How Dream Became A Target - A Reflection On Stan Culture | TRO

hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right opinion the home of a [ __ ] with too much free time what is this [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] listen ladies this isn't some weave channel and i'd appreciate it if you would turn back into whatever corporate logo you originally worked while some dreaded tier comic book found when i'm doing my research for these videos i'm sometimes delving into dangerous places of the internet where the wrong step could result in my death or worse getting cancelled on twitter taking a turn into the depths of ancient myspace pages while leaving your ipr masked is not very wise you wouldn't walk into a dark empty alleyway filled with muscly gangsters with bad tattoos or wearing your hipster glasses with a kale smoothie in hand well my smoothie ingesting friend surfsharkvpn protects you by masking your ip making it so that those sus people and those looking to steal your information have to contend with the giga chat that is surf shark's vpn service your bpm stands between you and those who would do harm serving as your first line of defense against those packers and scams wow shut the [ __ ] up anyway like that ghastly anthropomorphization over there said you can get surf shark bpm for 83 off and get three months for free all you have to do is click the link in the description and use the code opinion and now for the video thank you [Music] hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right opinion the home of a [ __ ] with too much free time and of all the features that are guaranteed to come with internet fame you are more certain than the existence of fans and followers after all in many cases the loyalty of those people is what helped you acquire that status in the first place however as much as fans and their behavior make certain influence on you it's a two-way street and the way you present yourself will often define the fan base you have as well this is hardly a groundbreaking discovery just as every tv show has a target demographic every political figure has supporters who likely share many common ideological standpoints it's nothing to be alarmed about at the same time one of the most pressing and burdening questions i see asked is how accountable one can be for the actions of their audience after all it's challenging enough to manage your own online persona let's learn that to the masters who view your content however it's definitely become more pertinent conversation of recent typified by the rise of a certain creator called dream you may have heard of him if not i'll give you a brief rundown now dream is a minecraft youtuber he started his channel in 2014 assuming the moniker of dream traps and although it didn't take him too long to hit 1000 subs his channel stagnated after that although he's on record doing a little gaming with his friends and interacting on twitter these few years seem pretty uneventful by a youtuber standard however this all changed in 2019 where minecraft was experiencing a bit of a renaissance amongst online communities and creators alike so this little game called minecraft is popular again minecraft i know what everyone's thinking right now everyone's playing minecraft right now however it was also a refreshed sense of interest not necessarily based on nostalgia and this created a gap for new creators to rise up and feel the increased demand for minecraft based content dream was one of those eager creators and he wasn't just any old chump mooching off its popularity he was a seasoned and experienced patron of the game and his skills were regularly showcased in the content he produced which often revolved around challenges that tested his in-game ability as well as his rather popular minecraft manhunt series although he wasn't regarded as a force of personality his proficiency with the game hand was highly admirable and as more people tuned in his channel picked up momentum though i'm not sure anyone could have predicted where he would be today i just did 25 million thank you guys so much i appreciate you guys i love you guys you see in the space of two years he went from a thousand subscribers or so to over 20 million which i think is what some would call blowing up he streams with a crew known as the dream team which includes old and new friends alike he uploads on a semi-regular basis and has very successful side hustles it would be fair to take a glance this channel and say he's doing all right for himself but is this the full story such a great amount of success in such a short amount of time is certainly a lot to adjust to alongside the increased sense of influence and responsibility you hold however it's nothing that creators aren't used to is it [Music] well i want to introduce a new feature of youtube stardom that being what many regards stan culture many of you probably wonder what the basics are surrounding this the term is derived from the infamous eminem song stan short for stalker fan the one about an obsessed fan who goes postal when marshall doesn't immediately return the affection that the title character bestows onto the rapper it's a pretty great but also deeply uncomfortable portrayal of fan idol relationships and a stark reminder of how obsession and attachment can manifest themselves in very ugly ways nowadays however it doesn't seem to quite carry the grave implications it still refers to those who may be slightly overzealous in their support for popular figures twitter has been fertile grounds for such a culture to manifest itself often following renowned celebrities such as ariana grande nicki minaj and of course the k-pop genre most notably the household name bts who would definitely spawn some of the most passionate devotees i can see the gifts now this can be quite controversial and there have been a considerable number of situations which have involved celebrities distancing themselves from the social media platform due to antics attributed to these communities with that said there hasn't been too much direct involvement from the targets of their affection as is the case with most celebrities they make the music the media appearances they do their job but they don't tend to be outspoken on issues like this unless they view it as absolutely essential pr is a tie rope and most walk it without swaying however as i've said many times before youtubers tend to have a more intimate relationship with their audience they tend to be more interactive and the online platform makes them feel at least a bit closer to us than the traditional personage so what happens when you put the two together well that's the question that read itself with our friend dream here but why stands have been around forever even before we had a name for them there have been communities set up to champion other creators i should know i've been to a james marriott meet and greet yet as dreams viewership continued to balloon his stand and grew respectably eventually procuring a consciousness of its own and even a little title the deity twitch i don't know exactly how to pronounce that but one wish to say the least was certainly quite ardent in its support of the newfangled internet sensation to be honest it was quite unique how invested many people seem to be but it's pretty harmless in fact most of the time being part of a community like that merely constitutes of lending your undivided support to a creator and their ventures and if you want to go and support someone in such a way then i don't think anyone should obstruct that and to be honest if a creator is more involved with their audience that can regularly be quite a positive and rewarding experience there's one caveat though and that's youtube drama an omnipresent facet of this delightful sight so on a dream's status with the level of influence he had with his astronomical rise to fame was going to be subject to significant levels of pressure and dare i say it controversy whether he was an outwardly tendentious figure or not devoted stands a large youtuber an internet drama i mean what could possibly happen well let's find out ladies gentlemen everyone i suggest we begin insert dream becoming nightmare punchline here [Music] how one interacts with their fans in general is a philosophy personal that creator and plenty of youtubers have different ways of approaching it some are very involved in the communities that surround them others prefer to maintain a degree of separation like everything there's a popular spectrum you don't want to be too far away from your audience to the point where you don't really understand what they want or what they expect of you at the same time you don't want to be too close to them to the point that you foster toxic parasocial relationships when you think of minecraft and you think of the average minecraft enjoyer many likely imagine the kid with a creeper t-shirt and a diamond pickaxe toy that isn't even made of diamond and to be honest it wouldn't surprise me if a majority of dreams youtube following was at least somewhat comprised of that demographic however go on twitter and you'll see quite a contrasting portrait and certainly not that stereotypically associated with minecraft one thing i mentioned at the start when talking about a fanbase is that is often influenced by the creator themselves however stans don't necessarily play by the same rules now of course i don't doubt that many do hold a legitimate interest in the genre the dream finds himself in however stands are often characterized online more by their pattern of their behavior towards the creator rather than their specific interest in the content itself these will often involve tweets threads fan cams edits fanfictions all that jazz which reclaims their love for the creator in question a lot of stans particularly ones in online communities are also known for their social sensitivity now this isn't a catch-all statement as i've had friends who've been subject to the surprising amounts of insert phobic here harassment when even saying the slightest criticism against a k-pop group but generally speaking online sounds are more committed to social causes than the average fan base they also have a stronger sense of community and identity and are a bit more robust than where they stand ideologically minecraft on the other hand has been traditionally associated with your stereotypical gamer many of whom are not particularly political at all and others who certainly possess somewhat questionable ideas you're probably all aware of minecraft creator not just takes by now it's an interesting intersection and probably part of the reason that stans have never really been traditionally associated with that genre now this doesn't mean the creators they had followed didn't dabble in minecraft that was probably what switched many of the stan community onto minecraft creators in the first place but dream was a distilled mc gamer and a pretty decent one at that with that said a stan's elevator commitment to create a regards of genre makes them pretty versatile in who they can support and they had chosen their king but let's talk about that said king in person why are you driving in a [Laughter] you'll zigzag that i get away from crocodiles [Music] [Laughter] as said he's a very skilled minecraft player and he was never an outwardly unpleasant person he wasn't overtly bigoted and although we'll discuss some curious takes in due course there was no obvious reason to hate him having also wasn't the most diplomatic person and he definitely had a very competitive streak to him with a dashing assault on the side now i don't think his attitude was particularly exceptional as a matter of fact i think him and i are quite similar in that regard the difference is in spite of the fact that i am a massive gamer i don't ground my persona in playing online games nor do i think i have an audience who would take my in-game passion particularly seriously because you know you really shouldn't stands on the other hand can be very serious and there are plenty of reasons for this partly because of who they are they may be young they may re-tone differently or they may just want to show their commitment to their beloved creator there are people in an array of fandoms who vie for the approval of their heroes to even receive moments of recognition for their devotion to that icon that leads people to actions that may not necessarily be viewed as healthy or productive to the world around them or other people in pursuit of a twitter reply plenty of studies published have documented traits exhibited by those who engage in celebrity worship of any kind on one hand you'll have people who are a bit more connected to reality on the other you'll have people who believe that if these celebrities saw them in a restaurant they'd come and sit down for a chant many want to believe that now as noted celebrities often have limited scope acknowledging public support rather than a few generalized statements about how much they love you guys i discuss that spectrum which many youtubers occupy and although some certainly express affection for their devotees many still maintain a professional distance dream wasn't of that persuasion he'd always conveyed gratitude to those he felt responsible for his success and that definitely encompassed many within the stan community he was also just extremely active and interactive on twitter which enabled plenty of positive exchanges with his supporters he'd engage with them make them feel valued wanted part of a greater movement and for the earlier part his time the spotlight was quite blissful drew's relationship with his audience was tight-knit and for every positive interaction they had he gave people more reasons to support him he made it a rewarding experience to the average fan there were a lot of perceptible benefits to standing dream pair this with the natural yet impressive growth of this channel and it seemed like a recipe for mutual success was brewing however it's a two-sided coin because although dream was hot [ __ ] and he kind of knew he was the problem is that when that's undermined or challenged it can regularly cause an emotional response now that emotional response from someone like dream wouldn't inherently have any repercussions in fact amongst friends it can often be laughed off the problem is that when you involve people who don't have that context nor that necessary understanding of how to handle situations a ripple effect occurs where any sort of negativity is amplified because those more devoted want their commitment to go unparalleled especially when dealing with drama but so far we hadn't really had any of that let's introduce it then there's always been discourse over the healthiness of stan mentality but it's never been particularly targeted and if you want to go back to his early prosperity many wouldn't even pay mind to this but his excitement for dream reach fever pitch this often spilled onto other creators and communities who were not the most enthusiastic about it the problem is that it's not just dream that's closer to the communities it's all of dreams friends collaborators associates anyone he interacts with at all even people just in the outer fringes of the genre unlike many normal human beings not all of dream's online exchanges were as wholesome as one may idealize and as it persists people begin to notice and equate a lot of the worst antics to dream and his fan base this began to emerge at the end of summer 2020 when there was a flurry of instance attributed to dream stands particularly relating to other creators and how they often mix with each other this pattern behavior that they were often associated with wasn't met warmly by youtubers or their respective communities now when you're dealing with stands of certain celebrities i'd argue that they have the capacity to behave with a lot more toxicity than dreams audits ever did especially towards other artists but once again that disconnect often distances both parties from possible consequences such toxicity may yield this is not the same with youtubers and twitch streamers who often invested heavily in their platforms and are much more likely to use them to voice their opinions they've got arrows so they're shooting this is not a dead end you're fine oh techno blade oh you fools you fools you messed with the wrong man he had a youtuber called technoblade he has known collaborated with dream having what many describe as a friendly rivalry emphasis on the friendly towards the back end of august he competed in a duel against our minecraft overlord here it was hosted by our good friend mr beast and in typical beastly fashion the winner would take home one hundred thousand dollars and the title of best minecraft player a very objective denomination if i say so myself three hearts no oh no oh dream down no no okay the times are turning the time no what no way no way no no my goodness yeah bro no way oh no in what was seen by some as a bit of an upset technoblade had the audacity to defeat daddy dream and with his pride somewhat dented at that point in time dr eamon passed a few offhand comments during his post-mortem rana was just running around the rock in a circle and i couldn't like i literally just couldn't do anything he was just running around in a circle until he healed and um and then he and then he and then we fought again and he beat me by one heart um so i mean i i think it i think he said it too but i think depending on the gay the the gay depending on the gay depending on the day it could have gone either way it just depends on the day how they do they get the lucky the lucky rod the lucky the lucky bow shot lucky combo whatever um he won and i think that's that's amazing i'm impressed i'm impressed with techno i think uh 1.16 he impressed me and 1.8 he impressed me and i found a bunch of insane 1.8 players at 1.14 and just like never lost to them and then they're sitting there like wow like 1.16 is a is insane so i think i think people people don't realize how impressive it is that techno my fish just yeah one even one against me in a similar bane many of dreams more ardent viewers sprung to the defense of their liege with many proclaiming their annoyance and disappointment with a few going to more extreme lengths providing ample fuel for a variety of compilation videos techno never commented on this himself splitting the money with dreamers past their pre-dual agreement hopefully also signaling the absence of any bad blood nonetheless it provoked discourse within the reddit and twitter communities in particular with some expressing frustration at dream's own behavior and questioning how his own attitude could influence that of his audience a few more clips then also began circulating about other creators who'd had their own run-ins with the more passionate factions of dreams followers i didn't know anybody there i only knew cronios and i guess dream through like association it's