OMG, They Cloned Steve Jobs

Earlier this week, I set up a Google Alert for “Joe Wilcox”. Hey, I’m not being egotistical. The alert is to see where my posts are being aggregated. I’m deeply conflicted about aggregation, but that’s a separate blog topic. The very second alert contained post “Too Stupid to Own an iPad” from the Fake Steve Jobs blog. It was pure nastiness.

This piece of witless sarcasm blasted my Betanews post “7 People Who Are Returning Their iPads“. On April 7th, I spent way too many hours writing “Mashable’s Apple Ad Platform Claims are Mush” here, posting nothing to Betanews by late day. I was desperate to post something. Within minutes of one another, two items in the RSS feeds caught my attention: The popularity of Top-10 lists (don’t recall where) and buzz that old-media-turned-new media evangelist Jeff Jarvis planned to return his iPad. So, I set out to find 10 people who had returned or planned to return their iPads. For time constraints, I stopped at seven people. The post went viral, racking up good pageviews, I am most embarrassed to say.

The Fake Steve Jobs response (we’ve had run-ins before) was unusually nasty: “Joe Wilcox, king of all ‘tards, ‘cos he can put more than two Lego bricks together, found seven morons who had the temerity to return their iPads shortly after purchasing.” The post then went on the attack photos of me on the Web, ending:

Obviously his Depends hasn’t been changed in three days and his Cialis got mixed up with his diuretic medicine. He thought he could hide under a picture of Gruber on an iPhone, but we’re too clever for ya’ Methuselah. Now go back to your Morse key wireless set  and paper punch tape compiler, will ya’.

Ouch. I tweeted: “Fake Steve Jobs calls me ‘king of all ‘tards’. Is that a compliment? Does this mean I get a role in his new sitcom? I could play myself. :)” Hollywood has called on Fake Steve Jobs (journalist Dan Lyons) for sitcom iCon, based on the character. ZDNet blogger Ed Bott tweeted back: “Hate to tell you, Joe, but it was FSJ’s sidekick, Lastangelman, who dissed you. You need to work harder to get on FSJ’s radar.” To which I replied: “Sidekick? He has a sidekick? What the hell? They CLONED him!”

I stopped reading blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs long ago. It was kind of funny when Dan Lyons was anonymous but grew to be obnoxious after he was outed as Fake Steve Jobs. Now there’s a Fake Fake Steve Jobs posting there.

Looking for the last word, I later commented to “Too Stupid to Own an iPad” post: “I checked with my agent; if you have a ‘king of all `tards’ character in the sitcom, I get a fee since it’s based on me. So, thanks.” To which Fake Fake Steve Jobs (aka lastangelman) responded: “We dropped the character, leech.” Really now. I thought “Leech” is the main character.

Photo Credit: Jeremy Keith