so not gonna happen

nobel prize for everyone itt (except whiney)

^ came here to post that!

(SPOILERS FOR THE PODCAST FOLLOW, BE WARNED!)

To be honest, I found the whole justfication for faking "Wayne's" death to be a bit suspect. I mean, according to the podcast guy, his friends did it so ILX would stop cyber-harassing him or something... But if you actually look at this thread, the discussion around "Wayne" mostly dies around 2007, and after that most of the thread revivals are about totally different pics, with only a handful of "Wayne" posts (mostly by Gr8080) in the next 8 years.

And then "WayneCrew610" posts the news about his "death" in January 2015, even though no one in this thread has even mentioned him since 2013. So unless there was some stalking going on outside the thread (which I guess is possible), the idea that they'd nobly fake their friend's death to protect him from harassment, even though it had actually stopped years ago, seems suspect.

And then you have Jaymc saying he was interviewed for the podcast in February 2015 (i.e. soon after the first post by "WaynesCrew"), and someone else says it has been on the works for "years". So maybe "WaynesCrew" only came to post here only after the podcast folks had contacted them... Which means that they created the story for their podcast themselves.

starring tuomas as columbo

Podcast to follow.

Just one more Finn

were they trying to stop jerks from stalking their friend or were they just trying to fuck with the jerks who stalked their friend

To be clear, I didn't mean to imply the podcast folks actually told "Wayne's" friends to fake his death, just that maybe the friends decided to do that after the some weird people had tried to contact them so that they could find "Wayne" and interview him.

(xpost)

Nice try... Tuomas Loftus! (dun dun DUNNNN!)

can't wait to read this thread and listen to the podcast with a nice glass of wine.

were they trying to stop jerks from stalking their friend or were they just trying to fuck with the jerks who stalked their friend

The podcast implies it's the former, but of course it could actually be the latter, and they just tried to come up with justification that'd make them look better.

Still, the whole idea that a bunch of people would lie about their friend having died, even in real life face-to-face conversation, just because some cyber-stalking happened many years ago, seems pretty weird. I can't imagine anyone I know doing that.

*pictures what everyone tuomas knows would be doing instead*

Posted on the Reddit thread for this episode

[–]panphobia 11 points 16 hours ago
This is so weird. I've never seen this picture - but I know the girl to the right. I worked with her for 3 years, and dated her roommate for a long time, but didn't recognize any of the other people mentioned in the podcast. The name they gave for her in the show is her legal name, but not the name she goes by (at least not when I knew her).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMIfoutZiho

Is Tommy in that video? I always have a weird fellow feeling for my fellow Thomases, I can't explain it.

My name is actually the Finnish variant of Thomas.

I think we already guessed that.

"just one more thing… "

I'm beginning to feel like Robert Culp here.

One minor detail that bugged me in the podcast: they use the Nolan Painting ad as proof that "Wayne" is still alive. But the ad was put to Youtube September 2014, and "Wayne" was supposed to have died in March of that year... The ad uses a lot of different photos, and "Wayne" only appears very briefly in one of them, on the far edge of one large group shot. That photo could've easily been taken before March; with a crew of that size, it's perfectly possible no one even noticed the pic includes someone who later died, or they wanted to use the shot anyway. So it's not really a proof of anything, their big CSI moment feel unearned.

"feels unearned"

my favorite chuck mangione b-side

OK, I see him, yay Tommy!

Tuomas, you obviously didn't listen that hard, because *by the end* the podcast people do think WaynesCrew were just fucking with us. They say this explicitly, more than once.

True that it could have been the podcast guys but I doubt it - waynetruther obviously was one of them.

Ya. I think it's pretty obvious they saw a chance to fuck with some people.

Damn, forgot about this for a bit. You cunts waited years for this shit. We'll get ya something useful soon. And that one dude who says he's a reporter or some shit, the dude who's been emailing all of us, can sit and wait like the rest of you. Sorry for the undelivered promise of new pics. We got drunk, laughed about this, then got drunker and forgot.

― WaynesCrew610, Wednesday, June 3, 2015 5:30 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember seeing this post and thinking "either they're just fucking with us or we're in for some real shit here." Then, like WaynesCrew610, I also got drunker and forgot.

This is the tiniest thing imaginable in light of all the developments since, but: I always thought Laurel ("Krissy") had a kind of Sheryl Crow vibe going on in the original picture.

I can see it

can't decide whether a podcast about gear's couch story would be made more boring or more interesting by the fact that it was a hoax

"hat's been in my family for generations. it says 'where's the beef?', but with an arrow pointing down....cos the beef is my penis."

Forget about referring to us as kids. In 2006, as a 33-year-old newlywed, maybe I was a kid.