healthy you say who also i looked at one of their channels none of them liked me because i killed dream one time i know that field i know that deals so i was like man i'd rather not people get angry this in turn led to some questioning dream's own failure to moderate his own fan base with some even proposing that they'd be disciplined though i'm not sure how that would be enforced however it seems these police mostly fell on deaf ears at the time as may report in the next few days that creators including dream had their names published and shared online and one guy by the name of tabo a 16 year old creator who received death threats after making a statement in stream about acap that being all cops are bastards uh so it's basically about all cops are bad or no all cops are bastards that's not true yeah what are you doing where are you going no don't say that i i think i i think it's i think it's more i don't think it means the individual cops i think it more is referring to the idea of the police state and how like how like the idea of of police i i you shouldn't say that if you don't know enough about it oh it's fine in the uk they're great now it's important to note that these debates were also internal and many stands were concerned about these issues as well but the problem was the discourse never really resulted in any proper change because there were plenty of people ready to deny or at least downplay this and problem with that toxic minority is that they're often the most influential ambassadors of a community because they are louder hence why they are referred to as the vocal minority and as people have negative experiences with them they then create a mental image in their head of what this community is like whether that image is accurate or not then that begins to spread and manifest into something new and what was formerly this wholesome movement begins to contort itself and you really need someone like dream the figurehead of this to speak to common sense did he though drew is quite active on his reddit and did actually respond to some who he believed were interpreting his actions somewhat uncountably clarifying that he was merely taking an analytical stance on the situation rather than trying to make excuses this is a fair response at the end of the day i'm sure both players in the duel had the capacity to win and whether he was assigning too much responsibility onto circumstance over ability is besides the point i don't think he was unreasonable whether you agree with him or not he also pledged his continued commitment to discouraging manufacturings from users within his community referring to a stream where he did indeed mention it probably my i don't want to say my community's more toxic but i think my community probably is more toxic and why don't you stick the knife in harder and twist it train but i wouldn't want i think that if i had won people i mean techno would have never heard the end of it i think i think if he won i think oh that's so such a nice thought i said okay i see what you're saying that's awesome that's why i think admittedly an aside on a stream isn't exactly the most potent statement in fact it was more like an acknowledgement rather than a request to his viewers but you can't expect him to make a tweet and video every five minutes in dream's position he wouldn't necessarily want to make a big deal out of it anyway because it would probably just yield more conflict at this point it wasn't worth the drama however it should have been a warning worth heeding if dream was leaving all those disclaimers as he said he was and nothing was happening it was a sign that it was going to take a bit more to suppress the action of his supposed fans additionally his reddit response didn't really answer the comparisons being drawn to other creators who had seemingly been more proactive in preventing toxic behavior at the least if he had made a more official statement it would have been a benchmark for his stance and he could have disowned any abuse towards those in his circle it's clear that people weren't listening enough because it wasn't even just public figures facing down the brunt of the toxicity barely a week after the techno debacle dream senator sassy replied someone and another person believed to be a stan claimed to have their docks although dream later clarified he was joking and so did the mystery stand it was once again a little too late it should have been presumed that dream was against the behavior that some stance had enacted even against himself and yet the question continued to loom and mutate only furthering the tension between critics and fans but why well i'll do my best to explain i have to say i've been left in a bit of a conflicted state by at this point there was definitely a lot of questionable behaviour being carried out but i wasn't sure who the perpetrators were it's very easy to immediately point your fingers out these stands but a large majority of tweets on the matter with people condemning these actions and even the toxicity and youtube comment sections could not necessarily be tied back to people directly within these communities just because someone was a fan of dream didn't mean they were a part of the twitter stand community however that comparison was continuously drawn for example another creator by the name of both he posts a screenshot of his comment section and many people who asserted that he was practically discount dream assuming because of the crudely drawn smiley face which as we all know represents dream and nothing else once again these comments were really dumb but were they all made by stans or just pickle viewers who may also watch stream it's hard to say and although you can't easily tie youtube accounts to their respective twitter handles that assumption that all these people making ill-educated comments are immediately stands when they possess an equally elementary understanding of the creator in question seems to disregard the system of due process however i guess when there are issues as inconsequential as the ones discussed so far it's very easy to judge situations somewhat haphazardly nonetheless the problem is that a lot of small incidents can often snowball particularly when people receive impressions of a fan base from those instances and it wasn't long until the caricature of the zealous dream stand began to spread i think this was because many people drew parallels between comments that seemed obsessed with associating everything with dream to those obsessed with dream the stance but at this point i'd say it was more hypothetical than proven this had two outcomes though firstly it made people in neighboring and adjacent communities more hostile to dream and his stance and it made the dream stands themselves more defensive and although dream had proudly proclaimed that he dissuaded toxicity he would regularly jump at the opportunity to come to the aid of his stance this statement from september barely a month after the techno situation asserted 90 of the time the people who complained just hated him or blowing a non-existent problem out of proportion and given what we discussed it's understandable why people were being a bit more defensive at the same time the problem was this focus on beating this narrative often then ignores the fact that there may be an actual problem and it was gradually emerging in fact a few days after this tweet another creator will wassert who had replied to dream statement after being called out in the replies would stop streaming prematurely due to purported toxicity in his chat i want to say i want to say chat he's saying that i wouldn't have died if i picked yellow i just wanted to be yellow i explained that to him and he kept shouting at me so i just stood my ground [Music] i like to mess around with among us i mean you saw it at the beginning of the game i kicked fondly for fun but like this feels too much what is this chat what are you doing right now man this is no it's not hi youtube chat he's a child you've got to give him the color give him the yellow in this case this was edgy because wilbo wouldn't give tabo another creator his color in among us i can't say whether this was the case or not but as long as people perceived it that way then friction between communities and creators would continue to rise and yes you can't ignore the fact that 90 allows for 10 of legitimate complaints it's not an absolute statement at the same time it's still a narrative against the critics as long as he doesn't give credence to that 10 which he can barely squeeze beyond a brief acknowledgement in the reply however 10 of a large number is still a large number or a significant one at least for example wilbur he had no reason to hate stans and he clearly doesn't he merely had some negative experiences but some used this statement to challenge him as well it seemed to deepen this rift between those who resented dream and those who supported him because the former once again felt that he was dismissing the concerns and those who supported him felt validated in their sentiments of unjust persecution the term antis also began garnering popularity around this time which was basically the slang way to describe people who criticize dream in the community around him i've never been particularly fond of such terms because they often serve as a way to dismiss large groups of people even if some of them have valid observations to make if johton felt like it was becoming an us vs them situation with dreams stoking the fire and many would argue that it didn't stop there with dream exposing many to the wrath of his own audience why would he do this though when it wasn't even his intent in the first place well normally people's behavior can be viewed through quite a simple lens that being that one is typically responsible for their own actions and not someone else's however being a public figure is quite different because many assume you are responsible at least in part for not riling up your audience unnecessarily hell there are even laws in many countries regarding how you speak to the public because we are aware when inflammatory language is espoused it has the capability to instigate unprovoked harm against innocent parties this is a rule common to creators as well you have an audience that is responsive to what you say on a public platform and when being responsible for how some of those around you may act you are expected to exercise a degree of self restraint and as i said dreamed it but many would ask if it was enough one of the greatest issues with stans is that they are loyal to a fault and if many of them see their ideal under duress their instinct is to jump to that creator's defense on the other hand if they see a creator calling someone out they will echo that sentiment maybe even more assertively this often isn't a problem most creators end up in quarrels which then involve followers who are keen to voice their opinion it's announced with the internet and provided you're not intentionally misrepresenting the other party it will have a limited impact long term people are impulsive people are emotional they should be allowed to express themselves online whether they have 20 million subscribers or not but the question is to what degree well let's assess the impact first dream did have his tendencies to be a bit more outspoken the average minecraft creator the strange paradox is that some of the most vocal people in their content are often some of the most careful on social media dream was certainly cautious on what he said partly because of the fact that he had been called out for previously ill-advised opinions but he was also quite forthright when he felt strongly about a situation and as you'll see strong feelings are risky business let's move into september and october then and in and out of interacting with his viewers our dear dream decided to hold a giveaway for a minecraft gift code with his friend and co-founder dream smp george not found george tweeted this code out excluding the final character viewers were then left scrambling to decide which letter or number occupied that gap however another creator by the name of colin smoke who was assumed to be on good terms with the dream team proclaimed that he had succeeded on the first attempt before tweeting shortly after that he was hosting a giveaway of his own all you had to do was retweet and follow him dream however responded accusing colin of ransacking a fan giveaway and using it for clamps though the xd may imply that he at least sees the amusing side of it though i feel it may have been tinged with a dashing of sarcasm in a shocking twist though colin reveals that he didn't actually acquire the code first time and this was all in fact a genius ruse by our mastermind jokester additionally colin would be holding a legitimate giveaway of his own so it should be considered a net positive unfortunately dream didn't see the funny side of this it's pressing his discomfort towards a tweet engineered for exposure on the basis of a giveaway where that element wasn't present colin then responds with the extremely eloquent no you argument and strikes a nerve with our minecraft virtuoso who proceeds to scold his former associate telling him that he has been disrespectful in public and private and abundance of times and will be subsequently blocked on top of this he suggests that colin uses his charity work as a vehicle to orchestrate sympathy from those around him prompting questions about the creator's character i'll add that this wasn't really aided by the fact that one of dream's colleagues sapnap had blocked colin a few days prior this enlisted a variety of reactions from audience members as well as colin who thought that up to a point that their exchange had been ingested i must say i personally find that surprising especially with dream's fallout reply which i struggled to find the humor in nonetheless dreams rather confrontational nature were certainly met with different reactions from those within fandoms colin was one of the first to say that he had been subjected to the wrath of dream twitter some were skeptical towards this though and believed he was playing victim now there was no public sign of mass hate towards colin at the same time it's often hard given how certain more toxic factions of these communities operate often incognito we all know how some have responded to even trivial disagreements within the minecraft community with dream aggressively calling someone out it's hard to rule out the possibility that colin was exposed to some real nastiness though he did seem to walk back on these words a couple months later so it's hard to know exactly how he felt about the situation nonetheless the large majority of twitter stands seemed to be of the belief that this would have been better sold than dms in part because it would have prevented hostility but also because it would prevented a very limited and aggressive perspective being presented to audience members who really didn't have enough context to understand why dream felt the way he did strictly speaking this was a matter for dream and colin to resolve amongst themselves even if it did conclude in dream blocking colin i didn't really find dream's arguments particularly compelling without further context either colin had already established that he was holding various charity events that month so it was hard to see it as a spontaneous attempt to defend himself dream just seemed rather irate in the moment and that's okay people are angry sometimes the problem is when you have a fanbase capable of self-acknowledged toxicity how many times can you direct your anger towards a person or a group of people without also motivating the possibility of harassment and hate even if you discourage it yourself what level of responsibility does your innate humanity hold to what point should you police yourself how should you use that influence when you have fans that devote it this question will be posed again barely a day after at an event known as minecon live an annual convention which unsurprisingly concerns minecraft however due to the then present health concerns it was being held as an interactive event there are a variety of in-game related activities at these ceremonies and one that great interest to a lot of the fans this year was the announcement of a new mob however with three options available it was decided that a poll would be conducted to see what the populist desire given that it was all online they decided that the best platform for this poll was twitter which also made sense the three options presented were glows with isolature and moonloom now everyone had their preference i probably would have gone i soldier myself my friend suggested it should have been called chillager but dream had his heart set on the glow squid he even decided to vocally advocate for the voting of the glow squid now once again on its own this isn't a huge issue people back horses during races but droom had an extremely large fan base some of whom would just go for what he said for the sake of it furthermore dream then said he would begin following people who showed him evidence that they voted for the glow squid as well essentially bribing his audience to vote for his choice lo and behold many of his audience did with the glow squid winning both the first round and the subsequent run-off however the margin by which this creature won its votes was to be frank marginal and this led many to conclude that i soldier would have won had it not been for dreams rather enthusiastic endorsement of its anniversary this annoyed a decent amount of people at the time who accused dream of rigging the vote in its favor it was hard to deny really with the evidence available but he's a person he can state whatever preferences he has and encourage people by whatever means it happens every year in elections he clearly thought of it that way as well and initially just mean the fact that he had affected the outcome of the minecraft poll but other people weren't thrilled and it's not hard to see why either why even vote if your vote doesn't matter a couple days later dream released a more comprehensive threat explaining his motives but also denying this idea that he'd induced excessive influence on the outcome of a vote which was certainly debatable further this though he stated that in fact he didn't really care which mob was added and certainly not about a dumb squid which i'm not sure was the best response it was concluded with the caveat that he actually did think it was the best choice once again dream sent mixed signals which clearly didn't satisfy those who had felt he had more responsibility to own up to and they were going to make this note here's the problem and it shouldn't be too difficult to explain if one person can influence the outcome of a poll then it can no longer really be considered a poll people are more than welcome to express their opinions and preferences but we should still encourage