Early Minecraft, And Why Notch Was Erased

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So, for the past month I’ve been on a really long Minecraft kick of setting up a new world that I started building on my Bedrock realm, flip-flopping between Java and Bedrock, because I can’t really decide which one is better suited to host a “forever world,” and basically just doing everything. But, as you do, when you’re deep-diving into a resurrected interest, you watch Youtube videos, right? Well, something I discovered, is that people are trying really hard, especially on Youtube, to sanitize Notch. Maybe you’re like, 19, and you didn’t see what it is that nefarious types would want to sanitize, so … let’s have a history lesson.

Back around the years of 2010 and 2011, Notch was pretty much a normal guy, from what I remember. He wrote the code, pushed out updates, and eventually brought us a functioning game called Minecraft. At first it was only building and breaking blocks. Then came the monsters.

And, like his work in Minecraft to do with hostile entities, Notch revealed himself to be the biggest monster of all.

But, he didn’t go from a simple developer of a game, to suddenly posting in exactly the same manner that a hat-wearing Neo Nazi does on present-day Twitter …

Basically, as detailed in this … pretty milquetoast video that hardly touches on the problems with the things he said, the man got tired of people yelling at him on Twitter about changes being made to Minecraft. So, like you do, he sold all of his shares to Microsoft for a billion dollars, and then bought a nice house. And, because hoarding wealth and sitting alone in a mansion ranting about how lonely it is to be incredibly rich doesn’t make you a very likeable person, he sunk into the depths of the Nether.

And started posting on Twitter like this:

Much of the internet was up-in-arms about all of this back when this happened, and, you can probably guess by now, since I’m writing this, that in 2025, this is a faint, if even hardly remembered thing that happened. Where, now, in the present day, you can go on Youtube and see people who are hardly adults talking about how great Minecraft would be if Notch had never sold off his shares. Or continuing to share and build monuments to the man in their worlds in order to share with their Youtube communities.

It could be a factor of Gen-Z kids largely having been groomed by the hateful right in those same years that Notch lost his mind, or it could just simply be that the old adage of, “The internet lasts forever,” continues to be completely untrue. Especially if another billionaire wipes out most of the website you spoke your garbage upon.

But, I just wanted to put this out there, so that there is at least some kind of present day thing re-representing the past that is so often forgotten and swept aside in order to sanitize and make excuses for people who don’t deserve it.