| “ | Howdy y'all! Joe Hills here, recording as I always do in Nashville, Tennessee! | ” |
―JoeHillsTSD's Intro | ||
Joe Hills (born: July 19, 1986) is an American YouTuber known for his Minecraft videos, though he can also be found reciting poetry in the place of midroll ads. These Minecraft videos are primarily on the Hermitcraft server, having joined midway through Season One and continuing to play up until the present. Joe also writes music, mainly self-referential or Minecraft-themed parodies, that his sibling, Quinn Hills, performs.
Personal life[]
Joe lives in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. He is a single father to a young daughter named Corrine. He recently got engaged to his new girlfriend. He has multiple siblings, most notably Quinn.
Joe studied history at Vanderbilt University while training in the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC), with intent to join the United States Marine Corps. He graduated with a bachelors degree in history but was rejected from military service due to a medical condition. He then began working full-time as a LAMP stack web developer, and dropped to freelance work at the beginning of July 2020 to transition to being a full-time YouTuber.
Personality[]
Joe is one of the more easygoing, fatherly hermits on the Hermitcraft server. He's well-literate, caring, and tends to attract a more laid-back, older audience. Often his so-called Minecraft videos turn into full-out philosophy podcasts, where he delves deep into topics like the burning of Notre Dame whilst also placing down blocks for a Nether tunnel. Joe can often be found helping another hermit, reciting poetry, or telling jokes that fly right over our heads.
MindCrack[]
Joe had reportedly asked GuudeBoulderfist if he could join the MindCrack Server at MineCon 2011, but the group did not unanimously vote for it. Guude later mentioned that Joe more-or-less lost the position to mcgamer, who had also asked to join around the same time.
Hermitcraft[]
Season 1[]
JoeHills uploaded 105 Hermitcraft Season 1 videos: Episode 1, May 31, 2012 - Episode 105 , June 1, 2013. Episode 2 did not air until June 2012 because of an issue with the server causing two server resets in April 2012. generikb and Hypnotizd were the ones who welcomed Joe to the server on his first episode.
Season 2[]
JoeHills uploaded 78 Hermitcraft Season 2 videos: Episode 1, June 9, 2013 - Episode 78 , May 10, 2014.
Season 3[]
JoeHills only uploaded 6 Hermitcraft Season 3 videos: Episode 1, October 19, 2014 - Episode 6, February 21, 2016. Joe titled these videos either Hermitcraft Amplified, or Hermitcraft (2016). It is speculated that Joe took some time off from uploading in 2015 because of his daughter, Corrinne, being only 2 years old at the time. Instead of Hermitcraft Season 3 videos, Joe uploaded 17 Hermitcraft FTB Infinity videos in early 2015. Joe uploaded 2 Modsauce videos and 1 Hermitcraft Season 3 video for the remainder of 2015.
Season 4[]
JoeHills uploaded 184 Hermitcraft Season 4 videos: Episode 1, February 25, 2016 - Episode 184 April 8, 2017. Joe returned to uploading regularly in early 2016 with the start of Hermitcraft Season 4.
Season 5[]
JoeHills uploaded 196 Hermitcraft Season 5 videos: Episode 1, April 13, 2017 - Episode 196, July 12, 2018. Early in the season, JoeHills set up his base on the land surrounding a body of water he called "Red Sky Bay". Joe then created his first large build, a colorful 3 story building with a sign that read "Red Sky Bay" on the outside of each floor.
Season 6[]
JoeHills uploaded 162 Hermitcraft Season 6 videos: Episode 1, July 19, 2018 - Episode 162, February 23, 2020. He was on the G-Team during the Hermitcraft Civil War. He poured lava on Grian's base. He had a Demise bunker in the Statue of Hermity. Despite this, he died during a raid on the Deadquarters, thus placing 4th.