people to vote for what they want and dream's involvement changed an outcome on the basis of his involvement alone and very little else and it's hard to go mr minecraft over here too much for this because everyone was offering their input and influence as well but i think it just reached a stage of disproportionality where basically anything went if dream said so you still want that illusion of democracy at least and dream couldn't meme his way out of this one it was worse when he claimed that he didn't even care because regardless of how irrelevant the vote was to him or his followers it was clearly meaningful to a lot of users and some felt a bit robbed of their freedom of choice people still want their voice to be heard even if it is on the vote of a mostly inconsequential in-game addition to minecraft it's also hard to buy dream's horror response that he didn't actually care he made arguments against the i soldier and in favor of the glow squid not really the ones a person who doesn't care would make he clearly had a preference i think one of the greatest issues with influences and their use of stance is that it will often bypass the process of critical thinking now young people online aren't going to be highest tier intellectuals at the same time you still want to encourage someone to think for themselves rather than necessarily just adopting another person's opinion because they tell them to particularly if they then implement that opinion in a way that can affect real world outcomes now as said this ideal isn't really possible all the time youtubers expressing the most trivial opinions will affect their audiences but it's important to make sure you don't necessarily exploit that concept and in many critics eyes dream cross a line following this situation jim went through a process of seemingly coming to terms with his influence and a week after the aforementioned thread released an even more comprehensive twit longer which addressed a variety of controversies a fair few of which we'll return to later but also discussing the use of its influence on that specific vote and taking a more sober reflection on his actions he states that it was merely a social experiment meme to see if he could pick a team and it could win but it did go too far and he acknowledges and apologizes for that i don't think this is an unreasonable response i can see why it bothers some after his first attempt to address it but one aspect that is a central theme in this specific twit longer was his failure to consider the feelings of others previously and he clearly wanted to be more sensitive towards others moving forward i can respect that and a lot of his friends and viewers alike respected it as well observing that anyone who spends this much effort addressing their past controversies and transgressions with that degree of introspection and detail must be demonstrating their ability to change as a person i would agree on principle however only time would tell if he had truly changed it's one thing to commit to it it's another to enact it dream was an individual and he had a right to his own opinions thoughts and feelings however he also had a responsibility to not weaponize this passion of his audience who may derive a lot of their behavior from his own it's a fine balance and if dream really wanted his full autonomy back he would definitely have to distance himself from the elements of stan culture that may also be beneficial to him that fervent albeit occasionally flawed dying lava just wanted to say how much i love you and thank you for making me smile oh thank you i love you too oh dream what loves a person it's what brought him a robust community it's what bolster views sales and much more people have faster crisis stands as being proponents of cancer culture but many also defended dream when they believed his remorse was genuine it gave him an extra line of protection against many of those haters who viewed his actions less charitably those who wanted to see him fail in the twitter he expresses how much he adores his stance in spite of rumors that he actually despises them he references the numerous times he stood up for them as a creator and pledges his own loyalty in return to them he clearly values their presence a lot regardless of the reasoning one of the priorities here was to convince those who may be skeptical where his allegiances lie however given that many would argue that these stands have also precipitated certain incidents where people have ended up being negatively affected most recently in the minecraft poll some may also feel he has neglected to address the downsides of his own community with the desire to retain their support and although in the months following dream certainly moderated his demeanor more mindfully for a bit at least there were still some people who felt that his more devoted viewers acted out of line and many critics felt dream wasn't really proactive enough encountering it every now and then he put out a tweet reminding people that toxicity wasn't really representative of those who supported him which is all well and good but it was always done under the preface that he was defending stands from being generalized which undermined any notion of recognition of the other point being made on the other end of the spectrum when stands did act out of line you'd regularly have people generalizing them to represent the community as a whole which entrenched this divide between the two sides of the discussion on top of this you have people who just did not forgive dream for the use of his influence and continue to maintain a narrative against him provoking the ira of his viewer base however every now and then you'd have someone who would recognize that the situation was more nuanced than either side presented it as it's honestly beyond me how people are able to hate on a minecraft video like it's very very strange and i'm just gonna say it for people who are concerned i'm all right with these messages okay i'm all right after having received them i'm not feeling down or anything if anything i'm just a bit angry not because i've received them but because people have this capacity to hate that much over such little things that what if other content creators are also getting the same thing and what if other content creators are out there who are maybe not as emotionally resilient or maybe a little bit more susceptible to these comments this is a clip from a creator known as fizzy banger now he makes a variety of claims relating to his experiences with the dream community some which are rather strong and as he doesn't show any accompanying evidence i'm not really in a position to comment on their verity with that said his experience echoes many others and there's already strong evidence to support those his arguments are reasonable and fair trying to work out how to expel the toxicity from the community you can't get rid of hate completely that's just a part of society really you can't get rid of hatred it's always going to be there it's a malignant sort of thing but dream could at least use his influence to try and maybe quell a lot of the toxicity that people try to pass on through his name so that's what i'm saying no hate on dream but i definitely think not just him as well but a lot of people should start addressing this more the way that i have because i haven't seen anyone talk about this however in the comment section you would see that the debate would regularly divert to which stream stands are the toxic ones how we'd characterize them who is right and who is wrong and it underlies the direct problem that leads into my next part i'm sure many dream stands want to see positive change between communities and wanted those in their own communities to be the best representatives of them as a whole but they didn't want to also be tied to the toxicity that they didn't see themselves as responsible for equally many in the minecraft communities wanted to create content without being associated with dream someone who has openly said that he's not that invested in the many aspects of minecraft that other creators are however this discussion often ended as soon as it began because no one was prepared to agree on what the guilty party was or who they represented whether those stands represented dream or not there was clearly some correlation and tensions were definitely palpable there need to be some sense spoken but who was going to speak it stalker fans must be stopped is something that's been said a lot on youtube and twitter over the last year or so involving a specific type of fan known as a stan dream himself of course [Music] julian's embrace of the stand mentality was not for everyone mainly because some people just disagree with the degree of parasocial relationships that he seemed to enjoy the internet's intimacy certainly intensifies certain aspects that other creators in dreams radius struggled to alienate themselves from unfortunately that's another downside to being an extremely influential creator you don't just have an impact on your own fans but on other creators in the genre so with that in mind allow me to introduce you to someone known as josh or josh if you're proper english anymore no no no no no it's happened it's happening josh is a youtuber and twitch streamer he plays a variety of games most importantly minecraft in which he was best known for his antics on snp live and smpr servers operated by his then friends however he also had areas of expertise outside the 3d sandbox and didn't really pertain a specific loyalty to those communities or those within them he'd already expressed his distaste towards stan's earlier in the year within a tweet requesting people c sending his friends threatening messages here he also suggests that viewers drop the stan label if they want to distance themselves from those who have acted out of line it's clear that he was not enamored by the more zealous of those within his audience this was a warning shot since then however he had remained mostly quiet on the matter until december at least at this point dream stands were garnering notoriety for a few reasons and they were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore due to their presence on trending pages with interesting hashtags to say the least ones which i really cannot be bothered to read out josh clearly agitated by all this and other matters as well decide to fully sever any relationship with the stan community announcing on his old account that anybody who considers themselves stands or part of any twit or twt can unfollow him as he believes the culture to be toxic he further elaborated on this in another thread labeling dream stands mentally unwell and framing them as a hive mind whose behaviors become progressively worse which is quite the supposition given his own prior experiences with these groups of people if this whole situation was indeed worsening how could someone like josh ignore it these statements were initially met with support from his audience however then our darling dream who had been mentioned in another of josh's tweets decided to weigh in with his thoughts on the matter with the grace retort of you're an idiot to his fellow minecrafter george then vigilantly pointed out the poise of his associate's response and dream informs him that his nuclear take unfortunately doesn't merit a proper response of course this then causes loads of viewers of both creators to pile on with their takes before dream returns to his main twitter to once more defend the honor of his loyal disciples tweeting out the new and improved dream dictionary definition of stans which equates to those who come together in a community while expressing that interest through love support sugar and spice and all things nice doesn't it just warm your heart well not really but i can understand why he made it although it's rather heavy-handed it's clear he's trying to make a point here go back a year and stands have always been characterized as the overly obsessive fan hence white is a portmanteau of stalker fan in the last year though i think many of these communities and obviously dream himself have come to the word stand through a different lens one that doesn't necessarily represent the formerly perceived stereotype these large communities coming together to lend a mostly unconditional slate of support to a creator with the caveat that they're not too problematic of course alternatively stan has also become a buzzword for when a follower of dream acted out of line and dream laying down his gauntlet for how he defines a stan is meant to challenge those who see them in a much different light this doesn't wholly address josh's point though after all he wasn't just attacking the conduct of fringe groups he was dressing the entire mentality supposedly behind stan culture and the allegedly cult-like worship of online figures dream however had his own response for this as well now some could class as a rather uninspired no you argument after all i really don't think a majority of people who have made this point are tom brady fans themselves i'm sure tom brady fans would have better things to do than provide insight on the internet's freshest youtube drama however i would say that he's trying to make the point that being fanatically enthusiastic for a certain creator isn't out of the ordinary at all for our culture and that we do it in plenty of other fields as well why should standing dream be considered any different i'm a big football fan and when i was younger i had posters i had shoes i had jerseys of my favorite players i watched all the behind the scenes videos i watched all their games my profile picture on twitter was my favorite player waving the flag of my favorite team and i looked up to a lot of players and most importantly i loved talking to other people about my favorite team the position was elaborated on a few days later in another video by dream appropriately called stand where he once again reasserts the argument that his stands are misunderstood and unfairly portrayed by critics it doesn't really say anything different to what we know already but does go into more detail in a way that relates the behavior back to the human condition of course that didn't make me obsessive it it made me human and when you like something a lot you like to spend more time involving that thing that you like you talk about it you tell other people about it and you try to spend as much time involving it as you can because you enjoy it and it makes you happy he also talks about these misunderstandings and situations where people jump to the dream stand's toxic point of view without critically considering the other possibilities technoblade fans or just stream haters see anyone calling me better than techno or just one of the best minecraft players as toxic stance which just isn't true it may be biased but it but it's natural overall it's a pretty standard video without much noteworthy to it so one quote did catch my attention but there's actually way more haters that take it too far and usually in a much much worse way i've had people try and find my address spam my comment section send me death threats and so much more but not from stan's just from people who really really don't like me dream mate your own stands are not going to be sending you death threats the point is that one creator stan is another person's hater and that perspective will differ between creators also very very minor side note dream but if you're going to talk about american football maybe don't use a photo of british football or soccer as you call it i don't agree with everything my fans do obviously and if they overset boundaries i tell them i tell them that i didn't like what they did i tell them it made me uncomfortable and you can see that on my twitter as recently as a few days ago but when i tell them they stop because they genuinely care about me and look up to me and why would they want to make me upset but the people who don't like me they don't care and they don't stop so it makes it much worse and that is a huge difference between dream haters and dream stands but dream belief in this stance he had faith in his stance and he proudly stood with his stands and with people like josh and other critics trying to present his stands as something he didn't believe them to be he had good reason in his mind to but was he tying himself to something that was beyond his control well let's talk about it [Music] thank you guys for all the support and don't let anyone convince you that something you genuinely enjoy is weird because they are weird for caring so much about what you enjoy dreams response certainly irritated a few to say the least and not necessarily because people disagree with him although many did i think the main reason was this sentiment that dream didn't really mean what he was saying and as a matter of fact was merely saying it to a piece as cash cow many thought this was illustrated by the fact that dreams opinions had taken a pretty sharp u-turn first of all on stands themselves a tweet from the year before showed him criticizing stans fairly harshly for not respecting his own boundaries despite demanding their own some argue that this makes him more reasonable in fact showing him as not being afraid to criticize his own audience but many saw it more as a dismissal of his nature to previously criticize and moreover a betrayal of the greater minecraft community that had nurtured him would he be the one to speak up if the same situation happened today the man who said that after affecting an in-game update that he didn't even really care for the game that he was renowned for the problem is that although dream was a minecraft creator by all intents and purposes he was no longer affiliated with the minecraft community in the way that he used to be many in fact viewed him as antithetical to what they believed in and it went deeper than that to a personal level dream's evolution as an individual can definitely be highlighted by his older content which saw him taking more traditionally gamer positions on matters such as language cultural appropriation and the rest in fact one rather interesting document posited the claim that dream was not merely an edgy gamer but a red dead republican who has an outspoken trump supporter in reddit on a formally shared account now the content itself isn't overly offensive this account clearly airs on the side of apologism as opposed to bigotry at the same time many would argue that trump and the policies that he's imposed are so inherently bigoted there really can't be room for those who make excuses for him a position very common among socially conscious stands in the subsequent pace bim response he stressed that he had never ever supported trump and although unsure of which posts were made by him if any he wanted to about anything that he said in the past that was him these were more a result of upbringing in ignorance rather than any form of bigotry it's