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# We only learnt of our son’s secret online life after he died at 25
It is the summer of 1989 and a Norwegian couple return from hospital cradling their newborn son. Their names are Robert and Trude Steen, this is their first child and they have named him Mats. The early weeks pass in the delirious, hormone-flooded fug of new parenthood, Robert documenting his son’s wriggles and cries on his camcorder with a new-found paternal pride that has left him dumbfounded. And as the months pass, the camera keeps rolling. Mats grows. He sprouts bright blond Nordic hair. He drags himself to his feet and begins to toddle. His father films him waddling across their living room in a Tom and Jerry T-shirt. He was, Robert remembers, “the most beautiful, perfect child”.
![Rumour and Ibelin in World of Warcraft. “In this other world, a girl wouldn’t see a wheelchair,” Mats wrote](https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F26484e9f-2a9e-49f0-a3c2-b26e5b2f0be6.png?crop=3840%2C2076%2C0%2C0)
Rumour and Ibelin in World of Warcraft. “In this other world, a girl wouldn’t see a wheelchair,” Mats wrote