please don't think you've wasted years of your life if he is indeed dead...
it gave you hope... it gave his memory & spirit energy to last longer... we all need dreams & we all need to dream... to have goals, & passions, & intrigues... we all enter into some kind of quest at some stage of our lives too (if we are to grow, develop, progress in life)...
if andy has lived on in the hopes & dreams of another generation, in your hearts & minds, then it is as though he did live on. if he did disappear, letting the media think he died, retiring the entertainer persona, then we wouldn't have much hope of having any conformation of his existence since the point in him carrying out his disappearance would be to fade from public life... so here we would be again... back at the whim of his boredom thresh-hold, his attention span would dictate his willingness to interact with his followers (as it appears to have on the site andykaufmanlives.com), his willingness to reveal his identity would become precious currency in this climate... it would also (in this situation) provide a source of entertainment for the man, of willing subjects eager to be toyed with!.. how could he resist?..
a man may out-run his-self, but he MAY never out-run his true nature, for no matter how much we try to present a politically engineered projection of ones-self, or a new construct or invention, or modification of our personality we still cannot hope to fully conceal our true self.
there will be some indication behind the mask we construct of who we really are... just take a look at the many tv appearances where andy blurs fact & fiction causing the audience to question not only everything he says, but also his motives & reason... the truth is in there somewhere, it may be incremental, it may be fractured, embellished &/or chopped & changed to suit...
the detective is not asked to conclude anything here, he is only asked to detect, to dig around for theories... the work here is not to spot the truth from the lies but to question both.
faith is what is at stake here.
it may very well be andy (it's not out with the realms of possibility)or it may be some-one-else's passionate ploy to keep his spirit alive (or it may be some-one convinced of their own importance enough to have the audacity to shoe-horn themselves into the legacy of a somebody in-order to become one themself)???
whatever it is i doubt we'll get the answer we're looking for. remember, if andy is capable of having pulled this off this deed it may be admirable in terms of having the tenacity to stick to his guns & sacrifice years of his life to be remembered as the guy brave enough to pull it off!.. but to be remembered as what? & once everybody knows, once it is laid to rest, for how long?
right now he is an odd footnote in entertainment history, revered after the fact & for planting the doubt of his own death in the mind of history.
but... if he is alive... then... he is not the warm man many remember him as, he may never have been. this changes things; how can one have affection for someone who never presented his true self in the first place? it the affection is based on lies then where do we go from that point? he may be confirming an exploit that is exciting & enviable with the conformation of him pulling off this hoax but it would also reveal(expose?) him as a steely, determined & calculating man & this would evaporate some of the goodwill we feel towards him. the sweet man-child we remember who just wanted to be friends & mess with us for his & our amusement, would have confirmed his contempt for us, his audience.
in summing up... if you like the idea of andy having duped the world audaciously, whilst still remaining lovable, believe it!.. in andy's world belief is the first step... the next is choosing which to believe... perception IS reality... WHICH reality?.. that's for you to chose!.. mine is different from yours (perhaps only subtly) but this is because WE are the architects of our own realities... we read however little or however much we choose into what puzzlementary & king
offer the world (the internet)... in the movie of YOUR life would YOU like to choose your OWN ending?