The Other Body

"When he had been gaming a lot, we could see it clearly. He became tired, lost his appetite, and wasn't as bubbly and happy as he used to be" (7:51). With this worried reflection, the protagonist Mats Steen's father narrates one of the film's early scenes. The camera shows Mats alone in a dark room, the only light coming from his computer screen. He sits motionless in his wheelchair, eyes fixed on a racing game, the rapid tapping of his keyboard amplified. His mother stands quietly in the doorway, watching him for several long, tense seconds before stepping in. She gently urges him to spend more time outside, but Mats does not turn his head. The scene then cuts to his sister Mia explaining that she tried many times to convince him to join family trips or meet relatives, but Mats always pulled back into the digital world. To his family, it looked as if their son was always slipping away, not living, only gaming.

The above clip is from Benjamin Ree's documentary, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which was launched in 2024. But what the Steen family never realized was that Mats was not disappearing. Instead, he was becoming someone. In the online world of World of Warcraft, a red-haired private detective named Ibelin Redmoore comes to life as a tall, confident figure whose strength, mobility, and role in advising others express everything Mats could not physically do. For a Norwegian youth profoundly limited by terminal muscular dystrophy and confined to a wheelchair, Ibelin became a self-fulfilled, connected version of life that the physical world could not offer. After Mats passed away, his parents assumed he had spent most of his short life in front of a screen, "wasted screen time," as another early scene suggests, where Mats sits quietly at his computer while family life moves on without him (7:03).

But when director Benjamin Ree and Mats's online friends reached out with hundreds of messages, they revealed an entirely different Mats, one built not on isolation but on leadership, empathy, and care. This revelation becomes the foundation of Ree's central question: When the self seen in the physical world contradicts the self known and loved in a digital one, which version of reality do we trust? Ree overturns the idea that Mats's online years were wasted by using game footage, chat logs, and interviews to show a digital world shaped by Mats's emotional labor. The film's emotional turning point arrives when these two versions of Mats- his parents' quiet, isolated son and his guildmates' fearless hero-collide. To his guildmates, Mats was the one leading raids, staying up late to comfort friends, and eventually being honored with an in-game funeral after his death (1:38:45). One guildmate recalls, "He listened when I broke down. He stayed up with me when I was scared" (1:30:00). By juxtaposing these perspectives, Ree transforms both the parents' and the audience's understanding of Mats, from a boy who seemed lost in games to someone whose quiet presence online became a source of care, leadership, and profound impact. And so the film poses its central question: to what extent can a digital existence build and sustain a genuine emotional bond with others?

Malcolm Gladwell, in his essay "Small Change", explores that social media creates "weak-tie connections" that are designed for loose, "low-risk" online relationships. For example, Facebook spreads people's information quickly, but cannot generate the "strong-tie" loyalty, "high-risk activism, sacrifice or hierarchical" discipline that defined movements like the Civil Rights Movement (6). In Gladwell's view, social media are good for people because "you can get someone you don't really know to do something on your behalf by not asking too much of them," a strategy that avoids "financial or personal risk" and therefore renders these online strangers structurally incapable of supporting the sacrifice and coordination required for real action (8). In this way, Gladwell allows readers to see that online networks lack "centralized authority, unchecked autonomy of rival groups", clear roles, and accountability, which makes them hard to organize and easy to fracture when facing "outside manipulation and internal strife" (11). From this perspective, Mats's early portrayal from his parents' standpoint seems to confirm Gladwell's logic. In one of the opening scenes, Ree shows Mats quietly and aimlessly maneuvering his wheelchair far away from the center of the family celebration, physically present but emotionally distant (9:16). Mats spent nearly 20,000 hours in the gaming world during the last decade of his life, seemingly drifting away from real life engagement, which confirms that online ties look "low-risk", low-commitment, and escapist engagement (10). Even his father passively interprets online life as one of the few ways his son could get some happiness at the beginning of the film, though it pulls him further away from the physical world. This first impression further reinforced Gladwell's skepticism: online ties look shallow, undemanding, and disconnected from real life through the lens of documentary.

