I spent a day with DREAM

my name's anthony padilla and today i'll be spending a day with dream the immensely popular beloved and off polarizing faceless creator to learn what it's like to wear the crown of most rapidly growing minecrafter on the internet the highly anticipated face reveal controversy and criticism and what dream's future really looks like by the end of this video we'll find out has this astronomical rise to super fame been nothing but blissful as dream reaps the benefits of stardom while remaining completely anonymous or has the expectations and critique from fans and cynics alike proven far too overwhelming to catch even a moment of peace [Music] hello dream hello when someone in person asks what you do for a living what do you say advertising usually advertising advertising like i just advertised to 73 million people per video it's kind of true you went from 1 million subscribers on the last day of 2019 to over 22 million in less than 500 days how has that affected you most it hasn't changed my everyday life much yet i feel like it definitely will like after like a face reveal or something because that's more when i'm actually doing things i feel like if it wasn't for kovid it would have changed my life a lot kovid kind of started getting big around the time that i started getting big so you were competing in popularity with kobe oh god no i wouldn't say that has all this attention cause you any kind of struggles at all or has it really just been chill for you it's caused a lot of problems with me and like trust oh really you have trust issues now i definitely have trust issues now as compared to before but it's kind of because you're not sure if people want to get to know you for the reputation you have online versus just wanting to interact with you in terms of like your personal life and things like you can't vent you can't show your emotions as much like oh who knows if this person's recording you sure you just have to sit there with the mask on with a smile constantly so everyone thinks it's you're okay always when did you first experience your first spike in growth i uploaded a video trying to find pewdiepie's minecraft seed overnight i got like a hundred thousand views and i was like oh my gosh like this is insane this video is blowing up pewdiepie is just like at the center of everything on the internet his series from back then i remember watching it and being like wow like it's like a drama series but he adds this music and stuff that makes it dramatic oh my god this is the most intense gameplay when i ended up doing man down the line i did that same thing you were a developer too like you coded things behind the scenes in in minecraft i think the first thing i coded was a pig exploded like a creeper it was a cursed minecraft video where everything was just going wrong i was breaking dirt with a pickaxe and i was throwing away all my diamonds and the lava and that definitely was one of the main reasons why i was able to catapult was because i was doing things that other youtubers like couldn't do so that kind of gave you an edge in a way helped you stand out from the probably millions of other people that were at least attempting to make minecraft content at the time a really big advantage what was your reaction to realizing that you had a viral video that first time that you saw that a video had like blown up i thought this is awesome but i can't screw this up the first thing you thought about was how you could fail yeah my first if you had something to lose a lot of people can get one viral video the problem is that using that and turning it into success i didn't expect it to come this early but this is my chance right now right here when i was like every morning waking up and just like going going going so i know this feeling too like when we had our first video blow up in like 2005 i was like peddle the metal baby we're not stopping and it just felt like we had to almost like if we didn't then we were wasting that opportunity if i don't do this i'm an idiot i need to put every single minute right now into it because if i don't i will regret it have you taken any breaks since then actually recently was my first like actual break i don't even tell anybody but there was just three days where i just was like not on my phone three days is your break yeah it was like three days i gave myself a three-day weekend i still ended up streaming during the three days but i was like okay so it wasn't even a break a lot of what i do in my free time now is like considered work because like i'll be watching youtube videos and instead of enjoying the video i'll be going like okay why they do that what do you think it is about your content that helps you stand out i feel like i didn't blow up because i have this like amazing personality or because of my looks come on dream you got an amazing personality okay i think i blew up because of my ideas the quality of the idea and the execution of the idea versus the quality of like the personality do you think you're most well known for your manhunt videos now in this video i try and speed run and beat minecraft while my friend does everything in his power to kill me oh for sure my most popular ones are manhunts yeah i saw the other day you were about to release one and you were about to uh like do like a premiere for it and it said something like 600 000 people are waiting for this permission i was like holy does that ever set in for you and you're like that is like that is so many people yeah it definitely has i mean i've been sitting there i think it got up to 800 000 something and i was like oh my gosh this is insane that experience of like wow there's many people like watching me right now like in this moment how often do you get people theorizing that these manhunt videos are like completely scripted because they are just some of the moments in them are just like too good my dream wait what every manhunt obviously there's probably a hundred different videos and posts and saying oh this is suspicious like it really is just mostly in how i edit the videos but if you watch like an uncut version you'll see that like a lot of the parts that like are so intense in the video you're listening to