Dan Lyons, the man behind “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs,” began his online experiment as the alter ego of Apple’s CEO mostly because he hated his job at Forbes, reports RCR Wireless News.
“My job sucked. It was so bad,” he said to raucous laughter during a 30-minute keynote here at the Mobile Entertainment Forum conference. “Covering IBM is like sticking your head in a meat grinder every day.”
So Lyons figured why not give this blogging thing a go. “I’m not old enough to retire and I don’t have enough money to retire, so I started freaking out, like really freaking out,” he said. “I thought I better get some online experience.”
When Lyons’ editors at Forbes rejected his request for a new blog or a job on the dot-com side of the operation, he struck out on his own in his free time.
His site grew to 90,000 unique visits and he’d sold a book all before anyone figured out who this anonymous Steve Jobs wannabe was.
A manhunt quickly got underway, brought on largely by a column from — wait for it — his editor at Forbes who set up a quasi-contest to out the Fake Steve Jobs.
“Finally he started writing to me trying to hire me at Forbes,” he said. “You mean the same assholes that wouldn’t hire me before?”
“I’m like, dude I work for you,” Lyons said to a now enthralled audience.
