Some thoughts on TotalBiscuit's cancer

John Bain AKA TotalBiscuit

It's strange that YouTube, as impersonal as it is seems to be, creates what ends up feeling like an intimate relationship with the hosts whose channels I watch. I feel as if I am a part of a family and that these family members come over and hang out with me while I watch TV... only it's them on the TV.

That's what makes today's announcement so hard. John Bain, who is known to the PC video gaming world as reviewer and commentator, TotalBiscuit, developed cancer a while back and it took the wind out of his sails for a while, but he went into remission. Today, we learned that it's back and the form of cancer he has now has a 2-3 year life expectancy and is inoperable.


To say that this leaves me with a heavy heart is incalculably short of the mark. TB has been the voice I turned to for an honest (if often argumentative) opinion that I might not agree with, but I always benefitted from hearing. He's introduced me to many games I love and steered me away from many I'm just as glad to have avoided.

But I've already started speaking in the past tense, and that's wrong! He's alive and, other than the knowledge of his likely future, he's well. We all have a ticking clock and I don't think that knowing when it's (possibly) going to go off changes anything other than the urgency of making plans for the future.

Life is worth living whether we have two months or many decades ahead of us.

And so, I look forward to his next video, and the next... and someday perhaps I'll see the video I don't want to see, either one from a loved one or a pre-recorded one announcing his demise... but perhaps I'll be gone first. Perhaps he'll be an outlier and live longer than I will. Nothing is certain, eat dessert first.

Much thanks to TB for the WoW videos back in the day, through the Sega incident (I still think twice about Sega games as a result!) and to the current day! You're a good man, TB.