Andy, Are You Goofing on Apple?

Fake Steve Jobs, a wild­ly pop­u­lar blog writ­ten by Daniel Lyons, an edi­tor at Forbes, has been goof­ing on the real Steve Jobs all year. And now things have tak­en an odd turn. Dur­ing the same week that Apple appar­ent­ly shut down ThinkSecret.com (an Apple rumor site) in exchange for cash, Apple may be apply­ing sim­i­lar pres­sure to Fake Steve Jobs. Or maybe not.

If today’s blog post can be tak­en at face val­ue, Apple lawyers have fol­lowed up hard-assed threats with a cash offer (of $500,000) to make FSJ go away. The recent posts all sound con­vinc­ing. But then you note the ref­er­ences to Andy Kauf­man, the mas­ter of walk­ing the line between com­plete sin­cer­i­ty and absur­di­ty. First, there’s the pic­ture of Kauf­man get­ting strong armed dur­ing one of his famous wrestling match­es with women. Next, there’s the ref­er­ence to a “Tony Clifton,” which is the name giv­en to a strange bit char­ac­ter Kauf­man played dur­ing the 1970s (see below).

FSJ is a satire site, and you should­n’t get fooled. But you do. Just like the inevitable dupe does every April 1. Good stuff.