We’ve all heard the urban legend about the guy who goes out to buy a pack of cigarettes and is never seen again. While it may have largely been a myth, it was possible before the information age to willfully vanish without a trace. But is it still an option in our digital world? In the November Wired cover story, “Vanish: Finding Evan Ratliff,” the magazine attempted to answer the question by offering a $5000 bounty to anyone who could locate their writer, who tried to go underground while staying on the grid. From the article:

“If you are looking to launch a disappearance, I cannot recommend any location more highly than a big-city Greyhound bus station. A mode of transportation Americans have seemingly left to the poor and desperate, it reeks of neglect and disdain. But for anonymity in the post-9/11 world — when the words “I’ll just need to see a photo ID” are as common as a handshake — bus travel remains a sanctuary untouched by security. At the station in Las Vegas, I paid cash for a ticket under the name James Gatz, no ID required. Six cramped hours later I was in Los Angeles.”

But pretty soon an online community sprung up to accept the challenge.

“What had started as an exercise in escape quickly became a cross between a massively multiplayer online game and a reality show. A staggeringly large community arose spontaneously, splintered into organized groups, and set to work turning over every rock in Ratliff’s life. It topped out at 600 Twitter posts a day. The hunters knew the names of his cat sitter and his mechanic, his favorite authors, his childhood nicknames. They found every article he’d ever written; they found recent videos of him. They discovered and published every address he’d ever had in the US, from Atlanta to Hawaii, together with the full name and age of every member of his family.”

They all have too much time on their hands, but it’s still a fun article.