[HN Gopher] The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
___________________________________________________________________
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Author : _tk_
Score : 222 points
Date : 2024-10-05 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thetimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thetimes.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Not what one would expect from the title, but a good read.
|
| wayback machine:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241005124635/https://www.theti...
| sonofhans wrote:
| It reminds me of this story from a decade ago --
| https://kottke.org/14/05/the-ghost-in-the-machine
|
| Sometimes I feel like digital prosthetic memories are an awful
| crutch; sometimes I'm in awe of the genuine emotion they can
| inspire.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| If this was such a big part of their son's life, how come they
| weren't aware?
|
| I'm asking this more to wonder out loud whether I'm in need of
| some introspection than to blame them.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I think from their perspective, all they saw was a video game,
| they didn't know that it involved intricate role-playing and
| community.
| chx wrote:
| That's the thing.
|
| WoW came out in 2004. What came before in a similar genre?
| Maybe Diablo II in 2000-2001. And while the Guild Halls were
| planned for D2 they never actually shipped. There were forums
| etc but nothing like the scale and possibility of WoW. There
| were no patterns for this before.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Ultima Online, Everquest, Lineage...Blizzard definitely had
| a leg up with their brand recognition which boosted the
| genre to new levels, but it really wasn't a new idea.
| chx wrote:
| In 1997 UO had ~100 000 subscribers, in 2004 WoW had over
| a million. It's nowhere near the same.
|
| This is a very common misconception, really. Yes, there
| are no new ideas. The fact that LG Prada sported a
| capacitive touch is only relevant for mansplaining.
| rewind.ai predates Microsoft Recall but who cares,
| really? The chances of an abusive spouse discovering it
| and using it to oppress further a woman is nil while
| Recall will be right in front of their eyes. AirTag was
| not the first stalking device but for sure it was the
| first to reach mass enough adaptation to get multiple
| women murdered. The list is endless.
| Tor3 wrote:
| That's exactly what his father said. They had thought it was
| just playing a game (he used the word 'competition' when he
| spoke about it).
|
| EditAdd: And it's not strange. First, Mats had his own
| apartment, it wasn't like he was playing where his parents
| were walking past all the time. And secondly, every time he
| logged on to WoW he would spend the first 30 minutes
| _running_. So if anyone watched him when he started playing
| the would simply see a figure on a monitor running on a road,
| and keep running, and that was all.
| asyx wrote:
| I think to parents at least to millennials, the idea of an
| MMORPG is just even more foreign than it is to parents to gen z
| or gen alpha.
|
| WoW was maybe not the first big title but it was the first that
| really put the genre into the mainstream. A genre inspired by
| the novelty of virtual worlds. I think to them, their son just
| played a dumb video game and in the best case they weren't
| necessarily supportive but also not against it. Just a weird
| thing he did that they didn't understand.
|
| How could they possible imagine that he spent his time in that
| world with people from all around the real world talking about
| the game and their life alike for hours on end. Being there for
| those people when life hit them and being able to expect the
| same in return like what you'd hope friends in the real world
| would do.
|
| To my mother, all people online that talked to me when I was a
| teenager would be creepy old people trying to groom me. But the
| people I've met in those games are now my best friends. If I
| were religious, one of them would have been the godfather to my
| child.
| lynx23 wrote:
| You're pretty much onto the crux of the situation. Lets put it
| mildly, its a rare case that the parents of a disabled
| child/person truly understand their
| needs/desires/wishes/dreams. Its much more common that the
| barrier that appears between disabled and non-disabled people
| will persist, and will not get broken down. Most disabled
| people I know (and I am disabled myself) basically had to run
| away from home to get some degree of freedom. Its a rather sad
| thing, which involves a lot of things, mostly the trauma of the
| parents which they likely never overcome. And the desire of the
| disabled peerson to gain some independence. Which is usually
| not compatible with family.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| That post really made me sad.
