Never Dig Straight Down

About

Never Dig Straight Down refers to popular advice among players of video game Minecraft which warns against destroying the blocks of ground the player is standing on. Since the release of the game, the advice has grown to be one of the best-recognized slang expressions related to Minecraft and has been the subject of memes and other works of fan labor.

Origin

On May 17th, 2009, the first public pre-release version of video game Minecraft was made available to the public.^[1] In the game, the players who dig straight down by destroying the block underneath them create additional dangers for themselves, such as taking fall damage after digging into a cavity, or falling into lava.

Starting in mid-2010, the advice to never dig straight down has been multiple times mentioned on Minecraft Forum website, with one of the earliest posts warning against the practice made by user Rox on August 1st, 2010 (shown below, left).^[2]

Spread

In the following years, the warning became common knowledge in the Minecraft community, with text posts, educational videos, memes, fan art and other types of content posted online. On September 17th, 2010, Rock Paper Shotgun contributor Quintin Smith referred to the warning as "one of the rules in Minecraft that to avoid disaster".^[3] On January 25th, 2011, YouTube user xMissyChrissyx posted a video titled "Why You Don't Speed Dig Straight Down in Minecraft" which gained over 16,000 views in eight years (shown below, left). On December 27th, 2017, YouTuber Logdozip posted a video titled "Why You NEVER Dig Straight Down …" which gained over 17.5 million views in 18 months.

On December 31sth, 2016, Urban Dictionary user Drillmation added an entry for the rule and its description to the site.^[4]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References