@gooni: Patrick retweeted the official post about his passing, he also interviewed TB for a Bombin' the A.M episode.

I also don't think your comment about what Austin said is very fair or accurate.

His passing is a big big loss for the section of gaming community and Youtube personality scene that I subscribe to. He had one of the most authoritative and commanding voices put to streaming format and used it marvelously in extensive videos about games in general, and it is going to be very sad not be able to hear this anymore. And his poise and strength in the face of overwhelming odds during his illness was inspiring and did much to give me solace in perspective of life in general. Rest in peace, Mr. Bain you will be very much missed but celebrated still.

RIP TB.

Totalbiscuit was one of the first youtubers I followed, back in the day. So many youtubers that I follow now got their start because of him. Just a terrible loss for the content creator community.

About his controversial past, all I'll say is that his involvement in the events of 4 years ago were, imo, slightly overblown. If you go back and look at his tweets around election time, you'll find that his sympathies clearly do not lie where his detractors say they lie. I encourage everyone who has doubts about his character to go back and read his initial tweet on the issue.

@gooni: I always wanted to see John and Jeff meet at some point. Big shame that they never managed to get Drew on as well, despite the promise.

@gooni: Vinny actually tweeted at Genna and wished her well.

@omgfather: nobody does what tb did , i dont know where i will go to find out if a pc game has decent fov options or not :( mabye pcgamer ?

I disagree and here is why.

Context is everything.

What Austin retweeted was somewhat offensive, not massively so but the timing and the way he chose to do it as well as his response to criticism speak volumes. A person who is an editor in chief of a site is meant to set the standard by which others are meant to look up to.

Austin often and frequently sets that moral standard.

What he chose to do was retweet somewhat offensive criticism on the same day as someone who had just died of cancer when that person could no longer respond and when that persons family was clearly and likely still is in mourning.

Whether you agree or disagree with the criticism laid at the door of John Bain is beside the point at all. It's whether it was appropriate to bring it up with the possibility his family might see that, there is a time and a place for everything and less than a day after his death was not it.

N.b. This will likely be my only post on this as I do not like witch hunts, the only reason I'm responding to this is because someone else chose to name Austin who is the games journalist I was referring to earlier.

@envane said:

Maybe, but PC Gamer are definitely more journalism focused, if that makes sense. Looking for someone more pro-consumer who puts out content for every major release and indie titles as well. Plus someone who posts updates on the news and their thoughts on it, like TB's "I will now talk about X for Y many minutes" series. I'm really struggling to find someone like TB. He was really unique, and you only truly appreciate that once he's gone.

I really enjoyed WoW Radio with TB back in the day. I might have to go back and listen when WoW Classic releases.

@evilmonkeyslayer:

What did Austin tweet?

He retweeted something, if you google it (or look through his twitter replies) you should be able to find it. I don't think it's appropriate to post it here as that's just asking for trouble.

The person who sent the original tweet made their account private, likely due to a lot of people going "wtf?!" and I think Austin un-retweeted them.

Honestly didn't see anything particularly wrong with what Austin said, critical but not cruel.

Maybe the original thread he was referencing was worse, I dunno, never saw it before it went private.

Austin's replies to another person where he explains why he liked those posts are still up.

Austin didn't un-retweet anything, or unlike anything The person made their profile private which removes the retweet from his feed. And the person made their acc private because of death threats and other harassment, lets keep that in mind

Also who notices likes enough to use them to go at somebody on twitter.

How do you find the time.

I wish I had something more profound to say. Unfortunately, the only thing that sticks is when he went on a rant about white privilege and cited not being able to Durham University as a reason why white privilege is bullshit. He was a contradictory twat who was pro consumer but moaned every time his expensive rig couldn't brute force a PC port to max settings.

Thousands will miss him. I think those going in hard after his death are out of line.

Precisely this. The public figures tweeting and retweeting some distasteful stuff is as you say out of line.

I strongly dislike pewdiepie both as a person and streamer, but if tomorrow he died I would at least be respectful before he's in the ground out of respect to his family. The behaviour by some people is destroying any moral ground they claim to stand on.

And now, I think I should walk away as I'm likely to go on a rant. This is why I said I the other post should have been my last on this.

Wasn't a huge follower of him on youtube, but he was a great force of good in the SC2 sphere. As a caster, tournament organizer and teamowner. Rest in peace man.