|
| I'm not disabled and neither is anyone in my family. But my
| relationship with my parents was always bad. I never spent
| any time thinking about the lives of disabled people because
| they've always been such an alien reality to me, but I think
| if you'd asked me think about it I wouldve had the vague
| intuition that disabled at least had good relationships with
| their parents because how dependent/how much time they were
| forced to spend with them. Your comment about the trauma that
| parents never overcome added a really dark twist for me to
| the concept of "bad relationship with your parents".
|
| Anyway thanks for sharing
| StefanBatory wrote:
| And longing for a family that you could have had...
|
| I find it that people who grew up with attentive parents just
| don't understand how one can not trust their parents, or what
| it is like to have to hide everything from them.
| CM30 wrote:
| Because most people aren't that aware of their friends and
| relatives' hobbies and interests, nor the specifics about how
| they work. So if that person doesn't speak openly about them
| (and let's face it, most people won't simply because the other
| person won't find the topic that interesting), then they'll
| only know the most basic aspects.
|
| Like, someone I'm friends with regularly goes to the climbing
| gym. I vaguely remember being told which gym it was at one
| point, and I know the sport they partake in, but that's
| basically it. I don't know if they've got any friends or
| acquaintances they hang out with each time they go, if they go
| to events related to it, whether they discuss it online, etc.
|
| And the same goes with what most people (friends and parents
| included) know about me and my own hobbies and interests too.
| They might know some of the things I'm interested in and some
| of the people I'm friends with, but it's certainly not all of
| them.
|
| In general, people tend not to know everything (or often, even
| that much in general) about their friends and loved ones. They
| know what they're willing to talk about/have bothered
| discussing, and that's usually it.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Would you say "Our lives have been digitally unbundled" be
| accurate characterization?
| CM30 wrote:
| Quite possibly. The internet's existence means it's a lot
| easier to have hobbies and interests and friendships that
| your real life friends and family don't know about, that's
| for sure.
| stego-tech wrote:
| It's because, for those of us who exist in these realms - be it
| WoW, EQ, furries, whatever - we get very, _very_ good at being
| discrete. There's that initial excitement when we desperately
| want to share our joy with our parents or siblings, but all too
| often that joy is dashed by popular misconceptions, media
| sensationalism, and flat-out fabrications about "strangers
| online" and the like. I found solace in online communities as
| an introvert traumatized by repeated cross-country moves
| growing up, and when I tried sharing my online friends with my
| parents, they deleted my social messenger accounts at the time.
|
| So that's why this stuff often pops up as a "surprise" to those
| left behind, or comes across as a "double-life". We often tried
| to open up and share ourselves, but were shut down for the
| unorthodox ways we found happiness or identity, and realized
| the best approach was hard segregation of the two.
|
| Heck, it's why I still don't tie my meatspace and authentic
| selves together. The meatspace me is this reserved but honest
| engineer who just wants to make good systems that customers
| like using and be left alone, but the online dinosaur
| is..._starkly different_, more open and authentic, exuding more
| confidence and more empathy as well.
|
| We're unique creatures who adapt to our surroundings, but make
| no mistake: we always want to share our found happiness with
| others. Unfortunately, experience often dictates that sharing
| ourselves so completely is more likely than not to end up
| causing us great harm, and so we just don't do it.
| Tor3 wrote:
| They _were_ aware, but hadn 't got the correct understanding.
| They had thought all the time that WoW was a competition,
| beating the machine.. like the video games they grew up with
| (and, er, I did), i.e. car racing games and the like. In other
| words, they weren't aware of the social aspect of the thing.
| goda90 wrote:
| He was born in 1989, died in 2014. Not sure how he died at 20?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| The title is incorrect. The age of 20 is significant because
| that's the maximum age the parents were told that he would live
|
| > He may, his parents are told, live to be 20
|
| And later...
