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.
For fans, each new video held the promise of Technoblade’s warm humor, whether he won a tournament or embarked 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 clear that something was wrong. Instead of showing Minecraft gameplay, a man who identified himself as Technoblade’s father appeared. He announced that his son, whose first name was Alex, has died after cancer diagnosis.
The video has been viewed more than 72.9 million times since its release on June 30, while fans who used to look forward to Technoblade’s notifications try to process the death of someone they know only through a screen.
Social media is awash with fan art, tribute, and links to sources of grief. Memorials have been erected in Minecraft, including: a digital book signed by more than 377,000 people.
The grief has returned offline, including at the home of Noelle, 13, and her sister Ilana, 11, who 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 passed away on her last day of school.
“I was just a mess,” she said. “I just sat in my room crying. I didn’t know what to do.”
Ilana, who dressed up as Technoblade’s avatar, a pig in a crown for Halloween, said, “I don’t like bringing up the topic when I’m just sitting with others.”
They both started watching Alex’s videos in late 2020. They loved his light-hearted banter with other Minecraft players and how he monologue about the absurdity of routine parts of life, such as using and losing, a box to carry soap in to a communal shower at the university.
Dealing with grief and loss
Living with the loss of a loved one is a universal experience. But the ways in which we experience and deal with the pain can be vastly different.
Alex talked about screenshots of himself playing Minecraft, the hugely popular video game Developed by Mojang Studios, players can individually create their own world and compete against others online. The game developer was later bought by Microsoft.
The guided gameplay had garnered such a following that the company paid tribute to Technoblade on the launch page after he passed away. Mojang Studios said Technoblade “became synonymous with a source of good” in an emailed statement.
One of Technoblade’s most beloved gaming 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.
In the video, Alex makes several references to Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” as he tries to overthrow the then best potato producer, a player who goes by the nickname im_a_squid_kid. After Technoblade sees that his competition has created a rendering of the Mona Lisa in his Minecraft lair, he declares that im_a_squid_kid is not just “a potato madman, but a potato supervillain”.
Shield an offline identity
In Alex’s videos, he talked about going to college (and dropping out to play Minecraft full time) and made occasional references to his family, but there was a clear line between Alex, the son and brother, and Technoblade. His family has tried to maintain that privacy since his death and refused to be interviewed.
Alex announced that he was diagnosed with cancer within a year August 2021 video full of jokes where he also mentioned that he was 22 at the time. He didn’t specify what type of cancer he had, but his followers assumed he had sarcoma, a rare cancer found in bones and soft tissues, because he created a fundraiser for the Sarcoma Foundation of America on his YouTube. . page. He had raised over $500,000 for the organization before the “So Tall Nerds” video was published.
The foundation, which created a special donation page for Technoblade, said that by 2022, an estimated 17,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with sarcoma 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.
Riley, a 21-year-old in Connecticut, routinely donates blood in honor of a friend who died of sarcoma, and she made her most recent donation in honor of Technoblade. She said his death was made all the more difficult because of her previous loss. “I cried like a baby for a few hours,” she said. (Riley spoke on the condition that her last name would not be used as she has faced online harassment.)
She’s been playing Minecraft for about 10 years, but she didn’t discover Technoblade until the early days of the pandemic when she was working grueling shifts in a supermarket. “There wasn’t much joy in my life as an essential worker,” she said.
She liked Technoblade’s humor and introduced his videos to some of her colleagues, who recalled his famous potato war at work. “One night we were stocking up on potatoes and we just started laughing,” she said.
Technoblade inspired Riley to broadcast videos under the name Notable_Crayon in which she plays or streams video games. It was a great way to relax, she said, but it also showed her why someone as popular as Technoblade would protect their offline identity.
Occasionally, people will find out Riley’s full name and send her “creepy” messages, she said. She also has a friend who was the victim of whack, false reports of pending crimes designed to lure armed police to the victim’s home. Her boyfriend was not injured but others are injured, with one man killed by the police and another die of a heart attack.
In the “So Long Nerds” video, Alex’s father read a letter his son wrote about eight hours before his death. In the letter, Alex acknowledged the ramifications of sharing personal information online and revealed that he and a sibling successfully convinced online fans that his first name was Dave by using the name in a 2016 video, which was later removed. .
Alex said the joke resulted in “thousands of creepy online dudes trying to get overly personal and saying, ‘Oh hey, Dave, how are you?'”
Navigating the Loss of an Online Friend
For some fans, the mystery of Alex’s identity has added a confusing layer to the muddle of grief.
Richard England, a pastor in Crofton Parish on Britain’s south coast, said his teens were both devastated by Alex’s death and had a few conversations about how not knowing Technoblade’s offline identity affected their grieving process.
“With this new online, offline world that we have, many of them will feel like they know Technoblade and other members of those online communities better than the kids in their own school,” said Mr England, 47. spent just as much time with them.”
In Canada, Noelle and Ilana’s mother, Janice, admitted that she was initially skeptical about the idea that you could have fun watching videos of someone else playing video games. But she said the girls taught her about the Minecraft world and its personalities, which she now appreciates.
Janice, 52, was well placed to address her children’s grief over Technoblade as she said she had previously worked with grieving children as a specialist in children’s lives, a role that helps children and families cope with stress that may arise. they experience as a result of health problems, hospitalization and deaths.
She said adults tend to protect children from uncomfortable feelings, but it was important to give them the space to express or not express how they feel about Technoblade.
“If we help our children through grief when they experience it,” she said, “they will be able to cope better when they are older and have other situations in their lives that make them grieve.”
In the video call with her daughters, Janice said her sister called in Maryland after Technoblade passed away 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 to her mother and ask, “Is there any way I can help him with that?”