a fair response but some were not convinced online in particular certain creators of recent have ended up being criticized for essentially selling out to what some brand is the woke mob when online and a small creator many like to be outspoken edgelords against the grain and as soon as they obtain any sort of socially conscious following they're keen to please behavior they were previously known to indulge in dream has regularly been invoked in these conversations given his historical defense of behavior that many of his stan community would take umbrage with and the sudden change of heart since the garnering of a proper follower base with many asserting that the reason for this about face being that it was profitable for him dream would regularly be called out by his audience for previous stances he had taken with many seeing his responses as groveling for forgiveness from an audience that he had previously claimed himself was not often permitting now it's very easy to take up that rather uncompromising position particularly given that popularity is often the only variable that has changed in the time between the u-turn in opinions however i do think that it's a reductionist stance because it doesn't necessarily take into account the other personal changes one man ago when garnering traction online and being able to have your own individual platform when you're in a toxic community it can easily affect your behavior and views that may precipitate actions that don't necessarily represent who you are individually that's basic psychology and you would struggle to name many youtubers who haven't changed as their influence has expanded for better and for worse in fact many viewers would argue that dream has merely been educated and thus reformed his positions accordingly this then disillusioned him with regards to his previous communities and he actually found more loyalty and acceptance from his supporters while many of those criticizing him and his beloved audience didn't even care for it this was the alternative theory dream came from a community that likely had a lot of outgoing edginess and once he met more socially conscious audience members he matured and became more socially conscious himself this is the mutual influence that we spoke about earlier dream established a bomb with people outside of his comfort zone and subsequently changed himself but how much were his audience willing to change and how much could he ask of them how much of this was just people's own assumptions clouding their perceptions on top of this some may ask why it even matters whether the dream was genuine or not if what he was doing was the right thing why should be a problem to decide whether he believes in it well i guess it comes down to principle if someone is willing to turn their back on previous stances for the pursuit of personal gain what else are they willing to do so the word stan doesn't mean stalker fan as much as you can google the definition and say it does my stance are a group of amazing incredible creative people that are some of the most supportive people on the planet although many would justifiably defend his position as one of a reformed individual who wanted to be more sensitive others just did not see that more a person deserting their former beliefs to pander to a demographic that was financially lucrative to him throwing a culture under the bus to pursue something greater if that was the case surely he continued to prioritize his preservation over any real moral compass well at this point it was ambiguous you have people on one side you have people on the other each of them vociferously defending their standpoints with dream designated as the slightly slanted spectator but there were a few ironclad banks we knew that dream was aware of his power as a creator because he had said it in a twitlonger we knew that he was regretful of utilizing his fans in the past to influence outcomes and had vowed not to do it again we knew that he did not believe many of the claims that stan culture was toxic against core but did have toxic members and how they mobilized would depend in part on dream's own demeanor these are all plausible at this point but if he was going to back his own horse he needs to make sure that he didn't end up validating people's criticisms of it with his own actions whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not dream did have an army at his disposal who would defend him no matter how much the odds were stacked against him little did we nor they know how much the loyalty would be tested in the following months so let's go for a run [Music] speed running [Music] it's a pretty popular activity amongst gaming communities for those who aren't aware it's the act of playing through a game with the intent of completing it in as short amount of time as possible now the actual prerequisites for what would be classed as completion can depend on the game itself and even in game conditions as many have other features that may not be viewed as essential to the plotline's fulfillment some may wonder how you can even speedrun a game like minecraft which was launched as an open world sandbox without any clear campaign mode well not too long after the launch minecraft chief architect notch also thought that there should be at least some end goal for the players so towards the end of 2011 the end dragon was added whose defeat would engender the final credits signifying completion of the game however the end dragon wasn't just waiting for any old tom dickerary to slay them they reside in a place called the end on an island where they launch aerial attacks on the besieged gamer the end can only be accessed through a portal created using eyes of ender in a structure known as a stronghold however you also need a sufficient number of ender pearls and blaze rods which can only be dropped by certain mop to put it simply it's not considered a facial task if you're interested in more watch cordwith's video he summarizes it well the game changing nature naturally makes it the target of competitive players who want to speedrun it and there are plenty of leader ports dedicated to just that as i mentioned earlier dream wasn't just a pretty smiley face he was skilled on the gameplay front of minecraft as well and did regularly partake in speed runs of his own publishing them online and submitting times for various leaderboards for the respective versions of the game including world records he had hung up his running boots for a period of time but appeared to make a comeback towards the end of 2020 scoring impressive times on his twitch streams and subsequently tendering his results to the official minecraft speedrunning team in around october a week after the stream in question he announced he would see streaming his speed runs due to allegations they were fake expressing frustration that people would even question his ability when he has scored world records before completely understandable however come the 11th of december the same day in which he posted his earnest defensive stand culture another video was uploaded this time though by the head moderator of speedrun.com dear square alongside a rather lengthy document that seemed to express skepticism at dream's performance let's take a look at dreamzodz this isn't exactly a good look across six streams dream bartered 262 times and got 42 pearl traits which when plugged into the formula comes in at 1 in 177 billion guess what else has a random drop chance in speed runs blaze rods anyone want to guess what dreams blaze luck was 1 in 113 billion the accompanying document laid out in the most comprehensive terms the sheer unlikeliness of dream's fortune in acquiring various items necessary to facilitate one's transportation to the end the two items of interest were ender pearls and blaze rods which have a pretty defined percentage probability of dropping when you slay the mobs who may carry them as the graphs illustrated dream's accomplishment seem to exceed the realms of chance an implied dream may have downloaded mods to enhance his performance basically the gamer equivalent of anabolic steroids as dream likes to point out just because the odds of his luck happening are in the trillions it doesn't mean that's the same chance of him cheating i mean with illumina's considerably lucky 92 odds it doesn't mean that there was a 92 chance of him cheating but the thing that dream misses is that the odds for the event and the odds for cheating are still correlated if you perform an infinitesimally unlikely event then you can be extremely confident that something went wrong that allowed it to happen just because something is possible doesn't mean that it's at all feasible here the numbers are just so large that they outweigh any conceivable subjective opinion the video also showed that dream had previously attempted to defend himself when confronted with this information by the moderation team presenting a document from his own perspective which attempted to demonstrate the flaws in their own calculations however geosquare presented a response to this as well you can check the paper for a rebuttal but we effectively examined the probability of this happening even if we checked multiple runners or streams first and the bias wasn't nearly strong enough to refute the idea that the odds were possibly tampered with look we're the first to admit that the data is actually biased but it's nowhere near as biased as it would have to be to disqualify the evidence the thing with real world data is that it's pretty much always going to be biased in some way but the field of statistics was made to interpret this stuff nonetheless and account for all the errors in our case we've over corrected the bias far enough so that we're biasing in favor of dream and we're still getting pretty crazy numbers all in all the report and the video concluded that dream's chances of succeeding a speedrun with this luck were approximately 1 in 7.5 trillion and as many other creators noted that was being generous typically this sort of thing would be a private matter but as he was a public figure and had completed these speed runs publicly and continued to defend them privately the mods were clean and happy that he had sold these as authentic and continued to dispute this when challenged now with all this out in the open and with all the previous pressure on him how would dream respond well he channeled his inner trump my 1.16 run was just rejected after research due to it being too unlikely to verify a video was made by a head mod and youtuber geosquare using my name and clickbaiting cheating speedrunning in order to get easy easy views definitely a response soon total bs it seems dream won and he won by a lot he tweeted an additional reply stating that many good mods had spoken to him and said they were going to quit the team because they believed the so-called investigation to be a rotten one a very rotten one indeed in the replies dream was met with support from his fans after all how could he be accused of being too lucky in a luck-based game this wasn't dream's only response he also took to discord to label geosquare a cloud-chasing clown who needs to go back to the circus dream clearly felt strongly about this matter and to an extent with the context given it was understandable after all this was his credibility that was under scrutiny with quite damaging implications it was quite ironic after what had all just been said what we know dream knows and the actual facts of the situation geosquare himself demonetized all videos to avoid the allegation of cloud chasing and clearly went to a lot of effort to be meticulous i would say there are much easier ways to garner attention online to frame a person who merely thought they were doing their job as self-serving and to use incendiary language is obviously going to provoke audiences even the most tranquil dream really needed to back up its claims before jumping to such conclusions but he was determined to do so following this a series of threads and tweets were posted in the coming days all with the intent of exonerating him and his unlikely speed run these included explanations corrections additional evidence many of which seemed to substantiate his case this was topped off finally with his own document filled to the room with statistical jargon and authored by professional astrophysicist who worked at an online science consulting company alongside this he published an accompanying video to summarize these alternative findings [Music] probability probability is the measurement of how likely something is to happen recently one of my speedruns that i did on twitch has been analyzed by the speedrun.com volunteer mod team and deemed as improbable to a degree that is nearly impossible so lucky in fact that they came to the mathematical conclusion that it had one in 7.5 trillion odds of happening so they put out a video and a long document talking about it and this is my response the video and the document agree with the thesis of the original report published by the moderation team that the base probability of dreams drop rates on the mobs in question are astonishingly low how they sought to compensate for other statistical biases that the moderation team may have established during their initial investigation is conducted with intent to plant that seeded doubt in the mind of the viewer though this does fluctuate even with the harshest of odds is in fact impossible to say with certainty that dream cheated so dream was completely justified in defending his position if he believed it right with these 11 streams included the data shows quote no statistically significant evidence that dream was modifying the probabilities well [Music] as a final closing note if despite all the evidence that i've presented you still believe that the odds are too low i want to mention a couple things from the report one the expert that wrote the report says that he quote disagrees that the situation suggests that cheating is an unavoidable conclusion and two that the probability presented is not the probability that i'm innocent it is just the probability of a rare event happening under specific circumstances and the expert says that in order to find a correct probability of me changing the drop rates quote external evidence that the probabilities were modified at this specific point would be needed to produce a significant probability of cheating essentially the fact that something unlikely happened shouldn't be the only evidence to back up an accusation i'll preface this by saying that i'm not an astrophysicist i've dabbled in statistics but i've been lying if i said much of it beyond a level had stuck with me even if you've only dabbled you'd know something was fundamentally wrong with dream's response and explanation although it's true that the world is based on chance and anarchy to an extent once you grant the fact that there were statistical bases for the possibility of particular outcomes relating to item drops the idea that dream had that magnitude of good fortune just does not seem viable even if the odds were less than 1 in 7.5 trillion if a game involves aspects of randomness and chance is it possible for one player to be so lucky while playing that game that we can say with mathematical certainty that they are officially too lucky i don't really want to go into much further depth related to this there's an excellent video by stand up mata on subject which basically deconstructs all the documents in question including dreams astrophysicist comrade who seems to be lacking academic diligence and here this number the actual odds come out to be about 1 in 6 300 that number is incorrect and this is within their own hypothetical situation they came up with the idea that if you flip a coin 100 times what's the chance that you get 20 heads in a row and i ran the simulations myself and discovered they must have simulated it for heads and tails and then to compensate for the fact that it's just heads they accidentally divided by two when they should have multiplied by two and that's why they're out by a factor of four and it totally changes the thrust of their argument because it moves what they claim is the correct answer from one side of approximation to the other and it's just indicative of a lack of care and attention when putting together even their own hypothetical examples do i think that dream hired a person who he believed to be an incredibly qualified mathematician for sure i highly doubt that anyone without some sort of mass aptitude would bother to write something like this let alone have the capability to write it however it feels like they were probably dragged from one of those essay writing companies who flood your dms when you tweet your frustration at your latest english assignment whatever dream was paying them wasn't enough to cover up the fact there were still some glaring questions that hadn't been addressed it certainly didn't take long for our slash statistics to dissect the document and for videos to spring up publicizedness with momentum once more gradually turning against him i already apologized on twitter because i had said some rude things to the mods after the video was released and i really don't want to send hate to anybody i responded incredibly immaturely at first because i was angry and i really do regret my response but i would think that the average person being falsely publicly accused might react in a similar way i don't know i'm very competitive so being called the cheater just really set me off at first however a lot of his audience stood by him for one key reason but from their point of view dream didn't really have an impetus to lie it wasn't the biggest deal there are much more pressing matters in the world and dream wouldn't make a sincere appeal to his supporters otherwise their support surely wouldn't hinge on such a trivial matter some audience members were publicly taking matters into their own hands taunting those involved even echoing dream's own comments if dream had cheated or even unknowingly played on modest settings surely he would have no problem coming clean about it hell this is a sentiment he echoed a few months later in a drama relating to another creator by the name of john swan who is no stranger to this channel in a different capacity john swan in that case was completely in the wrong and dream was in the right but these words would come back to haunt him once more i was showing on stream and stuff and i was like all of it it's like so so obvious that it's not a it's not a 12 year old it has to be either you one of your friends something i was thinking myself like why would he not admit it then but the reason he wouldn't admit it is because the fact that they said the n-word in these screenshots so it's like if he admits it's him then he's you know throwing his career out the window because then he gets cancelled for being racist and right whatever else you know so it's like i think