him without the music and without the cuts you're just sitting there like oh this is kind of boring wait i'm on fire come on wait i'm on fire come on oh george come on george come on when it gets you into the moment you really feel like wow this is insane and then you're watching oh he's just he's just running because the pacing the way that you cut it feels like it has like a story arc to it like in a way that would be scripted it's meant to be like a story because those videos do really well on youtube i think that's because a lot of people watch them that don't care about minecraft because they watch them like they're like an anime or a movie they are so captivating that it's like you cannot look away at any moment it's like a crime to look away that's had a lot to do with the success of them [Music] your username what's your story behind dream and your white blob i think it was just me and sapnap actually we were just like in a call and we were spitballing names and and i came up with dream on like aerosmith but then ended up morphing into just dream the blob character my girlfriend at the time this was like four years ago made matching discord profile pictures they're very similar to what my blob looks like now i was going through thinking oh i needed like a youtube icon i was going through like my pictures on my computer and i saw that i was like oh what something similar to that could be kind of good were you concerned at all like the the name just dream five letters probably impossible to find when you search dream on the internet i wasn't worried because i thought most people would be searching like dream minecraft everyone knows how to spell dream everyone knows if you say dream it's very memorable and it's very easy to to spread almost as catchy and easy to remember as anthony padilla and creative too how'd you come up with that one took some inspiration from my parents what's the story behind the dream smp i feel like that's kind of what all these other minecrafters are a part of who are huge and it's got your name right in the title the dream smp originally i just wanted to play survival with me and my friends until eventually tommy in it just talked to him a couple weeks ago don't miss it link somewhere i don't know he ended up asking if he could join originally i said no i was like ah nah because he was such a big troll you didn't know if you wanted him on there i didn't i was like no i don't really want him on here he's kind of he's kind of a troll if that'd be a good thing he joins and he's trolling the ads kind of like a different aspect there was no name for the s p and tommy was like i need a name for the titles and he's like i'm gonna put dream s p because it's click baiting you and i was like okay that seems that sounds like a great idea how does it feel knowing that the dream smp isn't just spawning popular minecrafters but it's spawning some of the most popular personalities on the entire internet i'm honestly not that surprised when i go through and i add somebody to the s p the main things i'm looking for i don't want them to just be successful in the s p i want them to take that and i want them to be successful outside of that whether it's on youtube or music or whatever it is that i think this person is talented do you frequently get called the greatest minecraft player of all time i do i'm not i'll just say that i'm definitely i'm definitely not people always hear just comparing people to like other youtubers because you only know what you see probably some 15 year old kid who who spends 12 hours a day grinding minecraft every day that's probably the best minecraft player now i feel like we got to address the elephant in the room and i don't mean that one right there you have no face why are you completely faceless i just blew up so quickly and then it kind of became a part of like the fan art and a part of the community so quickly it was not a calculated move it was just kind of like something that happened you almost didn't have enough time to be like okay time to switch up the content put my face in it it just kept going i feel like it all kind of like came together in this way where it was kind of the perfect storm how many people that you know online have ever seen what you look like only a couple i mean obviously i live with sapnap but all the other people that you're constantly playing games with have never seen your face george has never seen your face i mean no [Laughter] people i've never said that people are going to be like oh come on george really people people think that alyssa who's a really good friend of all of ours who used to be on the dream smp she see my face and like she brags about it and like sap nipple brag about it to george like as a joke like oh haha like you evan do your irl friends and family obviously know who you are a lot of them do not not all of them really so there's some people that you're close-ish to that don't know i'd say my closest friends and my closest family know there's definitely people that i'm close-ish with i have no idea but has anyone that you know like talked about dream or minecraft that you haven't revealed oh yeah they're talking about like minecraft creators and mentioning like the dream smp or something and it's like okay what does that feel like knowing that you are part of something that someone who knows you well enough to like talk to you and personally has no idea hannah montana yeah are you gonna like burst through on the stage it's me to what extent do you go to make sure that you remain anonymous like are you taping over all of your webcams like your your iphone camera and all that stuff i mean i've done that since like i was young so that's just kind of like i think when you know about technology usually you're kind of like tricky about that stuff i don't please don't hack my webcam please again i think it's mostly just covered like everyone's so used to like wearing a mask and not going many places has anyone recognized your voice in public i i don't want to get into it but okay but you can take that as an answer yeah i'll take that do you think remaining faceless has actually contributed to your success i think it has but i think it's more of that it's