Early MCYTblr Interviews: ilyuqi
today's interviewee is ilyuqi, who joined both MCYTblr and dreamlying after quitting twitter. below, under the cut, is a transcript of their audio messages responding to the questions.
Q: You were on Twitter before you moved to Tumblr– was there a specific reason for that change?
A: Yes! I got canceled! (Haha, very funny). Yeah, that’s kind of the crux of it, I got canceled pretty hard (to a point where, even though I might have had a chance to maybe regain my reputation and continue using my stan account, I just didn’t want to at that point.) I’d already been in so much drama before that (some warranted, some unwarranted), for example one of the things that people got on me for was that I wasn’t Sapnap-focused enough on my twitter account, and there was just an element of responsibility I felt, harboring a stan account with that many followers, as pretentious as that sounds.
It was just no longer fun for me anymore. And now people were creating these multi-thousand-liked cancel threads against me citing my friendships with other people, and then also harboring real-life kind of things on me, for example, like, someone was accusing me of mlm fetishizing, and although I don’t think that’s the most serious accusation (Within the realm of internet discourse. Over the internet specifically, that’s a pretty “eh” thing to get canceled for), I just felt like – I was like, I didn’t do that, though! But I felt like my words were purposefully twisted and misinterpreted just because y’know, a lot of people also didn’t like me on that platform. So I just found it easier to go “yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and quit twitter, this isn’t fun for me anymore, the point of having a stan account is that, you know, I want to feel a part of a community” and I just didn’t feel that anymore, so I found it reasonable to just go ahead and like. Quit being a stan account.
I think I might've privately stanned them on, you know, private accounts for a while, but then I one day ended up randomly answering someone’s question about dreamlying on tumblr, and then that spiraled into me actually becoming a critblr account. I never really intended that to happen, I thought it would be a fun thing of answering a couple of asks, but then suddenly it was, like, hundreds of asks and I was just like “woah!”. If you scroll back far enough on my tumblr, you’ll see that this really was never supposed to be a critblr. Like, I think you can still find my essays about, like, y’know, Girl Meets World from 2017? 2018? I have no idea, there’s no concept of time. But what I’m getting at is that, you know, the shift– the getting off twitter was definitely intentional, but the shift to tumblr, it was kind of just events. Y’know? It just kind of happened, but the main reason I left twitter was because of the cancellation, and I guess it just ended up transitioning into me moving onto tumblr.
Q: What was your experience being in the “fringe” of MCYTblr?
A: My experience being on the fringe of Minecraft Youtube tumblr– I guess I should say that I didn’t really feel, like, a difference in my experience, which is illogical– I am perfectly aware of the fact that my blog and the community I participated in was very different from the minecraft youtube tumblr community as a whole.
But I guess because I was never a part of the [larger] minecraft youtube tumblr community in the first place, I didn't really feel that lack. So for me, being on critblr was just– for me, that was minecraft youtube tumblr, you know? And I think that’s a very unique experience. I think many critblr blogs had the experience of being on minecraft youtube tumblr and then transitioning into being critblr, but for me, it was just immediately critblr. I never had the “idolizing my content creators” stan period while I was on Tumblr– I say that in heavy quotes– I never had that on Tumblr, I had already done that on Twitter. So I think it resulted in me not feeling a difference, I was just like. “Yeah this is– critblr is minecraft youtube tumblr for me, this is the only context in which I would want to talk about minecraft youtube on tumblr”.
So I guess for me, my experience was just being on tumblr. I enjoyed answering the asks, I enjoyed making jokes, I was perfectly awake that sometimes I was saying crazy things, but for me it was just fun, so I just did it anyway. It should be noted that, for the majority of the time I had my blog, I think I was like sixteen, seventeen? So that might explain a lot of the stuff I said. But for me, again, it was normal. I did not feel a lack from being on critblr. For me, that was minecraft youtube tumblr.
Q: Were you ever harassed for being part of critblr?
A: I would say no. I never really felt harassed for being on critblr. At that point, I wasn't– like, my friends, they were all aware that I was on critblr, and none of them really had anything mean to say about it. At the time, those were the only opinions that mattered to me, so it was just kind of like. Eh.
I think if I received any harassment ever, I– I don’t even think I can count it as harassment, it was just people who disagreed with my opinions, and were like, “this is crazy of you to say”. And in hindsight, I'm sure I deserved some of it. But harassment? No. While I was on twitter, I had adults attempting to cyberstalk me, doxx me, create these insane cancel threads on me (all while I was like fifteen years old), and to me, that was harassment. I would see familiar faces popping up in my dms to send me gore, send me death threats. I never experienced anything like that on tumblr. I think probably the craziest thing that ever happened to me on tumblr was some friend of mine sending an ask littered with slurs because they were mad at a critblr opinion that i had. That's probably the craziest thing I've ever had happen to me. I’m not friends with that person anymore. But harassment? No. I don't think I ever really, you know, got harassment. I think I had people who definitely didn’t like me, but I don't think I would count that as harassment.