that's probably why because to be fair if you look at it it's like other than that it's not that big of a deal dream and his fans felt like they were joined at the hip through this and it was in many ways the ultimate test of mutual loyalty the fact that dream was positioning himself against every logical and rational explanation put forward by the minecraft community they didn't want to accept his speedrun because statistically it did not seem possible that it was achieved under competitive conditions they had a greater volume of coherent evidence and under scrutiny dreams narratives struggled to hold water yet dream support never waned in fact it felt like it had been fortified this idea that it was dream versus the world even if there was a valid reason that the world was against him it could be a rewarding experience being the person to stand behind him however the downside of this is that you ultimately reward the wrong behavior it's the exact same reason trump was so successful but also such a morally dubious person in my humble opinion with me i'm pretty young so i feel like if i do anything i've done so i've definitely done stupid stuff in the past but i do stupid things i learn from them and then i grow and i think my audience recognizes that in many ways i do think that stands were unfairly characterized by critics i don't think that there are a huge number of aggressive unpleasant individuals who are part of these communities i also feel that many did prioritize their loyalty to a creator who defended them over the actual logical truth and maybe that's what being a stan is in a way like dreams said himself like being a sports fan like being a celebrity devotee that we are more predisposed to stand by them even if the odds are stacked against them but this is youtube and people call stuff out not on the basis of whether it's natural but on the basis of whether it's right and something didn't sit right with a lot of people about dream's demeanor to them even though he had turned his back on other communities he still wanted to profit all the same he wanted to have his cake and eat it and was regularly bullish in confrontation with those who questioned him even if at his size he was massively punching down this was a divide that only deepened by the conduct of his detractors he has spread the moderator who published the original document and corresponding video would find himself under criticism after creating a burner account to disseminate rumors that dream had openly used racial slurs a few years prior these allegations were later assumedly proven false and geosquare published an apology but the professionalism of someone who was supposedly on a moderation team was brought into question and this idea of bias was probably kept in mind again it certainly undermined this idea of him being a neutral observer even if his original assertions were correct and a lot of people were upset with that because they couldn't see how they could be biased i just want to share my point of view because from my perspective maybe you can understand why i reacted the way that i did first of all the speedrun.com minecraft bedrock edition team which is a similar team to the one who worked on this but for bedrock edition completely banned me from ever submitting an official run well before this happened without giving a single reason why other than that they don't like me and i have never even played minecraft bedrock edition or done a single speedrun on that game but i'm still banned and i have yet to be told why obviously this didn't give me as much confidence in their sister team java edition giving me fair treatment however i don't think that the actions of the bedrock team reflect on the intentions of the java team another thing though is that while the mods were looking into my 1.16 run a lot of the official speedrun verifiers were saying incredibly disrespectful things about me about my fans and essentially harassing me which obviously led to me saying some things that i regret saying but i'm sure that anyone can understand why that would be frustrating that's important to note regardless of what could be said about dream his critics often didn't immerse themselves in glory either and for supporters of the youtuber who may be subconsciously looking for ways to discredit those individuals it really wasn't that hard when you're calling into question someone's character you really have to be careful what you say the official owners and admins of speedrun.com which run the leaderboard made a statement that the video was quote lacking in the level of objectivity we hope to see around communications by the game moderation team to the community which i completely agree with those who weren't fans though the reasons to dislike dream just continued to multiply whether it was his attitude his pr or their own run-ins with viewers of his this renewed relationship spurred on by the speedrunning situation seemed to only serve to show everything destructive about his approach and not just for the minecraft communities in months coming the focus of the narrative seemed to shift there was still criticism surrounding how dream fans acted but it also went on to dream and how he acted how he appealed to his stance how people felt he mobilized them and how he subsequently responded to those who called him out i think the worst thing about it for many people was how contrived it seems a lot of people had received a lot of blowback from these dramas that could have easily been set aside but dream just couldn't help himself he wouldn't yield a lot of the time either and that amplified a lot of the harm that people face i had no idea that i was gonna get to this point this quickly but i did i had i had i was being unplanned cocky i was being cocky i was to the point where i was like bragging like yeah i'm gonna get i'm gonna be at a million subs and six months not funny dream was always slightly at odds with his audience at least personality-wise and his roots show in his behavior he's a very proud person he's instinctively very defensive of his nature when people do attack him he wants to stand up for himself and he has done even at times when to be honest i don't think it was worth doing for example in march may launch some new merchandise maybe we'll decide to call him out because they thought it was a bit well minimalist to put it mildly now in dreams defense the smiley face is probably the most noteworthy aspect of his brand but that doesn't mean you just have to print it on a shirt without any additional personality however once again proud of the work that he had done he responded first tweeting the dream classic no you argument after all everyone who was attacking him was a massive supreme fan i'm sure not to mention that i'm pretty certain nike and other brands actually do put a bit of effort into the design of their product emphasis on the bit dream then suggests that it's all well and good being able to draw his merch in pain but could the average fault finder manage to accomplish many of the other feats that he had achieved during this intricate operation in the formation of such a piece of artistic triumph well a lot of people's response was yes i think a lot of people could because unless dream was down on the front line stitching the shirts himself a lot of this is executive management a majority of large creators have merchandise because they can outsource a lot more of the more strenuous aspects of production and it means it's less work for them to do people reiterate these points and dream then qualified his own like he does explain that although he didn't articulate as concisely as he could he actually hires and employs his own staff for his plan maintaining excellent work conditions and paying a livable wage which if true i'll give him kudos for but i haven't worked there so how would i know i don't blame jim for having pride in what he's achieved as a creator i don't think any old idiot with a microphone could have established what he has you need to be grounded with your responses and every time dream was called out he seemed to react in a way that did not reflect that now he'd eventually adjust the viewpoint to be more empathetic but it was too late every time he didn't directly start a battle between his audience and his critics and by the time he has finally worked out what to say people have probably had their account suspended arguing a point that didn't even have to be made in the first place but don't worry he'll tweet a love part out whatever those who hate him bill are as dishonest someone causing a load of unnecessary collateral damage and then trying to kiss it better now what many see is disingenuous i personally see as a creator maybe a bit out of his depth trying to appeal to an audience he never really requested but also trying to maintain his own sense of self regardless it's what many began to build as the dream cycle and every time it occurred it only emphasized that pattern of behavior that to them seemed so tired and played out in many ways it felt like dream had much more in common with his critics than his stance but couldn't align himself with the people so blatantly against him stands off instinctively far more socially conscious than dream has ever been and may well ever be and that's no surprise we all know dream has had his fair share of gamer moments and interesting opinions that many people around him held too and as we've noted earlier he clearly wanted to move away from that but his desire to be something he had never truly properly understood before just presented a person who was putting on an act there's no problem with someone who's trying to be what they view as the best person they can be the problem with dream is that he didn't have a grasp on social conscience with the people he wanted support from nor what he was being called out for most the time and therefore he never really grew as a person and more just tweaked his responses after the fallout public persona by focus group essentially this was epitomized recently when he released his song mask i have to say it wasn't my cup of tea the lyrics themselves are a bit heavy-handed anyone who needs to explicitly explain the meaning of their songs in the lyrics twice is clearly missing the mark of songwriting and the music video well i have a lot of thoughts about that one but i digress as expected plenty of people came after him for a song for a variety of reasons some valid some not so valid and dream responded because once again whatever our opinions are the song clearly meant to lock to him and i'd never take that away however in probably one of these strangest decisions he responded to arguably the most valid point of them all the direction of his video which drew a lot of criticism for how it approached treatment of mental disorders this is a particularly sensitive subject given dream's younger audience and their responsiveness to his narratives nonetheless maybe dream had a point to make what did his response entail though well take a bloody guess it was a no you argument but this time juxtaposing this criticism with the idea that those attacking him enjoy music that blindly glorifies drugs however this was a big mistake on dreams part because he didn't consider that he was committing what some class as a microaggression which is basically a subconscious offense of bigotry where someone unknowingly perpetuates a negative perception of a marginalized group and before he knew it a variety of threads and tweets popped up explaining why it was problematic with many coming from within his own fan base this only deteriorated when he was called out for defending his fan base against the claim they were anti-black which didn't sit well with many in his audience who felt like there were serious shortcomings in how they had been treated it wasn't long until dream removed his tweet and organized a somewhat messy apology initially published to his private now deleted account he made it public so all parties concerned could see it he states he completely understands why it was harmful and then ticks all the apology boxes by linking other awesome black creators but this time it did not feel right there was something rather soulless about dreams apology like it was a masquerade he said he understood why what he did was hurtful and although i don't necessarily expect every person to explain exactly why what they did was wrong i do question if he really understood at all this time mainly because incoming hot take i don't really think he did anything wrong at all sure his argument was dumb and it did remind me of the old memes where someone thinks their music is so much deeper than it actually is but outside of that its purpose was clearly intended to show the shallowness of those who criticize the fact that he mentions medication as opposed to the typical drugs the idea that many of these haters hear songs talk about drugs and celebrated while criticizing people who betray them in a more vulnerable light but okay that may have been dream's intent but he still played into a negative stereotype that's the point of a microaggression right well i disagree people's main arguments within a lot of the threads critical of dream's comment was that the core message behind his statement was rooted in racism that being the drugs drugs comment was very typical of how bigots characterized hip-hop music this would be a valid point if his comment was designed to attack the music itself but from my perspective the comment was fully designed to attack the listener charles and his proverbial friend who in my opinion sound like the type of suburban frat boys who probably misinterpret the meaning of a lot of rap music that discusses such substances even then if you want to call back to the classic emo tweet about nicki minaj the point wasn't that nicki minaj is hip-hop and therefore bad the point was that at the time the song stupid hoe was viewed as somewhat shallow what made the meme wrong wasn't that stupid ho is actually some profound statement on the state of humanity apologies to any nikki stands watching but more the fact so whatever song is shallow to some people people like what they like whether it's shallow or not doesn't mean someone can't enjoy it it's not really a racist meme it's just dumb it's why stupid hoe is in the caption and not a song by grandmaster flash or common though i'm sure it wouldn't be hard to take them out of context help there's plenty of internal discourse over the current state of hip-hop music from many more experienced artists themselves many of whom don't approve of how new generations of rappers and musicians in general have adapted the struggles in a light that undermines their original message it's a discussion that's been going on for decades now they're definitely racists who have made the claim that hip-hop music at its core glorifies drugs violence and the rest to attack the black community when in reality it's a much more systemic problem that has been continuously ignored by countless governmental regimes however to tie that back to dream when it's not even the point of his tweet i mean unless you can really prove that there's a connection unless you have a load of studies it's a real waste of energy he literally does the bare minimum to contextualize not even implying the genre of music this could be to me it's absurd and i feel strange even having to explain it because you can't really assume much about a comment like that i'm sure if dream didn't have a commitment to his audience he would have said it was absurd too instead we have an empty groveling apology which validates a very weak idea of education without people actually learning anything although i think it's important that public figures don't express themselves in a way that could be inflammatory against specific groups of people it's also on us and the viewers to try and interpret their words with an openness and trust with regards to what they're trying to say and just because we may be hurt or we may interpret it in a cynical way doesn't mean that a person has been hurtful we may have just read too much into something even if we are part of that affected focus group that principle is universal with that said in many ways i understand why dream apologized ultimately it's one tweet in the grand scheme of things he was probably just exhausted because his thread comes across as just that it would have been much more trouble to dig his heels in and declare war on all of twitter but it was a sign of the times of that appeasement i think that's what take people off outside his fan base however to understand people's frustration you have to see this in the full context of his at least now decently sized collection of apologies but also for what he didn't apologize for as well you see i didn't just attempt to dissect dream's tweet to own the people on twitter in fact i accept that people who are bothered by the tweets perspective may have a point they may be valid maybe june was right to apologize given that you could interpret his words in such a way and people who carry racial trauma feel that trauma resurfacing when certain comments are made as someone with my own trauma my opinions differ on how we should approach others language that may activate that trauma but i accept that this is subjective but if dream is so receptive to apologizing for a tweet in which the implication is at best tentative why can't he show some sympathy towards people who may be bothered with him having a music video where a young version of himself throws away his medication or sometimes the question seems dependent on who's upset you remember that old speed running skylark we spoke about well dream actually did apologize you wouldn't be blamed for missing it as it was removed less than a week after it was published but an apology is an apology i guess and in the apology dream explains how after all the drum had transpired he had discovered that he was actually using a disallowed mod on the version of the game he was playing and that he regretted behaving the way he did he'd gone through so many emotions at that point he just wasn't thinking straight i know the struggle dream he said he planned on letting it die down but wanted to clear his conscience after the animosity had persisted between himself and the mod team and although he doesn't necessarily agree with their behavior at all points he acknowledges that his actions were rash and driven by his own personal judgments of the mod team's intentions rather than what could be logically and mathematically drawn from these striking anomalies in his actual performance as an apology it is well written and manages to explain his perception pretty rationally however it didn't wash with many of those who had criticized him for a few reasons firstly his whole justification for holding off addressing it he states he thought he'd let it rest for a few years and reveal it when no one actually cared anymore