be Connor Murphy

- 32 years old
- American bodybuilder from Texas
- built one of the biggest fitness channels of the 2010s
- 2016 "Fake Shirt Trick" video hits 63 million views
- peaks at over 2 million subscribers
around 2020, the content changes
- pranks give way to psychedelics and spirituality
- uploads grow disturbing enough that he's reportedly hospitalized for two weeks
2021
- posts two separate videos staging his own death
- both go viral
- both are later revealed as fake
July 7, Thailand
- per Thai outlet ThaiRath, police called to a rented mansion
- witnesses report a foreign man behaving erratically in the street
- he runs into the property's lake
- swims until exhausted
- goes under in front of onlookers who can't reach him in time
divers recover a body 20 meters from shore
- no signs of assault
- syringes found in his car
- unidentified pills found in his bag
24 hours later
- no family confirmation
- no representative confirmation
- no government confirmation
- not even the identity of the man in the lake is officially verified
- autopsy still pending
the part that makes this different from any other tragic headline
- he spent years documenting his own unraveling publicly
- monetized it
- staged its ending on camera, twice, for views
now that it may have happened for real
- it arrives with syringes and unidentified pills
- and nobody, not even people who knew him, can say for certain if it's true
he faked his death so convincingly twice that the real one, if this is it, doesn't even get to be believed
if you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 in the US