I think TMZ might have broken the story first, but now sources from USA Today to the BBC are reporting that Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50 after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center.

I grew up during Jackson’s heyday, and “Thriller” was the first music video I ever saw. (YouTube has the whole thing in all its zombie- and werewolf-filled glory.) I never really thought of him as geeky — his music was something I started listening to in an attempt to fit in with non-geeky kids. Josh of GeekSix, though, has a great post on the geekier side of Michael Jackson. Did you know Japan had a robot Michael Jackson? Me neither. 1Up has a video-filled write-up on Jackson’s influence on video games. And Annalee Newitz at io9 has explored Jackson’s ties to horror and science fiction.

Jackson moved from famous to infamous during his career, but he had a definite influence on music. Web traffic seems to be slowing to a crawl as people look for information about his death.

Any good memories about the King of Pop? Leave them in the comments below.

Edit: I found the 1Up and io9 articles after publishing this post, so I’ve updated it to include them.