A Complete History of Herobrine [2010 - 2021]

[Music] hey everybody so picture this the year is 2011. it is a dark summer evening and you've booted up your favorite beta minecraft world to continue your survival build you decide to venture out from your base hoping to gather some feathers from any zombies you encounter your cpu isn't the best but by now you've gotten used to the perpetual render fog that opens up as you travel and closes in behind you you enter a dense forest and round a bend when you see something that just isn't right a flash of blue in the field of gray a tiny movement that fades in from the fog and fades just as quickly out instantly you freeze you turn the render distance up and look around but it's gone with no trace left behind it could have been anything a zombie that had survived the night under a tree a block that hadn't fully rendered in a simple graphical glitch in the game's working beta version it could have been anything but you know exactly what it was you've been wondering for a while if you'd ever see it but now you knew for sure you had just bore witness to minecraft's most enduring urban legend you had just bore witness to herobrine herobrine has been around for over 10 years now and he's become as much a part of the community as any legitimate game feature despite his humble origins but his story is scattered throughout the community spread across the internet through years of user interaction and obfuscated by countless strings of misinformation i will be tracing the path of one of the greatest minecraft hoaxes of all time analyzing the spread and development of a modern gaming horror story and following the decade-long evolution of minecraft's most enduring brush with the supernatural this is a complete history of herobrine the tale of herobrine interestingly enough can be traced back to a single mysterious origin point the year was 2010 minecraft had only existed for about a year and the game was bare bones as it was still in its alpha development phase in the month of august the game was quickly developing and many integral features like survival multiplayer had just been introduced this was the unexplored frontier of the game minecraft's wild west if you will much about the game was unknown or unsure and the game's experience was shrouded in mystery it was the perfect environment for an idea that would change minecraft's community forever somewhere around early august of 2010 an anonymous user posted a single image to 4chan's x paranormal board accompanied by a short story the image is understandably of very poor quality but its contents are easy to make out the user stands facing a tall hill surrounded by trees the render fog brought on by short render distances encroaches on the edges of the hill and the trees around the player nothing seems to be out of the ordinary until you look towards the left corner of the unusual image a strange figure resembling the standard steve minecraft skin stands motionless hidden unnervingly at the edge of the render fog the figure's eyes are noticeably absent the original poster stated that this spectre had been stalking them throughout a supposedly single-player world always remaining outside their view but altering the world in bizarre and uncanny ways stripping trees of their leaves building small pyramids and boring small tunnels through mountains the poster claimed that desperate for help they posted about this haunting on many forums before receiving a message from a user named herobrine simply reading stop the poster elaborates on how others reported this same experience and then continues on with claims that herobrine was game developer notch's dead brother but as i've stated before this part is kind of dumb how this original image was made is unknown but a few theories exist as the screenshot was taken in alpha version 1.0.16 and survival multiplayer had been introduced in the version prior the user could have simply invited a friend to their world and edited a screenshot to create the uncanny missing eyes effect herobrine could have been entirely edited into an otherwise empty image and the user could have even used retextured paintings and doors but we'll get to that later the origin and meaning behind the creature's unusual name is unknown and it's unlikely we'll ever really know as the original poster has never been identified this post created a minor stir but the idea would have likely died out if not for another event that occurred soon after on a completely different side of the internet [Music] while herobrine was making waves on 4chan a small streamer named copeland was streaming on the site emma's videostream.com which has since gone down around 2010 copeland created a new stream entitled bro craft with a friend where he would continue to stream minecraft in august of that year copeland came across a strange story on 4chan describing a supernatural minecraft entity intrigued copeland took a screenshot of the minecraft world he had streamed on and quickly photoshopped this herobrine into it after posting the screenshot in the bro craft stream chat he observed the interesting reactions it had on his viewers copeland knew his next stream had to include herobrine and he knew just how to do it in the years following the stream users debated how exactly copeland had pulled off the hoax but as he would later explain copeland simply photoshopped an image of herobrine onto the texture of a painting and replaced the texture in the game before the stream began he placed the painting in a small room inside one of his survival houses on august 30th copeland started up his stream like any other for a good portion of the stream he acted as if nothing was wrong showing off his survival home but all the while deliberately avoiding a small innocuous door to a room off in the corner at around 20 minutes and 45 seconds copeland finally seemed to notice the unexplored chamber however upon opening the door and stepping inside he was greeted with the dead empty eyes of herobrine staring dead into the camera in a state of apparent panic copeland fled the room and shut down the stream leaving his viewers to ponder what it was that they had just seen this low quality screenshot taken at that exact moment is the only surviving glimpse of the now lost stream with the stream now off copeland removed