Dad Regrets 'Stupid' Bet with Minecraft Obsessed Daughter in Viral Post

A dad has been left to rue making a bet with his Minecraft crazy daughter that left her close to tears and has left him facing a hefty bill.

Figures compiled by Statista show that as of August 2021 Minecraft had amassed 141 million active players globally.

Though Minecraft has been praised for encouraging creative and practical skills among young gamers, as well as the fact it features none of the highly-criticized in-game purchases, for some users the game borders on obsession.

In December, Minecraft became the first game to rack up one trillion views on YouTube. The fixation on the game has seen some users take drastic steps to feed their habit, as a story shared by one concerned dad from Australia on Reddit highlights.

Posted to the "Today I F***ed Up" subreddit, where it has already earned over 40,000 upvotes, the worried father explained that his daughter is "Minecraft mad" and has been building her own 3D world in the game since she was five years old.

Though he acknowledges she is a "great builder" who has come up with some "really interesting creations," she is no longer satisfied with playing the game on a console or tablet and has been bugging him to buy her a computer.

His big mistake came during a conversation about her gym class activities where she told him that she managed to do "a plank for 30 seconds" during her latest session.

Without even thinking he "stupidly" told her that if she beat his plank time of two minutes and 25 seconds he would "buy her a computer."

Challenge wholeheartedly accepted, the girl then got her gym instructor involved by telling him she was setting herself a target of doing a "four-minute plank" having seemingly forgotten her target was actually significantly less.

Despite this, the young girl stuck to her task and managed an impressive four minutes and eight seconds, though her dad acknowledged that by the end she was a "sweaty crying mess."

That's nothing compared to how her dad has been left feeling after making the "stupid bet."

"I lost and am now poor," he lamented at the end of the post.

Some users were in disbelief. "4 minute plank? My life could be on the line and I wouldn't make it past 2 minutes, but your 8 year old with abs of steel can do 4 minutes for a computer," Joel___Miller wrote. The girl's dad agreed, responding "I'm right there with you. I figured 2 minutes would kill her because it nearly killed me. How wrong I was."

But while the scenario appeared unusual to some, plenty on social media who could empathize with the dad's plight. IrozI wrote: "You guys sound like me and my daughter—she keeps asking for a computer so she can play java edition too!! Only difference is that her thing is kung fu."

Sonofthenewmilenium recalled one Christmas where someone got an Ab Roller as a gift. "So my dad jokes with my sister that if she can do 100 he'll buy a horse," they wrote. "She did 108. Horse's name was Rusty."

Tapin42 agreed: "Kids will do crazy things if they're motivated." Another user, posting as photoharv, recalled how when he was 10 Pokémon Yellow came out but it was in Engish and he "didn't know English."

"So I saved all the money that they gave me for lunch at school, bought the game and an English-Spanish dictionary," they wrote. "That's how I learned English."

The dad was also inundated with offers from fellow gamers willing to send him computer parts and help build a PC for him, but he turned them down. "Many thanks for the generous offer but I need to learn my lesson too," he wrote in response. "I'll just keep making stupid bets with kids if this doesn't cost me haha."

According to guidelines established by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2013, children should be limited to less than two hours of screen time a day, excluding educational use. Parents should also avoid letting children have televisions or internet access in their bedrooms.