The thing I most admired about McAfee?

Wasn't anything he did with antivirus software, cryptocurrency, or tech in general. It certainly wasn't maybe killing someone in Belize, not fucking whales, or the holes in hammocks.

It was his unique ability to build his own legend, believe it, and get others to as well. After all, a surprising amount of it was true.

I mean, he was both crazy smart and crazy crazy. He bullshitted about some mad exaggerations, but some of what he said could only be dismissed out of hand if anyone not him said it.

Like... I talked to him a couple of years back when he was still on the run. I guess I can say now that he was in the Bahamas at the time. Why?

"I'm in a place where I cannot be extradited for the, quote, crime of refusing to pay income taxes, because there are no income taxes in the Bahamas. And in order to extradite someone, the extradition crime must be a crime in the country where you reside. Well, they have no income tax here. So failure to pay it is not a crime. So I can't be extradited, I'm safe to the election."

I ain't no lawyer. I don't know if that's true, or at least didn't at the time. But upon hearing that rationale before googling? I thought... "Was he smart enough to find this loophole, smart enough to convince himself this was a real thing and convince others of the same, or is this just him giving in to that crazy and irrational piece of himself?"

And it wasn't an easy question to answer in the moment. The same question could be applied to so much else about him.

"My issue is, since I cannot come back to the States, debates and other things are going to be very difficult for me. Starting at the beginning of next week, for the first time... one of my clones will be wearing my mask, but I'll be speaking through a microphone hidden inside the mask, and into a speaker inside the mask, and I'll be able to see the audience. It's going to be a keynote in one of the largest cryptocurrency conferences in the world. It's on a cruise ship is the 2019 blockchain cruise.

"Now the crypto humanity is starting to accept the fact that my clones will appear. My problem is the following. Will the Libertarian Party accept the same conditions? If not, then I will not be in debates. However, I will still be running and I will be speaking. I would guess that they would allow it."

He went on to claim this mask would have a video camera, and he could direct the person wearing it when to shake hands or bow or whatever through a earpiece, etc. That he would choose people with different body types so there would be no question that it wasn't actually him. All these elaborate things to give him a body in the room while abroad.

I mentioned that Snowden spoke from afar through the existing technology of video conferencing, and why didn't he just use that rather than this elaborate theatrical thing?

He told me "that wouldn't be half as fucking cool."

McAfee being suicided after claiming he was threatened with that and that he'd never do it? Classic McAfee. McAfee suiciding himself after warning he would never, getting people to blame his enemies as his last performance? Also classic McAfee.