Headlines

Foreign Service officer killed in Libya was influential figure in EVE ONLINE

Joseph Bernstein

Sean Smith, one of the four Americans killed last night at the consulate in Benghazi, was a long-time player of EVE ONLINE and a beloved member of that game's player community. A devastating eulogy on The_Mittani, as well as a testament to the power of online gaming social networks:

I’m clearly in shock as I write this as everything is buzzing around my head funnily and I feel kind of dead inside. I’m not sure if this is how I’m supposed to react to my friend being killed by a mob in a post-revolutionary Libya, but it’s pretty awful and Sean was a great guy and he was a goddamned master at this game we all play, even though a lot of people may not realize how significant an influence he had. It seems kind of trivial to praise a husband, father, and overall badass for his skills in an internet spaceship game but that's how most of us know him, so there you go.

UPDATE 2:20: Another eulogy, this time from Chris Peterson of the MIT Center for Civic Media and a friend of Smith's from Something Awful's discussion boards.


blog comments powered by Disqus