I went down a rabbit hole this evening during our weekly screening of Babylon 5: The Crusade (we finished all of B5 a couple months ago and are making our way through the supplementary materials) because one of the main actors of the show, David Allen Brooks, seems to have entirely disappeared from the internet and all public life after 2006. This is baffling to me. I dont know if it even counts as a rabbit hole bc despite much searching, the only proof i could find that he didn't die in 2006 is a barebones Facebook page made in 2017 that appears to be him.
The thing thats weird is like, he actually has 2 websites, a professional one for his acting and teaching and a more fan-oriented site where he seems to have posted some poems and things he wrote while developing the character he played in Crusade. Both of these sites are like a time machine to the 2003 internet, and dont reference anything after 2006.
Also, he doesn't have an English language wikipedia page but for some reason he has Czech and Finnish language ones? I didnt really get any more information from these except that he was in the original Broadway cast of "The Normal Heart" in 1985, which is definitely Interesting. I was def picking up Vibes from his Crusade performance. Not necessarily like, bright orange neon sign vibes that Andrew Robinson gives to Garak, not even enough that I felt like mentioning it in the chat while we were watching. But more like, a kind of indifference to performing his character heterosexual-ly, that a straight actor/person can totally have, assuming they are, in fact, unbothered by how they are percieved.
Anyways, so like, I guess he retired from acting? He doesn't even appear to have done the convention circuit after 2001. Its just very odd for any human to have existed as an adult for the last 20 years and have made literally no lasting mark, no footprints, anywhere on the internet in that timespan. Especially in the entertainment industry! Like, his professional website shows a teaching position "2005-present" as well as an acting coach gig for Disney in 2006. If he was teaching anywhere now then a faculty page would have come up but even if he retired in 2010 or whenever I think something would still come up about him. Its just a mystery. Like, I don't particularly care about knowing about what this one specific actor has been up to, though i do enjoy his performance in Crusade, its just remarkable and weird that i cant find anything that even hints as to what he has been up to.
I could speculate wildly based on the little tidbits I can pick up on from his pre-2006 internet presence and his one interview that can be found from 2002. But uh, I'm not gonna, cuz that seems gross. Probably acting work just started to dry up (his last 3 IMDB entries are small 1 episode TV roles and each is a year apart), he turned 60, and maybe, like a pro athlete he took the message that the game was showing him the door, retired, and didnt have any reason to have anything to do with the internet after that. I guess my earlier statement about not making a footprint on the web in 20 years didnt quite take into account that those years were his 60s and 70s. Crusade is 1999 and he does not look like he's in his 50s, at least not to my faceblind ass.