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The Bridge: This week’s WTF moment gives new meaning to the old adage: “not all superheros wear capes”…or masks, for that matter. Twitchcon, a convention for prominent figures on the live streaming platform (Twitch) and their fans, hosted a much anticipated face reveal – one for the books.
Unmasked!
This week’s WTF moment gives new meaning to the old adage: “not all superheros wear capes”…or masks, for that matter. Twitchcon, a convention for livestream celebrities and their fans, hosted a much anticipated IRL (in real life) face reveal of Dream.
Dream, a gamer known for playing Minecraft during his live-streams, has amassed an audience of over 50 million across the internet within the last 8 years. What’s crazy is him accomplishing this while hiding his face behind a smiley-mask – that looks like this: 🙂.
You would think that an unmasking event would draw some attention, make fans happy, and then be replaced by some other event or scandal – Kanye West’s antics, perhaps.
Unfortunately, the internet had other plans.
#HESUGLY
There’s no easy way to say this.
Dream was met with a barrage of negative comments and critiques on his appearance. In fact, #HESUGLY began trending on Twitter only a few hours after his initial face reveal pre-Twitchcon. This sort of mass bullying is uncharacteristic of the uber tolerant Gen Z, but business as usual for an often unkind internet.
Beauty standards are often only discussed when women’s looks are criticized, but this unfortunate unmasking raises questions about the standards men are held to. This goes double for gaming culture, where many members are viewed as incels unless proven otherwise.
If anything, Dream’s face reveal nightmare has highlighted the amount of work that still needs to be done in terms of body positivity, empathy, and basic human kindness.
After all, we can’t all be Himbos.
