Trigger Warning: Mentions of grooming and pedophilia 

On October 2, a popular Minecraft Youtuber by the name of Dream premiered his face to a live audience of 1.5 million people. It took 30 million eyes and one FBI text later, for a guy named Clay to know he broke the internet. 

For context, I am someone who has zero connection with Dream/Clay. I have never watched his content, never followed him on social media, and all of my information about him came from outside his fanbase. So it was a bit surprising to see my Twitter feed filled on October 2 with 3/4ths of a pasty white guy’s face photoshopped into copious amounts of memes with the hashtag #HesUgly. 

At first I thought the timing was weird – why now of all times? Were the views too low? It was just another Sunday (an irrelevant one too) when he live streamed his face, so what was the motive? 

According to Time, Dream  had this planned since September 19. In a Tweet he said: “My next upload will be me face revealing… Super nervous but also incredibly excited for the future! I can’t wait to start meeting you guys in person.”

The reason was because he wanted to reveal his identity to his closest friend and streaming collaborator, GeorgeNotFound. He made a point that he never wanted it to be about the views, rather, more so about his comfort levels. 

“My goal was to just start doing things; get out, meet creators, say hi to my friends finally, just get out in the world, be an actual creator, be a person,” Dream said in his video. 

Even if that wasn’t what he was striving for, Dream certainly got the views, and the (unwanted) attention as well. Hours after the reveal, Dream became #1 on trending, and people were rushing to the (Twitter) streets either to proclaim their marriage to Dream, crack a joke, or simply to learn what the fuss was about. 

For being the most popular Minecraft streamer these past few years, I’ve noticed that the name “Dream” seems to elicit all sorts of reactions from all sorts of people.

On one end of the spectrum, there are people who find his content comforting; because of the immense amount of worldbuilding that goes into his SMP’s (survival multiplayers), it’s easy to get lost in all the “Dream SMP lore”. Additionally, the way he interacts with his fanbase, through a second private Twitter account meant for his fans, also paints him as a “down-to-earth” guy, and I could totally understand why people are drawn to him. 

However, I, along with the majority of the internet, have always been skeptical of Dream, due to the egregious controversies and scandals he’s been in. For instance, right after his face reveal, the hashtag #DreamIsAFreak started trending because a 17 year old by the name of Anastasia came out with allegations against Dream for knowingly flirted with her when she was still a minor.

“I’m not here to fully prove my experience that I know happened,” she tweeted. 

“I don’t care about showing every receipt. Here’s me telling him I’m 18 SOON (not yet). I also believe I clearly had ’17’ in my bio the same time I have 20 now. I have him asking for my snap and we talked about school.” 

Although Dream did not come out to make a public statement, those who follow his second Twitter account, @dreamsecretclub, had this to say:

“Wake up to people making disgusting false allegations for the millionth time. I’m going to enjoy my last couple of days in LA and not let people try and ruin it,” he said. “My heart goes out to actual victims who get questioned in their hardest moments because of stuff like this.”

These accusations are not to be taken lightly. I would like to remind you that it is important to believe the victim first. Even if there is a chance that the Tweets are fake, it’s better to support a liar than a pedophile.  

Additionally, with his latest controversy, this has led people to wonder what the future is like for other streamers.   

“Are they [faceless streamers] gonna be doing makeup now? Making sure they look proper and amazing every time they stream? It shouldn’t be like that. You should be able to just face your audience judgment-free,” Applications Trainer and E-Sports sponsor Damani Brown said.

This serves me, and the entire internet, a reminder that people are not what they seem behind the screen. It’s important to double-check who you support and hold them to the same level of accountability as you would hold yourself.