financial or board topics a lot (Jerry York?). That gives the feel of someone with ties or grudges in those areas. There's actually very little on using Macs. AI's much more user/everyman-focused.
2. Tone. AI's said his favorite author is Wodehouse, and that shows. His stuff is nice, almost twee, and he prefers circumlocutionary backhanded fulminations with obscure references over quick frontal assaults. "Frigtard" and worse would be a tectonic shift for him.
3. Career. AI's Sun-Times column and Wiley series are good freelance gigs. FSJ's fake stories are hilarious tangos with libelousness. If someone's lawyer got itchy, managing to sue and out AI, it's a lot of reputation at risk even if the public-figure defense eventually held. I doubt his publishers would appreciate the value of the satire - especially if it weren't making them money. His Apple access might also dry up. FSJ is probably someone with less to lose, or more to fall back on.
4. Mistakes. FSJ's deliberate mistakes are funny, too funny for a good humorist to correct or apologize for the way he does. He also has a casual way with quotation marks and run-on sentences. Even AI's most slapdash blog posts have damn good grammar and he tends to trust readers to understand ridiculous exaggeration.
I'm not saying the leopard can't change its spots, but changing these would be a lot of effort, for what? FSJ's identity isn't as interesting as his output. Let's not kill the golden goose.
This whole FSJ thing is just another stupid ripoff of the FSB blog ([fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com]) as is all apple software. People the future is in the cloud, rental OS's, coffeetable computers!
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