A Schizoanalysis of Herobrine

Written by: Golan

[[]] Herobrine is not a mere urban legend, it is a memetic coincidence intensifier.

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Layer 00: Arachnophobia

[[]] Ever since Minecraft had been created and unoficially published, the community was in close relations to Notch. A great part of the interactions consisted of exchanges of experiences between players and suggestions for Notch. In early 2010, there have been suggestions for a stalker mob started appearing, a mob that would watch the player, of which only the [glowing] eyes would be visible and that would make strange sounds. liq3 and kholhaus' suggestions are most notable here. Notch did take into consideration such suggestions, and changed spiders so that they have glowing red eyes.

[[]] This arachnid motif stands at the basis of the urban legend. It has occured once again when one of the iterations of White Eyes was depicted as a half-spider half-skeleton mob with glowing eyes. This is almost a foreshadowing for the addition of spider jockeys in August of 2010, which also happens to be the most important month for the history of Herobrine.

Layer 01: Scopophobia

[[]] The stalker mob that has been suggested in early 2010 was meant to watch the player and vaguely hint at its own presence. The Herobrine instantiation, in the original story, also exhibited stalking behavior and signs like 2x2 tunnels, leafless trees and sand pyramids in the ocean.

[[]] liq3's suggestion in particular was that the player would die instantly after looking at the glowing eyes of the stalker mob. There is a comparison to be made with the mythological creature that is the basilisk. The gaze of the modern mythical stalker has an effect on the player, that is they start looking around the world paranoically. Or maybe, the player would even build structures to attract this gaze.

Layer 02: Triskaidekaphobia

[[]] The ambience of the game in 2010 was essential in making players' imaginations deterritorialize outside of rationality. The thick fog, the world that was mostly void of any life, the deafening silence, the lack of a clearly established goal. These are all elements that can contribute to a sense of paranoia. Not to mention the game used to be quite unstable, glitches and bugs being very common, and people not being exactly "tech-savvy" when it comes to the game's code. The most important glitch here is the white dots that would appear on the edges of blocks, and which at certain times and in the dark could look like two white eyes watching from the distance. But even after this, ignorant players would attribute certain bugs and glitches to Herobrine. Such bugs can be seen as moments and events when the game itself escapes from the territory of its own code (Herobrine thus being believed to be the originator of this deterritorialization).

[[]] But the most important pieces of ambience were the 13 cave noises that were added, and the music disc 13. Hearing the noises was basically an audio jumpscare, while for some Disc 13 was their first experience with a jukebox. The audio of Disc 13 was also part of the origin of White Eyes (Curchack's video). And because we are on a part about 13, the Herobrine screenshot most often said to be the original (the one taken on version Alpha 1.0.16_02) was taken on the version released on August 13th 2010, which also happens to be a Friday the 13th. 13 is a number associated with bad luck because it is an excess, a deviation from 12, which is a number associated with perfection. 12 months of the year. 12 zodiac signs. 12 apostles. 12 is divisible with 2, 3, 4, 6 (not mentioning 1 and itself). 13 is a deviation (escape) from this perceived (enforced bounds of) perfection and into the Outside.

Layer 03: Anti-Memetic Fog

"The post was deleted within five minutes. I tried again, and the topic was deleted even faster. I received a PM from username 'Herobrine' containing one word: 'Stop.' When I went to look at Herobrine's profile, the page 404'd." - the "original" story

[[]] The original story presents an episode where Herobrine tries to prevent rumors about him from spreading across the Internet. Even the account by which he tells the protagonist to stop is non-existent. It was also only up until recently that the internet started re-discovering pieces from the urban legend's history, some of which were hidden in plain sight and some of which are lost media. Most of the fan depictions of White Eyes have fallen into digital decay. We are not even sure if the "original" Herobrine screenshot and creepypasta were part of the same post, and even today we don't know for sure who the author was. Even the Brocraft livestreams were lost up until a few months ago. And when it comes to these livestreams, in them Herobrine was never referred by name. Which brings us to the next point:

[[]] The urban legend resisted becoming a unified subject of language for a few good months before the "original" creepypasta. Not being territorialized by a particular name, it was in a more "raw", nomadic state. While this absence of a proper name (even in the creepypasta he had no name pop-up) prevented the existence of a truly unified discourse surrounding it, it was precisely this that gave the stalker its state of semiotic superposition, merging it with the omnipresent darkness and fog and giving the fog its own gaze. The stalker was omnipotent, in that it could never be subjectified and clear attributes and limitations could not be attributed to its powers. The stalker has no organs.

