Herobrine

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Herobrine
Herobrine Isometric.png
A render of Herobrine
First appearanceAn anonymous post on 4chan in 2010
In-universe information
Nickname"HIM"

Herobrine is an urban legend and creepypasta from the video game Minecraft , originating from an anonymous post on the imageboard website 4chan in 2010. He is depicted as a version of the Minecraft character Steve, but with solid white eyes that lack pupils. In numerous iterations, Herobrine has possessed several different unnatural abilities, from constructing unusual structures to possessing animals such as sheep. Other claims about Herobrine include those that describe him to be the deceased brother of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. After the original sightings were published on 4chan, livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss created their own takes on the story, staging sightings and the former creating a webpage oriented around the character.

Contents

After the livestreams, interest in the character rose tremendously. Herobrine became a popular part of the Minecraft community, with interest in the character sparking numerous people to create their own alleged sightings of the character, as well as creating Minecraft mods that add him to the game. Interest in the character continued into the 2020s, leading to the rediscovery of media related to the original sightings. Herobrine has been considered one of the most notable legends in video games, with his popularity leading to him ranking on a poll for the best video game villains despite never existing. The character has effectively become an internet meme.

Origins

The screenshot provided in the original Herobrine sighting, posted to 4chan in 2010. Herobrine can be spotted in the fog to the left of the hill. Herobrine Sighting.png
The screenshot provided in the original Herobrine sighting, posted to 4chan in 2010. Herobrine can be spotted in the fog to the left of the hill.

In 2010, during Minecraft 's alpha stage of development, an anonymous post was made on 4chan's /v/ board, where the author claimed to encounter a mysterious entity while playing Minecraft. The post claimed that shortly after starting a new world in Minecraft, the author saw what they believed to be a cow in the distance, which they approached in order to kill it. Upon approaching it, they instead saw a second player character with solid white eyes staring at them from the fog, before vanishing. After the encounter, the author noticed numerous strange structures they did not create. When trying to contact other players about the event, the author found their posts removed, eventually receiving a message from a user named "Herobrine" that simply said "stop." The anonymous post went on to claim that other players informed him that Herobrine was the alias of the brother of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. The 4chan post claimed that Notch said, in response to queries about whether he had a brother, that "I did, but he is no longer with us." [1]

Around the same time, another anonymous post on 4chan wrote about another entity the author claimed to encounter in a cave after listening to the in-game music disc "13," which also had white eyes that lurked in the fog. This encounter was simply named "White Eyes", and was believed to be related to Herobrine. [2] Shortly after the original stories were published, livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss, the former of which saw and liked the original posts, staged Herobrine encounters of their own. In Copeland's stream, he played in a survival world with a custom texture pack for around two hours while working on a house. After entering a room he was planning on furnishing, he saw Herobrine staring at him and he quickly left the area, traveling a long distance before falling into lava while Herobrine watched him burn to death. This encounter was created by Copeland modifying in-game textures to make Herobrine appear. Afterwards, viewers of the livestream were redirected to a GIF depicting Herobrine with moving, realistic eyes. In Patimuss' stream, he encountered Herobrine walking on lava while playing the game, before promptly shutting the game down. [1] [3]

After Copeland's stream, it was claimed that his computer crashed when trying to go live again afterwards. He additionally shared a webpage with the title "him.html". The page featured a gif of Steve, the default skin of Minecraft, with his pixelated eyes replaced with realistic, moving ones, as well as text at the bottom that wrote about how the reader was "living in a fantasy world inside their mind" and needed to "wake up." This granted Herobrine the additional nickname "HIM." After these streams, the popularity of Herobrine spread across the Minecraft community, with people creating their own alleged sightings to this day, as well as developing Minecraft mods to add the character to the game themselves. Most claimed sightings of Herobrine are accompanied by red text annotations and eerie music. [1]

Design and characteristics

Herobrine is characterized as looking nearly identical to Minecraft's default skin, Steve, but with solid white eyes that lack pupils. [1] Sometimes, the character is depicted as just white eyes with no other physical form, or is even depicted as possessing other mobs in the game such as sheep. [1] [2] Throughout stories and mods that feature Herobrine, he is depicted as having numerous traits, such as constructing abnormal structures, digging random tunnels throughout the world, and removing the leaves from trees. [1] In mods that add Herobrine to the game, he is typically summoned via the construction of a shrine. [3]

Reception and legacy

A cosplayer wearing a Herobrine mask. mozaikuYan (16018637321).jpg
A cosplayer wearing a Herobrine mask.

