The subheading of the article tells us, "This Man Moved to a Desert Island in Order to Vanish. Here's What Happened." Assuming that the point of the article is

The subheading of the article tells us, "This Man Moved to a Desert Island in Order to Vanish. Here's What Happened." Assuming that the point of the article is to tell us what happened, then the writing style is extraneous, regardless of whether the man in question acts similarly. If the article said, "Here's what it's like to talk to Dave," then the writing style would be more appropriate. As it is, it gets in the way of finding out "what happened." Note that, say, A Beautiful Mind was not written in the form of a schizophrenic's paranoid ramblings, no matter how much that would reflect John Nash's personality during segments of the book.