|
| > The years pass. Mats' 20th birthday comes and goes
|
| The story of his death follows shortly after that line. I'm
| guessing the title author (usually not the same person as the
| story author) misunderstood that line, and it wasn't caught
| during proofreading
| ko_pivot wrote:
| I think there is a fundamental difference between MMOGs and
| TikTok-style social media. I suspect the human brain has a
| relatively healthy reaction to creatively connecting with other
| humans via virtual worlds but a comparatively poor reaction to
| algorithmic feeds.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| I don't even consider tiktok as social media. It's more for
| entertainment like netflix. There is not much socializing that
| happens on tiktok
| evanmoran wrote:
| Netflix is curated and not user created, so I'd say TikTok is
| more like YouTube. Then of course everyone copied the format
| including YouTube, IG, X, and even LinkedIn (saw this one
| just today). But even with that slight naming difference, I
| couldn't agree more with you that MMOs are rich cultural hubs
| compared to endless short videos. It's a low bar :)
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Even Spotify. Just saw their short audio clips feed of
| interesting sections of songs, tracks.
| whyenot wrote:
| The fact that you may not have experienced it doesn't mean
| that it doesn't exist :) There is actually a lot of
| socializing on TikTok, for example in the "BookTok"
| community. The format is a little different than on a message
| board, or IG, but it is there.
| bloqs wrote:
| Perhaps at risk of reading too far into it, but it seems
| the implication is that while Tiktok is called "social
| media", it seems to be the exception that socialising
| occurs. World of Warcraft, and many similar games of that
| era would often be canned as anti-social, but fundamentally
| facilitated the pursuit of common goals and deep bonds for
| those otherwise isolated or barred from such engagement in
| other avenues.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yep. WoW was problematic because the mainstream had
| already decided that the participants were problematic,
| not because of any careful analysis of the game's merits.
| TikTok is okay because the mainstream participates, not
| because of a careful analysis of the platform's merits.
| Lammy wrote:
| MMOs are people being together, alone
|
| Social media is people being alone, together
| fragmede wrote:
| Either way, you're doing socializing wrong. the only
| acceptable way of socializing is how our parents did it.
| In person, with lots of alcohol, and the only qualifier
| was physical proximity.
| wwilim wrote:
| It's parasocial media if anything
| Maken wrote:
| People were active participants in MMORPGs. You get the
| dopamine from achieving goals inside the game, and make
| connections with other people as you collaborate to reach these
| goals. Your relationship with other players is that of
| coworkers (or cohabitants). On social media, most people are
| just spectators, getting entertained by a small group of
| creators whose relation with the rest of the community is that
| of salesmen. Both systems are not designed in the same way.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Not everyone who plays MMOs are active participants. Majority
| of people in a guild are not active participants. A lot of
| them won't even get on a shared voice call anymore to listen
| to instructions during large group events.
|
| A lot of MMOs also make active collaboration a complete pain,
| whether it's introducing a messed up matchmaking system, not
| dealing with bots, or adding new content that rewards you for
| going at it alone. A lot of content now is quite literally
| zero communication, not even a message in chat, just queue
| for group, do content and leave.
|
| And people will spend 5+ hours a day doing that. Farming
| mindlessly as if it's a second job.
| Aerroon wrote:
| MMOs have always been like that though. The forced group
| content is a later addition that not every game follows (eg
| OSRS). But that doesn't really mean anything. You're still
| sharing a virtual world. You see people pass you by, meet
| random people etc. They are still active participants, they
| just don't have to wait around for other people constantly
| (because that's what forced group content always turns
| into).
| bitexploder wrote:
| I play WoW still. It is very much a fun social group and hobby
| as much as it is gaming. We nerd out over the lore and shared
| experience in the game. It can be a very humanistic experience
| if that is what you want. I have played this game for 15 years
| now. Been with the same guild for 6 now.
| corimaith wrote:
| Tik-Tok (and Social Media) exists around content. It's
| fundamentally social but has no inherent "meat" which is why it
| go bad so easily, just like high school gossip and cliques.
| It's hollow by itself, focused on reaction and judgment.
|
| MMOs are that "meat". It's someplace you go for it's own sake,
| and (hopefully) you meet people around that shared space as a
| consequence rather than an intention. There will be debates,
| trolls and conflicts of course, but I feel that the focus on
| content is a shared axis that can keep things healthier on the
| long term.
