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MostlyHarmless.jpg

‘They Called Him Mostly Harmless’ Takes Aim at the Heart of True Crime

By Alison Lanier | Film | February 15, 2024 |

By Alison Lanier | Film | February 15, 2024 |


MostlyHarmless.jpg

An emaciated body of a man is found in a tent out in the Florida wetlands—a tent stocked with food and cash—where he apparently starved to death. No one comes forward to claim his remains. No one is looking for him. Among the community of avid outdoors people and hikers to whom he belonged, he went by the “trail name” Mostly Harmless, or sometimes Denim. Trail names are monikers given to dedicated hikers by others in the community; the story was that he got the moniker “Mostly Harmless” from his joking response to a hiker’s joking campfire comment of “Hope you don’t bite.”

But that’s it. Nothing more is known about this man. Everything stopped short at hikers’ memories of positive and even deeply meaningful conversations with Mostly Harmless over a period of months on the trail. This man had apparently—despite all the odds in the year 2020—scrubbed all evidence of himself from digital sources. He’d managed to truly disappear into the wilderness. And now he was dead. They Called Him Mostly Harmless, the new documentary film now streaming on Max, follows the long and winding road to the end of the mystery.

The case became a beacon of true crime community interest, with online amateur investigators swarming to Facebook groups. Despite Mostly Harmless’ evident wish not to be identified or connected with his past life, the mystery of who he was became a rallying point: The official investigators and the true crime community wanted to “give him his name back.”


By grasping at straws and through fascinating leaps of faith and crowdsourced information, both professional and amateur detectives set out on a years-long mission to answer the question of who this man was and how he died.

But in the end, that answer is less important than the journey of these many and varied investigators. The documentary becomes a story not about the mysterious death itself but about the storm around it as internet sleuths pile on the case and parasocial relationships bud and tangle.

The range of people drawn into the journey is incredible. From a dry-clean delivery driver to a shiny scientific startup pioneering DNA technology to an editor at Wired and the Atlantic to “trail angels” in remote cabins and trailer parks, the story touched many different worlds and communities.

As fascination builds around the case, so does obsession and contention. Facebook groups with thousands of active sleuths crop up. Some online investigators spin absurd, kneejerk theories about who he is, why he is so hard to trace, including: he is an incarnated ghost or an extraterrestrial. Toxicity sparks between group moderators—who are two of our talking heads—in an incredible portrait of how empathy breaks down online. One moderator, Chrissy, clearly sees herself as a devoted and bullied hero—while the screen fills with piles of abusive messages that she herself aimed at another moderator.

The race to solve the mystery feels competitive. With each false identification of Mostly Harmless, real and very alive people are buried in what essentially amounts to cyberstalking and harassment by strangers on the internet determined to fight the good fight and close the case.

And when the truth of this man’s identity is discovered, the stories built around him for years by avid investigators crack apart, revealing the depths of the parasocial relationships that thousands and thousands of people had built around the man at the heart of the mystery. Because in the end, he wasn’t a story; he was a person, with all the complexity, horror, and tragedy that goes along with that.

It would do the documentary an incredible disservice to give any answers away here. Suffice it to say, there are answers, in part because of the thousands and thousands of well-intentioned people who pursued the case tirelessly.

On the surface, judging by the streaming service thumbnail and catchy synopsis, They Called Him Mostly Harmless appears like any other sensational procedural true crime saga about discovering the truth behind a baffling mystery. But it certainly isn’t.

This is a study of community—of the community of hikers and outdoorspeople to whom Mostly Harmless belonged, and of the online maelstrom that is the true crime community. The drive to belong to a narrative, to matter in that narrative, feels like a bitterly powerful force in this documentary. They Called Him Mostly Harmless becomes more about why true crime as a genre happens, more than about the case itself. And that’s not a bad thing at all.

They Called Him Mostly Harmless is now streaming on Max.