Layer 04: Herobrine(s) of the Wired

[[]] Once it's popularity started riding a rising trend, even Mojang started referencing him in official art and in the patch notes. A note of repression: -Removed Herobrine. Once it has been memetically disseminated in the minds of players, it was inevitable that it would start making different versions of itself. When it comes to genres of Herobrine media, a very popular species is the "Herobrine Hunt". This is actually foreshadowed in the "original" creepypasta where the narrator searching and researching the entity only to find out it is Notch's allegedly dead brother. After the appearance of the hunt genre and the fading back into obscurity, the search shifted onto the world seed, the Brocraft livestreams and the White Eyes forerunner.

[[]] The community's archetype(s) from fan stories, videos, machinimas, fanart etc depict him as an actively hostile agent that exhibits the powers of Creative Mode players and the behavior of griefers and trolls. He builds traps, griefs structures, steals items, uses redstone torches, can be summoned, can possess mobs and is often depicted as a sort of overlord of the hostile mobs. Beyond just this particular name, all of Minecraft creepypasta creation is by necessity post-Herobrine. Even the other two "classics", Entity 303 and Null, feature Herobrine.

[[]] The Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic (Romanian) internet populace has had an interesting relationship with the Herobrine mythos. It was mostly comprised of kids who did not know English and for whom anything is possible. In this atmosphere, mythization followed. Herobrine soon became known here as the creator of all hostile mobs. Notch by association also became a sort of mythologized figure. The Enderman for instance used to be good, and helping the player, until the player started killing them out of selfishness and Herobrine came to make the Enderman hostile. This is what they used to say. Herobrine was coded in the game by Notch, who, because he was drunk, made him evil instead of good. It was also said that Notch had fought Herobrine four times, that the Nether is his home and the fortress is his castle. And also that Herobrine's greatest creation was the Wither. Randomly generated crosses in the ground became an object of curiosity for Romanian internet users. Null was also interpreted to be Steve's (the player's) evil incarnate, because the player does evil when destroying the game habitat and killing mobs. They almost had an idea, they just needed to research Jung.

Layer 05: The Dragon Unearths

[[]] As 2024, the Year of the Dragon, was approaching, Herobrine turned from a literal fear to a cyber-archeological curiosity. The seed for the "original" Herobrine world has been discovered in 2021. In early 2022, I had a dream which inspired me to find and post one of the most important videos from Romanian internet culture, that was about Herobrine's mythology. Soon, the Internet started looking for the Brocraft streams. They managed to contact Copeland, but the livestreams would remain hidden for longer. In early-to-mid 2023, Ossy Flawol accidentally discovered White Eyes while trying to fabricate a false Herobrine image post and realizing the Unix stamp does not add up with the already known information on Herobrine. The anti-memetic fog came to disrupt further research by attacking the Discord Server. And a certain video (the anti-memetic fog got to it too, but fortunately it's been archived). Said video, from 2:09 to 2:11 visually predicted the AI slop that would be oasis.decart.ai.

[[]] The Year of the Dragon came about. 2024. I was told it would be a year in which many things will be discovered. It was true. Many pieces of lost media have been found, many celebrities have been exposed, geopolitics is inflamed, Congress revealed COVID was made in a lab, and much more. Relevant to us is the discovery of the Herobrine livestreams by complete accident.


[[]] The machinations of the Dragon with this urban legend culminate with this analysis.