|
| Well MMOs are dying, and a growing number of zoomers would
| rather passively watch than actively play games, so I guess
| gamers aren't immune to social media either, but I think in the
| future we will return to this for answers that our present
| can't answer.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Even if MMOs are dying, fun collaborative gaming experiences
| with friends (Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, ...) continue to
| be very popular. It's often done with an external voice chat
| program (Discord), meaning groups of friends can wander from
| game to game having many different experiences than MMO
| grinding.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I think MMOs are dying because the casual players play mobile
| games instead, so MMOs end up catering more and more to the
| hardcore crowd. This further turns casual players away.
| tenzing wrote:
| I still remember playing Anarchy Online in the mid 2000s and
| teaming up for a few hours with a guy who'd broken his back a
| month or so prior. He talked about how he got so much happiness
| from the social interaction and a sense of helping people (he
| was much higher level than me) within the game when he was
| otherwise bedridden.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| As much as wow was a time sink waste of time for me, I love that
| it provided community to those who needed it and could thrive
| within it. Putting this documentary on my to watch list.
| pram wrote:
| I actually met my wife on WoW, doing progression raiding
| through vanilla to WotLK. Spending 8+ hours a day together for
| years forms pretty close bonds ;D
| Novosell wrote:
| It is a sorta nice story, although I imagine us who actively do
| participate in gaming communities wont look at it with as much
| wonder as the writer and the mans parents do, but I'm sort of
| disturbed by the fact that their son basically did nothing else
| than play WoW for many years yet they never cared to bond with
| him over it? Maybe they did but he wasn't interested in sharing?
| Was he mute? It's not mentioned but it's very possible given his
| disease. Even so, they could've gotten something of an
| understanding of it surely? Their ideas about it and the reality
| of it were not even close.
|
| It can be tiresome to take care of sick family members, I relate
| with that, but they still come off as negligent in this article.
| Feel like I need more info.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I have three kids, and even when I ask what they're playing
| they just give me simple answers. "Who you playing with?"
| Friends. "What game you playing?" A game.
|
| Imagine trying to explain an mmo and role playing to people who
| don't play video games. Probably not an easy conversation to
| explain you're Ibelin, the noble warrior of Azeroth.
| itronitron wrote:
| Consider that they were providing the environment and resources
| that he needed in order to have a positive impact on other
| people's lives. I don't think you should perceive it as
| negligence if they didn't know about it.
|
| Mans probably wanted to keep the worlds separate, as his
| parents knew everything about his condition and he didn't want
| to reveal that to the online community (until he started
| blogging.)
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Some parents aren't interested in it. My parents don't really
| know anything about me; it's just not of interest to them. It's
| all basic weather talk at best. And whenever I tried to talk to
| them, I got shut down. They have their own problems, their own
| things to worry about, I guess.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Double life, how ironic. I have _some_ experience with being
| isolated due to a disability, albeit mine is by far not as far-
| reaching, but still. What some call a "double life" is the
| primary life to those which failed to find a true and meaningful
| connection to those around him, lets call it family. Sometimes,
| escaping from well-meaning but unable to adapt people around you
| is the only thing _you_ can do to try and achieve some meaning in
| life. Ironic that they end up calling it a double life, failing
| to understand that what they provided simply wasn 't enough, and
| also _couldn 't_ be enough. Lets put it that way. y life only
| started when I moved out of my parents home. Be it physically or
| virtual, thats likely true for many who are being tormented by an
| isolationist life.
| gavmor wrote:
| Shades of _Otherland_ 's Orlando Gardiner. In the 1995 novel by
| Tad Williams, Gardiner is afflicted with a progressive genetic
| disorder which precludes his having much of a life offline--at
| least, he finds it easier to make friends online--and spends his
| days playing _Middle Country_ (WoW was released 3 years after the
| last volume of Wiliams ' quartet was published) where he is a
| strapping swashbuckler.