unique i guess so it's something to talk about that is like one of the things that's attached to your description i feel there's like a lot of mystery obviously and that kind of creates some sort of like hype of like oh like this is cool and i think the fan art's really cool i think that's the benefit please don't stop doing that once i face revealed keep doing the math do not stop the family but i think the biggest downside is just not being able to express myself fully i want to be able to do things that you can't do like let's say go and meet people it's restricting on the things that i can actually do and being able to like do like tick tocks or different forms of content it hasn't had a negative effect i think it's had a positive effect does that make you nervous at all about you know when you do a face reveal there's no turning back these things aren't necessarily going to be synonymous with you as much as your face not really the smile mask and all stuff that's all going to be part of my brand even after face reveal i think it's more so it's just going to be a new chapter like i'll be able to do so many things that i haven't been able to do my goal is to take full advantage of it so you plan to do a face reveal how do you plan to do a face reveal i'm not sure i want to do it with my friends and i want to do it in some way where people can participate somehow and so i thought i'm like a meet-up or some kind of event i feel like you could literally sell out like staples center i just feel so like self-centered like guys come see my face all you do is walk out and the seats are so far away that they have to look at your face on the jumbotron but there's fireworks going off it's like all leaf it's dream and then you just walk into the back and then you go to sleep i'm definitely not doing that but but you could i would do it in a way where it wouldn't be the center of things that feels so cheesy like how egotistical is this guy he's like charging you to see his face are you nervous about the first thing people are gonna say when they see your face not really my face has had nothing to do with my content in any way whatsoever i'm still gonna be the same way with that where it's not gonna be you know shoved in your face or like if you follow me on instagram or something maybe you'll see it but like if you're just like a casual viewer it's gonna be no different at all can you get into any of the ideas that you have for what you might do after you do your face reveal i think the biggest thing is probably just meeting people being able to do collabs with people that i i wouldn't be able to do now like mr b's the internet will break when there is a mr beast x dream video i hope so it'll be awesome how do you deal with harsh criticism it's weird because i feel like i'm so argumentative i just always have been my go-to whenever somebody criticizes me is always like oh what an idiot like i take it more like i want to argue with this person because i think they're wrong so you find it into like a fun debate sometimes i do but i feel like it leads to like me being an idiot sometimes because i reply to people that i shouldn't reply to so people are pestering you and then they get a reaction from you and then they're like oh dream will interact with me and anyone who pesters him to me it's just i see somebody say something it's like oh that's not true i'm gonna reply to this but you're not taking it personally no no they don't know anything about me like they're saying something making an assumption about me or something it's like okay well you can say what you want i don't really care so there's been some controversy surrounding the legitimacy of one specific speedrunning record that you set with people claiming that you you know maliciously hacked the game to give you a competitive edge and some people have gone as far as to say that this allegation completely delegitimizes your entire career how has this all affected you it's hard when people say stuff like that or when people use that as a reason to attack my character or my accomplishments or anything in that way the one record that was removed from the boards was it wasn't even a world record i had three other world records that i had gotten before and those aren't even in question right they're not they've been up for a while but the thing is i didn't even upload a video on it that was just one i did on my twitch and you're saying that to kind of show that like you didn't do it just for clout kind of which is probably what some people are assuming in the grand scheme of things like it's such a small part of my career i guess and me as a person i mean i handled the situation like horribly i mean i did whenever i originally came out my response was like oh you guys are idiots how do you wish that you would have approached that response i should have shut off all my devices for a couple days and been like okay let me not react with emotion give it some time to breathe and then come back to it when you're kind of approaching it from a more level-headed place that is kind of a downside of blowing up so quickly that i wasn't used to like criticism coming in like waves of like tens of thousands of people instead of just one guy saying hey yeah i don't like that you did this there was an adjustment period i feel like i've definitely since then grown and learned that that's not the right way to approach anything being able to use that situation as something that you can reflect on and say i wish i would have done it differently i think that's a huge sign of growth knowing that you aren't always right your first inclination isn't always the correct one i feel like when you look at anybody under a microscope you're going to see the flaws and the imperfections and i think being able to realize that and go hey i'm not perfect and try and improve before we continue learning about the world of dream how do you feel about people who are fervently trying to de-platform or cancel you like every day i'd like to thank honey for their continued support in sponsoring this series and allowing us to work with the incredibly talented artist jess brisch who brought dream to life for this video you may recognize this work from the