12.11.12
Living Like John McAfee
The tycoon in a men’s adventure setting each week. The famous raconteur will call a lucky viewer or journalist in each episode to tell a fantastic story and extend an invite to his jungle home
Resurrecting some bits I added in comments yesterday:
This, from a NY Times piece on the media role, Gizmodo reporter Joel Johnson opines at the end:
While Mr. McAfee seems determined to drag out his drama as long as he can, some of the journalists who have covered him say they have had enough. “People try to behave ethically,??? said Mr. Johnson. “And he milks that out of them until they get to the point where they’re like, ‘You know what, you’re just nuts.’ ??? “I know as a journalist I can’t say that, so I’ve got to get out of this story.???
Not half an hour after this hit the net the Hollywood Reporter ran a bit informing McAfee had sold movie rights while in jail, although one is dubious whether that meant any immediate windfall:
“U.S. anti-virus pioneer John McAfee, arrested by Guatemalan police and facing deportation to Belize, has apparently entrusted his life story to Montreal-based TV producer Impact Future Media.The TV producer is currently looking for investors and production partners which is tentatively titled Running in the Background: The True Story of John McAfee.???
However, it’s obvious John McAfee is in trouble it will be hard to worm out from under. The publicity and his blog haven’t accomplished whatever it is he actually wanted.
Dispensing with the nonsense in which he dubbed himself a “human rights advocate” on Sunday, McAfee’s in a cell for a straightforward problem — he crossed the border into Guatemala illegally.
It’s humorous. The wealthy white gringo, holding a press conference in Guatemala City, then eventually taken to jail after returning to his hotel.
Not quite like Border Patrol snapping up the poor illegals for detention cells here but …
And McAfee’s blog has made things worse, a chaotic mess with embarrassing photos, shady but trivial characters and weird semi-perverted stories he now probably wishes he’d held back on.
There’s no transparency with McAfee, just what he wants others to think.
It’s difficult to view him as any kind of genius. Indeed, with antivirus McAfee may have just been lucky. He was at the right place at the right time with a tool that worked good enough. And, of course, he had enough knowledge about computer viruses — which were a total mystery to the media — to write the story to his ends.
The viruses of 1992 did not come at you every day. Their only reliable way of travel was through the sharing of infected floppies and diskettes. It was a strength and weakness, the latter because the programs had to be written small to fit into the master boot record, plus occasionally, a few extra sectors. Removing them was, relatively speaking, a lot easier than disinfections are now.
And after McAfee’s SCAN was in the corporate workplace nationwide his fortune was assured. There was only one other real competitor in the US — Symantec. And conservative business behavior guaranteed McAfee Associates would remain a dominant force in the industry.
So rather than being a genius, McAfee was — perhaps — more lucky. Because after antivirus there’s been nothing except spectacle.
And finally, his disaster of a show in Belize. Which is most definitely not evidence of a shrewd operator, just the intrigues of a strange publicity hound with a lot of money.
John McAfee was the same in 1992. A sleazy manipulative salesman with, sometimes, a bit of offbeat smiling charm who never really changed. His fortune turned and, along with bad judgment, got the better of him. Most people don’t get nearly as much string in a lifetime.
The Little Virus That Didn’t in the American Journalism Review — McAfee and the press in ’92. Taken for a ride then, too.