A Few Things About Heroes
And journalism, and [probably] being a fan
There’s a thing about being a journalist. One thing that at the same time it is exciting, is completely frightening.
It was not any Saturday night, it was the last Saturday of the year, just after dinner. My dad asked me to choose something on Netflix so we could watch together, and so I did.
When the movie was over and everybody had already gotten off the couch, I decided to continue browsing the platform, and there I found Bjergsen putting his headphones on in a thumbnail.
“What’s Bjergsen doing there?”, I thought as I pressed play.
When you talk about e-sports with me, it’s with my heart that you’re talking to. It is an adrenaline that takes over my body, as a newly discovered passion that boils in my blood.
I’ve never been able to feel adrenaline with the traditional sports in the same way that I feel with electronic sports. The energy is different. The way people act, live and deal has more to do with me and with my life story, it is where I identify myself, where I feel like I am a part of something. Where I can feel the emotion inside my bones, when I can twist and let the adrenaline take over me to the point of screaming at the top of my lungs.
I could not wait to watch that.
There are a few people in the world who, to my heart, are real heroes. Most of them don’t even know about my existence, and some of them probably never will. I don’t care if the world don’t see them as heroes, because to me, they truly are.
Ordinarily, a hero is someone who has the necessary attributes to overcome, in an exceptional way, a certain problem of epic dimension. Or, to me, someone whose attitudes and behaviors give us enough strength to learn how to deal with the difficulties and obstacles that permeate our lives.
I find it funny how we see someone, we consume whatever the content they create and share with us and some of these things they say or do or that simply happen to them and we come to know are so relatable we end up sticking to them, and when we last expect, they become part of our lives even without knowing we exist.
As a journalist, when something happens, I’m generally there.
You may not see me, but I am there.
By everything that I share, you may see me as sports reporter, a blogger, or even as a random kid with a camera, but I’ve covered crimes too, specially in 2018. I don’t talk much about that, but I’ve seen dead people. I called desperate parents and mothers to learn details about wakes and burials. I’ve seen and heard things you most likely will not even want to know, and thinking better, it’s not good for you to know.
I can’t count how many times editors or newsroom colleguees came to me and said “Ok, so this story, you’re the one who’s gonna tell”, it doesn’t matter how harsh it was, because it was my job to do so.
So I was watching this thing completely without thinking about the dates of the events which were being shown in the documentary, nor anything like that, but somehow I knew. In a sudden moment my organs retracted inside me and I felt cold from the inside out.
I saw a poster, and I saw that person coming up on the stage.
I couldn’t move. It was a match, a very happy one, but, I couldn’t move.
I saw the whole team sitting down and they seemed very happy but…
I knew what they were about to show.
And still, I couldn’t move.
I saw that guy getting up with the cell phone on his hand and moving away from the rest of the team and I knew what would happen next.
And I knew because… I was there.
“One of the most charismatic and known AD Carry in the world suffers family tragedy hours after being classified for the final”, I wrote as I messaged my friend (and colleguee) Miguel asking if the text I wrote was okay to be published.
I wasn’t there physically. I was at home in São Paulo, checking several tabs of hard news websites and several microblogs (Twitter profiles), when I found that 2 minutes after that coming out.
I was a newbie reporter in esports, back then I did not follow the international scenario as a whole, I only keeped up with one single player. And this one player, who should have been overjoyed by being classified, have just received terrible news.
As someone who knew so little about the international scenario I did not even feel qualified enough to write. I was not as confident as I am today because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I thought I had no experience enough.
For twenty minutes I pretended not to have watched so many of his videos and lives. For twenty minutes I blocked out any kind of feeling I could have or any way to imagine how he was feeling about all of that; because, once again, it was my job to do so.
So as I looked at the TV and saw that guy standing there with his cellphone, I was teleported directly to the day I was sitting in front of my computer punching the keyboard with my words trying with all my might not to imagine the scene I was seeing before my eyes now on “7 Days Out”.
It’s an abstract feeling, I do not know how to define it completely or just translate it to words so you can understand it for real. It is a deep sense of melancholy, not necessarily negative, although the whole situation is terrible. The way that he dealt with it was something that made him grow a lot more in admiration inside my heart.
I searched for everything that came out on the case. I monitored Twitter accounts, I logged into forums and stayed on top of the case for weeks.
And in the meantime I worked inside myself the way I handle it all, I wanted it to be as good as he was seeming to be, by the way he was dealing with it.
Miguel Kcanibu messaged me as soon as Steve tweeted so we could scream together about his decision. I‘ve already felt taken by the hype at times that I considered great for the scenario. I’ve been anxious wanting to watch many of them, but I don’t think any of them made me feel as keen as that one.
The tears flowed through my eyes and no one who came near me understood, because for those who see from outside it does not make sense.
And as I watched the documentary in the last Saturday of 2018, I felt all of that again.
I have no way to know how it was the inner process to deal with the whole situation, but by everything he showed in the public sphere and all the strenght he has shown us to have, it consequently passes on to the people that keep up with him.
All that focus, all that strenght, as much as I felt sorry, I absorbed that and found a way to apply that to my life, and sometimes even without realizing it I’ve dealt with the same philosophy of looking straight forward in cases that were a lot less complex and a lot less unhappy.
And for these and others I consider Doublelift a hero for me.
He has become, in my view, a kind of heroic symbol devoid of any kind of heroic expectation. A normal person trying to deal with everything in the best way possible, and passing that force and energy on to others without even knowing that he’s doing. So I see him as a true hero.
