What happens when a blog dies, especially a long-established one? Further, what happens when the blog’s author also goes missing, leaving no digital footprint behind?

The latter question seems almost impossible in our hyperconnected world, but it’s the case with Trinidadian blogger Renard, the proprietor of the now-gone Renard’s World. Renard and his little avatar, which looked like a character from The Boondocks, was so ubiquitous, he seemed like the unofficial mascot of WordPress. Here was a writer who churned out quality content every day, and like “Tom” on MySpace, he seemed to follow and be followed by everyone on the platform.

Then he disappeared.

The mystery has, as I wrote last year, “endured.” In attempting recent searches for “Renard’s World,” the same speculative blog posts show up as did last year. I even hopped onto Substack to see if our boy had made an appearance on that platform, but no dice.

Could Renard be blogging under a completely different identity? Or did he hang up the work for good?

There are, of course, the darker speculations, that Renard met with some unfortunate fate beneath the Caribbean sun. But the coordinated shuttering of all of his social media and online presence seems like something difficult to do if you’re dead and your relatives are fumbling to get into your accounts.

I pray that Renard is okay. I didn’t know him that well, of course, but I wish no ill upon anyone.

That said, if any readers have any updates on Renard’s whereabouts, leave a comment or contact me. I’m intrigued to know, although I suspect none of us will know for sure on this side of Eternity.

With that, here is 15 May 2025’s “TBT: Mystery in the Blogosphere“:

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It was almost exactly a year ago that legendary Trinidadian blogger Renard, formerly of Renard’s World, disappeared—or, at least, his blog disappeared.  To my knowledge, no one knows anything about the once-ubiquitous blogger or his whereabouts.

In searching for his blog, I found two different blog titles from his site, which still shows up in search results even though the site has been deleted:  “Renard Is Not Overly Attached to His Blog,” dated 5 February 2024; and “Nothing Ever Gets Between Me and Blogging,” dated 12 April 2024.  It seems Renard was sending mixed messages in the final months of his blogging journey.

The blog Geek Mamas ran a post on 30 May 2024, “What Happened to Renard’s World?“; it asks all the questions we in the WordPress blogosphere were asking at the time, and noted many of the similar themes:  the change in Renard’s tone; the possible use of AI to generate images and/or to write his posts; the total and sudden disappearance of the blog.  I can’t find much more (although, to be honest, I didn’t dig that deeply), and this may simply remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Internet.

Why speculate?  Well, let’s be honest—it’s interesting.  To understand how huge Renard’s sudden disappearance was, this guy was everywhere—every blogger on WordPress followed Renard, even if we didn’t always read him, and he seemed to follow everyone else.  He even liked a few of my posts on occasion, which isn’t a brag so much as a kind of surprise, because the guy was all over the place.

Anyway, it seems the weeks of speculation died down, and I had not thought of old Renard until casting about for some old blog posts to repost for TBT.  Now I have to wonder again:  what happened to him and his site?  Does anyone have any additional information?

Perhaps one day we’ll know, but I suspect that the mystery will endure.

With that, here is 15 May 2024’s “Mystery in the Blogosphere“:

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