Q: Do you remember any specific discourse/drama from that time?
A: I will say that a majority of the really really old discourse stuff, I experienced through twitter, not tumblr. So for example, the “Dream Native American war cry” situation, the “r slur” stuff, the spreadsheet, those all came through twitter for me. I experienced those while being active on twitter.
The ones that I remember that I experienced through tumblr were specifically the “Dream kkk edit”, and then there was also an internal critblr affair where this account called mctruther or mcyttruth (I can’t remember, one of the two) made this giant callout post dedicated mostly towards Jason lmanburg. I remember this pretty vividly mainly because I wrote a callout, like, a response to the callout post, and uh, personally I found the post to be very silly. They were criticizing Jason and other people for using stuff like kiwifarms and being a part of ebblr, I think, and it was just very odd, and I didn't vibe with it. So I made a callout post, and I was just like “I don't agree with what you’re saying”.
But yeah, no, so personally the Dream kkk edit is what kind of made me go “okay, I don’t think I want to talk about Dream discourse anymore”. Because before this, for me, my critblr account was mostly dedicated to talking about the relationships that Dream had with his family, and George, and Sapnap, and other content creators, the internet in general– sometimes, I talked about Ranboo, and y’know like, what I thought his fans were doing for his face reveal? As in, y’know, they were hyping him up too much and he was getting visibly more and more insecure. But for Dream, you know, I think I was able to always maintain like, “yeah, I think he’s done a lot of shitty stuff in the past, but I think he’s perfectly capable of growth and learning, because he’s always owned up to his mistakes”, but the Dream kkk edit was one where he gave lies so quickly to try and cover his ass, and then gave this halfhearted apology in which he really rubbed me the wrong way.
I obviously had no problem saying this, obviously I’m going to find a kkk edit pretty despicable, but I had people in my inbox arguing with me whether or not a kkk edit is really a mark of someone being antisemitic, or racist. They even debated whether or not the edit itself was racist or not, and I just kind of had to take a step back cause I’m like, “C’mon guys, like, I think if this happened in real life, y’know, this would Not be the conversation occurring right now, but you guys are giving so much leeway to this, like, random white guy over the internet.’ Like, I don’t want to have to debate with people whether or not racism is real. I wanna talk about GeorgeNotFound’s visa, and I wanna talk about Ranboo’s face reveal! I don’t want to talk about like– I don’t want to try and convince you that racism is real, that is not what I want to do. That is very exhausting, honestly. Cause, like– I don’t know, it was just very disheartening to see this community go down that route. And I was just kinda like “Okay, no,” and I think I made a big post that was just like “Hey. I’m no longer going to address Dream’s controversies, because they seem to be going down a route where I'm going to have to defend things that I know to be true, basic things I know to be true, and I have to defend them like I'm already wrong. And I don’t wanna do that, that’s too much for me.'' So yeah, that’s kind of the biggest discourse that I remember from critblr from when I joined it.
Of course there were other things too, from the very very beginning. Like, I don’t know if any one of your interviews has talked about it, but misogynap was one of my favorite things on tumblr in 2020. Because like, I fully agreed, I was like yeah! Sapnap does give off misogynistic vibes! It’s really weird! And I vibed with that– but you could never say that on twitter.
I think what made me the angriest about this whole thing– there were tons of things that made me angry, y’know, I didn’t vibe with the argument that he was, like, 15 years old therefore he was a dumb fifteen-year-old. I was like okay, I've been fifteen, I've never done anything like that before. But what definitely pissed me off was the fact that he immediately tried to deny it, and I was like dude, c’mon. Like, these are some pretty serious allegations and accusations, and you just decided to deny them, and you’re like “Augh! It’s just my stupid antis!” and it’s like, no, you made that edit!
And then when he owned up to it, he basically said something along the lines of “some people grow up with kindness surrounding them… I was not, and I grew up with hate… and therefore, this is the byproduct of that :(“ and I– I dunno. I don’t wanna say I get what he’s saying, but I think that is an incredibly, incredibly privileged take, to be able to say that. Like, I grew up with hate, therefore I also started hating. There are plenty of people in this world surrounded by hate all the time, and they don’t grow up to do that kind of stuff. And the fact that Dream’s stans took that and they were like, “oh my god he’s such a good person, I love that he apologized so well!” I was just kinda like guys. Come on, like this is a white guy being like “It’s just not my fault, it’s not my fault that I was so freakin racist as a kid! It’s just not my fault!”. Like, we’re all capable of making choices. Sorry. Sorry, does that sound too harsh? I’m sorry.
