Notes

Meet Dream The Mysterious Minecraft YouTuber who's one of the Fastest-growing Creators on the Platform

YouTuber Dream has broken records and racked up millions of views, but the person behind the avatar remains unknown. With 16.4 million users on YouTube, Dream is one of the fastest-growing YouTube channels on the platform. Although he's faced controversy however, the Minecraft expert is still one of the most loyal and committed fans online. For more news, visit Insider's website.



Minecraft YouTuber Dream has rapidly risen up the ranks of creators and is now one of the fastest-growing YouTube channels of 2020, and the second overall creator of the year, according to the platform. The green faceless avatar with a knack for discovering "Minecraft's" cavern-filled secrets has managed to garner over 16 million users in less than two years. What is it that makes Dream so unique and popular, when there are thousands of content creators creating worlds with Minecraft's characteristic blocks?



Who is Dream?



Dream's life and identity are still unknown as the YouTuber with the sleepy name preferring to keep his image secret. His avatar on YouTube is a simple neon-green figure. The style of the figure is well-known and easily identifiable to the average "Minecraft" viewer.



As YouTuber Mysticat says, "Dream's branding is unprofessional but this doesn't mean that it's bad. Dream employs a Microsoft Paint drawn character that's fun and appealing to children, which is Minecraft's core viewers."



Dream started his YouTube channel in 2014, however it's not clear if he uploaded regularly until July 2019. In his first video, he intentionally "triggers" viewers by playing the game as poorly as he can. He does things like placing blocks on top of chests, killing sheep for their wool, and eating rotten flesh.



After his first upload, Dream started posting content fairly often. Minecraft-servers Felix Kjellberg, known online as the hugely popular PewDiePie, was playing "Minecraft" for his massive audience of more than 100 million users at this point. Dream managed to find an opportunity to alter Kjellberg's "world seed," meaning, the randomly generated world his "Minecraft" game had created, using techniques he had learned from forums. The video was viewed by 200,000 viewers within two days. Dream then created three videos that received more than two million views each. At the end of July, Dream had gained 54,000 followers and his star was born.



For the next few months, Dream's channel would continue to grow in millions of views and thousands of subscribers but his most memorable breakthrough moment was in November 2019. Dream created a variety of videos that capitalized upon the popular format "___ but it changes each time." The video titled "Minecraft However, Items Drops Are Random and Multiplied ..." became a viral hit with 32 million views and bringing the video 600,000 new subscribers.



Dream would upload regularly throughout the rest of the year, gradually gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers per month and millions of views. His "Minecraft Speedrunner vs." series, in which Dream would decide to play the game while certain NPCs (also known as non-player characters) pursued him, or objectives needed to be completed was a huge hit. Dream would also begin working with GeorgeNotFound as who was a friend and a future member of Dream's roleplaying server that he developed in May of 2020.



Dream has been accused of cheating in Minecraft



Dream's channel was at the peak of subscriber growth, with 2.6 million subscribers by August 2020, and Dream becoming the face for the game. He had uploaded a speedrun version of the 1.14 version of Minecraft in March of 2020 and 1.15 in June, so when version 1.16 version launched later that year, he had to take it on. He was happy with the place he achieved on the leaderboard and ended his race in fifth place.



Geosquare Moderator of the official speedrun forums posted a YouTube video entitled "Did Dream fake his Speedruns Official Moderator Analysis" on December 11 in 2020. Geosquare and his fellow Minecraft moderators had examined the livestream runs and believed that Dream had recorded events that were statistically unlikely to have happened without the help of mods or cheats. The moderators looked over the 29-page document and concluded that Dream was 1 in 1.75 trillion likely to have found the necessary items to play the game.



In multiple videos and Twitter threads, Dream denied any wrongdoing. Dream posted his video on the 23rd of December discussing the claims. He shared a study he'd conducted with Photoexcitation. It concluded that there was a 1 out of 100 million chance of his winning.



The speedrunning mods then issued a five-page document that dismissed Dream's research. Dream responded in a final tweet writing that "this drama has caused stress for the majority of the Minecraft community and a lot of it was due to my initial reaction to the drama. I'm fully responsible for that."



Dream has faced harassment including doxxing



On January 1, 2021 Dream fans were able to find his home with a photo of his kitchen, which was posted on his second account and then shared the information, an invasion of privacy that's called doxxing.



In a Twitlonger on January 7th, Dream addressed the incident as well as his ex-girlfriend whom he believes is spreading false allegations about him. Dream denied the accusations and stated that he doesn't care about YouTube. He also stated that his friends who appear on his videos don't receive the same percentage of his profits.



How Dream has mastered the YouTube algorithm



Dream's massive growth over the years of 2019 and 2020 could be attributed to his understanding of the YouTube algorithm.



He uses keywords in the right places and makes use of trends to create thumbnails that viewers will want to click. Similar to the genius of Jimmy Donaldson, the highly-popular Mr. Beast creates in his videos, Dream has figured out how to succeed on YouTube.


Website: https://minecraft-servers.xyz/