Months after a long-in-coming face reveal that finally showed his mug to the rest of the world, big-name Minecraft YouTuber Clayton “Dream” Huff has put the mask back on following a seemingly never-ending pile-on of folks making disparaging remarks about his appearance.
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Dream is a prominent content creator in the Minecraft community. Having started uploading to YouTube in July 2014, Dream went on to accrue some 31 million subscribers on Google’s video-sharing platform due in large part to his Minecraft shenanigans and speedruns. While he’s no stranger to public spotlights, particularly around a video series he admitted to cheating in, he found himself as the internet’s main character again in October 2022 after pulling down the egg-white-colored smiley mask that had been his signature look for years. This is the internet, though, where folks are emboldened behind anonymity. As such, internet losers used the chance to bully the streamer.
Dream dons his mask once more
Now, Dream is walking the face reveal back. He uploaded a June 9 video, “Bye, from Dream,” in which he scrolled through commenters dragging him for his facial features, some of which begged for him to put the mask back on. In the video, which was jokey but somber, Dream revealed a new mask that’s similar to his old mask, but with one distinction: It appears to be composed of a see-through front so that Dream can wear it 24/7, 365. He then tweeted on June 11 that his October 2022 face-reveal video, “Hi, I’m Dream,” had been deleted.
“After face revealing and removing my mask, I regretted the attention and hate, and am walking it back,” Dream wrote in the June 9 YouTube video’s description. “I will slowly be deleting all pictures of me online, and going back to just being a gamer in a mask. Starting with my MrBeast video, and my face-reveal video, ‘Hi, I’m Dream.’ I will be walking it back. I will be getting rid of everything other than my new mask. The same company that made the Spider-man mask, Batman mask, and many other superheroes, made me a mask so that I can be Dream all of the time. Hide my identity, even if public, at McDonalds, or any place I need to go. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart to those that supported me, even though I am ugly. I appreciate you all more than you could ever know, and I will be working on my face while I’m masked again.”
It’s unfortunate, someone getting harassed for the way they look, and I feel for the 20-something YouTuber. He just wanted to exist without hiding behind some smiling mask. Yet because the internet is so often filled with haters, it might’ve been inevitable that someone somewhere would start something. It’s a bummer aspect of making a name for yourself on the internet, I suppose.
Dream’s management told Kotaku over Twitter DMs that the Minecraft YouTuber will “wear the mask in all public places for the foreseeable future.”
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The YouTube convention VidCon kicks off on June 21 with Dream headlining the event, where he’ll presumably don his mask once again. Like many of us, though, he could probably benefit from the most salient advice ever to be passed down in the digital age: Never, ever read the comments section.
Update 06/12/23 4:20 p.m. ET: Updated this story with a comment from Dream’s management.