|
| I think it's phenomenal that Mats was able to touch so many lives
| so deeply.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Scalzi's Lock In explores what might develop when you have an
| entire segment of the population that become complete
| paraplegics ("Hadens") from a pandemic. Real life services,
| virtual worlds, telepresence robots, and people who get brain
| mods to be able to serve as hosts for Hadens that want a real
| physical experience.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| This kind of story is heartbreaking, and something I think about
| a lot.
|
| My parents don't know me very well, a lot of people don't, and
| I've always been a very private person. I've also been through a
| lot, written a lot about that and other things, but it's all
| across various profiles.
|
| I know if something happened to me my parents would probably like
| to read it to have a better idea of who I was, to maybe be able
| to feel closer to me or hear more of my voice.
|
| But this data is all across various profiles that would just be
| forgotten.
|
| I want to make something that allows for importing data from all
| these various sources, presenting an interface to parse and
| peruse it, and making it available only after someone has died to
| certain named people.
|
| Something like this will need to be standardized at some point as
| so much of our lives becomes increasingly digital.
| bradfitz wrote:
| That was what I started to do with Perkeep.org but never find
| enough time to work on it. At one point I had it importing from
| all my social media sources but of course everybody broke their
| APIs. Sigh.
| 1R053 wrote:
| I do empathise with your desire a lot
|
| ...but then such a service gets monetised by advertising,
| financed with VC money and guess what happens next...
| fragmede wrote:
| it must suck to be that cynical
| xyst wrote:
| > But this data is all across various profiles that would just
| be forgotten.
|
| Google/Big Data/Advertisers/NSA/MI6 will never forget though ;)
|
| It's scary to think faceless corporations may often know more
| about yourself than you, your family, and even closest friends.
|
| Reminds me of a story of Target sending adverts for baby items
| to a teenager which accurately predicated she was pregnant
| before she was even aware [1]
|
| It's all (unencrypted comms, texts, social media, osint, ...)
| archived in massive data centers just waiting to be analyzed.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2024/08/30/co
| n...?
| ben_w wrote:
| > Reminds me of a story of Target sending adverts for baby
| items to a teenager which accurately predicated she was
| pregnant before she was even aware
|
| Given that the big advertisers have collectively decided to
| show me both dick pills and breast surgery and sanitary pads,
| and lawyers specialising in renouncing a citizenship I never
| had for tax purposes for people residing in a country I don't
| live in, and several other equally stupid examples, I now
| think such examples were as much over-selling as most of the
| claims Musk has made about FSD.
|
| Only time I've seen an advertisement for something relevant
| to me, I already had it.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| You are likely an outlier. Ad targeting is very good at
| predicting you IF you fall into a cohort that behaves the
| same as each other. There's only way to find out the answer
| to this anyway (export our ad targeting data, share it into
| an anonymous open source pool, and analyze it)
| ben_w wrote:
| An outlier, yes.
|
| Enough of an outlier they can't figure out my gender, and
| get the country I live in wrong while showing me the ad?
| That's a pretty dramatic failure.
| indymike wrote:
| Honestly I think ad targeting is good at just following
| me around and showing me what I just looked at. It's been
| a while since I've even clicked on an ad on purpose.
| Sakos wrote:
| I have my Google account configured to automatically send an
| email with my most important usernames and passwords to close
| family and friends with a brief description of the most
| important sites I frequented with my main accounts. One of
| those is the master password to my password manager. I prefer
| that over some service that could be abandoned or close down
| before (or even after) I die.
| FrontierProject wrote:
| What's the trigger for sending the email?
| mattlondon wrote:
| When you die. Google knows this, of course.
|
| Kidding.
|
| But seriously, there is just a timeout you can configure -
| if you don't login for 3/6/12 months or whatever it
| triggers. You can grant login access too.
| evanmoran wrote:
| Gathering all that together sounds worthwhile, but let me
| encourage you to share more of yourself in small parts as well.
| It takes practice to find the right amount to share (it's a
| balance and depends on you and them), but taking an extra
| moment after dinner to ask what they have been up to or share a
| thought you've had recently can really help you connect better
| to them while you're alive.