i spend a day with corpse episode which turned out flawlessly and i'll go ahead include a link up here in this corner for you to check that out as well but back to our sponsor honey is the free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best what it finds to your cart so you don't have to stare at that empty discount code box and it's called dead eyes every time you try to check out because if honey finds a working coupon a little honey button drops down and all you have to do is click apply coupon and honey supports over 30 000 stores online ranging from tech to popular fashion brands and food delivery honey has personally saved me a stupid amount of money when it comes to buying things online including my lunch today thank you honey is literally free and installs in just a few seconds so if you want to do yourself a solid and also support this series get honey for free at joinhoney.com padilla again it's free and if you go to joinhoney.com padilla you'll be directly supporting this series now back to the world of dream what do you think about the discussion that your fans or stans are toxic and that you need to denounce everything transgressive that any of them do in every single fan group and in every single group of people in the world there's going to be bad apples there's people who say dumb things and do dumb things pulling them accountable and calling them out when people do stuff like that is good but i don't think that it's my responsibility that i'm accountable for everything that anybody who has ever said my name does like with how many people you have who are fans of you who like have you as their display picture in their bio saying dumb stuff online you would have to say something every single day if you had to address every single thing most time when somebody tweets something or says something that is bad they're only seen by a couple hundred people which is like way way way less than one percent and then if i say something about it then everyone sees it and so it's like right now it's almost like you bring more attention to it if you address it i get so much crap for not saying stuff about certain things i'm like dude if i say something it makes it it's 100 gonna make it worse it's one of those disconnects where i feel like people just don't want to accept that there's just some people that are just like screwed up and obviously if you have a huge fan base like let's say 20 million people there's going to be a bunch of people that do bad things they're also going to be like millions and millions people that are that do amazing things how do you feel about people who are fervently trying to de-platform or cancel you like every day i think it's something that every creator has to deal with if someone's trying to hold somebody accountable for something that they did like as an example something that i would have said in the past or i would have done in the past and they go wow this is defensive to me and people have done in the past and it's just like oh yeah dude that's not me anymore i'm sorry and then that's when that growth should be rewarded you know if we're constantly saying wow you said that word at some point you defended someone saying it at some point you should never like you never deserve encouragement to grow then it's kind of having that opposite effect of what i think many people think they're doing yeah the biggest thing is just recognizing when somebody is genuinely trying to just tell you hey this wasn't cool versus when somebody's trying to de-platform you for something that you've grown from or you've apologized for that's a really important thing [Music] you started reaching beyond minecraft and dabbling in other fields you started making music i never would have thought that i'd make music but i feel like it's one of those outlets where you really can express yourself fully like your emotions and how you feel i never really sang when i was younger so it's been a lot of learning and experience but it's been so much fun on your new track mask it sounds like it has a very different sound than your first one like you kind of are honing in on your singing sound [Music] it's way more like genuine to me and yeah how i feel comfortable singing it there's much more raw vocals and there's never raw vocals in any song but but but rob locos in that that's perfect that's no filter no auto tune perfect dream voice you tend to be pretty private in terms of what you tell the internet about your personal life was it kind of an emotional release to get some of these lyrics out there some of them pertaining to putting up a front of happiness behind your smiley face mask even when i was a kid and i was playing minecraft and i was going through depression and and like i said struggling at school and i would put on the mask and become dream and then i'd be happier because i'd be playing with my friends and playing minecraft you almost get to put on a new persona and be a little bit detached from any difficult emotions that you're dealing with you mentioned that you have adhd and you've kind of had periods in your life where you struggled with that masking is a term that's used to describe putting on a front kind of and like not showing that you have adhd do you feel like that kind of helped influence the song oh yeah for sure i mean in the second verse there's a lyric they think that i need glasses i literally was tested for glasses when i was a kid because i was having a lot of trouble in school i could never pay attention i was always doodling i was drawing i was writing down stuff i was always doing anything but paying attention and that's something that happens a lot to people with adhd because they're trying to figure out oh what you know what's wrong you must be having trouble seeing if he's doing bad in class because i'm having trouble focusing i had adhd medication i was like mad and i remember pouring it down the drain was it changing the way that you were like did you not feel like yourself on your meds i didn't feel like myself because i feel like i was way less creative and my mind didn't drift as much i stopped doing the things that were making me do bad in school like not drawing the things that made you do bad