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    dothedewJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 3:50pm

    30 videos in 30 days after the surprise death of a son. I guess everyone mourns in their own way.

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      hotlinekinjadothedew
      11/10/15 3:53pm

      go on, finish the snarky comment you’re dying to make about the family of a dead child.

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      Hexpiedothedew
      11/10/15 3:53pm

      papa needs a new pair of shoes, Brown Rice and Fried Falafel gunna have to be more precocious.

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    tornadoslackssJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 3:53pm

    “The family has continued producing videos for their YouTube reality-lite series since Caleb’s death,...”

    I know that people grieve in different ways but this is Kardashian level profit seeking. I wonder what his siblings will say about it in later years.

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      Matttornadoslackss
      11/10/15 3:57pm

      I doubt they're even getting paid a 10th of what the third back up director's PA is making on the set of the Kardashians.

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      secretagentmanMatt
      11/10/15 4:02pm

      Crews on shows like Kardashians make crap money.

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    BogartCatJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 4:26pm

    My feline avatar had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He was young, it was sudden, and he only survived because when his back legs suddenly went out from under him and seemed paralyzed, I just happened to be looking right at him and just happened to know that he had almost surely thrown a saddle thrombus, which is a clot that blocks the point where the big artery splits three ways, one to each leg and one to the tail.

    Fortunately, my boyfriend was also home, and I told him to RUN for the car as fast as possible while I got Munro into the carrier and out the front door, and fortunately there was a 24 hour emergency vet only a few minutes away, and fortunately the vet obeyed when I told him “fuck NO you can’t put him down. Just get him on blood thinners and get him stabilized, and we’ll take him somewhere else in the morning.”

    The second vet wanted to put him down too. But then we found a cardiologist. He lived two and a half more years, without suffering beyond having to swallow pills and endure having his vitals checked twice a day, except for complications that gave him a few bad days a few times.

    After one of those, I brought him home so limp and exhausted that he fell asleep with his head in the water dish. When I took him in for followup a week later, he launched himself like a furry grey bullet at the vet when he came in. He knew who had made him feel better! The vet said he’d never seen a cat bounce back so fast from being down so far.

    “Yeah, he’s a tough little bastard, which is why we’ve always said he’s the Humphrey Bogart of cats.”

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      graphemeistBogartCat
      11/10/15 8:02pm

      Thank you so much for this. Our cat person died suddenly last week apropos of nothing. It’s primarily why I was reading the post about the kid, since I read that this is not at all uncommon with cats and likely why our sweet little dude died. We were asleep, and wouldn’t have known what to do anyway, but it’s nice to have a clue now—and to know we didn’t cause it.

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      allensmitheeBogartCat
      11/10/15 8:46pm

      nobody wants to read five paragraphs about your cat.

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    HoldenCashJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 4:17pm

    This is so messed up...their producers Maker Studios is owned by Disney.

    They still have a link to the dead kid’s Minecraft on their Youtub about page: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bratayley…

    They post 30 videos but have not taken that down it’s just crazy...I really can’t imagine continuing to do videos like this if one of my family died.

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      Zsa Zsa GaborgHoldenCash
      11/10/15 4:24pm

      Yeah, what kind of garbage parents don’t remember to remove their recently-deceased kids’ minecraft page?! Someone call CPS!

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      HoldenCashZsa Zsa Gaborg
      11/10/15 9:10pm

      They have posted 30 videos so they have been active.

      It’s weird that they haven’t updated their info and you know this. It’s says “watch him play live” like he’s still alive streaming...

      Either they don’t care, which is weird, or they haven’t updated their info while posting 30 videos, which is also weird

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    DolemiteJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 3:49pm

    Disclaimer at the start of next season: “The role of Baked Potato will now be played by Jaden Smith”.

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      PfffffbbbbytttttdjshdgDolemite
      11/10/15 4:06pm

      Well, Lars von Trier did play Pie in “Too Many Cooks”.....

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      derpradameinhofDolemite
      11/10/15 9:49pm

      And in the mother’s Valium-addled voice: “With sponsorship and other promotional consideration by Eli Lilly.”

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    doubledumbassJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 5:55pm

    Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) is treatable, if warning signs are observed. Most sudden teen deaths are often attributed to the disease but there are treatment options. It is often misdiagnosed as “athletic heart” or simply muscular pain.

    My brother was diagnosed when he was in the 9th grade, had an ICD implanted in 11th grade and eventually had life saving surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota before he was 20. Prior to the surgery his heart was functioning at 35% effeciency. The surgery was able to fix his heart and now he lives a normal life.

    I don't know anything about this family, I feel for them and can't quite understand the addiction to living ones life on YouTube.

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      dkfree2doubledumbass
      11/11/15 11:40am

      Great post. I have HCM - started showing signs in my 40s, diagnosed in 2013, surgery one year ago next week. Mayo, Cleveland Clinic and Stanford are the three best places to go for HCM surgery (mine was at Stanford by a Mayo-trained badass who is my hero).

      My kids get checked periodically (easy: EKG and echo) and I have my own portable AED that I bring to their sporting events (more likely to save a parent than a kid but we are ready).

