Is Fake Steve Jobs (aka Forbes’ writer Daniel Lyons) actually being pressured by Apple to give up his site for a wad of cash, is it Fake Steve’s way of speaking out against the Think Secret shut-down, or is it just him messing around during a slow news time?

Certainly a few of his posts today make it sound as if this is serious. Daniel has taken off the Fake Steve mask for a bit and written a number of posts giving a play by play of the supposed actions Apple is taking towards him. With each new PDF letter sent from their attorneys he’s getting more and more pissed off – as are they that he’s posting all of this on his blog.

But then he goes so far as to say they they’ve sent him: “a list of my assets with an estimated value for each and I suppose the implied threat that I stand to lose them” – including a breakdown of his kids’ college fund. Would any company really do that? That sounds like something Keyser Soze would have Kobayshi do.

As Steven Hodson notes, because of the very nature of satirical sites it can be hard to separate fiction from reality when something serious is going on, he rightly notes it could be a case of the boy crying “wolf”.

With no disrespect meant to Fake Steve if he is under real duress, I think this is just his way of telling Apple to piss off with regards to the Think Secret happenings. If he gets the community so worked up that Apple has to come out and make a statement saying that they are not going after Fake Steve and clarifying their Think Secret position, that will be a small victory for bloggers.

Or maybe he just knows it’s going to be a slow news cycle for the next week or so and he can completely dominate it with something like this. We’ll see.

[UPDATE]: Fake Steve just put up a new post claiming that his lawyer has found out their grounds for a lawsuit, and all 3 don’t seem anymore grounds for an actual lawsuit then me saying that I think Apple is going to release a new computer next year. This leads me to further believe this is just Fake Steve’s way of making commentary on the Think Secret issue.