Famed YouTuber’s face reveal exposes downsides of internet fame

Photo by Ariel Zhou

Dream’s explosion on social media for simply uncovering his face.

“I’m so nervous, do I just — do I just drop it? All right. For real, I’m dropping it.” 

With over a million people eagerly tuned in, the 23-year-old YouTuber dropped his iconic droopy smile mask, flashing the camera a smile. “Hi, this is so awkward talking to a camera for the first time. Hi, my name is Clay, otherwise known as Dream online.”

If you’ve visited YouTube sometime over the past two years, you’ve likely heard of “Dream,” a popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber widely known for his gaming content. He has amassed over 30 million subscribers on YouTube and accumulated over 2.5 billion views. His success rose in 2019 during quarantine when he created the “Dream” persona, an internet personality that revolves around the entertaining Minecraft manhunts he films with his friends. These videos have skyrocketed in popularity, with one of them peaking at 108 million views.

He maintained anonymity and kept his identity hidden behind a mask until Oct. 2, when he posted a YouTube video “hi, I’m Dream.” that gained over 20 million views in the first 16 hours. In the video, he introduced himself as Clay, and continued to explain that he’d been “bunkered up” with fans trying to leak his face in an attempt to find out what he looked like. Dream further elaborated his wishes to be able to “get out in the world, meet creators [and] be a person.” 

Dream’s face reveal started with first individually showing his face to other creators and close friends, before revealing it to his millions of fans. Though the reactions from his close friends were positive, a large proportion of reactions from the online world were demeaning and cruel. The hashtag “Put the mask back on” began to trend on Twitter, and Dream was on the receiving end of immense backlash and hate. 

The backlash to Dream’s face reveal projected and butchered his insecurities across countless media platforms, which should never be normalized. The harsh judgment he was put under explains why he was so hesitant in the first place. Many made fun of his robotic movements in efforts to show off his jawline, which could be funny if not taken to the extreme limits that the internet did. All the backlash he received was undeserved. 

“I was like, well, yeah, when you have 30 million eyeballs on you, a million, two million people are going to be making jokes or mean or are not great people,” Dream said in a Bloomberg interview. 

Despite the internet crashing upon the YouTuber, he seems to not have let the hate get to him.

Although there were also many Dream viewers showering Clay with support, the overwhelming amount of hate caused the creator to remain silent since the reveal. Honestly, the 23-year-old looks pretty good and confidence would look even better. He has been seen comfortably posting his face regularly on his Instagram page unlike before. The unwarranted backlash against Dream hasn’t yet stopped the rising star from content creation and living life how he pleases.