It really shook me. I started watching his videos and streams when I was 14. Gaming content as we know it was just getting started, and I’m pretty sure he started streaming on justin.tv before it became twitch. It felt like I was part of some new and exciting world, right on the cutting edge.

8 years later, I was 22 and he was dead at 34. There had been a couple kids in my grade that died growing up, but I had never truly been confronted by human mortality and how unfair it could be. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say I listened to him talk every day for over a third of my life. I knew it was coming eventually, but when I saw the news I was truly devastated.

Parasocial relationships are crazy. I was so young (and therefore broke) that I never got to meet him, but his death hit me harder than not only that of a couple pets, but also my great grandmother. In a way it makes sense, I literally “spent more time” with him than almost anyone else in the world. That may still be true even today. I don’t regret a minute.