The Minecraft YouTuber and Twitch streamer Dream appears anonymously and generally conceals his face. This seems to further fuel his popularity. Now, even the important US Senator Ted Cruz has congratulated him on his birthday. His daughter asked him to do so. The political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker cannot handle this at all and calls for protest.
Why is Dream so popular?
- The Minecraft YouTuber “Dream” has made a name for himself with extraordinary content ideas and a pleasant voice. He has transformed well-known YouTube formats related to Minecraft and achieved enormous success: He doesn’t do a regular speedrun in Minecraft but a speedrun where he is sabotaged by a friend.
- In recent months, there was a cheating scandal surrounding Dream, but that did not diminish his fame. Dream explained to fans that it was all an accident and many did not hold it against him.
- Dream’s popularity is also bolstered by the fact that he appears completely anonymously and masked. This allows fans to project onto him, seeing everything they want in him. When he recently showed his hair, it was comparable to an international state of emergency on Twitter.
This congratulation is now causing trouble: The controversial and conservative US Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) has now congratulated Dream on Twitter for his birthday. Cruz says: His daughter asked him to do so.
Cruz has two daughters, one is 10 years old, the other 13. Fans of Dream are likely to fall into that age range.
The tweet has received 34,110 likes.
“OH NO!”
This is the backlash: One person who has nothing to do with Ted Cruz is the Twitch streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, who represents a distinctly leftist politics. In a live stream on Twitch, he sees the tweet and is completely baffled. It apparently bothers him that Cruz is catering to a “young” audience.
Piker posted a counter-tweet on Twitter: Ted Cruz is a “permanent defeat” for Texas. People should now use this tweet as “ratio”.
In fact, HasanAbi’s counter-tweet has now received 86,500 likes.
Fear that young Minecraft fans could be politically influenced
This is the background: Hasan Piker has clashed with Dream in the past. Piker accused Dream of associating with the creator of Minecraft, Markus “Notch” Persson. Persson came under scrutiny when statements from him that were seen as transphobic or racist became known.
Dream defended himself against these accusations, but later spoke live on stream with HasanAbi and ultimately admitted that there was something to Piker’s criticism.
It shows that even a seemingly harmless game like Minecraft has a social and political dimension. Hasan Piker, in particular, sees a danger in young Minecraft players being influenced by conservative or, from his perspective, even dangerous forces. A similar discussion took place in Germany in 2020:
Böhmermann pushes German Twitch star into the right-wing corner – He defends himself