in school that were distracting from school were what brought you happiness yeah yeah and i don't know enough about them to comment on whether that was smart of me to do i don't want to encourage anybody to do that i haven't been on like medication for adhd since then i feel like it is a unique thing that i i'm proud of do you think any of your adhd symptoms have kind of almost contributed to help you become who you are now as dream i do i feel like one of my biggest strengths is like i'm creative and i feel like one of the things that helps me with coming up with ideas and stuff is i can just like run through things like i'd be like oh that's a bad idea that's about it i can go like a thousand in like half a second the same reason that i talk so fast is just because i'm thinking quickly and that kind of only happens when it's things that you're excited about right yeah i know if i'm excited i'm just like a million miles a minute i'm stumbling over my own thoughts that was exciting i was like it's not really like people a lot of times trying to explain it's like a lack of focus in reality it's like you just focus on the wrong things a lot of the time i can sit there and edit the video for 12 straight hours and then afterwards be like holy cow i'm so thirsty i'm dehydrated i need to go to the bathroom i haven't peed in six days that could be really like i'm just hyper fixating how does that feel knowing that people are now going to kind of have some insight into this very private part of your life it's scary it is it's definitely scary there it is something at some point before my first song like the day before release i got so sick like out of nowhere i like a swollen like lymph node in my throat it's because your body's like like you're stressed you're like stress can't affect your body meanwhile you're sad and then mix water pour out of your eyeballs after it was released i was like so relieved hopefully this time i don't think i'm gonna be as nervous just because i'm more comfortable and i've already gone through it it is definitely nerve-wracking knowing like i'm putting out there part of me that i've never really put out there before so what's next in your career are you going to continue doing music is it are you just a strictly minecrafter for life kind of guy if you want i'll tell you what my next video is but you have to bleep it out okay you can't have it in there okay okay give me give me give me the dirt my next video he's gonna say like well in real life in real life he's gonna be trying to before no it's like fear factor yeah yeah sort of what do you think the biggest misconception is about you a lot of people think that i am very very conceited and i don't think that i'm conceited but wouldn't a conceited person not think they were conceited that's true that's that's very true that's very true no i've talked i've talked to you a bunch i don't think that you're conceited why do people think you're conceited i always try and be like positive and confident sometimes can be taken as that way after like me and technoblade did like a duel and i lost and i remember after that duel i was in some stream and i said something along the lines of like oh if it was any other day like i could have won it's just me trying to convince myself like oh like yeah you can do better than that i think that the biggest reason that someone might think that is because it wasn't just you saying i am going to be better next time it was almost like saying that you should have and that you deserve to beat someone for it almost like if they don't know you personally if they don't know what you actually mean those words maybe aren't specific enough for someone to like understand what you really mean i definitely realized that when i was looking back and i was like ah one of the things where it's just in the back of your mind like obviously you're going to think that but saying is a different thing when you say something you as a content creator should be very very specific with what you do you know you can't leave any gray or you can't leave it up for interpretation that's definitely something that was like an adjustment because i feel like you have to over explain a lot of things like as a content creator all right you got five seconds of shout out to promote anything you want directly into camera go shout out to my cat patches because we never talked about her she's gonna get jealous so i have to mention oh my god you don't want to see pissed patches only a small percentage of people that are watching this video is actually subscribed to his channel anthony's channel you guys need to subscribe right now if you're in that small percentage check the button you may not even know that you're not subscribed just check yeah it's free and you can always change your mind always change your mind but don't change your mind after spending the day with dream i've come to understand just how overwhelming having millions of eyeballs hyper focused on your every move can really be regardless of if we have a face attached to our identity or not we all have everyday struggles and what the rest of the world sees in us is only one aspect of any story [Music] do you disguise your voice in public at all just to make sure it doesn't happen i remember one time i did like who me yeah i'm not dreaming that's what you said

Channel: AnthonyPadilla

Views: 4,055,463

Rating: 4.9403958 out of 5

Keywords: anthony padilla, padilla, anthony, i spent a day with, interview

Id: 3WAkPJ6654o

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/vatzlava]

Not that lame ass Nike shoes

[u/hobbes_56]

Still can’t get over Dream’s Hannah Montana cover being advertising. It’s just really funny to me for some reason.

[u/Vma791]

That animation really messed with my eyes

I had to listen to it like a podcast cause it was so disturbing

[u/Skelupo]

What the fuck is that animation.

Blob Dream would have been so much better.

[u/KiwiLiverpool]

Nice interview

[u/DebyPlayz]

cool!

[u/BurgerKingFeetLet]

I liked it. It was a really nice interview. I’m excited to see what his new video is gonna be!

[u/Alvaro_Rey_MN]

I actually liked the animation. I thought it was quite nice.

[u/phoenixRose1724]

cool vid