A dream
History was written yesterday. It is quite possible that you are not aware of this.
Wildly famous and mysteriousMinecraft The content creator known as Dream has finally revealed his face. It followed the announcement of the face reveal in late September, following reactions from friends online who saw the face before it was revealed to the wider world.
for the non-existentMinecraft gamers, and probably anyone under the age of about 40, reading headlines like “The Dream Finally Reveals Its Face” must have felt like reading a bit of word salad. How can a dream show its face? Wait, the creator did Minecraft do you have a dream that reveals your face? Yes?
But who is Dream and why is her face so big? I will do my best to explain.
What does the dream do?
Dream, whose real name is Clay, is 23 years old Minecraft content creator. The building block game has a really huge online community and its top content creators are the kings among YouTubers. You can check out his YouTube channel to get familiar with his content and style.
What’s up with his face?
Dream never showed his face until this week’s big reveal. He hid it behind a smiley face, which in turn became an iconic part of the YouTuber’s brand, inspired fan art, and created some mystique around his personality. It certainly gives it a distinct look that sets Dream apart from the rest Minecraft content creators.
Dream Has A Huge Online Following – Rivaling Big Celebrities
Regardless, between his engaging personality, mystique and gaming prowess, Dream has built a huge following on social media and YouTube since he started creating content three years ago. Few popular celebrities have followers like Dream.
Dream has 30.6 million YouTube subscribers (up from 30.4 million last night). This is PewDiePie (111 million) or Mr. Not in the same league as Beast (105 million and counting).
But it’s well ahead of big names like Taylor Swift (47.5 million) and Billie Eilish (46.7 million) and other popular gaming YouTubers like Ninja (23.8 million). He beats popular gaming YouTuber Markiplier (33.7 million), but just barely.
But how big was this face?
An estimated 20 million people watched the Dream face reveal video (below), which is roughly equivalent to the population of New York State in the last 17 hours (as of this writing). This number will continue to grow. Imagine 20 million people tuning in to watch you show off your face to the world?
“It’s weird,” Clay says at the start of the video. I can only imagine.
Why Unmask Him Now?
“Many of you are probably asking, ‘Why now?'” Clay says in the video below. The reason is kind of charming. His best friend—YouTuber GeorgeNotFound—was finally able to get a visa to live and work in the U.S., and the two want to collaborate on videos with Clay’s real face, though he plans to keep a smiley face. Minecraft flows.
“Hi, I’m Khaya and this is what I look like. After years of being completely faceless online, I finally decided to do face detection. GeorgeNotFound will be uploading a video of our meeting for the first time soon, so make sure you’re ready for that,” the video’s caption reads.
How bad was the internet frenzy?
Well, as with any great internet issue, it has been answered. . . mixed. No doubt many fans are excited to be a part of this discovery and see the face of their favorite content creator for the first time. Others have been less kind.
Just waiting for Dream to show his face, Twitch streamers broke viewership records:
(Note: 20 million views on Dream’s video is obviously only part of the equation, given how many people are clearly watching. else content creators co-broadcast the “event” not to mention anyone who reads such articles).
Of course, the reveal also inspired fan art, which itself draws big numbers:
After announcing to her millions of Twitter followers, Dream continued to post pictures:
I still don’t understand
Look, you shouldn’t buy this. It’s a generation gap. I’ve been covering video games for over a decade and I don’t get it either. South Park I lampooned this thing about ten years ago.
Basically, Dream makes videos for young people who like to watch videos about a game where you punch trees to get firewood (sorry, South Park joke) and around him created a mysterious personality that millions of fans have been interested in for years.
Now we know what he looks like and who he is. . . completely normal. He seems like a nice kid. But will we ever understand his success? Probably not, and that’s okay.