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The Death of a YouTuber (theverge.com) 60

"Effortlessly funny. Endlessly talented. Gone too soon," tweeted fellow YouTuber Ted Nivison after hearing the news. "Technoblade, a popular Minecraft YouTuber, has died from cancer age 23," writes the Verge.

But before Technoblade left, he'd prepared a goodbye for his 11.9 million subscribers: In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel titled "so long nerds" and narrated by his father, Technoblade thanked his fans and fellow streamers for their support over the years... His father says Technoblade wrote the script for his final video from bed and died shortly afterwards. "I don't think he said everything he wanted to say, but I think he got the main points," says his father. "He finished that up and then he was done. He lived about another eight hours after that."
"Hello, everyone! Technoblade here," the final message begins. "If you're watching this, I am dead. So let's sit down and have one final chat." My real name is Alex. I had one of my siblings call me 'Dave' one time in a deleted video from 2016, and it was one of the most successful pranks we've ever done. Thousands of creepy online dudes trying to get overly personal going 'Oh hey, Dave. How's it going?'

Sorry for selling out so much in the past year. But thanks to everyone that bought hoodies, plushies, and channel memberships. My siblings are going to college! Well, if they want to. I don't want to put any dead-brother peer pressure on them.

But that's all from me. Thank you all for supporting my content over the years. If I had another hundred lives, I think I would choose to be Technoblade every single time, as those were the happiest years of my life. I hope you guys enjoyed my content, and that I made some of you laugh.

And I hope you all go on to live long, prosperous, and happy lives. Because I love you guys.

Technoblade out.

After reading the statement, the 23-year-old's father remembered that in those final hours, "We all said goodbye." Then he adds that "He was the most amazing — he was the most amazing kid anyone could ever ask for." He said he misses his son, and thanked his viewers "for everything. You meant a lot to him."

And at the end of the video a message from "Techno's mom" appears on the screen. "My son's bravery on this path was a shining lesson to all of us who were privileged to walk it with him."
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The Death of a YouTuber

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  • Oddly touching (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamienk ( 62492 ) on Saturday July 02, 2022 @09:45AM (#62667992)

    My kid showed me this a few days ago. I have no knowledge of this weird niche of Mindcraft YouTube influencers, etc. Watching it made clear that there's a whole world in there that seems to me to be of dubious value, but this video was really touching. It was very emotional and felt very and rarely authentic.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Viewers develop a para-social relationship with the people on screen. His death probably touched a lot of people he had never met or interacted with directly.

      • I didn't know who he was til I watched the video. He seemed like a bright, funny, sincere guy. I'm not ashamed to admit it made me cry.
  • by shibbie ( 619359 ) on Saturday July 02, 2022 @10:06AM (#62668032)
    Fuck cancer and fuck anybody or anything that causes people to die young. I've seen and heard of too many young people and children suffer - having been ordered to fight in a war, die as refugees trying to escape ware with parents, or taken early by diseases usually associated with age.
    • Re: FUCK CANCER (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday July 02, 2022 @10:42AM (#62668108) Homepage Journal
      Cancer kills at any age. I wasnt 20 when the older sibling of my best friend, two kids of their own, died of skin cancer. It wasnâ(TM)t that many years later that a father on my street, maybe 10 years my senior, died of cancer. Took him in months.

      When reading this comments remember many are protected and have not experienced death the way the rest of us have. They have no ability to process. They are scared.

  • Youtuber or not (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday July 02, 2022 @10:41AM (#62668102)

    This has nothing to do with Youtube. It's a guy bowing out and using whatever channel they have to say goodbye.

    I just came out of my second bout with the big C. Not out of the woods yet, but close enough that I can reasonably state that I will have beaten it again this time around.

    Well, I don't do social media because I'm from a previous generation and it don't come natural to me. But I do patronize a couple of old-style forums and IRC channels in which I do have some very good old friends. I too bade my farewell. It's a strange thing to do, but I felt I needed to do it while I still had a working brain to do it. Turns out, my friends ain't rid of me yet :) But that's another story.

    IRC is my generation's version of letters. I suspect people of yesteryear in that situation wrote letters to their friends. Or they sent one last message before going silent key, if they were into ham radio. Whatever your medium of choice.

    This guy did the same, with his Youtube channel. He used Youtube because that's his IRC. This story is about someone taking his last bow gracefully. Youtube don't enter into it.

  • The father's comments were of more interest to me than the son's. Although the "dead brother peer pressure" comment was cool :-)

  • by Kristoph ( 242780 ) on Saturday July 02, 2022 @02:35PM (#62668496)

    Please donâ(TM)t think me insensitive. I was touched by this and I mourn his passing.

    This being Slashdot though I am curious if all his content could be fed into GPT-3 to create a sort of digital version of him, and if this would be of value to others.

"Tell the truth and run." -- Yugoslav proverb

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