he didn't want to be the center of drama again however the problem is that dream perpetuated the drama a lot of hassle against these people a fact that he acknowledges himself saying that it's probably been torture for the mods the one thing that i'm sure the mods wanted from this situation is closure and as long as the question of whether dream cheated was contended they would never have that here admitting to cheating wouldn't have looked bad on the mods or flared up drama against them it wouldn't have upset them more regardless of what torture they had endured up to that point dream tries to make it look like a point of selflessness and it's just not very convincing other points mainly pertain to how he tonally conveys himself there's a lot of comments that people feel were a bit pointed towards the mods playing up his own history with them to justify his actions alongside unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable claims that people feel were placed there to embellish his perspective to make it feel more justified than it was many found it hard to buy the fact that dream would go to such lengths to defend something that he wasn't even sure about this is the person who tweeted with conviction who hired mathematicians to justify his point of view who published videos all proclaiming his truth the fact that he now says he wasn't even sure just makes it worse given how he used his platform in the first place there was no way that the masses in these communities affected were going to forgive him for this but was the apology even for them [Music] on one hand you had two very different apologies in their structure in their presentation in their actual context and that makes sense in a way after all the latter was a much more serpentine situation warranting some elaboration however when you analyze the actual language in his belated apology it's hard to say it's directed towards a different party there's a lot of emotional language that i wouldn't say is inherently manipulative but is designed to elicit sympathy from the readers however to elicit sympathy you need people who are prepared to be sympathetic and in a youtuber's case the people who are most likely to be sympathetic are your own audience now maximizing understanding is something that is quite normal when explaining anything to anyone i don't want to say that it's a tactic employed to solely win over your fans but there are distinctions that can be made dream talks about how scared stressed angry he was all the strong emotions that he went through when being challenged on the nature of his speed run these aren't details particularly relevant to the situation for many interested but they are to those who support him and want to assume that he had the best intent even when he acted dishonorably people trying to bring everyone round to their perspective will logically take the route of empathy explain their actions in a way that people can identify the mindset when the actions were taken and at least make sense of them even if they don't agree this will build a level of respect between the parties involved this is present in dreams confession but his appeals to sympathy are much more pervasive and noticeable and unless you brought people into a position where that's effective then many will view it as cheap and calculated which is exactly how a lot of his detractors interpreted it anyone can be scared anyone can be stressed those feelings don't necessarily precipitate the actions documented plenty of other people in fearful mindsets will act differently it's all about how the person interacts with those feelings on a unique level understanding that is what prevents it from happening again because lord knows we're all going to be scared stressed and angry again at points in our life i'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's not the worst confession apology i think the problem was it wasn't directed towards the mods or anyone who was actually involved in this situation anyone actually deserving of an apology it was directed towards the people who dream believed had a capacity to forgive him because whether right or wrong he clearly has it in his mind that there are people who blindly hate him regardless of what he says or does and it's not worth the effort to try and bring them round to his perspective at the same time this is an issue because those who are caught in the fallout of this situation probably do deserve a public apology and there's no real sign of that in this post he says sorry directly once to quote anyone he let down which is again indicative that this is for his audience after all to let someone down they need to have an expectation of you and many of those who didn't like dream had no expectation in the first place to them this was just him admitting to what they'd always known and even if they'd borne the brunt of his actions he didn't want to apologize to them particularly for any fan antics because he didn't want to play into that narrative of toxicity peddled by them and he certainly didn't want to vindicate any of them more than they already would have been through such an admission dream's apology begs us all to move on from the drama and the reality is that we have it's been six months so why is he in his bathtub at 4am bringing it up again it's because earlier in the day moderators rejected yet another run of his for cheating his 1.15 world record speed run gotta say it's some really interesting timing for him to suddenly become apologetic about the situation and you know what if dream looks to it like that maybe he's right the mods the reddit foreign frequenters the antis maybe they wouldn't forgive him but does that mean they're not deserving of an apology no of course not if you wrong someone your apology shouldn't bank on whether they forgive you or not and just still apologize if you feel you've done something wrong even if you know they're not going to forgive you i will admit that that was part of the reason that i ended up making this guy the only but the only reason i knew is this was going to be brought up and i thought ah one of the main reason that i hadn't said anything about this for the last like two half three months however long since i removed the response video was because there was nothing there was you know there was no big drama around it like people didn't like me because of people spammed me and hated on me because of it that's fine whatever i can deal with that but when this happened i was like all right i mean it's it's very it's being brought up again when you look at the two apologies side by side it's not hard to understand why people were bothered the dream takes me hours to apologize for trivial matter relating to a tweet a month to apologize something that caused people to invest time and effort and face down stigma from his audiences for even daring to try and prove something that should have been accepted from the start dream's own principles seem to be based on who was affected and of course we'll all have our biases and inconsistencies it's natural for a creator to be more interested in their own audience but there's a line and for many dream crossed it to the detriment of individual users and greater communities alike however if you choose to believe his version of events presented in the apology that many of his supporters would argue that his perspective makes complete sense if we go back throughout the video it also makes sense the same pattern that has continuously surfaced throughout the stories no matter how different they may seem the dream felt persecuted the dream felt that there was a narrative being crafted against him and his audience and that it was being pushed by those who were envious of his own success and thriving community although he didn't present any in his pace bid there was sufficient evidence that the mods did not like him and whether his response was logical or not is besides the point it was human and certainly not impossible that is with the proviso that you believe him of course but the fact that it's not off the table is indicative to say the least however you can be relatively confident about how his audience felt what we witnessed here is essentially a deficit in critical thinking a product of polarization all it would have taken is a significant group within dreams circle to publicly challenge his assertions and yet it never really happened because people were so focused on fighting the greater narratives that were being charged against them i don't think stans were lying through their teeth to protect them i think they genuinely believed him and from their own perspective he was one of the only creators who was honest and upfront in characterizing their own behavior so by extension he was going to be a more reliable narrator to them nobody wanted to desert an ally so when he came round to explaining his own perspective that was rooted in the idea of this deluge of hate towards him this resonated with his audience because that's what they felt too but not his critics because only the former concur with the presupposition that he was experiencing disproportionate hate in the first place his audience understood where he was coming from and therefore they by and large forgave him because what dream was saying was real to them but what is real [Music] what dream is created in less than a couple years is by many means unprecedented therefore one of the typical responses to those critical of him is that it's hard to expect to know exactly how to act because there are very few prior examples of it in the youtube community at the same time as illustrated by the dream cycle there seems to be from many people's perspectives this idea that these antics have reached a point of repetition the dream may have some degree of self-awareness of what he's doing drew may be the first from the youtube sphere to experience what we're discussing today but he's also experienced it on a continuous basis and you expect him to have learned by some point however self-awareness does tie into how much responsibility he should take as a creator particularly in regards to the more destructive drama there's an impulse to a lot of what dream does on the surface which in a way makes him relatable to a lot of his audiences he portrays himself as a bit emotional and impulsive and even if he doesn't always do the right thing he seems to think that he is at the time it's that which allows his audience to maintain faith them you can look at a lot of studies in the fan culture that establishes how fans want to see themselves in their idols and in spite of every blunder dream seemed to fall apart it only seemed to reinforce the bomb between the two parties that's epitomized by this 4am confession post that gives off the surface level impression that something's been weighing on his conscience and he just has to talk about it but there are a lot of skeptics who believe that this was just another part of the ruse this simulation of a person is identifiable to his audience but is merely exploiting the idea of understanding between them rather than actually understanding the fact that he launched a toxic attack on people who doubted his speed running credentials on the same day that he acknowledged that audiences had the capacity to behave with toxicity themselves seemed too ironic to be sincere even if he genuinely believed he didn't cheat why would he emotionally rile up his views with polarizing and divisive language when he knows exactly what the consequences entail is he really that impulsive or is he really that calculated well let's have a look at the former first i'm dead oh my god i'm stupid i am so dumb dream can be pretty reactionary however as his critics have observed this can sometimes be beneficial to him particularly when he wants to align himself with his audience's perception of him at the same time sometimes his responses aren't remotely helpful either for example the situation pertaining to his music he didn't really receive many plaudits for his comments just backlash from his own viewers and it's not the first time that's happened it's what he was regularly called out for when he acquired a standoff and although he quickly climbed down from his prior positions there was no real benefit to what he previously said dream has his own feelings on matters but at the same time many will question whether it's compatible with the other side of him decision after reading the document myself i was surprised and it seemed like a very good job the only reason i was insisted on the math being wrong is because i know that i didn't cheat and i also know that 7.5 trillion is just too unlikely to be reasonable if i didn't cheat so i could assume that the math was off again i don't care at all about my speedrun i care more about defending my character than defending a dumb leaderboard position looking at dream's apologies and qualifications regularly show a different portrayal and that's the one that a lot of those who aren't fond of him see a person who doesn't want to face consequences for trouble that they have instigated dream has the ability to be very rational and even if he has said something that seemed impulsive in the moment he clarifies points in a calmer manner down the line it was rather amusing in many ways it felt like we had two very divisive sides of him because he clearly showed an ability to be mild and reasonable and yet regularly ended up in the firing line of his own comments and subsequent fallout whether they be on twitter youtube comment sections or discord servers even if it didn't aid him he still did it and for many it was very thin but what if it was just a ruse when people think of such cynical ploys to exploit demographics people often think of large corporations and their rather shallow activism designed to reap people's pockets without bringing about real change it's often hard to do it on a youtube level because people often subscribe to you for personal reasons for you and they're often going to notice when you're not really expressing what you truly believe many critics believe they saw something like that within dream particularly given his previous positions that this wasn't really someone learning more over someone manually trying to adjust to his audience's expectations over time it starts to sound like a broken record especially when combined with the at points rather superficial levels of activism for example at the end of may dream proudly announced that in the spirit of gay rights all donations from his twitch streams the following month would be going to lgbt focused charities a heartwarming course to say the least however dream then proceeded to not stream until right at the end of june with many alleging that he only did it then because he was called out you can't really be impulsive in attempting to appear calculated but you can be calculated in attempting to appear impulsive i think that idea would solidify with his pace bin but given that he also says by his standard stupid [ __ ] on a regular basis it's obviously not the full picture so what is i think the dream is impulsively defensive and deliberately apologetic i don't think it's what he's used to but i think he often feels pushed in a position to do so mainly due to the expectation of those who don't really have that much in common with him the problem is that on one hand his apologies take the boxes and do the job the stans accept it because he admits that what he did was wrong and at the end of the day it's not that big a deal but the issue is that in those scenarios it provides the illusion in personal growth when in many cases these apologies are done with a hollowness because they don't touch into what causes the issue in the first place which is in my opinion dreams of nature to be provocative not insensitive not conservative but provocative and i think stanza struggled to account for this as well [Music] not too long after dream admitted to his malfeasance he ended up on a stream with hassan pika a popular leftist twitch streamer who had tumbled down the dream rabbit hole a few days prior hassan had made some pretty charged statements against dream himself minecraft stance what the [ __ ] are you guys doing do you know nothing like do all you know is just like minecraft eat hot chip and [ __ ] make like minecraft tweets bro that's literally he's literally like platforming oh my lord dude oh my god that [ __ ] is [ __ ] wild dude bro listen instead of freaking out instead of freaking the [ __ ] oh yeah he said pizzagate is real good start good way to start this you guys lose your [ __ ] over like carl jacobs being a [ __ ] signing fan at some point or some [ __ ] or watching ice beside it that is unhelpful like attacking carl jacobs or that is ridiculous okay attacking like your favorite content creators and like writing massive [ __ ] threads about how um about how like uh it's problematic to bring up uh slavery in any capacity in a [ __ ] video game role play scenario a thread is ridiculous just having notch on a video like this with 60 million views it's my 12-year diabetes is significantly [ __ ] worse the have notch in 2020 on your [ __ ] 16.5 million view video game like this is years after literally [ __ ] years after like when everybody knew what the [ __ ] notch was when microsoft did everything they could to separate themselves from notch that's wild dude how the [ __ ] are you gonna sit there and cancel like tommy in it or carl jacobs when when your dream is just like [ __ ] chilling with notch dude which as always led dream to escalate the situation put out some rash tweets all that jazz however this time because once again these were social issues pertaining to dream's previous work and his fan base had some strong feelings on those matters he was quickly compelled to attract these comments and actually resolve any hostility going on to stream with her son to discuss these issues i'll be using clips from that stream to parallel the narratives in this part hello what's good how's it going all right talk to me dream when we have a dream apology or clarification particularly to his fans it will normally go down the route of ignorance but our good minecrafting friend here didn't realize what he said was going to negatively affect people he's not what he intended to say or do even if his words or actions were driven by a sincere sentiment but it doesn't happen on a regular basis to many other youtubers in his position and that's not just because of the haters or the stats when i was like when i was like 16 and trump was first running i thought trump was like funny and that was obviously i was like an idiot kid growing up like like you mentioned in florida in a red area going to online school you know being homeschooled like i was a total product my environment i said that i think many creators have the capacity to offend the masses with their thoughts because we all have selfish thoughts we all have defensive thoughts