In an interview posted on his website, www.jonronson.com, Ronson argues he’s really not so much of a faux naif, meaning someone who sort of pretends to be dumber than they are in order to trick others, or lull them into some false sense of security so they’ll reveal a bit of info they might otherwise not share.
From the interview:
With regards your presentational style how faux is your naif ? And generally how happy are you with your TV persona?
Jon Ronson: I have only got my TV persona (if it IS a ‘persona’, that is, I’m not sure that it is a persona) right on a few occasions: Secret Rulers of the World and Tottenham Ayatollah. The rest of the time it hasn’t quite worked. Faux Naifery is a delicate art that can get annoying if mishandled. I’ve been doing a lot of mishandling of late.
I don’t know how faux it is. Much of Them is about me trying to track down the Bilderberg Group, who the likes of Omar Bakri and David Icke believe is the shadowy cabal that secretly controls the world.
Now, I could have done a whole lot of research about Bilderberg before I set off to try and track them down. but I didn’t want to solve the mystery before I had the adventure, whatever the adventure might be.
The rest can be read here: http://www.jonronson.com/jon_biog.html
