what ever happened to that guy?

January 7, 2006 6:44 PM

All this afternoon, MTV has been showing a marathon of their documentary series True Life. Does anyone know what ever happened to Ben from True Life: I'm Going to Fat Camp?

The "True Life: I'm Going to Fat Camp" episode is an MTV classic. The network replays it every few months; I've probably seen that one episode five or six times since it came out in 2002. (And for the record, I don't even watch that much TV.)

One person profiled on the episode was an overweight teen from New York City named Ben, who was at fat camp for I think the eighth summer in a row. He had a compelling story, and television viewers just felt for him as he described how being overweight has affected his life with respect to girls (one girl in particular he mentions repeatedly), school, etc.

Anyway, I've always wondered what happened to him - if he was ever able to lose weight, or get the girl, and so forth. Does anyone know, or has anyone seen anything on the internet or anything? He's probably in his early 20's by now.

posted by peppermint22 to media & arts (4 comments total)

According to the last post on this page, Ben ended up buying a funny-looking hat.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:15 PM on January 7, 2006

Did you check the MTV broadband site, overdrive.mtv.com? I can't see the content because I don't have Windows, but they were advertising it this weekend as a place to look to for updates and follow-ups on "Made" and some of the other shows.
posted by xo at 7:23 PM on January 7, 2006

The last episode for Ben, if I recall, is that he did lose some weight and had hired something like a trainer to help him learn to cook meals that would assist in this endeavor. He didn't get the girl (the one he was seeing at Camp), but he seems like an outgoing guy, I'm sure he'll find another.
posted by Atreides at 9:17 AM on January 8, 2006

I read somewhere that there's an interview with him in the book "Teenage Waistland".
posted by smackfu at 5:31 PM on January 17, 2006