THE glowing obituaries appeared moments after Steve Jobs’s death was announced on Oct. 5. “Silicon Valley’s radiant Sun King,” eulogized The San Jose Mercury News. His name was floated for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, though the honor traditionally goes to the living. Even Gawker, the snarky media blog, adopted the sober tone of a state funeral.

“The scope of Jobs’s achievements is hard to put into words,” Gawker wrote in a respectful 1,200-word post simply titled “Steve Jobs Is Dead.”

That tone lasted 18 hours. By 2 p.m. the following day, Gawker posted another item, “Steve Jobs Was Not God.” It argued: “If you like Apple products, fine. They are products. They do not have souls. They are not heroes, and neither is their creator, no matter how skilled he may have been.”

It wasn’t just Gawker. The waters quickly muddied after the first wave of obituaries passed. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, anyone with a beef against Mr. Jobs or Apple found a platform to sound off about an industrialist who doubled as a pop star.