The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker

Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by lisper on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:08PM (#25793166)

TL;DR: This is about a hiker who went by the name Mostly Harmless who was found dead in his tent. No one knows how he died. That's it. But for the unusual name, it seems safe to say that this would not be on the front page of HN.

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by notfbi on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:21PM (#25793340)

The mystery was well covered on HN before due to him being a programmer and plausibly active in coding/gaming online communities:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24981786

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by robbyt on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:32PM (#25793478)

His photo gets posted to /r/brooklyn every few months. I really don't know what this story resonates so well with people.

Every day there are reports of many new missing/homeless/dead people, why is this man more important than all the others?

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by 542458 on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:15PM (#25793265)

I think the way they ID’ed this John Doe (trawling forum posts, DNA testing and advertising) is pretty interesting and I upvoted on that basis. It’s also a partial answer to a mystery that was pretty widely shared around the internet, so is interesting on that basis as well.

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by edmundsauto on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:12PM (#25793226)

For fans of the hitch hikers guide series, the name isn’t unusual. It’s the name of one of the books.

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by Dig1t on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:22PM (#25793353)

(and the entire entry for the planet Earth inside the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book) ;)

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by c22 on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:23PM (#25793372)

It's an unusual name for a person.

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by guerrilla on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:40PM (#25793577)

Much like c22. It was just a trail name.

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Re:The unsettling truth about the ‘Mostly Harmless’ hiker by NikolaeVarius on Friday January 15, 2021 @12:29PM (#25793437)

Many communities have nicknames that are unusual

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