When MMM posted his 2014 expenses, he mentioned some stuff about homeschooling. That lead me to Google search for his previous references to homeschooling, which unexpectedly led me to Mrs. MM's unpublicized blog, filled with detailed, personal thoughts on the same topic (as well as other topics). I mentioned her blog in the homeschooling thread on this forum, and soon after, Mrs. MM posted in that thread. And of course the real-world shift to homeschooling is part of why in the virtual-world, MMM's posting frequency has decreased.
Even though I have never had one tiny bit of doubt that the MMs are a real family, and that their stories are honest views of their lives, something about that chain of interaction made that fact glaringly obvious, and it just made me laugh at all the MMM-truthers from that old bogleheads thread and elsewhere. I guess if you only see a Washington Post article or something, some doubt is reasonable, but it doesn't take much digging for it to become glaringly obvious that MMM is real.
The call for a journalistic inquest is funny too. Thanks to the Internet, a random guy reading a forum can be just as good of a sleuth as your average "journalist". If your doubts are really burning you up, just do the sleuthing on your own. Public records about the MM family's houses and businesses are out there, though I'd say don't waste your time searching for them, because they all exactly match with everything that's been reported on the blog.
And man, the way some of those 7000-post bogleheads cling to the one thing they read 3 years ago! The Hawaii barter-for-lodging thing was more than 2 years ago, and as far as I recall, he hasn't done anything similar since. The "construction business" was even older; I don't recall any serious construction (besides on his own house) since the 3-year-old foreclosure project. But these guys bring this stuff up like it's an ongoing thing he wouldn't be able to do without.
I loved how a few of them kept repeating the idea "what about when he needs a new roof?! huh? HUH? He's not accounting for that!!", and then someone finally dropped in a link to MMM's "I'll never need a new roof because I'm installing a steel roof by myself" post. Bam. Once again, he's already a step or two ahead of you worked-too-long complainypantses!