Dream (YouTuber)

Clay (born August 12, 1999), known online as Dream, is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, speedrunner, and musician primarily known for creating ''Minecraft'' content.

Dream has been active online since 2014, but did not gain substantial popularity until 2019, with the release of his "Minecraft Manhunt" YouTube series. Dream also gained notability for his ''Minecraft'' speedruns; however, several of his records were struck down due to evidence of cheating. Content created in the Dream SMP, Dream's invite-only survival multiplayer (SMP) ''Minecraft'' server that stars content creators engaged in roleplay, also attracted considerable attention, acclaim and a popular fandom.

, his seven YouTube channels have collectively reached over million subscribers and over billion views, and his two Twitch channels have collectively gained million followers. YouTube awarded Dream the Streamy Award for Gaming in 2020, 2021, and 2023.

Entertainment career

2014–2019: Early beginnings and ''Minecraft''

Dream created his YouTube account on February 8, 2014, under the username DreamTraps and started to upload content regularly in July 2019. The oldest accessible video on Dream's account involves him playing ''Minecraft'' deliberately poorly in order to "trigger" viewers. As of April 2025, the video has amassed 19 million views.

In July 2019, Dream figured out the seed of a ''Minecraft'' world YouTuber PewDiePie was playing on by using reverse engineering techniques that Dream learned from online forums. In November 2019, Dream uploaded a viral video titled "Minecraft, But Item Drops Are Random And Multiplied..." that has amassed 59 million views as of April 2025. In January 2020, Dream uploaded a video in which he and another YouTuber, GeorgeNotFound, connected an Arduino board to an electric dog collar, which emitted an electric shock whenever a player lost health in ''Minecraft''.

In December 2020, in place of their annual ''YouTube Rewind'' series, YouTube released a list of their top-trending videos and creators. On the U.S. list, YouTube ranked Dream's "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters GRAND FINALE" video as the number seven "Top Trending Video", and ranked Dream as the number two "Top Creator" and number one "Breakout Creator". A livestream by Dream on YouTube in November 2020 with about 700,000 peak viewers was the 6th highest viewed gaming stream of all time as of January 2021. A December 2020 ''Polygon'' article stated that "2020 has been a tremendous year for Dream", describing him as "YouTube's biggest gaming channel of the moment."

In a January 2021 article, Steven Asarch of ''Business Insider'' attributed Dream's growth during 2019 and 2020 "to his understanding of the YouTube algorithm", noting that " puts his keywords in the right places, capitalizes on trends, and makes thumbnails that fans want to click on."

Dream is a member of the "Dream Team", along with fellow YouTubers Sapnap and GeorgeNotFound. The group frequently collaborate to create new content. Dream also had a friendly rivalry with fellow ''Minecraft'' YouTuber Technoblade before his death, as they each had a contested recognition for the title of "best ''Minecraft'' player."

2019–present: Minecraft Manhunt, Dream SMP and collaborations

Dream's most popular YouTube series is "Minecraft Manhunt", a format where one player — usually Dream — attempts to complete a speedrun of ''Minecraft'', while another player or team of players (the "hunters") attempts to kill the runner or thwart their progress. The first video in the series, titled "Beating Minecraft But My Friend Tries to Stop Me", was published on December 26, 2019. Further videos were published in the following years, featuring incrementally greater numbers of hunters. The final episode of the series was published on February 26, 2022. Many of the Minecraft Manhunt videos received tens of millions of views, with one of them ranking sixth in YouTube's Top Trending Videos of 2020. As of April 2025, the most-viewed in Dream's Minecraft Manhunt series has 135 million views.

The series has received positive acclaim. Urian B. wrote in ''Tech Times'' that Minecraft Manhunt "requires not only mastery of the terrain but also the ability to think fast on your feet while different choices present themselves with only milliseconds of time for decision making. This is something that Dream is good at, split second decision making." Nicolas Perez from ''Paste'' described Minecraft Manhunt as "an experience that leaves me slack-jawed every time", stating that the format of Minecraft Manhunt "seems to guarantee the hunters come out on top. But more often than not, Dream pulls just enough aces out of his sleeve to narrowly beat the hunters, and eventually the game." Gonzalo Cardona, writing for Ginx TV, noted that Minecraft Manhunt had "inspired cult-like montages by fans." Nathan Grayson, writing for ''Kotaku'', said that Minecraft Manhunt had turned Dream "into a household name among ''Minecraft'' fans."

In April 2020, shortly after the release of Minecraftbr>snapshot 20w17a
Dream and GeorgeNotFound created the Dream SMP, a private Survival Multiplayer (SMP) ''Minecraft'' server. Over time, other prominent Minecraft content creators outside of the "Dream Team" were invited to the server, including TommyInnit, Technoblade, and Wilbur Soot.

Throughout 2020, Dream was a prominent participant in MC Championship, a monthly ''Minecraft'' competition organized by Noxcrew. He won both the 8th and 11th MC Championships. In September 2020, during the 10th MC Championship, he played for charity and raised around $3,400.