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      doubledumbassdkfree2
      11/12/15 12:29am

      That’s awesome. The surgeon at Mayo in Rochester, Dr. Schaff, may be the badass in question. He’s developed new procedures for HCM surgery, and has the demeanor of a fighter pilot. I was in awe of him as he described how he was going to perform the surgery with such precision and unwavering confidence.

      I was checked when I was out there, but at 32 the only thing I have is a mitral valve prolapse that I never grew out of. When my wife was pregnant, my kids were checked in utero and saw pediatric cardiologists to be sure. I’m glad to hear that your kids get checked, it’s sad that a lot of these early deaths are HCM related.

      In Italy, it is mandatory for all young athletes to get cardiac screenings, in which HCM is one of the things they look for. There’s been a lot of research on their work over there. Very interesting stuff.

      http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

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    graphemeistJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 8:15pm

    I know lots of folks will be jumping on this family for keeping on keeping on with their channel, but really, what are they supposed to do? Curl up and die to accommodate total strangers on the internet and their needs?

    I think continuing to do what is probably a fun family project with a heavy heart is likely the healthy thing for them to do. Who hasn’t buried themselves in an activity to avoid thinking about things they’d rather not? This is not a contingency most people plan for (though, given the odds of having this happen mentioned in the article, maybe we should).

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      derpradameinhofgraphemeist
      11/10/15 9:59pm

      As opposed to exploiting their surviving children’s grief to rake in sponsorship dollars? I’m not a therapist, but I ascertain the unexpected, sudden death of a brother and son is incredibly traumatic for a family. Maybe it’s time for mom and dad to go back to their desk jobs, or pivot this Bratayley thing into something useful, like a real business. Maybe then, they wouldn’t need to rely on exposure while their children are dealing with the death of their brother.

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      graphemeistderpradameinhof
      11/11/15 12:01am

      This is America, exploiting pretty much everything for sponsorship dollars is the actual national pastime. Why should these people abruptly stop doing something that is working for them as a family? Maybe their therapist told them to keep it up if its working. Maybe this is paying the bills after everyone was laid off? Maybe they’re money grubbing monsters. Maybe they’re just doing the best they can in a really shitty situation.

      Some people assume everyone reacts just like they would.
      Maybe they’re wrong.

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    factorfictionJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 3:52pm

    Not sure if I should be upset by what seems to be an absence of grieving here. Instead, I’ll commit to understanding that I have no idea what the death of a child feels like (nor do I ever want to know that pain). We all grieve in our own ways and maybe this is theirs. Godspeed to them.

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      lucy pevensiefactorfiction
      11/10/15 4:26pm

      Yeah, and I get the impression that the vlogging is basically the equivalent of the mom’s job—she couldn’t afford to be a stay-at-home mom without it. So saying “Why don’t you take some time off social media to deal with your grief?” is tantamount to saying “Why don’t you just not show up to work for a month or two to deal with your grief?”—not incredibly plausible for most people, and some grieving people do better with the distraction of working on something else, anyway.

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    G3istbotJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 4:21pm

    When this had first came out, I commented how their videos didn’t peek past 30k views, up until the announced death of their son - that video exceeded over a million views. It looks like the trend has continued, and they are still raking in on average 3 times as many views as they had previously had. I questioned the reality of their youtube stardom, and how it didn’t make sense. Personally I mulled over the idea if they were exploiting the death, and if they hadn’t would they.

    It’s clear now that they have. You would expect, given the circumstances that your average family would halt the production of videos. That if they needed help covering funeral expenses they would have had setup a page explicitly for that. That’s obviously not the case with this.

    I don’t know what’s more disgusting though, the family or us for giving them the attention that they so desperately crave.

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      WillG3istbot
      11/10/15 5:20pm

      I don’t know what’s more disgusting though, the family or us for giving them the attention that they so desperately crave.

      Can I vote for you instead?

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    DarkCountenanceJay Hathaway
    11/10/15 4:20pm

    “No cure” makes it sound like death from this condition is inevitable... people aware of their condition receive treatment (beta blockers, avoiding athletics, staying hydrated) or surgery to reduce the hypertrophy...

    Fun facts: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death among young athletes. It’s an autosomal dominant condition present in about 2-5 per 1000 individuals. Famously responsible for the death of Loyola basketball star Hank Gathers right on the court in 1990.

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      dkfree2DarkCountenance
      11/11/15 11:36am

      I have HCM and I completely agree with how you addressed this.

      It is important to note that some of the protocol is changing based on specific family history and how it is presenting. If you look at suuden deaths, there are far fewer girls/women compared to boys/men. Further, if you show signs, the current protocol is reduced high level athletics but you need not curtail all sports (subject to the specific person). This will “out” me to any friends who read this but I will have my anniversary next week - a year ago I had open heart surgery to cut out tissue from the left ventricle at the septal wall to open up that chamber. This is an extreme approach for HCM and by periodic monitoring, should one of my kids develop the condition, he/she will likely not have to go through what I went through.

      Two plugs: make sure your local athletic facilities and schools are equipped with AEDs. In the case of a sudden cardiac event, an AED used w/in 3 minutes can save lives.

      Check out a company in South SF called Myokardia. They are trying to develop drugs that address those genetically marked for HCM that will keep the condition (characterized by thickening and stiffening of the heart muscle) from developing. Cool shit that won’t help me but may help many others.

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