But that definitely was kind of my breaking point, to be like “Yup! I’m not gonna be debating dream controversies anymore, because if this is the kind of person he is, this isn’t someone I want to playfully speculate on. This is some serious stuff, this is not my forte, no.”
Q: How do you feel that the overall culture and in-jokes of critblr differed from “main” MCYTblr?
A: Like I've said before, I don't know if I'm the best person to make the differentiation between main mcytblr and critblr, only because I never felt the difference because I jumped right into critblr. Even before, in like 2020 when I was a lurker, I was lurking on georgeeehd’s blog, wormweeb’s blog, etc etc. I never really interacted with normal minecraft youtube tumblr. I guess maybe the closest I might've gotten to that is endercores? But we actually ended up meeting over twitter, and that’s where we became friends, we never really interacted on tumblr. So honestly, I don't know if I'm the best person to ask that question.
I just kind of would say that, going off of vibes alone, it’s that critblr was a lot more okay with poking fun at content creators for their jokes and making jokes at their expense, while main mcytblr jokes definitely lined up with more traditional stan culture, praising and uplifting their CCs. That’s kind of the most basic generalization I can give, but I personally would have no interactions to give you in main mcytblr.
Q: Similarly, how do you think the culture of MCYT tumblr differed from MCYT twitter?
A: So this is something I can definitely give you a lot on, the difference between minecraft twitter and tumblr. I think that the main difference between the jokes and the culture, honestly, between twitter and tumblr, was in direct correlation with the fact that the content creators being discussed were on twitter, but weren’t on tumblr.
On twitter, you were faced with the possibility that these men might respond to your tweets at any time. You might make a harmless joke, but they might come after you for it. You might give valid criticism that’s meant to be shared amongst stans as kind of like a thinkpiece, you know, like “what do we think of this?” and you could get the men themselves in your replies, and completely change the trajectory of how that post was supposed to be taken. I have direct experience with this, so I can tell you firsthand, there were times where I made tweets and I had people kind of going like “Yeah, I do agree with you, I do agree with that!’ and then Dream (or whoever) replies, and they immediately go “oh, that’s so true Dream! Good job Dream! Yeah, yeah, yeah!” and I’m like guys, c’mon. Come on. You know? It was like that for me.
But on tumblr, you really didn’t have to fear that! You knew that your post was going to remain in stan circles. Back then, I barely remember anyone screenshotting from tumblr to take onto twitter– I don’t remember that happening very often. I know it happened, just not very often. So you could really say whatever you wanted on tumblr, and not be absolutely crucified for it. For example, misogynap! Like, people were just calling Sapnap a casual misogynist on tumblr, and no one got in trouble for it. But, on twitter, Sapnap got super offended at someone saying “Eh, I think Sapnap might smell like cheetos and weed!” and he actually went through the process of making sure all of his friends blocked that one specific person, just because they said “Eh, I think Sapnap smells like cheetos and weed.”
So there was a very very different culture. They kind of made it so that twitter had to have that stan, like, idolization going for them, because if you didn’t, if you made jokes at their expense, they would come for you and they would get their stans on you, and you had to just pray that they also see what you said as a joke, otherwise they’re gonna pounce on you, too. I don’t know. I think that’s probably the biggest difference, the fact that the content creators were on twitter and not tumblr changed a lot of how you could make jokes and how you could act on those platforms. I don’t know, you can take that however you’d like.
Q: Looking back, a large amount of 2021 critblr culture revolved around doxxing and sharing personal information– what was that like? What’s your current perspective on it, looking back?
A: So, doxxing. Very interesting topic. I guess what I first want to start out with is: do I want to call it doxxing? No, probably not. I don’t think what anyone (or at least, what I saw anyone doing) was doxxing, or would be ever considered doxxing. I think if you really wanted to put a label on it, you could say “being invasive”. But is that illegal, or a crime? No, it’s not. Everything that I know that people found was just, you know, public information on the internet, and it wasn’t obtained via illegal means, no one was hacking into bank records, no one was– [laughs] I don't know, stealing house papers? This was all just stuff that was online, available for the public to see. You just had to know how to find it.
I would say for a while there– this was not on tumblr, this was on twitter– there was almost a competitive aspect to it, to see who could find what, but this was very strictly on twitter. This was– or, at least in my experience, this was on twitter. But on tumblr, it was just kind of like “Eh, if you know, you know”. Y’know? Like, it’s not like anyone’s making these blogs, and they’re like, uploading bios of Dream, George, and Sapnap, and have their addresses, and like their parents’ names and everything, it was just kind of like “if you know, you know”.
