so not gonna happen

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

i seem to remember you giving me an incredulous "no" when i asked to be listed that way in your photo zine credits

i stand by that decision.

it was the right decision

also, i researched PJ's life and today is his birthday.

happy birthday, PJ!

listening to freewheelin' cuts by famed author bob dylan as i read through gr8080's recap and then the injokes afterward from the last hour, i got a weird wave of nostalgia

like it feels like the morning after the last party, and now half the crew is going off to college and it's pretty far away. or, gandalf and friends are sailing away across the sea to the West

i probably just need to get outside for a minute

for real though, it's nice to get some verified, real closure on wayne.

not until the carter V drops

i am surprised, amazed and heart-warmed. i love that tommy didn't care about the internet :)

I can add that gr8080's voice is not only simply great but that based on the Chicago trip I did last week he is also an excellent docent for tours at the Robie House, which I encourage you all to do.

^^ he has a wonderful voice

that was good. its funny when some perceived big ilx event happens and you can be reading the borad casually and have no clue.

also never fell for the "prank". guess i'm a cool skeptic.

<3 gr80

also never fell for the "prank". guess i'm a cool skeptic.

yeah this always seemed really transparently false to me too

honestly, when Thomas/Wayne finally got on the phone, I had trouble believing his initial confusion

Listened to the episode and really enjoyed it, it was such a weird sense of worlds colliding (although I do wish I had listened on the way to work before seeing jaymc mention on Twitter & this thread revival, just for the dawning realization of what they were talking about).

Also I was a little surprised that I never posted on this thread, as I definitely remember following it at the time and whenever it popped up.

honestly, when Thomas/Wayne finally got on the phone, I had trouble believing his initial confusion

Yeah, my first reaction was that his friends must have told him to play along and avoid the reporters.

also never fell for the "prank". guess i'm a cool skeptic.

yeah this always seemed really transparently false to me too

― Οὖτις, Friday, October 14, 2016 5:10 PM (six minutes ago)

I didn't think it was transparently false, but nor did I think that it was definitely true. Kind of thought that trutherism without evidence was very insensitive *if* he had actually died, but now it is clear that they were gathering evidence, they were just waiting to unleash it. Also I love a story and I love ambiguity, so the truth values of the story being told are always slightly less important to me.