Dream/YouTube
- Minecraft YouTuber Dream took to Twitch to discuss claims that he cheated his ‘Manhunt’ series.
- Over 250,000 people watched Dream break down every allegation made against him.
- Fans started pretending that Dream was a teacher in the chat, getting “MRWASTAKEN” trending on Twitter.
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On Tuesday morning, YouTuber Dream unexpectedly decided to stream on Twitch for the first time in 22 days. His fans and following quickly flocked to his channel, posting thousands of tweets with “Dream is Live” and “Dream is Streaming.”
The two-hour long internet broadcast was in response to a much smaller channel called Nightriez that had uploaded a 45-minute-long video claiming that Dream’s Manhunt series of videos were faked or scripted, attempting to disprove their legitimacy.
In his Manhunt video series, Dream tries to outwit and survive a battle with multiple opponents and friends in high stakes “Minecraft” action. The series is immensely popular, with each of the five installments pulling in between 25 and 66 million views. Dream is one of the most popular YouTubers around, having an active server full of highly-followed gaming personalities roleplaying and creating content.
The stream seemingly brought attention to the allegations made by the much smaller YouTuber Nightriez, with only 6,000 YouTube subscribers compared to Dream’s 16.9 million. By the end of the stream, the video had gone from 2,000 views to 17,000 and had gained 4,000 comments. A large YouTuber focusing his audience on someone much smaller can be seen as attempting to start drama, but that wasn’t the intention.
Still, Dream saw value in discussing this content. He implored his audience at the start and end of his stream not to “send hate” to Nightriez and if you do “you are no fan of mine.”
"I thought it was a really well put together video and just wanted to talk about it, I don't know," Dream says in the first few minutes of the stream. "A lot of the stuff he says is suspicious but when you know the context it isn't at all."
Peak viewership for Dream's stream teetered at around 250,000 people. Either because he was going over a video or that he was streaming when school was in session, chat quickly started acting as if Dream was their teacher. Messages like "when's the test" or "who has an extra pencil" filled the quickly scrolling chatbox.
—Clementine (@Clement22484931) February 2, 2021
The Dream, teacher shtick spread to Twitter, where #MRWASTAKEN (a joke on Dream's Twitter handle @dreamwastaken) broke through to the top five of trending topics in the United States.
—claire 😀 🪴 is stanning ranboo (@1tsClair3) February 2, 2021
In the stream, Dream went over each individual claim that Nightriez put forward in their own video. Claims like Dream's opponents having modifications to their games that would allow them to see his health and enemy mobs not showing up suspiciously were seemingly debunked, with Dream trying to make clear that he does not fix or tweak anything for these videos.
A common criticism in the video was in the cuts and edits Dream uses, which he says are necessary. Each Manhunt video takes three to five hours to record, getting edited down to less than an hour for easy viewing. He's released one full VOD, or complete video recording, for the fourth finale, but doesn't want to "pull back the curtain" or have his friends "censor" themselves for his videos by posting more unedited content.
"We have to be on our best behavior, we couldn't curse or say personal stuff if we posted the whole thing online," Dream says. "I have a much younger audience, I like not cursing and being more PC on YouTube."
Dream has been a staunch defender of his own reputation as criticism levied against him has increased with his rise in popularity. In December of 2020, he was accused of cheating at his speedruns by manipulating the percentages that important items would drop in his games. Through multiple videos, Google Docs, and even a study commissioned by Dream, the YouTuber tried to show that he didn't cheat at the game.