the painting posing his herobrine and reverted the textures hours later he resumed the stream demonstrating that herobrine was now gone but making it clear that he was very shaken up as the stream concluded copeland posted a thread to the minecraft forums entitled video proof of him the thread contained a link to a vod of the stream and the words skip to the last two minutes he's real the stream was a resounding success introducing many to the idea of herobrine and convincing many others that he was unquestionably real but this was not the end of the bro craft herobrine story shortly after copeland concluded his herobrine stream another broke streamer named panamus decided to try his hand with the hoax much to copeland's dismay while patamus's stream has been completely lost it is known that he took the illusion a step further encountering herobrine free standing over a lake of lava rather than mounted on a wall it is believed that patamus used a retextured door rather than a painting to create this effect patamus acted in much the same way as copeland imitating fear before fleeing and returning to see that herobrine had once again vanished however patamus was later heard speaking to his wife on stream confirming the entire event was a hoax this largely deflated the intrigue behind the sightings and it was something copeland would regret but copeland had one more trick up his sleeve several hours after patamus's stream copeland linked a web page in the bro craft chat the link directed users to a page entitled him.html an animated loop of herobrine's face his empty eye sockets replaced by photorealistic eyes darting around rapidly below the face was a mix of numbers and letters which when organized were revealed to be a creepypasta named wake up written around 2008. with this copeland ended his involvement with the urban legend although he continued to maintain an illusion of belief in herobrine for a good while afterwards several months after the stream copeland would leave bro craft for good unfortunately both him and patamus have largely dropped off the face of the internet and here we come to the end of bro craft's chapter in the story of herobrine the legend was now in the hands of the community and the community picked it up right away the day after the stream august 31st someone reached out to notch on twitter asking if herobrine was real to which notch simply responded it's not real but it might be soon this was the first time notch was known to have acknowledged the idea of herobrine throughout the next year or so the legend simmered beneath the surface of the community spreading from user to user through word of mouth and hastily written stories on may 31st of 2011 notch posted the change log for beta version 1.6.6 the changelog included the now famous line removed herobrine although it was likely added as an afterthought this single line seemed to validate the fears of players who still believe that herobrine had been haunting their worlds now of course this simply wasn't true herobrine had never existed in the first place but the inherent mystery and intrigue of the idea that a rogue entity could be creeping around players worlds staying just out of reach made the legend of herobrine a fascinating one as a result of this on july 29th of 2011 a minecraft forum's user named burner released the herobrine mod version 1.0 this modification brought the creature out of the minds of players and into the game itself this mod not only added a herobrine mob which stalked the player but also a menagerie of unusual effects that he could bring upon the world this signaled the beginning of development on herobrine's unofficial lore as it was as pieces of media like videos stories and mods were created the herobrine concept was fleshed out while the two original herobrine sources the 4chan post and the bro craft streams characterized herobrine as little more than an enigmatic stalker that watched players he now had a catalogue of supposed behaviors herobrine could now be summoned through the use of a herobrine altar he could place traps in the world and take control of animals to harm the player he carried a diamond pickaxe or sword in some variations of the story he was no longer notch's dead brother but a dead minor or even a glitch in the game's programming further community interaction continued to elaborate on the ever-growing story surrounding this once simple myth on august 2nd of 2011 adam's own top marks uploaded the video minecraft herobrine mod citing he lives and is watching you in which he demonstrates the mod with the help of a friend this video and the sequels that came afterwards popularized herobrine's strange association with the letter e wait a minute there's an e over there oh boy e e i should say e e e where did the e come from the august 12th minecraft wedding weekend event featured promotional artwork with herobrine hidden in the background on november of the same year the official trailer for minecon 2011 featured a similar cameo it was clear that mojang was in on the joke and wanted to confuse players as much as possible the next year 2012 was a significant one for the evolution of herobrine the rapidly evolving genre of minecraft machinima was a perfect environment for the creation of narrative stories involving the urban legend and a number of these were made throughout the year on february 17th youtube user rejected shotgun began his 23-episode haunting series centered around a group's interactions with herobrine the series racked up several million views over the next few years in a reddit post a few months later notch noted how fascinatingly little control a content creator had over their content in reference to the wild success of herobrine on april 1st captain sparkles and tryhard ninja released the music video for the parody fallen kingdom which spawned a music video series starring herobrine as a primary antagonist in the same vein slam cow released the music video for cubeland by laura shigihara two weeks later again prominently featuring herobrine as the main villain side note this is unquestionably the best minecraft song ever made resume on may 26th likely due to countless questions about herobrine's legitimacy notch changed his tune from two years before officially debunking the myth with a blunt tweet reading getting loads of tweets