@halidyusein: Thank you for writing that. I'm feeling actually sick that people, both random commenters and prominent people I used to respect, who have chosen to use this moment to talk about how "problematic" and "toxic" TB was, when the evidence points in the opposite direction. The worst anyone can drudge up are years-old comments he's apologized for, and actions his fans took, not him. If we're going to judge people on the presence of toxic people in their fanbase, there aren't many people we can like.

Hell yeah, he made mistakes. But of course he did. He was an incredibly public figure, who built his career without outside guidance, and did so starting from a fairly young age. That's a bumpy road.

Rest in Peace, John. And to those of you who are so ideologically blinded that you can't recognize that this is not the time to drudge through the deceased's past, give your head a shake.

@samoopy: I didn't want to comment in this thread, but (a bit like TB) I couldn't keep myself from looking at what GB would say about his passing. I already said my piece on Reddit. But the more highlights I saw of people bringing stuff that's just false, I felt like I hard to write that.

All I have to say is maybe not all of our heroes are as chivalrous as we might want them to be. "Like TB" some might say, while not looking in the mirror themselves. Heavily flawed, but human at the core. I want to see the good in people, but sometimes it's hard. All these recent events in the world have brought something really ugly in people and they never might realize how deep they are in it.

Love you all!

Damn, young as hell.

R.I.P.

I resisted posting in this thread because I wanted it to stay as a place where those who were distraught could mourn. It seems this thread has developed further than that though so I thought it was important to say something. This is less aimed at those in this thread, and more towards lurkers reading it (as I doubt those actually doing this are visible in this thread):

It's important for those in mourning to have a space to leave their condolences but it's also important for those who were hurt because of him to be able to say so in peace. Neither side existing actually hurts the other so long as they aren't actively searching for each other and confronting them. If you, the person reading this, are one of the people actively searching for anything negative people are saying about TB: I want you to take a second and think about what you're doing. People should respect your grief for losing a person important to you. You should respect others who feel bittersweet relief because the cause of their abuse is gone. Don't go searching for them and definitely don't send them abuse. I've seen way too much of that this weekend (including myself, when I merely answered someone's question about why some people describe him as toxic - I wasn't even talking about my opinion and I got people searching through Twitter to harass me for it).

Again, this wasn't directed to anyone specifically in this thread, but this thread has got a lot of views so I find it likely some of those people are reading this - and I hope I can change the minds of just one person to stop searching for people to insult.

Now on to my complicated feelings (partly for clarity so you know my bias). I am sad that he's passed as I truly believe he had the best intentions at heart, however, I'm conflicted on his legacy because the truth is that his actions directly lead to the lives of people online (including myself) being worse. I don't resent him for it, but I understand those who do (especially those who were sent death threats). He was a role model for me a decade ago but ultimately his actions hurt me and I couldn't continue to follow him. My sister still loved his work though (she listens to every Co-Optional podcast for instance), so I am well aware of how much he improved over time. I respected him but I wished he was better at holding his temper and actually listening to people: even as late as Hellblade's and Battlefront 2's releases last year, he was making the same mistakes. It's just all so sad. If it wasn't for this damn cancer, I truly think he would have learned how to deal with the brand that he created and would have turned a mixed legacy into a completely positive one. It's sad to know that that's never going to happen now. I feel terrible for his family and friends, but especially Genna and his son: I hope they have the support they need.

@dixavd: what a great comment

@samoopy: Well said. Couldn't have been more disappointed in some responses to this. Lost respect for a few people I've been following for years. TB could certainly be an abrasive guy, but that was isolated almost entirely to twitter, something he has always admitted he had a problem with. In terms of his actual actions he has done far more for the gaming community then most gaming outlets.

to lighten things up a bit

As someone with cancer affecting their family and having people bring up drama about it, I hope TB's family isn't being harassed on social media and the like...

Sure opinions of video games can be important, but we are talking about a human life, and we are all human.

Rest in peace TB, I'll surely miss his content.

All this Drama. "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" seems to still work well in this day and age. I think it's fucking weak attacking people who cant defend them self's anymore.

To response to his death, TB's fans are teaming up with "games journalist" who have a known history of harassment, including one that's worked for a white supremacist website, and going after marginalized folks in the industry to try to get them fired.

