Late
last month, more than 10.4 million subscribers to a
YouTube channel received a
notification that usually brought good news: Technoblade, an expert Minecraft
player, had posted a new video.
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For fans, each
new video held the promise of Technoblade’s warm humor, whether he was winning
a tournament or going on an inexplicable quest to produce more potatoes than
anyone else in a Minecraft minigame.
But when fans
clicked play on this latest video, called “so long nerds”, it was immediately
obvious something was wrong. Instead of showing Minecraft gameplay, a man
identifying himself as Technoblade’s father appeared. He announced that his
son, whose first name was Alex, had died after being diagnosed with cancer.
The video has
been viewed more than 72.9 million times since it was published on June 30 as
the fans who used to look forward to Technoblade’s notifications try to process
the death of someone they have known only through a screen.
Social media is
flooded with fan art, tributes and links to grief resources. Memorials have
been erected within
Minecraft, including a digital book that had been signed by
more than 377,000 people.
The grief has
ricocheted offline, including into the home of Noelle, 13, and her sister
Ilana, 11, who had recently told their aunt to name her baby Technoblade.
In a video call
from their home near Toronto, Noelle said she learned that Alex had died on her
last day of school.
“I was just a
mess,” she said. “I was just sitting in my room crying. I did not know what to
do.”
Ilana, who
dressed up as Technoblade’s avatar, a pig in a crown, for Halloween, said, “I
don’t like to bring up the topic when I am just sitting with others.”
They both started
watching Alex’s videos in late 2020. They liked his lighthearted banter with
other Minecraft players and how he would monologue about the absurdity of
routine parts of life, like using, and losing, a box to carry soap to a
communal shower in college.
Alex spoke over
screen recordings of himself playing Minecraft, the immensely popular video
game developed by Mojang Studios in which players can create their own world
piece by piece and compete against others online. The game developer was later
bought by Microsoft.
The guided
gameplay had garnered such a following that the company made a tribute to
Technoblade on its launch page after he died. Mojang Studios said Technoblade
“became synonymous with a source of good” in an emailed statement.
Among
Technoblade’s most beloved game adventures was his whimsical quest to make more
potatoes than anyone else in Minecraft, a feat first documented in The Great
Potato War video, which had 35.8 million views.
Alex announced
that he had been diagnosed with cancer in an August 2021 video threaded with
jokes in which he also mentioned that he was 22 at the time. He did not specify
what type of cancer he had, but his followers assumed that he had sarcoma, a
rare form of cancer that is found in bone and soft tissues, because he created
a fundraiser for the Sarcoma Foundation of America on his YouTube page. He had
raised more than $500,000 for the organization before the “so long nerds” video
was published.
The foundation,
which created a special donation page for Technoblade, said that an estimated
17,000 people in the US will be diagnosed with sarcoma in 2022, and more than
7,200 people will die from the disease.
After Alex died,
his fans encouraged eligible people to donate blood to help cancer patients.
For some fans,
the mystery of Alex’s identity has added a confusing layer to the muddle of
grief.
Richard England,
a vicar at Crofton Parish on the south coast of Britain, said that his
teenagers were both devastated by Alex’s death and that they had a few
conversations about how not knowing Technoblade’s offline identity affected
their grieving.
“Through this new
online, offline world we have, many of them will feel like they will know
Technoblade and other members of those online communities better than they know
kids in their own school,” England, 47, said. “They will have spent just as
much time with them.”
In Canada, Noelle
and Ilana’s mother, Janice, admitted she was skeptical at first about the idea
that you could have fun watching videos of someone else playing video games.
But she said the girls had educated her about the Minecraft world and its
personalities, which she now appreciates.
Janice, 52, was
well suited to handle her children’s grief about Technoblade because she said
she previously worked with children in grief as a child life specialist, a role
that helps children and families cope with stress they experience because of
health problems, hospitalization and bereavement.
She said adults
tend to want to protect children from uncomfortable feelings, but that it was
important to give them space to express, or not express, how they were feeling
about Technoblade.
“If we help our
children through grief when they experience it,” she said, “then they will be
better able to cope with it when they are older and have other situations in
their lives that would cause them to be grieving.”
In the video call
with her daughters, Janice said her sister in Maryland had called after
Technoblade died, because her son was also a big fan. The boy had decided to
raise money for the sarcoma foundation, Janice said, prompting Ilana to turn
toward her mother and ask: “Is there a way I can help him with that?”
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