we all have unparalleled thoughts i think it's in the instincts of many people it's just the differences we keep them as thoughts when you're a large creator you need to train yourself to have a filter dream has often lacked that the ability to just know when to say absolutely nothing there's nothing wrong with having pride in what you create i understand why people trying to deride your work may bother you but you don't have to go out of your way to attack them as long as you know it's good you're not going to change their mind that way all you're doing is placing yourself in the crossfire for more conflict in a way i think dream knew that though that his method of tweeting wasn't going to make him many new friends he was just channeling the outspoken game he'd always been a lot of people in that community talk a lot of [ __ ] we've spoken about that before i think the problem is that dream's popularity intersects a fandom and a great community who didn't necessarily perceive the issues the same way he did to them his strongly worded comments would hold a lot more weight when dreams spoke in an inflammatory way when he had his heated gamer moments people would act on it he'd end up in these ridiculous back and forth with creators who probably took things far more seriously than they should have with audiences who were far too invested themselves um yeah i mean first of all i just want to say i'm sorry for the tweet that was stupid that was just me being an idiot i don't care dude watching your stream and i was like ah this [ __ ] okay but i promise you i don't care but dreams somehow always manage to end up taking things seriously himself and instead of saying hey i overreacted which is 90 percent of dream's problem he'd often then react to it in a way that escalated the situation again i feel like this is because he was aware that people cared by then he didn't want to appear like he was disinterested he didn't want people to feel like they'd spent whatever allotted amount of time arguing over something that he was hardly paying any mind to dream likes to make supporting him a rewarding experience which is why he tweets out the love parts at the end of every online argument because he doesn't want people to think that it's a fruitless venture however in those cases it kind of provides the impression that he's pulling his pants aside and saying good job like when someone pretends to rep around a person but is saying something different in confidence in a way i don't think it's exactly that i think it's more a thank you for continuing to support me but i think it's usually kind of leads people to thinking he can't control his audience and but what matters to him is their retention whatever the cost for others and that he's going to condone this continued problem it feels like dream is this position where he's always reluctant to say or even imply too much because he doesn't want his audience to read it as an attack on them while many want him to say more because they feel like it could prevent some of the anguish faced by those outside the fandom i know that's why people call it the dream cycle but sometimes it's more important to notice the cycle of those you're interacting with as well and the greater cycle of behavior it reached a point where it didn't matter who said what or what they did people linked it back to dream and spam base which in turn made them defensive and instigated this endless palata over dream support's ability as a creator one side wanting to hold him responsible for everything and the other for practically nothing when the truth is a lot more grey you really need to look at how dream mobilizes his haters as well as his fans and you are very responsible with your uh with your content otherwise and uh even then i think people still people still uh you know jump on your throat when they feel like you are coming out of pocket yeah i mean i feel like i've been criticized a lot of times for things i didn't deserve criticism for but i've also been criticized a lot of times for tons of things that i deserved criticism for even even recently on one hand you have the minecraft community the speed running community these people who care a lot about their game and the respect for their game dream straight up told them that he doesn't really care for minecraft while being one of the main benefactors and faces of the game's resurgence he regularly posts comments in the sections of videos that were critical of him sometimes they were composed other times not so much this made more more enemies out of prospectively neutral parties particularly in the commentary genre who often frothing in the mouth for youtuber controversies and subpar responses and to be honest dream never did anything overly offensive he just pissed people off and then didn't really address why he pissed people off a lot of his gestures felt perfunctory and his activism felt performative stans may be happy that dream regularly agreed with them but people outside that circle just felt it was fraudulent dream provoked his adversaries the adversaries provoked dream the difference is that dream never apologized to them even when he may have acted out of line reason being due to this cycle dream didn't feel the need to apologize to people who already hated him so when he apologized to his audience for the smallest transgressions people thought dream was giving them special treatment which of course he was but it just increased that desire to call him out on a continuous basis it wasn't just a dream cycle it was a general cycle like people that are younger and stuff like it's just it's making people some people have comprehension issues some people have a harder time understanding things i just try and i try and be i i i'm you're probably not used to it as much as i am so i kind of recognize when i say things i try and say them in the way that can be consumed by the most people and understood that way it's like okay there's no misinterpretations right yeah i'm interested it's just different yes often the stands received the backlash as well for being the ones to complain and although as i said at the start stands have a much greater independent consciousness than a typical fan base i don't think there's anything wrong with that i just disagree with them sometimes it's not their fault that dream regularly apologized them when they pointed out the dream had said or done something that had bothered them whether i personally believe they were writing that or not a lot of people resented stands for even raising a lot of these issues at all when in reality they were doing exactly what other communities were doing when dreams said something that bothered them the difference was that they could solicit an apology because they were on his side they were tackful when there was a problem they frame it through the lens of education which made it a lot easier for dreams to respond to they're also fairly small issues making them easier to correct their greatest weakness was being too passively appeased but at the same time they're a fan base what can you expect i'm glad we could clear the air that way uh fans who you know have nothing to do with situation wouldn't be at each other's throats in his apologies dream never addressed the fact that he's just a provocative person he clearly has tendencies rooted in that rather proud mindset and so it just kept happening again and again and again the apologies were born mostly at convenience and even if he learned a bit more social awareness here and there he didn't seem to garner self-awareness for his own position as a powerful creator whose words can hold a lot of weight i think a lot of people blame stan cult primarily for this and dream secondarily for enabling it but funnily enough i think i've come to the opposite conclusion allow me to explain why people weren't that critical of what i had to say i i so if you feel bad about like you tweeting and then deleting it and then having people come over here like i hope we can all broadly agree that a majority of stans are not bad people i don't believe that i don't think most people believe that however the issue of question is the culture and even if it is a vocal minority is the minority too vocal to ignore i bring the very typical religion analogy that many people tend to turn to when discussing these queries religion as a whole has helped a lot of people but at the same time is caused a lot of harm and grief now it shouldn't be invalidating any of the legitimate positive change that people derive from religion however it's the philosophical question of whether we should settle for something so imperfect when josh put out his tweet in december it wasn't an attack on any specific stance it was an attack on stan culture as a whole his perspective seemed to focus on collectivism and the toxic ramifications of what he described as prioritizing group cohesion over the rights of the individual now i've already spoken about the problems with the deficit of critical thinking that can occur in these circles i do want to break down this discourse one more time to fully arbitrate a fair outlook on the nature of stands josh's theories of statements are a fair bit to unpack and i'm not going to discuss at all but in essence what he's saying is that dream twitter and other stan twitters extract the identity of the individual in the desire for a greater course in this case the example of the cause's dream and the devoted support for him in all his pursuits he believes that this behavior is the product of unhealthy mindsets and instead of people finding help these issues it is promoted in the confines of these obsessive communities with other people who are also suffering by carelessly living through an idol's achievements and occasional shortcomings these people may feel better for the moment but is it the best solution for them when there are other notable drawbacks for people inside and outside of these communities just because something may seem like a broad net positive should we not try to do better now josh didn't always put this quite as tactfully as i have but that's the gist of his thesis does he have a point is stan culture inherently toxic can you resolve something that is systemically corrupt and where the dream and his stance factor into this specific philosophy collectivism is a prickly subject because i think it's hard to find someone who is truly above being part of some sort of collective as well as being influenced by it it's seldom absolute and i don't doubt that a lot of stans have their own personalities beliefs and identities so it's really about looking at everything we've discussed today and trying to establish what is human nature and what is exceptional and on the surface i'd say a lot of this is human nature however i think the most defining feature of stand groups as opposed to normal fans is that they do have a nature to assemble in a way that can bring mass momentum and sometimes this is a good thing but it can also be quite overwhelming in the old and glory days of youtube fans never really had that platform to organize in such a way and therefore retain some perception of independence but yet the increasing interconnectivity between platforms and twitter have enabled the assembly and growth of these communities the evidence we've reviewed today shows that there is plenty of toxic youtube behavior that probably isn't just stands that's an omnipresent feature of youtube but what we see is a synchronization of behavior a consensus a camaraderie which can sometimes override that own critical process to me standum is just an outcome of fandom on a more macro level and that can be demonstrated elsewhere i understand how somebody that isn't a creator might feel creepy if someone does this to them like if they had a profile picture with your face on it or something but to a creator it's no different to a celebrity or a football player or any popular figure dream already discussed this in his own video comparing the nature of stands to those of very dedicated sports fans and in some ways it's not an undeserved comparison people live through their sporting heroes at any age and people can become far too invested to the point where you could reliably say that they indulge in behavior that does not represent their idols particularly when they're in large groups hooliganism in the name of factualism to a much worse degree is not a rare occurrence in these circles have i think there is a key difference one that we've kind of dabbled in already but not with the level of responsibility that it probably carries and that simple fact is that these sporting legends don't live online this isn't to say they can't be negatively affected by fans and honestly comparing your standum to sports fans is not the most flattering thing one can do however when it all gets too much for them they can close down their pc comfortable in the thought that the decision they just made won't greatly affect their ability to perform their job it's not the same with youtubers this level of dedication wasn't really designed to exist in the online sphere and i think at a time where mental health is so delicate amongst content creators stands don't necessarily help a situation even if they're not trying to necessarily stir stuff up particularly when they're emotionally involved to the point where people feel overwhelmed or they decide to take up a cause against a singular or limited party all at once this is not exceptional either though but dream stands have been made out an example they're a very visible target and they allow for creators to craft a digestible narrative around a familiar subject but it's also their presence in a way their rise was almost as sudden as dream in mid-2020 and you're going to cause a bit of whiplash when that happens they're not the worst i know creators and music critics who have received far greater help from some of their subjects fanatics but dream stanza's position as youtuber enthusiast means that any fallout of instance is felt more intensely for some people although seemingly experiencing the whiplash at first as well dream has a climate to it and embraced it sometimes though a bit too much private twitters with hundreds of thousands of followers calling his fans kittens the love bombings situations we've already discussed they promote this sense of parasocial intimacy that is obviously going to make people more attached to you whether you mean to or not make no mistake i don't think it's wrong to extend love and kindness to those in your fan base but i think you can do it in ways that also doesn't promote this illusion of closeness that makes people more committed than they need to be if stands of other public figures have shown as a force of influence you don't need to feed the beast too regularly to guarantee its loyalty so with this in mind would some of us derive greater benefit from returning to the more individual independent based sense of fandom yes i don't think you should undermine the negative experience even if it is a minority we've seen that a small group of people can still wield a lot of power and even when it's not intended to be negative there can be real negative ramifications life probably would be a lot more of a peaceful journey for many of us without this however this is more than just us what benefits these people josh really tried to hammer home the point that the people in these groups are just exacerbating their own mental illnesses and i don't know how i feel about that point i've really tried to think about it maybe in a few years time when it's clear we'll be able to analyze the actual outcome of stan culture as people get older and move on from this but a community for a lot of people can take them out of a very dark place and sometimes a better support group is the first step to helping yourself out of that pits maybe in a way that other outlets can't this shouldn't negate the harm that's been inflicted onto people and i never want to do that harassment is never acceptable clearly some people just don't feel like they have the breathing space they once did with older audiences and i don't think people like josh make their arguments with bad faith i believe they're rooted in legitimate experience the question is can you remove the bad without removing the good is it always doomed to fail and leave us worse off than we have been before at the start of this part i mention religion and although there are some parallels there are also great differences and whereas religion in many ways is deeply rooted to the point that we struggle to affect societal change around it i'd like to think the stan culture isn't past that point one glaring difference is that we actually have a contemporary figure at the center of this drama who can speak openly and positively influence communities who will listen to him dream himself the best argument for dreams position outside of everything we've already discussed is that a lot of these situations just are not big deals and to be frank dream will be completely entitled to adopt this position even the minecraft situation was only a big deal because he made the big deal otherwise it would have had very few negative implications and it still didn't for his status as a creator many claimed his own stands expected too much of him politically which i think is a valid point these people became famous for playing minecraft not for their social activism there's only one key factor to his detriment though the fact that he already addressed things that were fundamentally not big deals again and again and again and tried to involve himself on these matters and validated everyone's concerns with his behavior after all the high-stakes stuff it feels strange this drama has probably had the most people talking given how minor it could hypothetically be a lot of people placed responsibility for dream softening due to this idea of hostile stance but i don't think that's the entire picture do stans care too much about stuff that i think personally is rather relevant yeah that's my opinion but it's dream's decision to also care and endorse a culture that can be unhealthy i can't say i'm a massive stand of anyone myself sorry j aubry but i think it's evolution as a phrase is something a lot less harmful today than when it was originally created i do think that a significant proportion of these communities are pretty amiable most want to focus on positivity and supporting a creator they look up to with the occasional dabbling in social justice are there bad stands definitely and i might mention them in a bit but i'd say dream stands on the whole are probably milder than a lot of other stands for more mainstream artists who can be very unpleasant i don't think stan culture at its core is a rotten philosophy i don't think many people really provided too much substantial evidence to bat this idea i think one of the universal downsides to being a stan or a fan is that it does