| dleeftink wrote:
| I just want to say you needn't feel pressured by relations that
| could have been by leading a private life. Love and kinship
| reach beyond knowing one's inner intricacies, and I feel the
| big stories don't matter all that much when it comes to love
| and family--it's the walks in the park or sharing a meal, the
| happenstance moments that are fleeting. And there is still time
| for many such moments, that remain difficult to capture in any
| sort of digital legacy we try to impart.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| I appreciate your comment very much, thank you.
| elric wrote:
| > this data is all across various profiles that would just be
| forgotten
|
| I'm quite happy with this. I don't need my stuff correlated.
| When friends and family die I miss them, but I don't go around
| snooping through the things they may have left behind, that
| feels disrespectful. If they wanted me to know about their WoW
| accomplishments, they would have told me about them.
| cpill wrote:
| crazy idea, but perhaps you should find some way to let your
| parents see who you are while you're alive?
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Sure, but sometimes death happens before people repair
| relationships to a point they can really do that.
| tombert wrote:
| Huh, this is basically the plot of a My Name is Earl episode:
| https://mynameisearl.fandom.com/wiki/Kept_a_Guy_Locked_in_a_...
| caseyy wrote:
| If you hit Reject and Pay on the cookie notice, it's a PS7
| monthly recurring charge that does not subscribe you to The
| Times, and does not turn off ads, nor allows you to browse
| without tracking. It simply turns off and personalisation and
| promises The Times (but no mention of their partners) won't use
| your personal information for ads. And apparently this stands
| only for the website, not the apps, for which cookies are
| "managed separately".
|
| PS84 a year for one website to still advertise to you and still
| track you in their apps, and not even give you paid content.
|
| Even if you choose to accept all cookies and tracking, the next
| modal asks to pay for digital access to read the article. Meaning
| -- you might need two recurring subscriptions to read the
| article, it seems.
|
| This level of grift -- I couldn't have even imagined. What a
| trash-tier business practice.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| https://github.com/bpc-clone/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
| bbow-resp wrote:
| Hey: it's this story again. As someone who's around my 30s now
| with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and who has friends with the
| condition, I've always found it a bit too bleak about the quality
| of our lives (probably for drama's sake). Yes, I need a
| wheelchair and full time care attendants, but also:
|
| * I went to university and had a great time there
|
| * I had a pretty normal social life growing up, and made some
| life-long real life friends in college who I still visit
| regularly.
|
| * I talk to women and have had romantic relationships.
|
| * I've had and continue to have what I consider a pretty
| successful career in software.
|
| * While I like video games and played a lot of them in high
| school, I'd say I prefer going out and having interactions with
| friends more, however challenging it can be logistically.
|
| I know DMD severity varies between patients, but I don't want
| this article to discourage people with DMD or with children that
| have DMD. It can be tough, but I think that modern treatments
| allow us to lead fairly rich lives outside of Warcraft.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| I didn't find it bleak at all. Brought tears to my eyes though.
|
| I'm glad your condition is less severe, or better managed, than
| his. Keep living your best life!
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| "...allow us to lead fairly rich lives outside of Warcraft."
|
| I didn't get the impression from the article it was otherwise,
| just that this young man found what he was looking for inside a
| game and its community. The article felt positive, your comment
| feels defensive and judgemental.
| card_zero wrote:
| Well, his _parents_ supposed otherwise.
|
| > Robert delivers a eulogy for his son in which he speaks of
| the sorrow he and Trude had felt, believing that his short
| life had been one void of meaning, friendship, love and
| belonging.
|
| Edit: I wasn't trying to attack WoW, so here's the next line
| too:
|
| > But, he continues, over the past few days they have come to
| understand that this was not the case, and that he had
| experienced all these things.
| swores wrote:
| His parents supposed otherwise before they knew about his
| online stuff, you're making it sound like they still felt
| that way about his online time too.
| card_zero wrote:
| OK, WoW is great and rich and fulfilling, but also, DMD
| is not necessarily a prison sentence. I think that covers
| all the bases?
