chat

I'm obviously self-aware of the aesthetics of this post and the rancid vibes about making content about a corpse. Believe me, I have no shortage of other things I'd like to talk about on this account, but I also feel morally obligated to talk about them now because I knew them, and I do think that there's a lesson to be taken here about their life and their death that's relevant to me and probably relevant to other people that grew up on the internet.

I was probably within the top 20 people that knew them, maybe even the top 10, and even then, I really didn't know them at all. I was not their friend; I tried many times to be their friend over the years and failed every time. I invited them to visit the community I'm building here in St. Pete, and they considered it briefly before making up some excuse about how the Tampa airport was sketchy. Those were the last things we said to each other. Meeting with them was like pulling teeth; they said they were too busy watching vtubers alone in their room to hang out, even though I was specifically in the area to meet up with them. Beyond this meeting and some DMs before and after, this was the extent to which I personally knew them.

So again, I wasn't their friend; I'm not reflecting on this from the perspective of their friend. I don't know if they had any friends—it doesn't seem like they did. They told them many times the importance of having people in your life that love and understand you, and many times they brushed that off. I don't think they ever let anyone in; I don't think they ever let themself let anyone in, and the few people they did seem to try to let in had such deeply traumatic and troubling experiences with them that I don't think they knew how to let people in.

They told me during my interview with them that they were mute in high school, that they basically didn't know how to talk, didn't talk to anybody when they started posting online, which again was when they were a teenager with a developing brain. They found a way of feeling understood and finding a market for the way in which they were deeply strange—the way in which they were strange seemed to find an audience, and that strange pattern of behavior was encouraged both financially and socially. It made them fairly rich; it made them fairly well respected, but through it all, they were who they always were: a deeply strange and uncomfortable person with not a lot of self-awareness.

I also know that they were on pharmaceutical medication, that they were on a very high dose of SSRIs, and that they did an insane amount of drugs. I don't even know how you do $30,000 worth of cocaine in a year, but those drugs are ultimately what killed them. I believed they must have some sort of schizo-adjacent brain back in 2021. I don't really care to diagnose them, although I am pretty sure they had autism or schizophrenia or one of those things. I encouraged them to make an effort to correct their health, avoid stimulants and psychedelics, and do some things that work for me, like fasting.

I also considered them to be an exceptionally isolated and atomized individual and kind of the archetypal example of someone so surrounded in copes that they view their own atomization as a good thing. This was especially prevalent near the end of their life, where they started identifying as the Joker from Batman, who was this trolling genius three steps ahead of everybody who had a master plan that nobody else knew of. Of course, this grandmaster plan manifested in them overdosing while watching Hololive alone in their room, dying as they lived.

When the controversy around them began, they told me that their father had started smoking again after a long time of having quit because the dad was so stressed about seeing them embroiled in random drama—if only because of their family being Mexican immigrants. I do allow myself to feel sad about this. If you follow me and the themes I explore on my other alt, it's not a great mystery why I decided to go forward with this post.

I don't think they deserve to be dead; that's my hot take for today—my hot take about a corpse.

I love being an internet character; maybe this post is a bad idea. I'm making it in the emotional state of simultaneously thinking I really do not need to talk about this and thinking I really should talk about it while it's fresh. I'm just taking some notes and trying to make sense of it—that's really all I can do.

Maybe there are no lessons to be learned; maybe they were just a deeply troubled individual that ultimately got what they deserved. However, I also think there are forces in play that we really should be aware of when talking about this. I do really feel right now, at least, like the internet killed them. It gave an awkward teenage enbie a false sense of being understood and a false sense of purpose. It gave them opportunities and social and financial power, all of which they abused. At some point, it encouraged them to lean into their eccentricities until the person they were offline and the person they were online were no longer distinguishable. It hollowed out their mind to the point where their video responding to the allegations about them was them complaining that it didn't get enough views on YouTube. It gave them an endless stream of stimulation that allowed them to stay atomized and alone and content in their room, and then it provided them pathways to drugs, which ultimately killed them.

I can hear myself rattle off the same platitudes that I've been rattling off on the Discord for years: Have homies, have love; don't spend 14 hours a day on the computer; don't think you're too good to know people; don't think you're too good to love people; don't become too warped into the character you play online.

I don't think they knew how to be a real person; I don't think they ever had to learn.

The only thing I really do want to say is, over the last few years, I've started talking to more and more people who are strange in some way—autistic or schizophrenic or something—and when I talk to them and when I listen to them, what really stands out is how grateful they are that somebody is taking the time to understand them beyond just viewing them as a nuisance. And I don't think being a nuisance on the internet warrants a death sentence, and I don't think that's a good enough reason to celebrate someone's death. I don't know how they would have wanted to have been remembered; they were a deeply nihilistic person and didn't believe in anything besides themselves. It's ultimately up to you as to what you think the lesson here is, if there's any lesson at all, and because I don't have a conclusion, I also don't know how to end this post so uhhh I’m so irony pilled I want to fuck the IKEA shark.