Saw that picture of Jarod Nandin again the other day… you know, the South Park cosplay guy. Took me back a bit.
I remember seeing it ages ago. Me and my buddies were deep into WoW back then. We were just kids, really, staying up way too late, raiding, yelling into cheap mics. Someone shared that picture in our guild chat, the one from BlizzCon. We all thought it was hilarious and kinda awesome, you know? Takes guts to do that.
Man, those days…
Funny how online stuff felt back then. You’d meet people in games, spend hours with them, felt like you really knew ’em. But you didn’t, not really. Just voices and text. Some were cool, some were total jerks. Just like real life, I guess.
- Remember this one guy in our guild? Total legend in raids.
- Turned out he was like, 14, pretending to be older.
- Another one, super quiet, typed everything perfectly. Found out later she was dealing with some heavy stuff offline.
That cosplay Nandin did… it was bold. Putting yourself out there like that. Especially online, people can be brutal. He just owned it though. That’s what stuck with me, I think. He didn’t seem to care what the haters thought, just doing his thing, having fun. It was pure passion for the game and the show.
Then I heard he passed away from COVID. That hit weirdly hard, you know? Like, this internet legend, this funny cosplay guy… gone. Just like that. The pandemic was rough for everyone. Felt like the whole world just stopped turning for a while there. I had my own scares, family members getting sick, worried constantly. Seeing someone you sort of ‘knew’ from online, even just an image, succumb to it… it made it feel closer, somehow. Less like just numbers on the news and more like a real person, part of a community I was also part of, even loosely.
He wasn’t just ‘that cosplay guy’. He seemed like a decent dude from what people said after he passed. Part of the community. Someone who loved the game, loved the show, and wasn’t afraid to show it, no matter what anyone thought. Real guts. People sometimes forget there’s a real person behind the avatar or the cosplay.
Yeah. Seeing that picture just brings back a whole mix of stuff. Good memories of gaming, weird feelings about online life, and sadness about how things turned out for him and so many others during that crazy time. Just makes you think, you know?