About

"Punching Trees Gives Me Wood" is a catchphrase that comes from the popular sandbox game Minecraft. Within the fanbase, The phrase "punching trees" has been generally used in reference to playing the game itself, as in "brb, gonna go punch sum wood." Alternatively, it can be also interpreted as a double entendre, as in "playing Minecraft gives me a hard-on."

Origin

Minecraft is a popular Sandbox game originally released on May 17th, 2009. At the beginning of the game, the player starts with no tools or weapons but bare hands. To get started, the player must gather the wood blocks by literally punching down a tree. The humor is derived from the fact that in real life, it is extremely difficult to bring down a tree with bare hands.

Spread

The earliest known iteration of the catchphrase can be attributed to a T-shirt design introduced by the videogame merchandise site Level Up Studios^[1] and was reposted as a Reddit thread^[2] entitled "Punching Trees Gives Me Wood" on December 9th, 2010.

The Minecraft gaming server "Punchingtreesgivesmewood.com"^[3] was launched on February 11th, 2011 and there is also a single topic blog dedicated to Minecraft-related images named "Punching Trees Gives Me Wood" on Tumblr^[4].

"Getting Wood" Achievement

On April 19th, 2011, new achievement features were introduced with the Minecraft Beta 1.5^[5] update. One of the new achievements you could unlock was labeled "Getting Wood," which can be attained by punching a tree until a block of wood pops out. The only prerequisite needed to unlock this achievement is the "Taking Inventory" achievement.

Splash

The Splash texts^[6] are 225 randomly selected yellow lines that appear on the title screen. The 122nd Splash reads "Punching wood!"

Notable Examples

Punching A Tree IRL

Some Minecraft fans have celebrated the phrase in real life by taking pictures of themselves literally punching trees and uploading them online. Prior to the release of Minecraft, the act of punching trees has been largely associated with physical training, especially in the field of martial arts.

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Level Up Studios – Punching Trees Gives Me Wood (defunct)

^[2] Reddit – Punching Trees Gives Me Wood

^[3] PunchingTreesGivesMeWood.com – Punching Trees Gives Me Wood' Minecraft Server

^[4] Tumblr – Punching Trees Gives Me Wood

^[5] Minecraft Wiki – Achievements

^[6] Minecraft Wiki – Splash Text