Marketing

RE.net, I Trusted You



Andy Kaufman | 2007/12/24  | 9 Comments

I LOVE a great parody.  

Sharing a name with a dead (supposedly) genius comic performer who used to wrestle women and play mindf**k pranks on his fans can lead to a lot of interesting situations in life.  Sure it comes with it’s ups and downs, but like real estate, it’s usually never boring.  

One thing is that while people tend to remember your name, it can be a double edged sword if you’re not so good at remembering others’.  I also think that I’ve heard the phrase “Man on the Moon” more any other human not in the band, or on tour with REM…  and while it’s usually a good conversation starter, it certainly messes with your vanity searches quite a bit.

One of my favorite running parodies is the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.  If you’ve been reading recently, you’ll know that Fake Steve is being accused of pulling an “Andy Kaufman”.  Anyway, supposedly we’re to believe that Apple’s legal team has turned it’s sights on Fake Steve and they’re out to shut him down, even if it means paying him to do so.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, I totally recommend it, it’s pure comic brilliance.

So if you’re keeping score at home, not only am I now a dead (supposedly) comic and a geeky unREALTOR, but now I’m a verb as well.  Way cool in my book!

For a while, the tech blogosphere was up in arms trying to figure out who FSJ was.  Valleywag publicly guessed wrong a few times before FSJ was outted as Daniel Lyons, a Senior Editor at Forbes.

So how does this apply to the RE.net you ask?  I’ve got a couple of theories, but I’m wondering who’s going to figure out who fake Greg Swann is?

Hat tip to my friend Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for this little Andy Kaufman earworm (below) & Dustin at 4realz for the FGS find


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This article published on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 3:22 pm | Contact the editor

Topics: Marketing, Real Estate

About this Columnist (Full Profile)

Writer for national real estate opinion column AgentGenius.com, focusing on the improvement of the real estate industry by educating peers about technology, real estate legislation, ethics, practices and brokerage with the end result being that consumers have a better experience.

Email Andy Kaufman



Comments (9)

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  1. 2007-12-24 in Review, 140 Characters at a Time | My East Bay Agent:

    [...] Steve Jobs, Fake Greg Swann & an Andy Kaufman video ear worm all rolled into one post – http://agentgenius.com/?p=658 [...]

  2. Todd Carpenter is Fake Greg Swann - final post « The Secret Diary of Greg Swann:

    [...] since long before Greg ever coined the term. Andy Kaufman was invited because he proved in his Agent Genius article to understand exactly who had inspired me. Daniel and Mariana were invited because I [...]

  3. Fake Greg’s swan song - Google PR4 in under a month.:

    [...] Corbett, Andy Kaufman, and Dustin Luther all posted about FGS. Again mentioning Greg in their posts. A few people like [...]

  1. I have an idea who it might be. I’ll report back if I am correct. :)

  2. Oh Merry Christmas to you all . . and to all a good night. :)

  3. Mariana says:

    Did you guys hover over all the links in the blogroll? HILARIOUS!

  4. Andy Kaufman says:

    The link titles on FGS are gold.

    Man, I’ve gotta stop watching that video. Took me a few days to get away from it the first time, and now I’m neck deep again.

  5. Ben Bach says:

    This is exactly what Real GS’s ego needs… groan

  6. Dave says:

    So your name is Andy Kaufman? I’d say you get a good ribbing for that. Have to say, it’s one of the funniest videos on YouTube.

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