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Minecraft star Clay "Dream" is one of the most iconic personalities within the gaming and streaming community. Since joining YouTube in 2014, he has amassed over 31.2 million subscribers on his primary channel.
In 2022, the Minecraft content creator made plenty of headlines, with one of the most popular moments involving him removing the signature Dream mask and finally revealing his face. However, this year was not all positive for Dream, as some community members accused the YouTuber of grooming.
In this article, we'll look at Dream's 2022 and explore some of his most viral and controversial moments.
Recapping Dream's 2022
1) The YouTuber finally reveals his face for the first time
Dream's highly anticipated face reveal saga began on September 23, 2022, when the content creator used the phrase "the mask is coming off" for the first time:
On October 3, 2022, Clay uploaded a five-minute video ("hi, I'm Dream."), where he finally dropped his "faceless" persona and revealed his face to the internet:
The 23-year-old YouTuber spoke about the decision to reveal his face, saying that he wanted to meet content creators and "say hi" to his friends in person:
"My goal was to just... start doing things! Get out. Meet creators. Say, 'Hi,' to my friends, finally. Umm... just get out in the world. Be an actual creator. Be a person. I've been bunkered up. You don't know, the people trying to leak my face. Trying to find out what I look like. Trying too... there's too many! It's a little, just a little tiny, tiny bit too much."
Dream attended TwitchCon 2022 in San Diego just a few days after his face reveal and finally met with several prominent streamers, including Felix "xQc," Ludwig, Valkyrae, and others.
2) Dream gets accused of grooming
In one of the most controversial moments of the year, Clay found himself in a peculiar position when a Twitter burner account by the name @burner39413705 shared a thread that accused the content creator of grooming:
The archived thread featured Twitter user Anastasia (@oxeclean) sharing her experience with the internet personality and revealing a few screenshots of their private conversations.
In one of the tweets, Anastasia claimed that Clay connected with her when she was only 17 years old:
"I'm not here to fully prove my experience that I know happened. I don't care about showing every receipt. Here's me telling him I'm 18 SOON (not yet). I also believe I clearly had '17' in my bio the same time I have 20 now. I have him asking for my snap and we talked about school."
The Twitter user also alleged that Dream's former partner "cheated" on him with minors:
"This was all while he was with his ex, didn't she cheat with minors who were fans of his too? Power couple ig idk idc about these people. It was a short-lived phase when I was in a very bad place and after I started talking to him as a person. I stopped supporting bc he wasn't interesting."
On October 16, 2022, Dream responded to the allegations via a TwitLonger post titled, 'I'm sorry for the late post and reply." He believed that Anastasia's direct messages were real, but called out and slammed the grooming allegations.
An excerpt from his address read:
"Yesterday, a thread was posted that had screenshots of twitter dms from me from 2020. I believe these dms are real. in these dms, there are no inappropriate comments whatsoever. It was just friendly conversation. In these screenshots, them being 18 years old is mentioned in their bio, and I also very clearly asked them for their age."
Dream went on to say that the grooming allegations were not only "disgusting," but also "insulting to victims:"
"I did not act inappropriately with this person, and any attempt to equate these messages to grooming is not only disgusting, but is insulting to victims who actually experienced grooming and still have trauma as a result."
The address concluded with him inferring that he might consider taking legal action following the serious accusations:
"I will also based on your advice pursue legal action towards people using my name to spread disinformation or those that are misrepresenting facts, lying, faking things, or falsely abusing my name and image."
3) Other controversies
On September 15, 2022, Twitter user Jawsh (@Its_Jawsh) shared a member-exclusive item from Dream's merch store.
The item was a USB Drive with "special Dream content," such as his baby pictures, chapters from the streamer's old books, childhood emails, old gaming screenshots, and memes from Clay's camera roll:
The slap bracelet-cum-4 GB USB Drive quickly received heavy backlash from the community. Some of the most relevant fan reactions from the viral conversation thread were along these lines:
Besides the controversies, Dream met with Minecraft legend Alex "Technoblade's" father during a livestream on October 20, 2022. The two remembered and shared memories of the late content creator.
The hour-long broadcast was also a fundraising event, with all proceeds benefiting the Sarcoma Foundation and cancer research.
