Todd Carpenter is Fake Greg Swann – final post

Brian Brady nailed me from day one. I took it as a great compliment Brian. To have figured it out so fast can only mean you know me, flaws and all.

I wanted to do something like this for a while, and the blog war over the B&W video was the final motivator. My idea was to start an anonymous blog, like the original 4realz. The main problem with a blog like that it’s very hard to get traction, especially with the explosion of bloggers who are now offering their own advice.

I planned to get caught. Some of the title tags in the blogroll were clues, as was my post about Keywords, and I left the spell checker off. I knew someone would figure it out sooner or later. Jim Duncan was at the top of my list once I saw he was using REMBEX to to try to figure it out. That made me smile more than anything. But I also knew that it wouldn’t matter if a few people were pretty sure, so long as more than one blogger was posting. People who thought they knew who I was would also figure out that I wasn’t the only one. Anonymity for each post would be preserved Tony Clifton style. I also decided to wait until I saw how others responded before inviting anyone in.

The behind-the-scenes post reflects everyone who I invited in. I invited Brian because he was the first to figure it out. I invited Jay because he was the second. I invited Dustin because he was the first to discover FGS, and because, who wouldn’t want him on the team? He’s been an RE.net friend 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 thought they, above everyone else, handled the B&W incident with the most class and humor. Only a few accepted. I’ll let them tell their own story if they wish.

I gave Greg a hint so obvious that he may have easily overlooked it. In a personal, merry X-mas email, on the night before launching FGS, I quoted from The Mouse That Roared. With respect to both sides of the B&W debate, that’s how I perceived some of the outrage. Just below the title of this blog, a second quote from the same book is staring you all right in the face.

fandi fictor Ulixes was a term cobbled from Wikipedia that roughly means, “The Deceitful Odysseus”. As Kris Berg once said, “the latin I know all comes from the back of a one dollar bill”.

Up until Friday, I was 100% positive that this would go on indefinitely. The events of the last few days changed my mind. Lots of people accused me of being the real Greg, and engaging in a publicity stunt. Some of the private mail, and deleted comments were rather offensive. I did not envision that it was going to cause problems for Greg’s reputation. Sorry Greg. Another problem was that it became obvious that virtually every reader was more concerned about “Who Is” than any of the posts that were actually about real estate. This might of changed in the future, but I only intended to create enough publicity to get the blog rolling, not consume it. The final straw was a mistake that I made that was realized by Brad Coy. My WP template did not display the authors name, but the RSS feed did. I exposed one of the contributors, which in my mind was a paramount sin. I have already apologized to that person.

This is all taking way to much effort, and the paranoia I have interacting with my online friends is getting rather unmanageable. Damn you Dan Green!

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. 2000 Page views in one week is as much a credit to the real Greg Swann’s name as it is to my tomfoolery. I will mark this experiment as a failed blog, and a glorious viral marketing exercise.

I’ll continue to comment on RE.net, in public, on Blog Fiesta. It won’t be quite as much fun though, thanks for playing along.