But continually to refer to Loftus, this dude with a beard and some beer and hanging out with some ladies as a boy over and over? That was a little weird.

otm

were they trying to stop jerks from stalking their friend or were they just trying to fuck with the jerks who stalked their friend

― Har-@-Iago (wins), Friday, October 14, 2016 4:50 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol and the best part was that he doesn't really hang with these guys anymore. they were into the whole weird thread investigation in a way TL wasn't, maybe because of the fact they were in the party pictures. writing him out of the story with the fake death almost seems like a "fuck you" to the ilxors who were really trying to figure things out -- why were we still going on about this one dude who they barely even talk to anymore?

the entire part where they were somewhat shocked about people doing this sort of investigative work about a picture they were curious about in 2006 kind of made me think, "whaaaaat?" it just got a lot easier post-google. back in the late 90s when you were trying to unravel these things it was more of a "well, he's wearing a shirt for a group at this college, maybe they have a website and I can look at all the images and get a name, and then maybe the school has a student directory I can look at, and then that gets me an email address that I can uh... search for on usenet? maybe they post on newsgroups"

sorry, the "they" in my second paragraph is about the podcast hosts, kind of context switched there

podcast episode should've been called "so not gonna happen"

did they ever actually say the thread title? I feel like there were a few details left out to try to throw people off of actually tracking down this thread

roxy says it

but iirc not in a way that makes it clear it's the thread title?

what the fuck

that is not my voice

i did not talk to these people

the plot thickens

haha jk

jaymc is correct, when the waynescrew610 posts showed up in january of last year, i told a few ppl who no longer post to ilx regularly but whom i still communicated with and knew would appreciate the development, s1ocki included. s1ocki had been the subject of a story on the reply all guys' previous venture (a show called TLDR) and sent them the story idea. at this point Reply All was a nascent but solid podcast that i was listening to regularly and i agreed with s1ocki that this was a story they could tell the way it deserved to be told.

PJ emailed me and i agreed to a taped interview under the condition that i would not be the only ilxor they interviewed and that they wouldn't air the story without participation from tommy's friends. i didn't want to participate in a story that was just about an ilx thread and/or my obsession with it.

with their permission, i put Sruthi in touch with roxy & jaymc. i also sent a facebook message to pplains asking if he'd be interested, but sadly he never replied.

in april of last year i did a pair of interviews with PJ that combined lasted more than two hours. the 2nd of which was done in a public radio studio here in chicago with a hired engineer manning the recording while i listened to PJ in my headphones from NYC. at one point about 45 minutes in, we had to take a break for some technical reason on PJ's end as soon as we did the engineer was like "LET ME SEE THAT PHOTO I AM DYING TO SEE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE" (i really hoped that would make it on the final edit.)

Over the last 18 months i've heard very little from PJ or Sruthi, just an email here and there, assuring me that while the show was on the back-burner, they weren't giving up on it. up until a few weeks ago, the last i heard was that they weren't having much luck emailing tommy's friends and that PJ had family near Upper Darby and was going to head down there to see if he could track anyone down. i’d pretty much given up on it ever happening.

then late last month Sruthi emailed and said they were almost done with the episode and asked me to answer a few clarifying questions. another week later, i had a fact-checking call with her and another staffer that lasted almost an hour where they laid out the way they were framing the ilx side of the story. she told me that "researching your life" had become an inside joke among their staff. at one point i was like "hey but what about the church bulletin that unregistered found? are you going to mention that?" and sruthi said something like "grady... i have called every catholic church within a 15 mile radius of upper darby, but the current edit of the story does not mention it." that was the point when i knew they had really spent some time on the story and while obviously in editing it all down a load of details were going to be cast aside, but they weren't going to present it haphazardly. they assured me that they did speak with tommy's friends but weren't given permission to record them. aside from that she remained very tight-lipped about what they found out or how the story would be told.

so i hit play on the podcast yesterday morning thinking that tommy loftus was dead. i was almost as in the dark as the general audience and enjoyed every minute of it. i really love how it ended up being way less about ilx or even this thread and more about PJ falling under the same spell many of us did a decade ago and getting to the end that none of us could find.

its funny, the last year and a half has been a time when i've finally sort of semi-permanently stopped engaging with ilx on a regular basis, and i think that talking to a non-ilxor at great depth about a facet of ilx that i really let consume me at times might have been the beginning of that disengagement.

i've really enjoyed seeing the varying responses here, ... just like ::antonio banderas gif:: "ah, some things never change". i felt a wistful tear come to my eye reading the last few posts from tuomas.

it looks like based on the reddit thread already linked itt and the replies on twitter, their listeners really loved the story too.

most of all, it was such a delight to hear tommy himself. I’m glad he’s alive and well and I hope this isn’t the last we hear of him, but would be totally at peace if it were.

Is ILX even real

We still don't know if it did or didn't happen though.

they have 2 more eps planned for megan and laurel

lieutenant tuomas is on it

love gr80's voice itp

investigate hen fap

l0u15 j@gger can't melt steel beams

i almost requested they slip a "ban l0u15 j@gger" in to the credits but decided it was best not to