And before that...

A couple people have sent me this link about phillip stauffen, the possibly british amnesiac who maybe turns out to be a gay porn model...

I gotta say that article bugs the living shit out of me. Not cause I doubt that the guy might be a gay porn model, but because it seems so hellbent on being like "HA! Amnesia my ass!" when... ok:

What would his motivation be to fake the amnesia? If it's:

2) To escape some aspect of his past: People now seem to think they have a smoking gun on that front with the possibility he was a gay porn model. But i ask again: if you're trying to hide from something, do you publicize your case and distribute your photo through an international missing persons database and accept the help of a lawyer who has said photo published in all manner of media? Or do you just move to Canada and try to start a new life, sans fanfare?

1) Attention: ok, that's a possibility. Though, the price he's paid in personal freedom (if you're unfamiliar with the particulars, his bureaucratic catch 22 was that he couldn't get a job in canada because he wasn't a citizen, but couldn't leave canada because he couldn't prove he was a citizen anywhere else, so he was living on welfare in a group house unable to afford to do much of anything except go to the library) seems particularly harsh for that attention, not to mention the fact that he really did not seem to welcome the attention anyway. After initially letting himself be photographed (in a clinical setting) so he could be identified and to aid in his case, when it didn't work and the media seemed to frequently suggest he was lying (imagine just for a second that this were you and the story were true, you really WERE lost in the world and hopeless and helpless and snarky journalists were accusing you of bringing this deliberately upon yourself; i'd get pretty bummed), he grew increasingly despondent and shirked the media and asked to be left alone and was reportedly totally depressed (due to said bureaucratic nightmare).

I mean the guy's not exactly going on talk shows. He's not even doing interviews.

It's possible that that's a ruse, a calculated part of his elaborate attention-getting ploy. At that point you've got to come up with a motivation for this pathological need for attention: did he want the entire world to take notice and say "Yes! The man known as phillip stauffen is actually a gay porn model named George Lecheit!" Seems to me no, but people's pathologies and psychological disturbances are frequently surprising and illogical. I guess this ends up being a question where some people just give him the benefit of the doubt and others don't. I personally do.

I think also people are just immediately cynical around the word "amnesia" because it sounds so soap opera. But even if persistent global amnesia is rare, it's not neurologically impossible. That it happened to someone who lacks a family or other support system to identify him quickly is a statistical improbability, but not impossibility.

Maybe the truth is more complicated; maybe he had transient global amnesia, began the search, recovered his memories privately and chose not to divulge them because he'd rather not return to that life, and is just trying to start a new life as is. I don't know. The bureaucratic nightmare and physical discomfort would seem to me to be reason enough to own up to your legit identity if you remembered it, just so you could get a fuckin passport, go somewhere you wanted to be, and put gay porn behind you deliberately rather than through some elaborate lie.

It's so troubling to me though that his lawyer now doubts his story though, seeing as IF it's true, and he's suffering the despondency he's reported to suffer, and his strongest supporter abandons him, that just fucking sucks.

I guess, no matter what, I just hope the dude is ok. I hope everyone's ok, is my problem.

I hope there's some follow up, i mean how long can it take to figure out if George Lecheit had a passport and recently travelled to Canada?