Yes I know. Now let me go forth with my sackcloth and ashes!
I was just thinking I hadn’t seen @DocCathode in ages, and came to this thread to see if anyone else had mentioned it. Yes they have, and no one knows why he disappeared.
He’s been gone for two months now, I hope he’s okay.
I hope he is too but he got his butt handed to him in a thread.
I don’t think it was that, he was struggling with IRL issues and the board was aggravating them. I think he is just taking time off from the SDMB.
Well, all the mentions he’s getting have gotten his attention, since he’s been “seen” more recently, just not posting. Given his health, finances, love life, and family are quite complicated, and we posters can be quite aggravating at times, I again to not blame him for taking some time to work on his concerns IRL without getting second guessed by us all the time.
@DocCathode keep on doing right by yourself, and drop us a line if/when you’re comfortable sharing. Or one of us steps on a proverbial rake in a thread and the time for laughing begins!
I read a thread the other day and saw a post by @Bijou_Drains - he hasn’t
posted for nearly 3 years !
(I know this is weeks old, but reading it after the bump.)
I clicked on his profile and he last posted on June 18th but was last seen 4 minutes ago (at the time). It dynamically updated to 5 minutes ago while I had the tab open, so it is probably an accurate siting date.
So you’ve cited that he’s been sighted on the site? I see. 
What’s the difference between an accurate siting date and an accurate
dating site ?
I miss @Anaamika and @elucidator both last seen on January.
@aruvqan has reappeared after almost 2 years! Was worried about her. She’s using the account @aruvqan_myers which she briefly used a few years ago when she lost her password.
Whatever happened to @Riemann???
Like almost all the rest, they simply stopped posting and nobody knows anything more.
I know, I was trying to magically summon him with the @.
I have zero evidence, but I’ve known some people IRL who have basically withdrawn as much as possible from interaction outside their closest circle as a result of Trump 2.0. Everything hurts for them, they feel betrayed by their communities, states, nation and the people who didn’t stop this from happening. January of this year being a common cut off for them.
They just can’t deal with the hatred, the distrust, and the collapse of what they thought was shared social values. In fact one of my IRL friends only came out of that this June, and started reaching out to us again because they realized that they only associated with their partner and those they had to at work (even then, remote) and were afraid of the consequences.
Not saying this is what happened to the two posters @Frodo cited, but considering the date last seen, figured I’d share the personal anecdote.
I was thinking along the same lines, let’s hope they return someday.
Any word on @kayaker ? I saw him in a zombie thread a few days ago. Didn’t someone here who knows him IRL say he decided to scale back his online presence?
Some folks are hiding from the soon-to-be Gestapo.
I don’t know if the last seen date/time means he (or anyone) was actually reading the site, or just that it was open in a browser tab. I know if I leave the page open I will get updates showing in the browser tab even if I am in another tab, so it must be keeping tabs (lol) on the site in some way.
Probably most people do not habitually have 20 tabs open at once, though.
Actually, there seem to be a lot of people who start their computer, start their browser, open 20 tabs to 20 websites, and just leave it like that for months. Rebooting is a major crisis to these folks since it means they need to reopen all their tabs.
I was flabbergasted to learn this, but it’s a pretty common approach on a computer / tablet. I don’t know how much phone users do that.