Aaron Soetaert has lived a lot of lives. These days, he’s a video game YouTuber. Years ago, he was in the Air Force. The path between those two things, however, was fraught. After Soetaert returned home from serving in Iraq, a drunk driver nearly took his life. In the end, he lost an arm.
Soetaert fought through that hardship and continues to be an active, athletic dude despite missing one-fourth of the limbs people traditionally use for, well, everything. He also plays Overwatch’s Pharah, a perfect angel, like a damn demon. As a fellow Pharah main, I salute him.
Check out these clips (via PVP Live):
Soetaert dabbles in games like Call of Duty, Destiny, and Titanfall 2, as well. He holds his own in all of them, something made even the more impressive by two facts: 1) he has not modified his controller in any way, and 2) he’s only been playing games one-handed for a bit more than a year.
He’s also a devoted dad and someone who generally tries to remain upbeat in the face of adversity. His goal is to inspire and make people laugh, as he once said through what’s left of his arm, which he sometimes tapes goofy faces onto and uses as a sort of ventriloquist dummy. For real! I wish I had the guts to grab ahold of my own losses and throttle them until joy came out like that.
He’s one heck of a person, in other words. “Aerial superiority achieved,” indeed.