by Dream
While I remain extremely disconnected from the Minecraft community, having never played a single second of the game, I even know who Dream is. Minecraft streamers and YouTubers are kings and queens of their own sprawling ecosystem and some of the most popular creators on the entire Internet. And the most popular of all might be Dream, who until now had never shown his true face to his fans, or even to his friends, known only by a simple, iconic smiley face.
The dream revealing his face was, to put it mildly, a big deal for his community and Minecraft as a whole. Dream has an amazing fan base with 5.6 million followers on Twitter, 3.1 million followers on Instagram and 30.4 million subscribers on YouTube. For context, Fortnite’s Ninja has 23.8 million. Dr. Disrespect has 4.1 million. Taylor Swift has 47.5 million. The dream is a big deal.
And so, here he is, here’s Dream:
Dream
He’s a 23-year-old named Clay, and before this revelation, he created it as an event, facing many of his friends in the game for the first time, and everyone posted theirs reactions to his face, but the public reveal was saved until tonight and premiered on YouTube with 1.2 million people tuning in to see it. This is celebrity in 2022. And you can get there without showing your face.
There aren’t too many great YouTubers left who are completely anonymous. Corpse Husband comes to mind as another gaming figure who has never revealed his face on purpose, but Dream is definitely the biggest person to do so. I remember years ago when face reveals were a very common thing on YouTube and Twitch before most streamers went live with little boxes of themselves in the corner, but these days if you’re streaming you’re probably doing it with your own face . although it is not your name. An exception to this is the exciting rise of Vtubing, where virtual avatars of player controllers are synchronized with their real-life movements standing alone. It’s a bit of a “conversion” if you want to go there.
As for Dream and why he decided to do this now, it has to do with one of his friends who moved to America and is just tired of being “outed,” he said in the reveal video. It certainly opens him up to creating a wider range of content and doing things with his friends in real life without the need for secrecy or fear of leaks. At a certain point, being hidden for so long with so much buildup must be exhausting. While I don’t envy being a 23-year-old revealing your face to 30 million people after years of build-up and speculation, even if it turns out you’re…a very pretty kid. We’ll see what Dream does next from here and how often we’ll see his face moving forward as he enters this new era.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content collection newsletter, God Rolls.
Get my science fiction novels Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