When Mats' parents log in to his email using the password he left after his death (26:54), they received hundreds of emails rushed from his guildmates. These emails are not about the game but show the care towards Mats' parents, including expressions of gratitude to Mats about how much impact he brings to them, and comfort to the grieving family. However, Ree's film unveils an even more intimate layer of truth by incorporating a huge amount of Mats's personal blog. His blog reveals that Mats was not merely living a digital life but also he was actively, and with great deliberation, authoring his online life. He becomes both the subject and the narrator of his own existence, systematically observing, recording, and analyzing his growth, relationships, and emotional experiences within the virtual world. What he wrote was more than a gaming diary. This blog offers a private space for Mats himself where he could explore who he was and who he wanted to become. In short, Mat's blog demonstrates the perception that he had not escaped from reality actually. Instead, he expanded it in the online platform, taking the virtual world as the second home he valued. Ree intentionally captures a repetitive shot in which Mats's father's face flickers in reflection on the computer screen as he watches footage that Mats and Ree secretly recorded before his death (16:54). The image becomes more than a moment of grief. It becomes a powerful visual metaphor for digital embodiment, hinting that the screen now holds the version of Mats that is capable of moving without restraint, acting, and connecting more freely than his physical body ever allowed. Gladwell's framework, which argues that network relationships are structurally weak, is therefore inapplicable here because it merely views digital interaction as an exchange of information. In contrast to Gladwell's view, the virtual world was not an escape for Mats but a digital extension of his physical body, one that gave him the agency his real body couldn't. Thus, the film shifts the conversation from the strength of ties to the nature of presence: which self is more "real"? The community that knew and loved Ibelin provides the answer.

If Mats's story shows how online life can deepen a person's presence, Jia Tolentino describes a very different digital landscape: one where the self becomes superficial, more performative, and increasingly shaped by audience expectations. Jia Tolentino's essay, "The I in the Internet", traces how the web's early promise of freedom turned into a system where "the Internet has gone from being a utopia to a place full of angry people obsessed with their own representation" (3). She describes how "Web 2.0" platforms built "nightmarish metaphors of mirrors, echoes, and panopticons" that turned straightforward self-expression into a well-curated online persona (14). Specifically, "mirrors" reflect users themselves through manufactured images of perfection. "Echoes" and "panopticons" mean users refine their online personas to cater to followers' reactions, until individuality dissolves into followers' expectations, someone that creators did not know well in reality (14). Together, these structures turn the Internet into a stage where authenticity must be rehearsed, and flaws and vulnerabilities are carefully hidden. Tolentino points out that back in the day, in 2012, people shared opinions and presented themselves in everyday internet. But now, "there is no backstage area where we can relax", and the "highly functional person" must "promise everything to an indefinitely increasing audience at all times" (16). What begins as self-presentation slips into self-brainwashing: people curate versions of themselves so persistently that they start believing the performance, blurring the line between authenticity and performance. Consequently, this manufactured online persona brings economic benefits.

In contrast, Ree's film offers a counter image to the version of online personhood that Tolentino critiques. The digital identity of Ibelin was shaped within an earlier, pre-algorithmic Internet culture, one that existed before social media turned visibility into a source of revenue. Mats's years of gaming, which began around 2007 when he was 18, occurred before the Internet became, as Tolentino later describes, "a three-ring circus of happiness and success" (22). Instead of chasing followers' attention, Mats's online life is defined by the slow work of showing up for other people: Late at night in Elwynn Forest in the game, Xenia tells Ibelin that her autistic son, Mikkel, struggles to say "I love you" and interact with others in real life, even to her (52:44). Instead of giving generic comfort, Ibelin shows her an in-game emote, which is a simple digital hug. Then, she tries it with her son. The film then cuts to their avatars standing by the riverside as Xenia clicks the command. On-screen, her character leans forward to embrace Mikkel's. Ree immediately shifts the camera into Xenia's home. Off-screen, Xenia and Mikkle sat back-to-back at the computer, playing games and enjoying their first intimate moment together, even if it was virtual (53:51). It was a significant step forward for Mikkle. Then, during the interview, Xenia explains that this small digital gesture allowed her son to express feelings he had never been able to share physically: after that moment, he typed "I love you." This is not a performance for followers, but an act of emotional delivery, where Mats uses the tools of a virtual world to repair a real parent-child bond.

