About

Illegal Minecraft Building Techniques, also known as HOW and Cursed Minecraft Images, refers to images of Minecraft items and objects which cannot be found or constructed in the game without the help of external mods or being faked with image editing software.

Origin

On January 11th, 2019, Redditor^[1] CoolClark posted an image by an unknown author in which four Minecraft torches were placed in the space of one block, which would be impossible to achieve in the game without the help of modifications. The image, posted to /r/hmmm subreddit, gained 16 upvotes in two months. Later posts of the image to /r/teenagers^[2], /r/blackmagicfuckery^[3] and and /r/gaming^[4] gaining over 6,200, 430 and 230 upvotes in the same period. The latter post,^[4] made on January 19th, 2019, was titled "Illegal Minecraft Building Techniques", referencing "Illegal Lego Building Techniques" posts^[5][6] popularized earlier.

Spread

On January 17, 2019, Redditor^[7] Extreem13 combined the image with Wait. That's Illegal macro in a post to /r/memes subreddit. The post gained over 5,700 upvotes in two months.

In the following weeks, more posts featuring the image, as well as other "illegal" and "cursed" Minecraft objects were posted on Reddit.^[8][9] In some examples, the images were combined with Wait. That's Illegal macro and other reaction images.

On February 9th, Redditor^[10] The_Konester posted an image of two Minecraft blocks standing upon each other in an "illegal" manner (shown below, top left). The post gained over 240 retweets and 1,500 likes in one month. On February 12th, YouTubers kingani^[11] and Grandayy ^[12] and Twitter user @realNA7HAn^[13] posted three more similar images (shown below), gaining over 1,800, 240 and 24 retweets in the same period, respectively.

HOW

On Instagram, "illegal" Minecraft images combined with all-caps Impact "HOW" caption gained popularity in March 2019 after a series of posts created by Instagram^[14][15] user benisblaster (examples shown below). Other confusing images in addition to "illegal" Minecraft objects also appeared as a part of this trend, with the earliest example^[16] posted by benisblaster on February 27th, 2019.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References