If you go on Twitter right now and look through the Dream hashtag, you'd never know something was going on. It's tweet after tweet of fan art, with Dream's massive fanbase drawing Dream in various styles and doing various things.
But a closer look shows that some heavy stuff just went down in Dream's community. On April 11, Dream opened up about his sexuality — a topic he also brought up in the past. And just like before, Dream was ridiculed by Twitter users for "queerbaiting" for calling his sexuality "ambiguous."
"I’m not gay, I think women are very attractive, some men are ok too I guess," Dream tweeted.
The statement led to a huge discussion in the Dream community that unsurprisingly got heated. Some felt that Dream was straight and was just making it sound mysterious for clout or attention. But others pointed out that you aren't straight just because you aren't gay.
The drama escalated, however, after one Twitter user questioned Dream's intentions with the tweet. Dream didn't like the person's take and decided to call them out. In response, the person deleted the tweet and made their Twitter account private, which Dream and his community found satisfying.
But a closer look at the drama that ensued shows something more troubling than a Dream hater not liking his tweet. Dream tweeted from DreamSecretClub that he should be able to call people out on their BS. He acknowledged, however, that some felt he was inadvertently sending his community to "harass random innocent people," to which he replied that the people can just turn off their phones and "reflect."
The thing is, however, that Dream has tens of millions of diehard fans. The Dream community is known for their obsessive behavior regarding the Minecraft content creator, some even going as far as to say that Dream is one of their alternate personalities. When the random Twitter user said something Dream didn't like, it wasn't only Dream calling them out on their BS — it was all of his fans.
The random Twitter user ended up privating their Twitter account to avoid getting "doxxed." Apparently, Dream's fans were not only threatening them but attempting to figure out their identity and location. The person tweeted that they had decided to private their account because they lived with their boyfriend's parents in a "dangerous" neighborhood and didn't want anything to happen to anyone staying in the home.
While Dream never demanded that his fans go out and harass the Twitter user, this is not new behavior for his community. Dream should have known that his horde of fans would do something like this since it's never been discouraged in the past.
It's a debate as old as the term "influencer." Are streamers responsible for the actions of their fans? Some say no, fans are doing what they want and the streamer can't control them. Others, however, feel that streamers have a lot of influence on their fans and could encourage fans to stop harassing people and call out the behavior in some manner. This is something other popular streamers have done in the past, saying they would remove fans who did toxic things behind their back in their name.
Dream's flippant response to the Twitter user expressing fear for their safety due to his droves of fans has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Especially since he's reacted this way to criticism of his fanbase in the past.
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Esports writer and editor with a passion for creating unique content for the gaming community.
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