[eli]

It's rather poetic to think that when you die in real life, all your digital work vanishes too. But were there people who really thought that's what happened?

I hadn't heard about this detective work until just now, but there was never a great mystery in my mind. Not to be a jerk, but I think it was obvious at the time that this was just a person who really valued his privacy.

[camccann]

At times, _why projected an image of the "troubled artist" archetype--either "real" or part of the _why persona, no one knew--and if memory serves me he'd had a couple disappointments recently and left some downbeat tweets.

So, while I can't speak for randallsquared, at least some of the people wanting to know if he'd "suddenly died" or some such were just being too tactful to say that they were afraid he might have committed suicide--in which case the deleting all his online stuff would have been completely plausible.

[randallsquared]

Indeed, I thought suicide was implied. Not so much tact, as it just didn't occur to me that it needed spelling out.