I guess the big thing is like, do you regret it, how do you see it looking back. And while I can say “Y’know, probably not the best thing for a bunch of teenagers to be doing in their spare time”, I cannot say that I fully regret it, because these are men who are known to take the fact, like– known to take people’s lack of information and twist it and try to use that lack of information in their best interests.
To kind of give you a feel of what I’m trying to say, think about Manatreed, right? That was a straight up abuser that Dream was housing and trying to platform onto the dream smp, which is a fandom composed of mostly minors and mostly teenage girls. Dream tried to do that! Dream might have gotten away with it, if people did not dig into his life and figure out who Manatreed was, and therefore figure out what this guy had done in the past, and then been able to put pressure on Dream for it. I cannot see something like that and say “Ooh, but being invasive is bad!” Like, I don’t know, I don’t wanna say they brought it upon themselves, because that’s a bit much, but at the same time, what would have happened if people hadn’t doxxed them? Manatreed would have just been on the SMP forever, like, no one would have known that! That’s kind of scary to think about. Like, in a way, yeah, sometimes things like that are important. And you know, again, everything was found through perfectly legal means, nothing was done illegally, and at the end of the day, the Dream SMP was free of an abuser. (In the end, considering recent events, does that really matter? Since half of the Dream SMP were all, like, abusers or allowed abuse to continue? Whatever– we’re not gonna talk about that.)
But you get what I'm saying. I can’t look at a situation like that and say “Yeah, I regret like, doxxing or being a part of that community”. Cause at the end of the day, these men were hiding a lot of things, and they would have gotten away with a lot more if people weren’t so… I don't wanna say vigilant, but you know what I mean? I feel like you understand what I’m trying to say here. There was definitely an element of necessity, when it came to situations like those.
Q: Which criticisms do you think hold up? Which didn’t?
A: There is one criticism that I think has held up very very well, and it’s the fact that I believe that Dream is no longer going to change his behavior or make any real efforts to become a better person from his last mistake, because he has no real reason to. Because he now has stans that will enable and back him up through basically anything. There have been– I mean, I stand by that. I totally stand by that. He is able to basically do anything and kind of be untouchable for it.
Even when the grooming accusations were going on, and the Gumball beef was going on, and most of the internet hated him, he still had stans backing him up. And those exact stans are the reason he was able to come back onto twitter, and now has his platform again, and people praise him and say like “Yeah, yada yada, Dream made a response video,” when that response video really did nothing! It was genuinely nothing, it was just a bunch of– like, he just talked into the mic for two hours. He didn’t prove or disprove anything for me. For me, it was just like, okay? You’ve given me nothing here. The thing is, though, his stans will take it, they will enable him basically through anything. And when you have people that, even at your worst, still see you as being the best, why would you want to change? Why would you feel the need to put in the effort to change your behavior if the people that give you your money don’t care about that, you know?
So that’s something I still stand by, that Dream isn’t going to change anymore, even if he says that he is, it’s going to be very disingenuous. Because at the end of the day, he knows he has stans backing him up. He has no personal gain in changing, and therefore, he won’t.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add, or have archived on the blog?
A: I’ll say that I joined dreamlying in August of 2020, so a few months after it was created. I would say that it’s definitely insane to me that dreamlying has managed to keep its infamous status in the minecraft youtube sphere, just because we are all so vastly different from when it first began. So to see people still refer to us that way is just a little insane. I don’t even know if I’m really included in the “us” cause again, I joined a little bit late, but to me– that’s the thing, though! I think when other people think of dream lying, they think of these massive critblr blogs, but when I think of dreamlying I’m like, “these are the guys that I do movie night with”. Like, “haha these are my best friends”. You know?
That’s another thing, I think people were genuinely surprised to find out that we were a friend group. Like, yes? [laughs] These are people that I genuinely love spending time with, and not in the context of minecraft youtuber-ing, it’s just like– yeah, these are my friends, and I love them dearly! And I don’t wanna get all like [various noises conveying sappiness] but these are my friends, that’s kind of how I see them. My experience as a member, like, boils down to “these are my friends! I did stuff with them that I would do with any other of my friends!” And I think it’s like a weird concept to people, because again, they view dreamlying as this kind of– they regard dreamlying with a lot of mystique, but then me, it’s just “friends :D”. “My friends, awesome friends”. I don’t know, I don’t think I’m very good at being articulate about, like, being perceived and how people perceive other people, but I guess the only word I could really use is just “insane”, that dreamlying has continued to keep its reputation, even after four years.