Furthermore, Mikkel, terrified of certain game quests because of the monstrous graphics, avoids them for weeks. During one late-night session, Ibelin walks beside him through a dark forest and says, "Sometimes you have to jump in, no matter how scary it might seem"(54:36). It sounds like in-game advice, but the film soon reveals its real impact: Xenia explains that her son began taking small real-world risks, first trying talking to others, then stepping outside regularly, and eventually walking to school every day. Ree juxtaposes these scenes: Mikkel's avatar leaping into a lake in Azeroth, then Mikkel in real life opening the door to leave the house. Mats's words are gentle pushes that reshape someone's life beyond the screen. Yet the film also shows a limit to this digital care: it is never reciprocal. Mats gives endlessly, but he never allows anyone to give back. When Xenia notices his long disappearance and gently asks if his "vacation" was actually a hospital stay, he fires off ten rapid "NOs" (1:13:37). The timing is almost funny, but it hides real fear. He refuses every chance she gives him to share the truth with the guild. He believes that revealing his disability will turn him into someone to be pitied, not someone to be relied on. They never see that version of him, because he never lets them. And because of this, the avatar of the red-haired detective Ibelin would lose its meaning; the strong, capable man who advises others cannot suddenly become the one who needs help. Mats would not allow it to happen. Mats reshapes the lives of others, but no one can touch the part of his life that is hurting most. The tragedy is that Mats protects his guildmates from the truth, not because their connection is weak, but because it is strong. Having spent his entire life being pitied in the physical world, he cannot bear the possibility of carrying that same pity into the one place where he is finally seen as capable. To him, revealing his disability would not deepen the relationship-it would destroy the identity he had carefully built online. Regardless of his identity, he has always been actively encouraging those who need him. These stories between Mats and his guildmates turn the screen from Tolentino's "mirror" of self-curation into a bridge for genuine emotional communication. And because Mats repeatedly chooses care over performance, his digital world grows through consistency, effort, and devotion rather than the pursuit of being seen. In this sense, intimacy online is not defined by physical distance but by how far care can travel. In Mats's case, it travels far, just not far enough to reach the part of him he keeps off-screen.

Ree's The Remarkable Life of Ibelin reframes digital personhood by showing that online life can realize agency that the physical world could not and offer connection beyond the limits of "weak ties" or performed identities (Gladwell 7). The film argues that a self becomes real through its verifiable impact on others, and that this measurable effect becomes the new standard for recognizing genuine human connection in today's increasingly digital and artificially intelligent world. Yet this standard becomes harder to apply when the "other" on the screen is no longer guaranteed to be human beings. In "The Seductive and Dangerous Illusion That AI Can Understand and Empathise With Our Emotions", Christopher Roosen warns that artificial intelligence can only simulate human emotion, not truly feel it. This warning becomes sharper when we consider Al companionship: these systems can imitate empathy so convincingly that users may no longer notice the difference between simulation and feeling. Al companion systems can offer instant empathetic responses and attention without limits, which no human being could do perfectly. But this perfection is the problem: it creates a form of connection in which nothing is truly shared or reciprocated. The "other" responds, but it never changes itself. Roosen calls this kind of responsiveness a "statistical parrot," a system that imitates emotional patterns without actually grasping or experiencing them (4). This directly challenges the standard that Ree's film establishes, that real connection depends on two selves capable of impacting and altering each other over time. The AI can mimic reciprocity, but it cannot participate in it. Then, the danger is that people may begin to treat this one-sided simulation as genuine companionship.

And this contrast returns us to the essay's opening question: to what extent can a digital existence build and sustain a genuine emotional bond? Ree suggests the answer depends entirely on who stands on the other side of the screen. Digital worlds can sustain real bonds, but only when the "other" is a human being capable of vulnerability, mutual influence, and change. What makes Mats meaningful is not his Avatar form as Ibelin but the trust built through shared emotional risk and the identity he shaped through his impact on others. But once the "other" becomes an unchanging algorithm, the conditions for real connection collapse. Al indeed imitates empathy, but it cannot be altered, surprised, or wounded by the relationship, the qualities that made Mats and his guildmates truly see one another. All in all, If Ree's documentary asked how we can be truly seen online, the new age of artificial intelligence will propose a new question to us: In a world where algorithms are increasingly designed to simulate empathy and companionship, how do we preserve the capacity to recognize, and choose the demanding, unpredictable, and ultimately irreplaceable value of a human connection?

Works Cited