Who is Dream?

Dream, one of the most popular Minecraft YouTubers with over 30 million subscribers, has released a new video finally revealing his face to the masses. Dream utilized a smiley-face mask for most of his career so far. The hype behind the face reveal has blown up and the reveal video has amassed over 30 million views and gains more traction by the day.

Dream has been a major creator in the Minecraft scene since 2014. He gained popularity due to his creativity in creating traps in Minecraft. He was very dedicated to diversifying his style, with creations that were featured in PvP (person vs person) videos and showcasing how to build these for personal use.

Upon reaching just over 1000 subscribers, Dream took a mysterious break. No uploads or any word as to why. At this time, Minecraft slowly started to lose some significant viewership on YouTube till 2019, when PewDiePie hoped back in and seemingly re-ignited the interest in the game. This brought back some long unheard of creators – Dream included.

Dream’s Faceless Return

Even without a camera capturing his face, Dream has swelled back into popularity due to his constant diversity in gameplay and hilarious creativity. The first video back from his break was filled with antics no typical Minecraft creator would have attempted. Things like two trapped doors for a door or only eating rotten flesh for his food. It is this out-of-the-box, quirky thinking, that skyrocketed his channel to how it is today.

During his 1.3 million viewer premiere, Dream’s face reveal began a new chapter in his content creation journey. He hinted at potential real life content or vlogging.

“Get out in the world, meet creators, be a person,” he said jokingly in the reveal.

Dream had always planned for a face reveal, hinting at it as far back as June 2021. He talked about how he would do it and would make sure to, “take full advantage of it,” when the time came. 

How did Dream take advantage of this opportunity as a content creator?

Let’s break down the hype, why it’s important, what these decisions look like, and what we can learn from this experience as content creators.

Little by little, Dream slowly revealed his face to other creators through video calls. He worked on building an undeniable tension for viewers who wanted to see what was on the other side of that screen too. Dream used collaborations to build hype across multiple platforms and audiences, by using the reactions of friends and other creators to tease his audience of his face reveal. 

This is a valuable asset when teasing new content, being mindful about how you build anticipation and utilizing your friends and your audience when hyping up new content. This is also massively beneficial when your friends or other creators you collaborate with, are within the similar genre and audience base as your own content because it can spread the hype into corners of the internet you couldn’t previously reach.

So we’ve teased the reveal details, built up all the social media hype – now it’s time to actually follow through with the content drop.

Let’s analyze this particular content drop together and see how we can learn from Dream revealing something so personal yet so anticipated.

Around mid-September, Dream announced that his next YouTube video would finally be the long awaited face reveal. Finally, on October 2, 2022, the time had come for Dream to take off the mask and share his face with the world.

Dream teased the drop of the video both the morning of the reveal. He didn’t post immediately to any social media when it came time for the reveal, leaving the YouTube video and YouTube notification itself to be the only way for fans to catch the reveal. 

Dream made sure the very channel he built his audience on, was the point of contact for something this big – YouTube had to be the first to know. He also waited for several hours after the YouTube Premiere of the video to post photos of himself and friends on Twitter. In this Tweet he was using his real face for the first time.

Looking at these decisions critically, shows the power of directing all of your audience to one place. It’s not often that even some of the largest creators of a particular genre have videos where the view count surpasses total subscriber count. 

GeorgeNotFound or George, another Minecraft YouTuber and close friends with Dream, flew to the United States and volgged his experience meeting his best friend in person.

“I met Dream in real life finally… We’ve been online friends for what feels like my whole life and this is our first time meeting in person. This was one of the best weeks of my life,” reads the caption of the vlog.

What Can We Learn?

There are great lessons to learn from this face reveal but also Dream’s career as a whole:

1. The first should be that a camera is something that isn’t something you need for success. Creators like Dream, Lirik, and CorpseHusband have all found success without a camera being the focal point. Their streaming careers blossom from their personalities, humor, creativity, and mystery of who is behind that voice. 
2. When it comes to trying new things or hyping up your content, analyze your content to see what works and what doesn’t. 
3. Take moments that are exciting, different and maybe even scary, and turn them into moments of joy. Let yourself get hype about the things that you have to share with your friends and community. Build content with intention, whatever that may look like in your space.

Dream has never shown his face, making the content to emerge from this experience to be fairly viral – but it wasn’t simply about virality. Dream wanted to really introduce himself as more than just his creator persona. He sought to connect with his audience on a more personal level and felt safe enough to do so.