How to Disappear off the Face of the Earth and Why You Should Try it This Season

Everyone loves a good mystery. That's why Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed grossed $400 in the Box Office. But although we see mystery portrayed in film time and time again, when was the last time you actually encountered a mystery in real life?

To properly construe my point, I have designed a short quiz to determine how much mystery is currently in your life.

Have you, or has anyone you know, ever:

a) been selected to track down an escaped mental patient, only to find that the missing patient was yourself? 

b) spent years battling amnesia and trying to track down the man who killed your wife with insulin, only to find that that man was yourself?

c) gone on a quest to find Mary Magdalene's tomb and discovered that it's under that triangle thing outside the Louvre, and that Mary Magdalene was yourself?

d) had anything remotely similar to the plot of Gone Girl happen to you?

If you answered 'no' to any of the above questions, then it sounds like it is a good time to enigma-up your life. There's no better time to start than right now immediately!!

Why Scooby and Velma never got together is the greatest mystery of all

The reason there are so many movies about mysteries, is that we, as an internation, have forgotten what it is to encounter a mystery for reals. And no wonder. We live in a world where it is near-impossible to be MIA, or AWOL, or DDR. We're all on the grid, like a giant game of Battleships. 

Thanks to Edward Norton leaking the contents of Obama's diary back in 2013, we know that we are being watched 24/7 by the NHS. Our every move is constantly monitored; when we are sleeping, or hanging out with our friends, even while using the internet to search for child porn.

To make matters worse, everyone uses social media these days, even (unfortunately) old people. Social media is just another means for 'Big Brother' to infiltrate our lives. Once you put something on the internet it's there forever, like herpes.  

Between us putting the information out there, and the government right clicking, and saving it to desktop, privacy is a thing of the past. It's like in the Lord of the Rings, how when Frodo puts on the ring the huge creepy eye of Sauron can see him, even though he's miles away in the forest hiding under his cloak that makes him look like a rock. And if I learned anything from Lord of the Rings, it's that you definitely don't want to be a Frodo. You want to be a Gandalf, or an Aragorn, or at the very least Elrond. You don't want to be Gollum either, but for different reasons. 

So how do you seize back your privacy and be the mystery you always dreamed of becoming? I have compiled a list of excellent tips to help you become a modern day Madeleine McCann. 

1. Start by deleting all of your social media accounts. This won't be easy, but it will be worth it. It takes 6 weeks to delete a Skype account, so start today!

2. Throw your phone into the river. Then throw your whole house into the river if you can.

3. Get one of those SIA wigs that obscure your face and wear it always.

4. Go to mountainous China and live out your days alone in a cave. You will need a fake passport for this so that there is no record of you leaving the country. When you get to China, set fire to the passport and scatter the ashes along the entire length of the Great Wall.

Bonus points if you: a) have extensive facial reconstructive surgery so that you are no longer recognisable, or b) successfully fake your own death. 

Godspeed, friends, on your journey to total privacy. I hope to never hear from you again.