and emails about herobrine again i don't have a dead brother and he was never in the game not real never was but even the word of notch could not stop the evolution of this concept on july 19th youtube user spacewaffle uploaded the video i found herobrine minecraft pe which in time grew to infamy thanks to spacewaffle's exaggerated reaction august 22nd saw mojang developer dinnerbone repeat notch's claim emphasizing that there were no plans to add herobrine at any point in the future but it didn't matter anymore herobrine had become something more than a story and whether or not he was real was entirely inconsequential november 3rd saw the release of the legendary adventure map herobrine's mansion by hypixel which pitted the player against the mythical spectre a sequel to the map herobrine's return was released the next year on march 15th and the rest is history that's not to say that nothing happened afterwards the idea of herobrine persisted in the collective consciousness of minecraft players ubiquitous and unforgettable but by the time mid 2013 rolled around a full three years since herobrine's creation the idea wasn't seeing much development herobrine had been brought to life and now that we all knew his name and what he could do we simply accepted him for what he was and that would be the end of the story except it wasn't [Music] you see as time wore on and herobrine's 10-year anniversary rolled around players that had grown up hearing tales of herobrine looked toward the past trying to uncover something about the creature that had remained hidden for all these years the bro craft herobrine stream seemed like an obvious place to start but unfortunately both streams are almost certainly lost to time so these investigators traveled further back back to the original image posted on 4chan 10 years ago the question was simple what world seed was used to create this screenshot what world had the mysterious original poster the creator of herobrine walked through in the early days of minecraft the question was simple the answer was not i'd recommend watching ant venom's video on this along with the video from the team that cracked the code but essentially the world seed had to be deciphered based on what little we could see from the original screenshot led by user andrew 555 the minecraft at home team which had previously found such seeds as pac.png and the title screen panorama got to work ruling out dead ends and hunting down possible leads the image was noticeably lacking some of the crucial features that had expedited the cracking of pac.png and the skull painting seed like clouds and flower formations so the team had to get creative step one was determining the player's orientation this was quickly done by referring to the direction affected dirt texture next minecraft alpha's notoriously buggy terrain proved another great help as the team was able to narrow down possible chunks by noticing a terrain anomaly that only occurred in chunks with x and z coordinates at multiples of 4. now that the workload was cut down by a factor of 16 the difficult work began in the end the trees were the key you see trees spawn during what's called the population stage of world generation which takes place after the terrain stage and often time using trees as reference makes finding seeds considerably easier but this would still have been difficult if not for one detail the team had hit the world generation jackpot as the screenshot contained not one but two big trees in plain view the odds of one large tree spawning in a chunk is a minuscule one in ten and whether the two trees were in the same chunk or adjacent ones this narrowed the search even further a recreation of the scene was made to ensure the details were right and with that minecraft at home used distributed computing to chip away at finding the seed and after a few months of searching nothing after every possible seed was scrubbed through the grand total was zero results a long and painful string of debugging attempts were tried leading to a growing suspicion that something was wrong with the creation they had been using to search the seeds but the exact culprit wouldn't be tracked down until the next year january 15 2021 1600 hours could it have been a wrong leaf all along there seemed to be some pixels wrong can re-run on intermediate results within 10 minutes and that was it by the next day the original 4chan herobrine seed a mystery unsolved for an entire decade had been found any player could now retrace the path taken by the original uploader on that foggy august day all those long years ago and it really makes you wonder what were they thinking when they came upon that misty hill alone in their survival world and decided to take a screenshot did they have a plan for what to do next did they know their single image would spur an urban legend that came to be known by millions in that moment they made a decision that changed the face of a community because there was no precedent there was no herobrine's mansion no herobrine mod no fallen kingdom or cube land no narrative machinima and even copeland and patamus's soon to be infamous streams weren't even ideas yet there was just a lone player standing on an empty hillside with an idea to tell others that they may have just seen something hidden in the render fog it could have been anything a zombie that had survived the night under a tree a block that hadn't fully rendered in yet a simple graphical glitch in the game's working alpha version it could have been anything but in that moment the player knew it was herobrine thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Captain KRB

Views: 779,995

Rating: 4.9389572 out of 5

Keywords: herobrine, herobrine seed, herobrine world seed, minecraft herobrine, minecraft herobrine seed, herobrine history, herobrine origin, history of herobrine, herobrine 4chan, herobrine brocraft, brocraft herobrine stream, copeland brocraft, copeland herobrine, minecraft, minecraft herobrine origin, herobrine minecraft seed, herobrine documentary, fallen kingdom, cube land, herobrine's mansion, where did herobrine come from, where did herobrine originate, minecraft@home, pack.png

Id: G8e6IV3e6Qw

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/4zy1]

my homie herobrine

[u/Slaport-xXx-v14]

Always was creeped out by him as a child...