How many times does it need mentioning before you engage with it?

Yes, an *individual photon* can survive forever until it is absorbed, but your image isn't made of a single photon. It's made up of trillions of photons and enough of them need to be received undistorted and together in order to create the shape of you for the observer.

The Inverse Square Law states that after a distance, the likelyhood of enough of your photons all reaching a target in order to produce an image of you gets smaller and smaller. When the distance is ramped up to infinity, the probability becomes ZERO. Again, maths.