Herobrine gained widespread popularity in the 2010s, becoming a notorious part of the Minecraft community and an internet meme. [1] [4] Several other Minecraft creepypastas have been created by the community, though none were able to reach similar levels of notoriety as Herobrine. [5] Several journalists have considered Herobrine to be a notable urban legend in video games; [5] [6] [7] VG247 writer Nadia Oxford described Herobrine as one of the best creations of the Minecraft community, [8] and IGN writer Paul Dean wrote Herobrine to be the "most popular example of a game haunting ever." [4] Lauren Morton of PC Gamer wrote that, despite Herobrine never having truly existed, the character "lives on in the minds of plenty of Minecraft players" that were interested in him when younger. [1]

Some players believed Herobrine to be real despite the character never existing, which caused employees of Mojang to comment on the character. [4] Notch in particular has denied the existence of Herobrine numerous times. [1] [4] Despite the denial of his existence, Mojang has made numerous references to Herobrine in promotional material and merchandise; in numerous versions of Minecraft, the update logs have included the term "Removed Herobrine" as a joke. [1] In 2013, Herobrine ranked 46th on a poll for the Top 50 Video Game Villains of All Time, which was organized by Guinness World Records. [9] Books based on Herobrine have been published, such as The Legend of Herobrine. [1] In 2021, continued interest in the story resulted in the world seed of the original Herobrine sighting being discovered by a group of players known as Minecraft@Home. [1] [10] Similarly, in 2020, a Minecraft player known as Enderboss25 gained contact with Copeland in an effort to recover the footage of the original livestream that caused Herobrine's popularity. While the original footage was long gone, the original world file was recovered, and a recreation of the livestream was made in a joint effort by the two. [3]

Gabriel Menotti cited Herobrine as an example of how the recording of playthroughs might influence the universe of Minecraft in a radical way, due to the fact Herobrine never truly existed and yet still became popular. He believed that Persson's ambiguous answer on whether Herobrine will ever be integrated into Minecraft suggests that there is always a possibility for player imagination to be incorporated into one of the game's future updates, which is consistent with the logic behind Minecraft's open development as well as its history of frequent updates that sometimes introduce game-changing novelties. [11] The authors of Mixing and Re-Purposing Realities observed that the popularity of the Herobrine meme represents the Minecraft community's embrace of creative efforts by its members with the transition of spontaneous user-generated content into Minecraft folklore. Their survey of the study's respondents found that Herobrine is treated as a mythological destructive character which some similar traits as superhero characters. [12]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Morton, Lauren (1 February 2021). "The story of Herobrine, Minecraft's decade-old creepypasta mystery". PC Gamer . Archived from the original on 18 September 2022. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  2. 1 2 Razali, Izzatul (12 June 2023). "These Game Urban Legends Are Coming Back on TikTok to Haunt Gen Z". IGN Southeast Asia. Archived from the original on 28 February 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Troughton, James (3 March 2024). "How One Minecraft YouTuber Saved Herobrine History". TheGamer. Archived from the original on 3 March 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Dean, Paul (11 October 2011). "Hauntings and Hoaxes: Gamings Weirdest Ghost Stories". IGN . Archived from the original on 30 September 2016. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  5. 1 2 Cooper, Hollander; McGee, Maxwell (9 August 2017). "Gaming's creepiest urban legends to make sure you don't sleep tonight". gamesradar. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  6. ↑ Rigotti, Devin (5 November 2020). "Unintentionally Creepy Moments in Gaming". Red Bull. Archived from the original on 4 October 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  7. ↑ Powell, Daniel (Spring 2017). Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures in the Age of Convergent Technologies (Thesis). University of Central Florida. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  8. ↑ Oxford, Nadia (28 July 2015). "The Best Minecraft Fan Works". VG247. Archived from the original on 28 February 2024. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  9. ↑ "Bowser crowned 'greatest videogame villain of all time' in poll for Guinness World Records 2013 Gamer's Edition". Guinness World Records News. 23 January 2013. Archived from the original on 1 June 2022. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  10. ↑ Cryer, Hirun (25 January 2021). "Notorious Minecraft Herobrine world seed has finally been unveiled". GamesRadar+ . Archived from the original on 27 January 2022. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  11. ↑ Menotti, Gabriel (2014). "Videorec as gameplay: Recording playthroughs and video game engagement". The Italian Journal of Game Studies. 1 (3): 91. ISSN   2280-7705. Archived from the original on 26 September 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
  12. ↑ Flint, Tom; Hall, Lynne; Stewart, Fiona; O'Brien, Catherine A. (July 2018). "Mixing and Re-Purposing Realities". Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI). Electronic Workshops in Computing. BCS Learning & Development: 6. doi: 10.14236/ewic/hci2018.39 . S2CID   53062295.
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