Alex Goldman

He works in sustainability reporting.

He just became a father.

And he's married to a wonderful woman who he literally calls my wonderful wife.

So how did the normal guy with the wonderful wife come to be talking about rabbit holes in syndicates?

Well, it's actually a pretty sad story, and it started about two months ago.

On February 16th, Marcus and his wife got a call.

That kind of call that people in their 30s never expect to get.

One of their very best friends had suddenly died, and the news had left them reeling.

Not just because this friend was only 32 years old, but she was the kind of 32-year-old that seemed utterly unstoppable.

He was awesome, Alex.

It seemed impossible that this awesome, amazing life force could so suddenly be snuffed out.

And yet, it was true.

So when they got the call that their friend had died, the first thing Marcus and his wife wanted to know was, how in the world did this happen?

The person who called them hadn't told them the details.

And although they knew her family, they didn't want to burden them with questions at such a tragic time.

At first, there was nothing, just a total information vacuum.

But within a day or two, notices about his friend's death did start popping up on the internet.

At the top of Google search results, Marcus found links to these random small-time news sites, sites with names like Memoir News 360 and nycbreaking.site.

And I mean, already one of these seemed weird, because why would a website called NYC Breaking, that's presumably about breaking news in New York City, be covering the death of a not-famous woman in Canada?

But when Marcus began to click through and read the obituaries that these small time news sites had written for his friend, the weirdness just got weirder.