At times, _why projected an image of the "troubled artist" archetype--either "real" or part of the _why persona, no one knew--and if memory serves me he'd had a couple disappointments recently and left some downbeat tweets.

So, while I can't speak for randallsquared, at least some of the people wanting to know if he'd "suddenly died" or some such were just being too tactful to say that they were afraid he might have committed suicide--in which case the deleting all his online stuff would have been completely plausible.