The primary attraction for fans of The Dream SMP, according to their feedback, is the roleplay aspect. Major events are loosely scripted in advance, while most other elements consist of improvisation, performed live on YouTube and Twitch. Cecilia D'Anastasio of ''Wired'' described the Dream SMP as a form of live theatre and as a " Machiavellian political drama." During January 2021, over 1 million people tuned into Dream SMP livestreams.

On April 26, 2021, as a collaboration with Dream, fellow YouTuber MrBeast's fast-food restaurant chain MrBeast Burger released the Dream Burger as a limited-time addition to its menu.

Music career

On February 4, 2021, Dream released his first song, entitled "Roadtrip", in collaboration with PmBata, which garnered over 25 million views on YouTube. On May 20, 2021, Dream released his second song, entitled "Mask", which garnered over 24.7 million views on YouTube. An animated music video for "Mask" was released in June of the same year, though it was later deleted. The song and accompanying music video faced criticism for the content of the lyrics and animation, including a negative portrayal of prescription drugs. He depicted his own negative experience taking prescribed ADHD pills, referring to them in the work as " normal pills". On August 19, 2021, Dream released his third song, entitled "Change My Clothes", in collaboration with American singer-songwriter Alec Benjamin, which garnered over 8.3 million views on YouTube.

Dream's fourth song, titled "Until I End Up Dead", was released through Mercury and Republic Records on June 23, 2023, after he had signed to Republic Records in December 2022. It was his first song to be released through a major label. On July 26, 2023, Dream announced that his debut EP ''To Whoever Wants to Hear'' would be released on September 1, 2023, and would have seven tracks. The second single from that EP, "Everest" with Yung Gravy, was released on July 28, 2023, followed by its music video on August 9, 2023. A music video for "Kind of Love", the second track on '' To Whoever Wants to Hear'', was released on August 31, 2023, the day before the EP's release. The EP debuted at number 173 on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart.

Public image and controversies

Dream's personality on YouTube has been described as "polarizing". A 2020 SurveyMonkey poll revealed that, of respondents who were familiar with Dream, 59.7% held a favorable view of him, while 22.1% expressed an unfavorable view. Dream and other members of the Dream SMP gave rise to a popular fandom.

In 2020, Dream posted tweets encouraging his fans to vote for the Glow Squid in ''Minecraft'''s Mob Vote, a now retired community poll where users vote on Twitter for one of three mobs to be implemented into the game. The Glow Squid later won the vote, prompting players who voted for other mobs to accuse Dream of rigging the vote.

On January 1, 2021, Dream was doxxed. In a tweet on January 7, 2021, he addressed the doxxing and denied accusations made against him by his ex-girlfriend.

In June 2021, Dream was criticized for announcing that all revenue generated by his streams in June would go to charity, with critics claiming he did not stream for more than a single day that month. Dream had streamed multiple times on different platforms during the month of June, including at least four streams on Discord, where he encouraged fans to subscribe and donate to his Twitch channel. On June 30, 2021, Dream announced that he had donated US$140,000 (US$90,000 from fan contributions and US$50,000 from the Dream Team) to The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth charity.

In response to fellow YouTuber Technoblade's cancer diagnosis, Dream donated US$21,409 to cancer research in late August 2021. Dream has since participated in many other cancer charity initiatives, organized with Technoblade's father, known online as Mr. Technodad.

During his career, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) contacted him about a "threat made against his life".

Speedrun cheating scandal

In early October 2020, Dream livestreamed himself speedrunning ''Minecraft'', and submitted one of his times to ''speedrun.com''. He was awarded with 5th place at the time in the " 1.16+ random seed glitchless" category. Accusations of Dream cheating in these speedruns first arose on October 16, when another ''Minecraft'' speedrunner, in now-deleted Twitter posts, reported seeing higher drop rates for key items in one of the speedrunning attempts that Dream submitted. Dream responded on October 29 in now-deleted Twitter posts, arguing that he had no reason to cheat, that he did not possess the coding knowledge to raise drop rates, and that the data was cherry picked.

On December 11, 2020, following a two-month investigation, ''speedrun.com''s ''Minecraft'' verification team removed his submission from the leaderboards. The team published a report, along with a 14-minute video to YouTube, analyzing six archived livestreams of speedrunning sessions by Dream from around the time of the record. The team concluded that the game had been modified to make the chance of obtaining certain items needed to complete the game higher than normal; they argued the odds of "anyone in the Minecraft speedrunning community would ever get luck comparable to Dream's" was at most 1 in 7.5 trillion. In response, Dream called the investigation clickbait and claimed that it was flawed enough that some members of ''speedrun.com''s moderation team threatened to quit over it. ''Speedrun.com'' moderator Geosquare denied the accusation, saying: "All moderators voted unanimously in our decision and no one is threatening to leave in protest", and "From everything we know that laimis unsubstantiated or complete hyperbole."

