Two parents have discovered their son’s secret online life after death following hundreds of emails sent from strangers.
Mats Steen died at the age of just 25 after living with a debilitating muscular disease.
Due to his condition, Mats spent a lot of time confined to his apartment but his parents have uncovered a secret life he led online.
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Trude and Robert Steen found a personal blog that Mats ran along with his love of the video game World of Warcraft.
While his family knew that Mats would spend hours online, it wasn’t until after his death that they found out just how joyous it had been.
This realization came after the couple started receiving hundreds of emails from strangers who knew their son.
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The family from Oslo, Norway, discovered that Mats had lots of online friendship and had even found romance in the gaming community.
Known online by a different name - Ibelin Redmoore - Mats played the role as a heroic nobleman and monster slayer.
Speaking to the Independent, Robert said: “We thought he lived, for many reasons, a wasted life. And then we get these stories sharing just the opposite.
“The sad thing is that we were very strong on condemning the time they were spending in that world, and that condemnation was based on a five-minute analysis.
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“We did all the right things, and we were so present in our children's lives. With one exception – and that is the digital part of their lives.”
Mats double life will feature in a Netflix documentary called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.
Robert continued: “In Scandinavia, at least, we feel that we are becoming more and more fragmented. Everybody's looking after themselves and their own causes; we have become extremely individualistic, centered on our own things.
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“These collective solutions that we had some generations ago are gone, in a way. So if this could be one of the messages from this story – the kindness we can bring to a community, to the world – that would be great.
“Mats, in his condition, could help so many people without being able to move more than just his fingers. Imagine what the rest of us could do if we put our minds to it.”
The Netflix film, which delves into how Mats used the video game to become free from the restrictions of his disability, will be available to stream on Friday.