Here is a very quick but somehow amusing entry in the What in the Hell Just Happened genre. Last night Tim Armstrong, CEO of the all-powerful America On Line or “AOL,” tweeted an image depicting the maybe-cover of a certain publication that reports on a certain industry.
Look closely at the words!!
Such a positive force/one of the best humans – @shingy @AOL_Inc a very big highlight to see him on the cover @adage pic.twitter.com/39g1Ih01Xo
Advertisement— Tim Armstrong (@timarmstrongaol) May 11, 2016
Quite a few People in Journalism made a point of telling Armstrong that this cover is fake. He followed with a clarification:
It is…but he should be…@adage https://t.co/ifEkumWqKw
— Tim Armstrong (@timarmstrongaol) May 11, 2016
We don’t know who produced the not-real cover and/or sent it to Armstrong (though it may have been the creation of one Virgil Texas of CAFE). And Shingy is close to being the very lowest hanging fruit at this point. But he still makes a whole hell of a lot of money doing whatever he does, and it sure looks like Armstrong fell for the joke.
Remember when The New Yorker profiled Shingy under the headline “Crystal Ball?” That was kind of fun.