Vanish by Evan Ratliffs - Essay Example

Vanish by Evan Ratliff’s “Vanish” is Wired Magazine writer Evan Ratliff’s account of the month he spent attempting to live under a fake identity while thousands of Wired readers tried to hunt him down and win a $5000 prize. The big question Ratliff was trying to answer was one he had written about extensively before: Is it possible for a human being living in the digital world of 2009 to simply leave one life, one identity and start life anew without anyone tracking him down? Could he, as Ratliff put it “drop my life and pickup another?” (1) Writing this story created a number of challenges. First, while the idea of someone living a life on the run is certainly exciting, Ratliff wasn’t for the most part being physically chased. The people “hunting him” were largely doing so from their homes, in front of computers, writing code and scanning through Twitter accounts. That’s not very exciting and extremely technical to explain. Secondly, there are really two stories to tell – Ratliff’s story and those of the people who were hunting him down. Since Ratliff himself is writing this article, how can he do that? How can he technically be two places at once? Ratliff immediately tackles the problem of making a very technical story gripping by opening with his “getaway,” not unlike the way it’s been seen in “man on the run” movies from The Fugitive to The Bourne Identity. It starts with a first person explanation of his “escape” and gives no reference at first to this being part of a magazine-sponsored contest. He uses words loaded with intrigue like “fleeing my life” and “going on the lam” (1). He details all the steps he takes to “confuse investigators” and calls an oil change on a car he is about to sell “another head fake” (1). This is exciting language that catches the reader immediately. What could just be a scene of an average guy getting an oil change, picking up business cards, and shopping at Best Buy becomes the set-up for an ingenious plot. This language also makes the sections with all of the technical explanations easier to understand. Most of the tracking down of Ratliff would be done by people sitting alone in rooms, in front of keyboards, using lines of code and IP address tracking software. Too much technical jargon – even in a publication like Wired – does not make for an interesting story. But just as he heightened the tension during his pre-escape shopping trip with his use of word choice, he does the same when describing one of his trackers. When describing how tracker Makela used the internet and a computer to hunt down the fugitive, Ratliff says the young man “marshaled a collection of online tools” (6) and “jumping on the real IP address” (13). Later in “Vanished,” Ratliff describes the actions of another hunter, Jeff Reifman, and skims over most of the technical work Reifman did during the hunt. Instead, he highlights the obsessive behavior that went into tracking the fugitive down. Ratliff sets a scene that starts on a Friday morning when Reifman gets the idea to start looking at Facebook profiles, describing the man as “giddy” (13). The readers then see Reifman’s thought process of Facebook moving to Twitter profiles, moving towards seeing whose profile had few real friends until finally Reifman realizes he’s found Ratliff. This scene is described as “At 4 am on Sunday morning, Reifman’s girlfriend came downstairs and found him staring into the screen” (13). The reader may not have a firm grasp here on the drier, more technical details, but the point is clear: Reifman has become obsessed with finding his fugitive. And at this point, so has the reader. Ratliff is in a very interesting position as both the writer of the story and its main subject. Telling his own recounting of what happened during his month on the run is really only telling one side of this story. What about the story of the people who are hunting him and what they went through to catch him? How is that told? Ratliff solved this problem by moving between his own first-person account of his life in hiding and alternating that with a third-person narrative when detailing the actions of the hunters. This way, none of the emotional impact of what Ratliff went through is lost, while the fascinating story of the hunters is still being told. To make this switch in narrative structure easier for the reader, Ratliff splits “Vanished” up into sections. With each change of narrative structure, comes a new section. This gives the reader a moment to adjust and understand that he/she is about to get a different perspective. To further help the reader out, Ratliff keeps both narratives running along the same timeline. For example, section 14 ends with Ratliff safely fleeing the Atlanta airport after a close call and making it to New Orleans, where he mentions wanting to visit a place called NakedPizza. (14) Section 15 starts with a third person narrative of Jeff Reifman tracking Ratliff via IP addresses out of Atlanta and into New Orleans. By keeping this linear storyline, the reader is less confused by the consistent switch between narrative voices and is instead able to see both sides of the story, running almost as two separate trains along the same track. There is also the excerpts from Twitter and Facebook feeds that start every section that is written in third person narrative. This is information that both Ratliff and his hunters had access to throughout the hunt. It helps to bridge the storyline between what only Ratliff at the time knew (everything in first person) with what only the hunters at the time knew (everything in third person). The type of material being discussed also helps the reader adjust to the two narratives running through the story. This is essentially a chase movie, but written as a magazine article. Most people are familiar with this movie genre and the way it steadily switches between what the fugitive is doing and what the hunters are doing, building tension along the way until the story reaches a climatic end point. In Ratliff’s case, this was hunter Jeff Leach approaching Ratliff in front of a New Orleans book shop with the sentence, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Fluke, would you?” (17). It wasn’t exactly the hail of bullets often seen at the end of a chase movie. But thanks to the suspense that Ratliff built up by using thrilling language to describe the technical aspects and the switching of narratives to tell both sides of the story, the impact on the reader was similar. Read More