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A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

theguardian.com

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Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#21

Post by gigatexal »

anbop wrote: post #5

I couldn’t find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.

Are you mad at the various random mutations of genes, of countless other stochastic processes that leave some people in his situation and others perfectly healthy? Then I share your frustration. I don’t know why anyone has to suffer or why I am privileged beyond someone else. What did I do to deserve my health? How did I win the evolution lottery? It’s just random chance I tell myself and to that end true randomness makes it a bit more fair, though it doesn’t feel right.

All I can do is support the good in the world, and help those with less than me.

This story is inspiring. And I’m grateful that it was shared.

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#23

Post by em-bee »

applecrazy wrote: post #3

This is beautiful. It's amazing how the good side of the Internet really shines through in these pieces. Things like the 7,000-word script and professionally-narrated audio story for the kid to listen to are examples of how people sometimes go out of their way to do an amazing thing for little to no recognition, and that's what makes it even more wonderful. I believe this is what Internet communities should aspire to…

according to the original post, the audio story should be shared with the elite dangerous community. i tried looking for it without luck. maybe it's not out yet. i look forward to listening to it.

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#24

Post by Theodores »

My sister plays this game called Bakery Story. I played for a while too and shared a lot of my sister's online friends. There were a few people who had exquisite bakeries, each a world of intricate design and my sister was in the top tier of that type of thing. My bakery was a bit more functional, I was there for sibling rivalry reasons rather than the global community.

We had not heard from one online friend for a while. But then we got a message from the daughter of the lady who had the neatest bakery in the American mid-West. As you can imagine it was doom and gloom, she had not made it out of the hospital.

Both my sister and myself were shocked by the news, however, we had been there for this lady, her life coming to a premature end in a hospital. Online her world was nothing like the sad reality of her real life. We envied her in this online world, she was in the handful of true greats, not just for the bakery but for the personality.

We did not have time for anything too fanciful, we heard our online friend was poorly and two weeks later we had the message from the daughter who was not yet teenage. Everyone in the game added a tombstone - a game prop - in memory, there was mourning going on, nobody knowing what to say for the weeks after that.

I can remember telling my workmates that I was in stunned silence due to an in-game incident, but you just don't expect online friends to die and you don't imagine that you could be stunned into silence by such an event.

We also had no further messages from the daughter so that was that, abrupt. But, if I think now of how ill she must have been and how we lavished praise on her for her creations without knowing that she was at death's door, I think we helped provide an escape. In our own special way we visited her online every day during those difficult times and talked about what mattered to her in her world.

Games can be special like that.

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#25

Post by alluro2 »

xaner4 wrote: post #7
mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read, there are many other examples. One example I read in a Wired magazine many years back, of a World of Warcraft mass funeral and mourning in some place.

Or like the one from Norway from a few monthes ago, where the parents did not know he had friends until WOW players meet up in his funeral and a lot of players around the world mourned him in the game https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773

Huh, that hits hard...

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#27

Post by AstralStorm »

barking wrote: post #20
anbop wrote: post #5

I couldn’t find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.

If you believe in evolution then there is no evil behind this lad's illnesses just very bad luck. At least he was lucky enough to have very loving people around him, something else that is a result of evolution.

We could make for better luck, but then we'd need many more actual researchers, including basic research. We could get this funded directly instead of best people getting siphoned off to pharma sector to develop next patent to cash out. Etc.

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#28

Post by AstralStorm »

MrGilbert wrote: post #6

Man... just woke up, checked HN as usual, and now I‘m up in tears. Communities like the ones from Elite Dangerous or EVE Online really tend to shine in such moments. I‘m... I don‘t know what else to write. Dang it. o7

Game communities focus, but IRL most people don't until it is way too late. Why is it so?

Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy

#30

Post by krilly »

vijayr02 wrote: post #18
anbop wrote: post #5

I couldn’t find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.

And that's fine; cold impersonal anger can be a very powerful motivator if channeled properly. My question is what are WE going to do about it? For me: 1/ support the Grauniad [0]: the gulf between the quality of their journalism and the rest of the market is gaping. I may not agree with all their views but the world is a better place with their investigative push 2/ let's leverage the HN community: one of the consta…

Really? These days the guardian is known for its poor fact checking and misleading headlines
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