In a YouTube video, Dream maintained that the accusations of his cheating were untrue. In response to the report by ''speedrun.com'', Dream commissioned a report by an anonymous statistician, who Dream claimed was an astrophysicist. They argued that the odds of a Minecraft speedrunner seeing luck comparable to Dream's was 1 in 10 million, instead of the ''speedrun.com'' team's 1 in 7.5 trillion. ''Dot Esports'' said that the report did not exonerate him, and "at most" it suggested it was not impossible that he was lucky. The moderation team stood by their ruling and issued a rebuttal to Dream's report. In a Twitter post, Dream indicated that he would accept their decision without admitting fault. On February 4, 2021, Matt Parker, a YouTube personality and recreational mathematician, published a 40-minute video on the controversy supporting the conclusions of the moderators, estimating the actual odds of being 1 in 20 sextillion (2 × 10²²).

On May 30, 2021, in a written statement, Dream stated that he had in fact been using a "disallowed modification" that altered item drop probabilities, although he maintained that the addition of the modification was unintentional. According to him, this discrepancy was a result of a change to a client mod written for his YouTube channel. In his statement, he said that the item modifications were changed by the developer of the mod, and said that he was unaware of the addition until February 2021. After becoming aware of the addition, he deleted his video response to the ''speedrun.com'' moderators. Dream explained that he did not mention his discovery of the addition publicly back then because he "felt like the community had been through enough drama and that it was pointless." He also "didn't want to be the center of controversy for the hundredth time" and that he figured "it would be a story I would tell in a few years when no one really cared."

In a 2021 interview with YouTuber Anthony Padilla, Dream said that he regretted his initial reaction to the cheating scandal, saying that "I handled the situation horribly. When it originally came out, my response was, ''You guys are idiots, blah blah blah''." When asked by Padilla how he thought he should have handled the scandal, Dream said that "I should have shut off all my devices for a couple days and been like, ''OK, let me not react with emotion''."

TommyInnit feud

In January 2025, Dream publicly had a dispute with former Dream SMP member Thomas "TommyInnit" Simons in which he referred to Simons' fanbase as " retarded". Simons released a YouTube video in response condemning Dream's use of the word, adding that his mother "worked with adults with disabilities". Simons further accused Dream and his friends of treating him poorly when he was 16, speaking about women "behind the scenes" in a sexist manner. Simons additionally alleged that dream harassing his mother during a divorce, and having "an inability to accept criticism".

Dream made a response video in which he apologized for his use of the word "retarded", stating that he "posted a meme on Twitter that used the r-word and eshouldn't have done that". Dream additionally responded to the "harassing Tommy’s mother claim", Dream said that he actually only communicated with her once. To back this up, Dream shared what he said was a screenshot of a message he sent to her. In it, he says, in part, that he didn’t want her to be “attacked” by fans. Dream additionally alleged that Simons used child labour in his merchandise and using a "literal editor sweatshop". YouTubers JackManifoldTV, Ludwig, and Tubbo spoke out in support of Simons, with Ludwig accusing Dream of further misogynistic behavior. Dream's response stated that Ludwig had misremembered the situation, and he had never done anything. Tubbo and Dream debated live on Twitch about the situation.

Personal life

Having not revealed his face until 2022, Dream's real-life identity and many aspects of his personal life are not public. He is an American named Clay, was born on August 12, 1999, and, as of 2022, resides in Orlando, Florida, with fellow internet personalities GeorgeNotFound and Sapnap. Dream has spoken publicly about his diagnosis with ADHD. His anonymous avatar was inspired by a picture his former girlfriend posted on Discord. He has a pet cat named Patches.

On September 19, 2022, Dream stated that the next YouTube video he would upload would be him revealing his face to the public for the first time. He revealed his face in said YouTube video, titled "hi, I'm Dream.", thirteen days later, on October 2, 2022. Dream decided to do a face reveal because he wanted to meet up with friends, explore making new types of content, and do more work outside of his home. He also said that he would post "more IRL content" but does not "plan on adding a face cam" to his ''Minecraft'' videos. Dream's face reveal prompted both positive and negative comments online. His face reveal video garnered over 21.9 million views and 2.5 million likes in less than a day. the video has over 67 million views and over 4.7 million likes, making it the 13th-most-viewed video on Dream's YouTube channel. Due to backlash, Dream deleted the face reveal video in June 2023.

According to ''Time'' magazine, "Dream's anonymity has been one of the most alluring aspects of his persona online and that intrigue, paired with his vibrant personality, have helped him build a loyal following across social media platforms." In a 2021 interview with YouTuber Anthony Padilla, Dream explained that although he never intended to remain anonymous, this aspect of his identity had become too important to his online persona for him to abandon at that time.

Discography

Extended plays

Singles

Music videos

Awards and nominations

Filmography

Music video

See also

* List of YouTubers
* List of most-followed Twitch channels
* List of video games notable for speedrunning

Notes

References

Further reading

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dream
1999 births
2014 establishments
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American musicians
21st-century American songwriters
English-language YouTube channels
Gaming-related YouTube channels
Internet-related controversies
Living people
Streamy Award winners
American Twitch (service) streamers
Video game controversies
Video game speedrunners
YouTube channels launched in 2014
The Game Awards winners
American agnostics
Musicians from Orlando, Florida
Songwriters from Florida
Minecraft YouTubers
People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Mercury Records artists
Republic Records artists
American musicians with disabilities
YouTubers from Orlando, Florida
YouTubers with disabilities
World record holders
Victims of cyberbullying