Shoot for the Stars

Oya everyone

So uh. Don’t really know how to start this post? It’s taken me a week and half to even work up the courage to start it, and it’s currently Monday evening. Literally cutting this as close as I can.

Um.

So some of you know that one of my favorite content creators, and honestly one of my favorite people in general, is a Youtuber known as Technoblade. He’s done all sort of crazy stuff like beat Minecraft using a steering wheel, won a months-long potato farming war in Skyblock, set a ton of records on the Hypixel server. He plays on the Dream SMP and his character is my absolute favorite.

Well. Last year he was diagnosed with cancer. And um. On the last day of June he passed away.

It hit me really hard. Like. Really hard. It probably seems kind of silly, maybe, that I was so attached to somebody who I’d never met, who had no idea I existed, who was just a guy on the internet. But. He was a good guy on the internet. He was . . . amazing.

I think the very first video I saw him in wasn’t even his, it was a Skeppy video I think? And I remember hearing his voice for the first time and just instantly being intrigued. He had such a unique sense of humor, perfect delivery, he made me laugh almost every sentence he said in that video. From there I started watching a few of his old Skywars videos and I was hooked.

He was my favorite. I watched almost all the videos he’d ever posted over the span of a few months. The only reason I started to actually get into the Dream SMP story was because he started having a role in it and I wanted to see what kind of story he would tell. I made it to almost every stream. Back in December of 2020, during the peak of his role in the DSMP, I would watch the streams while I made Christmas presents. Ari and I would watch them together, or I would watch them and give her a live commentary over Discord. It made me so happy.

I looked up to him. Techno was one of the coolest guys, and I wanted to be just like him. There was one specific video. An edgy teenager talks about the meaning of life. It’s one of his Skywars videos, from when he was 17 or 18. And in it he just talks about kind of his philosophy on life, and what he wanted to do. Everything he said was exactly the same as me, as what I thought, as what I wanted with my life. And I was so happy when I watched that video because he got it. He was like me. Somebody else had wild, impractical, stupid dreams about making stories and making people happy.

And for him it worked.

I remember running out of my room after watching it, and just gushing to my mom, babbling about it, because someone my age wanted the same things I did and worked hard and he succeeded, he did it, even though so many things went wrong when he was starting out. It is possible to write books and make videos and have it work. For me this was so comforting because no matter how hard I tried, when I tried to make videos, or write, or do anything that furthered my goals, it never worked out and I just got so discouraged. But Techno had the same problems and he didn’t give up and he attained his goals. I just. That made me so happy.

One of the reasons I even worked up the courage to start actually making Youtube videos was because of him. He didn’t have the best microphone or recording software, he didn’t have, like, a plan. He didn’t do fancy editing or anything like that. He just made videos with the intent to make people smile. So I wanted to do that too. And I hoped that one day I would get to talk to him. Even if we weren’t friends, just. Talk to him. I wanted to talk to him about stories, about writing. About stupid things.

I used to watch his videos when I would get panic attacks. Somehow a guy talking in a monotone voice about soap or about A Modest Proposal or the French language or any number of things while destroying people in Minecraft was just about the most calming thing. When I had wisdom tooth surgery and I was alone and in pain and feeling horribly sick, I’d watch Techno because it felt safe and nice and helped me ignore how much I felt like garbage because it made me happy. I watched his Story Mode series over the course of a few days while I was cleaning the house, working on projects, trying to finish math so I could graduate, and it helped me focus like nothing else could at that point.

I imitate people. It’s sort of my thing. I steal speech patterns, mannerisms, words. Collect them like a magpie and repeat them because it makes me happy. I didn’t realize how much of how I speak is from Techno until this last week, because every time it hit like a punch to the gut. He was my favorite. The little noises he made when he was focusing or when he was happy, I latched on to them. Every time it would make me smile.

I don’t. I don’t really know where I’m going with all this, or if any of it makes any sense at all. I think this is like, how I’m processing sort of? I don’t know how to grieve. I’ve never really learned. I tend to just ignore things. He was just. Such a huge part of my life the last couple years. I loved him. He was just a guy, doing a thing that made him happy, and making other people happy. I looked up to him. He influenced so many things about the way I create. It’s hard to know that. He’s gone. I wish I could have talked to him even once. I hope he knew just how big a difference he made to so many people.

Maybe soon I’ll be able to watch his videos again, and wear my shirt with his logo on it, and hear his voice without breaking down. I hope so. And I hope that I can do what he did. Shoot for the stars. Even though everything falls apart, keep trying, and create the thing I’m supposed to create. Because maybe it will make someone happy.

Thank you Technoblade.

~Ace