The Slorge Mystery is Over

In retrospect, I think I may have actually enjoyed the mysterious ride on this one.  It all started about a year ago when Slorge stopped posting videos as often.  He had been doing a sort of video blog for over a year by that point and had done so with reasonable frequency.  I always enjoyed watching his videos, and it was that process that allowed me to get to know him on a personal level.  He was just another person I knew by that time, just like if he'd been a friend who lives here locally.  Anyway, his infrequent posting eventually became no posting at all by about 9-10 months ago.  This by itself wouldn't be so strange as I imagine anyone would eventually reach a point where they feel burnt out.  It was when his Youtube account completely closed that I began getting worried.  His Flickr account also closed.  This was a man who had been well connected on the Net for years, and I found it strange that he would totally disappear like this.  I feared that something bad may have happened.

It was with this motivation that I began to search in earnest for what had happened.  I emailed Slorge through an address that I found on an old email from him, I searched around, and I found pretty much nothing.  He never replied to the email and all activity from him everywhere seemed to stop altogether at the same point ~10 months ago.  I began to contact other people that had known him and didn't receive any replies from them either.  Looking around for context clues, I started a thread on the PCRPG forums about it.  I eventually (along with another member) found this bit on his old band's Youtube profile:

"UPDATE................We are getting back together ......It looks like it will be all of us except Scott Goodhart.....I will miss that voice and bass."

This bit didn't really answer any questions--it just made things more mysterious.  Had Slorge (Scott) declined to rejoin or had something happened that would prevent him from even being able?  The bit was worded in such a way that made things more interesting but less certain.

Josh (a PCRPG member) then heard back from someone he had messaged:

"I haven't heard anything from Slorge for months, myself. I was curious as to why he closed his account, as well."

This reinforced the firm position of "nobody seems to know anything" which is a little worrying in itself.  Why hadn't anyone heard about this?  Had anyone but us noticed?  I started to look at videos from others who were in the Slorge circle for clues.  I quickly discovered two things:  First of all that Slorge had effected more people than I ever knew and secondly that others had noticed too.  Brick72 had posted this three months ago:

"where is slorge gone?
I NEED SLORGE!

Is he on other sites?
His Account is deleted.
I NEED SLORGE"

A month later, whuffie posted this in the same video's comments:

"I see slorge is missing, too. Account closed?! ACK!"

Considering that these people's comments had gone apparently unnoticed for months, I didn't figure there was any point to posting, but I did anyway just so anyone in the future would have that much more to go on.  Unexpectedly, I received a reply from egglooke to my comment just a couple days later:

"Well, i know him personally.
he lives around the corner
his account got banned when someone posted a responce to a contest video.
but before he could deleted youtube kiked him off!"

This was a promising development.  It seemed that Slorge is alright but had probably just decided to heck with it all.  Questions remained though since this didn't explain why his Flickr account had closed simultaneously.  Not more than a couple days later Josh and myself received replies from Slorge's wife that confirmed all was well.  Her reply to me was as follows:

"Hi Geoff,

Yes, Scott is fine. He decided to go off-line and, basically, quit all of it in one day. I don't know about emailing him. He still has his account, but I don't know if he checks it regular.

He's changed jobs, spending more time with the family, and has become more involved at church - so, he's still in the limelight. It's just a different kind.

Scott is terrific and it's nice to know that other people appreciate him too! I will let him know that you are trying to reach him, as well as, others. If you don't hear back from him, please feel to write at this address again.

Sincerely,
K. Goodhart"

So that's the end of the mystery.  It seems that when his account got banned for whatever BS reason Youtube came up with, he must have decided he was done with the whole online thing.  It really sucks for us because he always had such interesting content to post.  After over a year of it, I really felt like I had come to know the man and I regarded him as a close friend.  If going offline makes him happy though, more power to him.  I'm completely satisfied just to know that he's alright.

Some times stories do have happy endings.  I'm going to try to remember that.