Season 7[]
JoeHills is currently uploading season 7 Hermitcraft videos: Episode 1, February 28, 2020 - present
He has a base on the Strait of Joebraltar, which he named after himself. There, he built his starter base in a sunken ship, then built a winery nearby inspired by the Wizards of Wine from Chris Perkins' Curse of Strahd module for Dungeons and Dragons. For this, he collected thousands of berries and terraformed land to add a vineyard around the winery. Following the 1.16 Nether Update, he replaced the Winery's original building materials with polished blackstone and warped wood variants.
He laid out the Shopping District's first roads using cobblestone, charging 30 diamonds each for permits to modify them. He also bought the land surrounding the Nether portal, which he used to sell portal customization permits for 50 diamonds. The permits were sold at the Folks at Work shop, next to a stand selling cooked steak called Steak a Break - Bust a Moo.
Following a failed attempt at claiming iJevin's head for ZombieCleo's Head Games which resulted in him dying in Tango Tek's iron farm and losing diamond blocks, he swore off diamonds for the rest of the season, promising to cover all diamonds that come into his possession in lava. Because netherite does not burn in lava, he considers it acceptable for use, and he obtained a netherite pickaxe from VintageBeef by bartering the land from the Folks at Work shop.
Joe built a lighthouse that is a 1:1 model of the Tower of Hercules in Galicia, Spain, on a terraformed hill across the Strait of Joebraltar from the Winery. He added a nether-themed mirror-image of the lighthouse underneath it, built with basalt and surrounded by lava.
During The Mayor Election, Joe ran for "Dog Catcher," a role he invented in protest after Grian created the mayor role, with which he would clean up stray dogs around the server and "watch over the diamond pile in the shopping district." The role is actually intended to give him authority to use lava to cover the pile of diamonds that had been collecting during the season as payment for land. To run his campaign, Joe created a poster map and bred a large quantity of dogs which he sat around the shopping district and multiple other Hermits' bases, dyeing their collars white to make them appear untamed. He began building a dog sanctuary, containing doghouses, giant bones, and a beach next to the lighthouse, naming it Joerassic Bark (a portmanteau of Jurassic Park, Joe, and Bark). He won the vote almost unanimously, besides ZombieCleo writing in "Daffy Duck."
Since winning the election, Joe has begun moving the dogs he placed around the server into Joerassic Bark, as well as expanding the winery.
Series[]
- Hermitcraft 5 Playlist
- Hermitcraft 6 Playlist
- Hermitcraft 7 Playlist
- Pitfalls and Penguins Playlist
- No Man's Sky Playlist
- Hermit Quest (no playlist yet)
- Hermit Skies (no playlist yet)
Quotes[]
- "That's the Joe Hills difference!"
- "You may have noticed that this video was mid-roll ad free, thanks to our... dollars a month Patreon sponsor..."
Trivia[]
- JoeHills records most of his episode content during his livestreams, effectively making his streams a backstage access to the production of his videos. While not recording, he tracks donations by expanding his face camera with each $20 milestone ($50 on special occasions), reducing its opacity as it enlarges. He multi-streams to YouTube, Twitch, and Periscope.
- The "TSD" in JoeHillsTSD stands for "Team Snow Day", which was a collaboration of web designers between JoeHills, Art Frederick, and C.P. Stanford. Together, they made comics, games, and videos before he started his YouTube channel.
- JoeHills's main Minecraft account is named "joehillssays" and his camera account is named "joehillssees."
- JoeHills was the first non-founding member to join Hermitcraft, joining five weeks into Season 1.
- JoeHills uses his Patreon sponsorships to waive mid-roll and pre-roll ads on his videos, and often ends his videos by reciting his poetry or giving a poetry prompt for his viewers.
- JoeHills and his sibling Quinn Hills have released two musical albums: [REDACTED] Hills Sings Joe Hills and [REDACTED] Hills Sings Joe Hills II: The Secret of the Views.
- JoeHills uses any pronouns.[1]