The rarest Minecraft death, he explained

It was 2013. Minecraft still in its infancy. I was 17 years old, regularly joining multiplayer servers for a special community and game mode called “ultra hardcore” (UHC), and having fun on TeamSpeak with friends I knew all over the world.

Since that Minecraft more than a decade ago couldn’t do as much as it can do now — or should I say, what can be done with them — UHC servers ran with all sorts of third-party plugins, and eventually evolved into the use of command blocks in games. As a result, when someone dies in a UHC match, they are allowed to witness by becoming invisible, invulnerable, and able to fly. But their character models are still in the game, so whoever is running a particular UHC match tells them to watch the fight from afar and not get in the way of anyone still alive.

I played in a doubles UHC match in June 2013 with a friend, and one of the gimmicks was that you didn’t appear near your teammates, so you had to find each other in the world. I created a nether portal early on, because resources like fire rods and nether warts are essential for crafting potions, an important combat resource for the late game. As I was waiting for my best friend to arrive, a flash: I died. I don’t know what happened.

Before I knew it, I had just encountered “the rarest death in the world.” Minecraft,” if the content creators who have reshared my clip on YouTube can believe it. You can see my original clip below.

What happens is that a spectator – someone who has previously died, but is still “in” the game – travels through the portal below. Instead of connecting to my existing portal, because I hadn’t turned it on yet, it spawned a new portal. Right where I was standing. And since I only had 1.5 hearts, and the core rule in UHC is that you can’t auto-regenerate health, I died instantly.

When I first uploaded the clip, I clearly knew that it was rare, because I titled the video “The first death caused by an entry portal Minecraft?” but I didn’t expect the video to gain traction in the following years. You might think I’m crazy for claiming that the video only has about 77,000 views at this point, but its virality comes from content creators who have tweaked my original clips, like last year’s video of “Pitch” with an 11.7 million seen.

There are a few more examples of content creators using my videos for the same purpose — shoutouts to “amcobalt” (which is also the only one that links back to my original video and channel!) and “PrismBlock” with 6.5 million and 5.4 million views respectively — but there’s one theme that runs throughout them: they don’t have the full context behind the video.

Seeing a 12 year old video of me, on a channel I no longer use or pay attention to, suddenly receive tons of comments because a big content creator reused my footage, was confusing but also hilarious. Some standout comments include: “everyone in this video is probably married and has kids now, it’s crazy.” Others claimed I was “playing dead” because I didn’t post or reply to any comments. Spoiler alert: I’m not dead, I’m alive and well, my YouTube career never took off. But if you, dear reader, see other content creators reusing my original videos, please direct them to this article for more details.