I cannot think of a more fitting way to honor the man's work and life.

@baal_sagoth: There's nothing wrong at all about having a specific target group. It's a natural outcome when you are an opinion-maker.

My issue is that the vast majority of the coverage I've seen, by both media and "regular" people, portait him as a representation of the gaming world as a whole. The point I was trying to make is that he was a representative of a part of it. Of-course if you are a PC gamer that part could very well be 'the whole' in some cases, but if you're not it's different. It would be like saying Heavy Metal is representative of all the music there is, while it's actually just one part of it. It's just something that annoyes me, it's the same as insisting on attributing TB to 'video games' and not 'computer games'.

@jellycube: Even in death, TB is being blamed on things outside of his control.

I didn't blame it on him. I blamed it on his fans, and implied that their behavior was typical of the way he acted. But it is worth remembering that he claimed that you'd have to be a sociopath to think that his fans would ever harass someone.

Also, any attempt of "He acted with the bare minimum of decency towards a trans person once, which erases all the times he was extremely bigoted and transphobic" is really pathetic. So sorry that some people aren't happy with the scraps of "being treated like a human, sometimes". The fact that that's noteworthy just shows how awful games communities are.

Like, it was just last year that TB said that it was "ridiculous drama" that people were upset at spamming a man crossdressing meme every time a trans woman appeared on stream at GDQ, and removing those people from chat was "a mod power trip", and that the mods were "the worst thing about the event" - and not, you know, the folks harassing people. And the time he defended the pillars of eternity transphobic joke. Or the times he mocked people who use different pronouns. It's true he stood up for trans folks that one time. It's also true he supported vile transphobia a whole lot of times.. The second outweighs the first in my mind.

This is extremely well said.

Far too young- rest in peace.

@bonbonetti: Ah ok. That makes sense. I legitimately hadn't seen responses like that, or I didn't notice.

QFT.

If you get literally any fanbase big enough, there's going to be shitty people in them. That's just how internet communities work.

Was a fan of TB's back when he was still playing WoW on a regular basis. He gave GiantBomb and Ryan family some love in a nice video after Ryan after had passed away. He like Ryan will definitely be missed.

R.I.P.

Man, reading this thread and what some people I (used) to follow on twitter were saying is such a bummer. I get TB was really polarizing, but Jesus Christ there's a time and place.
There are people I greatly dislike, but I would still have the decency to keep my opinions to myself when the deceased wasn't even put to rest yet. This moment is not about you.
I hope his family gets to mourn in peace and don't get exposed to any of this.

I haven't really been keeping up with TB for the last year or so, but I used to love watching The Co-Optional Podcast. R.I.P.

R.I.P TB. Nobody deserves to die that young.

A damn shame. I've been watching his videos on and off for years (always appreciated his WTF is... videos) and I figured he was going to stick around for way longer than he did.

It's a tragedy he waited for a year and a half before going to the doctor with his symptoms, he could still be alive if he had went sooner. Let this be a lesson for all of us to go get checked ASAP when we notice stuff like that.

33 is just too young. RIP John.

@dixavd: Very well said, duder.

@dixavd These are thoughtful and elegant words.

Can we lock this down? I think i am done with reading all the hate posts, at this point. Did the dude talk about some bad stuff, sure? might he have hurt certain people in the process sure? My point is people say dumb shit sometimes. Hey Even Jan sayed something dumb on twitter once doesn't make him less cool or a bigot? Can we just move on? Circle Jerking about who said what isn't helping anyone.

@karrius: usually allegations like these should come with some source
I guess it's just listen and believe huh?

besides why should he be responsible for things some of his fans do?

I was really struck when I heard this. TB was definitely the reason I found Giant Bomb and the reason I played a whole host of games I otherwise wouldn't have heard of. Even recommended the chair I'm sitting in right now.

Much too soon. The Co-Optional podcast hosted by Genna yesterday was really lovely.

I LOVE TOTAL BISCUIT !!

Edit: Also May 29th is Biscuit Day https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/biscuit-day/

@saytay: Sadly that's good enough for a lot of people in this thread.

Lots of people coming out of the woodwork with an axe to grind now that he isn't here to correct the record or defend himself. Truly pathetic.

@johntunoku: If the thread even started to veer down that path it would just get locked and deleted. It's already heavily moderated to keep that from happening.