sometimes compromise your ability to think critically in pursuit of your desire to seek validation from the creator that you admire equally i think it's allowed on us versus them idea to take precedence which has allowed some real concerning behavior to seep into the fan bases to this day dream is tweeting out to remind the haters how bad they actually are how they're so much worse than the stand and i don't know if i need to remind anyone but it's not a competition even if this statement was true it does not help at all creating this image of a greater evil only serves to pit people against each other further and validate deleterious behavior my friend cordwood another creator who has covered this topic went through a pretty rough time last year during a lot of drama relating to john swan and other individuals in the community that was generally not his fault during this some of the messages that he received from people who identified themselves as stands were truly vile and i understand that there will always be bad apples but tell me is this normal it doesn't feel normal to me should we calculate who's worse does that aid the situation how would someone who's not an experienced creator deal with this level of hatred the truth is i don't think dream or a stance really did anything heinous at the start i think he probably could have been a bit more vocal about what sort of behavior from his audiences he viewed as acceptable i feel he was always focused on defending one point of view rather than looking at the bigger picture but there's always a proportion of viewers who will be beyond your control a lot of the time the size of dreams audience amplifies some of the negative experiences of other creators i think the real problem comes with dream's own personality in dealing with these situations his tweets on the question of his stance were subpar responses in my opinion it was definitely what his stans wanted to hear but it wasn't what they needed here i think people may have been overreacting to a degree and fixating on a few negative experiences but dream's own handling often left people feeling like he was taking the piss out of them like ooh dream funny accountable tweet come on man by the time he came around and uploaded a video or thread explaining what he really meant people had already made up their own minds because it's easier to go with a sentence-long tweet and watch a 10-minute video it's easier to go with a provocative image of a person than a nuanced one and that does not help when the person is inherently provocative dream dropped into conversations that dared to name drop him and bestow his occasionally heedless wisdom unto them as well in spite of claiming to realize the responsibility that he wielded with such a committed audience he'd regularly just use social media without care for the actual consequences against people who called him out against people who challenged him despite the fact that many people had complained about his stance for that exact issue inflicting this continuous narrative where people stated they were experiencing harassment from his viewers and then dream would pop up to rub salt in the wound that leads you to the apex in these shenanigans the speed running situation one where dream actively fed propaganda and half truth to his viewers which caused torture by his own admission and when i say half truth i don't know whether he knew he cheated or not at the time but i do know that he claimed without any basis at all that the motivations of these mods were self-serving and had nothing to do with the actual mathematical probabilities that they were arguing which he clearly knew were contentious if you feed that content to devoted followers then how do you expect them to react you can't be blamed necessarily when people act in a way that doesn't reflect your demeanor as a creator but if you're angry other people are going to be angry and then other people are going to bear the brunt of it dream actively defended his audience then immediately followed it unintentionally or not by using them as a battering ram others then responded angrily and dreamed offended his audience while most people see it as dream pandering to his stance i also feel there's something personal to it because given the fact that dream has at points core situations with his own behavior his defensive stance would make sense because if he didn't then he'd be conceding that his own actions were out of line as well the preferential treatment was the smartest decision it's just obviously also a divisive one danson really called dream out on it because their perspectives were compromised in a sense and given that they benefit from it there isn't really much cause to especially on twitter stansberry felt like they've been given a hard time so many creators had used generalized and vague language to condemn the behavior of a few and even though i'd say the youtubers were justified in doing so i think it always made stands a bit sensitive over their image as obsessive outcasts dreams defense was a breath of fresh air it was a sign of solidarity dream and it stands against the world i think solidarity has its risk though because it becomes an umbrella for all sorts of people i think in a way the toxicity became a self-fulfilling prophecy where many used the whole guise of dream defense to be obnoxious and cruel some who i doubt were even that committed in supporting dream but found a space for their own exploits this has led to doxxing harassment a variety of other things that are clearly documented not just against dreams critics not just against creators in dream circle but dream himself he hasn't exactly benefited from this but every time the damage becomes clearer people seem to blame him more this isn't aided by the fact that a lot of his responses are only really remembered for how he defends himself because that's the primary narrative of them these groups is easier to maintain a culture of silence because too many times people don't want to admit they're flawed given the divisive narrative but that can be dangerous this is coming from me who i've been knee-deep in terms of like twitter and really deep into the community of you know of of what you what most people would say are stands and i think that there's there's very it's such a small minority like when you mention like you know drawing gore or whatever like i've seen two drawings of that that have been like mentioned before ever and when you're talking about me with 18 million subscribers and you know millions of followers on twitter and like you said like tons of interactions and everything two ever that i've seen i'm sure i'm sure there's probably more but from what i've seen to ever and even and that's mostly from people posting and saying look how gross this is or whatever i would assume that that makes it's a very small community um just look at the private communities that sprouted where some partake in three detestable behaviors i don't really want to go into detail because i've spoken about this stuff enough before and the mainstream communities clearly don't endorse it but people struggle to know exactly what to do about it i don't know why but it feels so good ninja let's let's let's of that talk yeah i feel like i might i might be a little a little more pg than you ninja you seem to be pushing the boundaries of comedy ninja i'm 16. five year old dreamers also made nothing joke or two which were in rather poor taste and these normally wouldn't hold too much weight but it's once again that sort of thoughtlessness that can be taken out of context by legitimately bad actors to validate doing things that are truly awful because they will look for any form of justification possible i feel that some people don't want to be too vocal about this stuff because they don't want to validate natives of people who do tie these fringe communities to the central dream twitter nobody wants to yield ground and that can have serious implications when there are nasty unwanted growths inside your camp people can probably do more than they have been doing to be honest factions end up arguing over whether these individuals are representative of the community rather than how to get rid of them it doesn't matter who they represent if you want to get rid of them you're on the same side i'd hope that if people work together on bringing that stuff to twitter's attention maybe something more could be done however that's merely a footnote in this belated saga what would i say to the big man himself but almost every single thing that i see brought up regarding stans is just completely false or very very out of context in my opinion people who expect dream to turn on his audience are probably asking a bit too much but i think there is definitely a change in dynamic that would benefit everyone online dream's obviously against toxic behavior and i think that's completely fair of him but i feel it would be even more helpful to just try and lower the stakes if he talks [ __ ] on such a regular basis or just not talk [ __ ] at all i think people struggle to grapple with the context behind his mindset when he makes a lot of his comments and when he's called out for it by the right people he'll backtrack but not really explain why he said what he said which is clearly an impulsivity problem an assumption that people who don't like what he does have bad intentions an impression that he has passed on to his stan community which can lead to the strangest of altercations there was a rather surreal situation recently when stats began to stigmatize a group of british creators for not wearing masks at a private party and then on top of this for some reason dream decided to weigh in with likely the most weirdly centrist take of all time rambling about viral loads like he knew what the term meant not only was his statement extremely questionable but i literally have no clue what his source was to throw suspicion on the vaccine's ability to influence viral loads the studies on this topic are still in a rather early phase and certainly don't provide a consensus that supports his claim this sort of content is far more dangerous in this environment than a group of vaccinated and tested friends who see each other all the time choosing not to wear masks at a private event but then again dreams tweet felt like this stretch to justify a very strangely targeted reaction to people arguably being more responsible than a majority of the british population unless you're willing to write a twit longer going through all the nuances of covert response epidemiology and human behavior then maybe it's best just not to say anything one of the greatest problems particularly with online stand culture is this nature to assume and i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with assumptions when you don't know everything but you have to work with the fact that you may be ignorant rather being overconfident in details that may not be as one-sided as you see them through a picture or a tweet about a picture sometimes dream just seems too desperate to appease his own audience while still attempting to be apologetic to those who have received unnecessary backlash and here it just came across as an absolute mess possibly pushing misinformation about a very serious illness and what we should be doing to combat it i'm going to leave some studies here and not say any more thank you for all the congratulations guys 25 million let's go and you know what with dreams monumental growth i can understand how all the attention both positive and negative must be a bit overwhelming the situations where he's been unfairly stitched up instances where he's been called out but done very little wrong unfortunately for dreams some haters are gonna come with the territory alongside the success and the stance it's your job not to provoke that the sounds themselves have shared their fair portion of controversy with their own consciousness does come a degree of accountability on them throughout most of 2020 i don't think you could say that any youtuber was singly responsible for the actions of their stance i think that people just need to lay down clear ground rules and a way to actually keep people who don't respect them away from the communities and sometimes the platform altogether to be fair many have done that since there are some what people call boundary pages for creators and these communities do try to define stands by people who respect those boundaries at the same time it's still down to creators who foster a close relationship with their stands to make sure there aren't scapegoats to act outside those boundaries dream does deserve the capacity to be himself but there are also new responsibilities that come with his position i think anyone with his status would be given the same expectations at the same time stans do need to realize that even if he does say the right thing sometimes has his moments of clarity and morality that he is a gamer raised in a game a country and he may have his gamer moments you don't need to take up his cause when he does he's large enough to defend himself on many matters and the inclusion of more parties only complicates a lot of these problems and embitters those involved dream erupted onto the scene in a whirlwind of hype and expectation it was clearly confronted with numerous challenges and corresponding judgment from millions online with the internet as it was many of these people likely did exist to drop a hot take on dream like they knew anything about him and move on within the fray though dream found support from those also under siege in his own standing becoming tired of the hip due to that shared persecution complex a complex that wasn't completely unfounded as a general philosophy though it was deeply thought because amongst those too harsh on him there was valuable criticism worth listening to and clearly evidence behaviour that should have been curbed generalizations from both sides culminated in this pointless war over people's reputations like the matters they were even based on was worth arguing over but sometimes you just need someone to say hey we should focus on the real enemy here because it's not about if a general group of people are good and bad often it's about ridding ourselves of the bad and retain the good that's not just the route to community improvement it's the route to personal self-improvement if you look at all the terrible stuff going on in the community and say that proves the community is bad i win you're not really helping anyone even if you believe these cultures are inherently toxic you can't deny the fact that there are a lot of people in these communities who deserve more help than hate going forward i hope dream is more careful with his words or at least more conscious of how they may affect people additionally i think it'd be fair to actually apologize to those whose affects in the past regards whether they hate him or not stan's not your usual fans and they can be a bit harder to handle and control as a large crater and dream can't be expected to own every action of someone who's carried away in their devotion at the same time if you want to advocate for them and retain them then you do possess some responsibility for what they may do in your name you need to make sure that misconduct is past the exception rather than the rule and isn't linked to stan culture at its core like some have claimed additionally even if you disagree with those people their opinions are rooted in some experience so don't go dismissing it too readily i hope that stan's also realized that support sometimes means being aware of how the person you're supporting is fundamentally flawed beyond just their politics and making sure they make responsible decisions for how they conduct themselves if you see too much of yourself in them then they may be doing something wrong because they're in a very different position to you stanz could well have a positive influence on dream and the actions that he takes it's just important to actually identify the problem something that i feel hasn't really been done up until now as much as dreamers misused his power on occasions stans do possess their own consciousness and they can use that loyalty to make sure that dream plays fair like the rest of us and tones down the behavior that has instigated these situations dream is receptive to his own audience and that receptiveness doesn't just have to be limited to social issues however the standard won't be the only ones within the discourse i hope other communities can hone in their criticism as well because they have unique insight to offer and don't just serve to feed the divide it's always easier to listen to someone who's on your side even if they should be listening regardless and if you believe in human decency and doing the right thing then you may be more alike than you think as for everyone else i think we'll have to get used to dreaming because if one thing's been shown in the last year it's that whether by design or fortune he does have a bit of staying it's only been in less drama in the past few months to say the least which is good news but when you have two nc's a great influence in volatility the drama is never far away but maybe that's because no one's taking their normal pills anymore thank you for watching and there was the video i hope you enjoyed it all i'm here to give a bit of a shout out to all the editors who've done a fantastic job once again thank you so much for your work it means a lot to me and a big thanks to the post editor flick stepped in when my previous post editor just unfortunately disappeared done a great job so fantastic big thanks to staffo thumbnail fantastic work as always also the artists whose art is all included in this video if your art appears to then let me know i don't really have too much else to add but thank you all once again for supporting actually i do have some more to add because i have to thank my patrons and ten dollar patrons or ten dollar plus patrons are on the screen right now thank you so much even more special thank you to my fifty dollar patrons hypercube and esther bedoya it is much appreciated and your support means a lot as always thank you so much for your continued support don't really have too much to add i'd briefly like to thank surf shark for sponsoring the video i will leave their link in the description below use code opinion for 83 off this video is also a fundraiser for macmillan cancer support it's a course very close to my heart donate if you want with what you see fit i'm sure they'll appreciate that thank you all for sticking with me this year i know i've not been the most reliable but hopefully i've provided some content about you thank you again for your support and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Right Opinion

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Length: 131min 27sec (7887 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 25 2022