| thegginthesky wrote:
| This is not the point. The point is you misquoted the
| article without understanding the full context, and was
| corrected. The parents weren't judgmental of an online
| life, they were just unaware. Matter of fact, on the
| documentary from one of the replies, it felt that they
| were glad their son had good friends who really cared
| about him.
| card_zero wrote:
| Jeez. I _understood_ the full context, I just _wasn 't
| even talking about that,_ and neither was the grandparent
| comment, I think. The "online life: wholesome or not?"
| debate has crept into this comment chain by accident.
| Tor3 wrote:
| At that funeral where he held that speech, a group of Mats'
| online friends were present, having arrived earlier and met
| the father. The leader of Mats' group in WoW also talked at
| the funeral. What Robert (the father) actually said was
| that when Mats died they had that feeling and that worry.
| But shortly after that the emails started coming (after
| Robert had written about what had happened, on Mats' blog,
| he did so because he actually thought there _were_ people
| out there who cared.
|
| I recommend watching the documentary, which contains
| private video recordings of that eulogy.
| dang wrote:
| > probably for drama's sake
|
| I've changed the title above to be that of the documentary
| whose release has prompted the article. We use the same trick
| with book reviews--i.e. since book review titles are often
| sensationalized, we usually change the HN title to that of the
| book.
|
| p.s. Thanks for your comment! We don't get this kind of
| perspective often.
| ETH_start wrote:
| Didn't he die at age 25? Am I missing something here?
| djohnston wrote:
| You're missing the point of the story mate. Don't let the
| arithmetic distract you.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| His parents were essentially told 20 was his life expectancy.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I also had a wholesome and fulfilling world of warcraft
| experience growing up. I'm fully abled and am not into how people
| only seem to recognize the fullness of relationships in
| videogames when that relationship is happening to a person you
| have a prejudice about. I am glad that he had access to this and
| I am glad that people are recognizing this experiences' value. I
| would love to see more people recognize the possibility of having
| healthy relationships in online spaces. I also am worried this is
| going to be seen as another instance of people with disabilities
| (or disabled people if you please) being infantilized in a way
| that insults this young man, other people with disabilities, and
| also people who have good experiences growing up in online
| communities.
|
| Edit: I just kind of tried to summarize my feelings here - which
| is not that interesting. Overall this is great! I too had a
| similar experience and recognize a fellow traveler. Also, boy, am
| I worried "the discourse" will go in a disappointing direction
| around this but I hope it won't!
| gslin wrote:
| https://archive.ph/UNebH
| jmclnx wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241005124635/https://www.theti...
| EricE wrote:
| Whenever I see stories like this (and they are frequent,
| including two uncles in my family) I think about the people who
| are convinced they are being benevolent in advocating for the
| abortion babies like this out of "compassion".
| viraptor wrote:
| Stories like this are written about people successful in some
| way despite their circumstances. You don't get to read too
| often about many others who are not able to lead a good life
| and end up requiring more from the parents/carers than those
| are able to offer.
|
| You'll hear about the mostly happy family, not about the local
| woman whose marriage didn't survive the effort, with a kid
| completely dependent on her, who decided that murder-suicide
| for both of them is a better outcome than the struggle and
| possibility of being left with local community care.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| This story was terribly sad, and wonderfully hopeful. Online
| gaming communities, like WoW etc. (but maybe less like tik-tok)
| are true symmetric, give-and-take, communities with honest,
| beneficial, and sometime fraught human relationships; and whose
| social value is often dreadfully underestimated by some people
| who are unfamiliar with them.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _' Ibelin' Review: A Shattering Documentary About a Gamer's
| Life_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39073807 - Jan 2024
| (2 comments)
|
| _My disabled son - 'the nobleman, the philanderer, the
| detective'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104044 - Feb
| 2019 (69 comments)
|
| _Only when Mats was dead did his parents understand the value of
| his game_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19011328 - Jan
| 2019 (25 comments - note the top comment by someone who played
| with him)
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