i just want to say... dream is very good with words in a more subtle way that often goes unnoticed. i don't think people realize just how carefully crafted a lot of his sentences are. obviously i'm not talking about when he's chilling with his friends on streams and fooling around. i mean in more serious/professional settings.
and there's one specific sentence he's said a few times that i want to talk about, because i am primarily a dnf-centered blog, and because i think about it a lot for multiple reasons.
"me and george are not dating, and have no plans to."
this is such a well-crafted sentence. he's said it a couple times, once in that stream about boundaries (we all know the one), and once on train's podcast. probably a couple other times too that i forgot about. but it's always that exact phrasing. he never changes it from what i’ve seen, and if so they are rare occasions, and he always answers people who ask if there's anything going on between them with that same sentence.
he's honestly brilliant for this one, and here's why.
most people hear that sentence and infer that dnf is not real because a) they are not dating and b) it's never going to happen. while 'a' is probably true, at least i personally believe it to be, 'b' is not necessarily the correct interpretation, despite it being the most common one for whatever reason. i often see people in comments on yt or other places claiming that dream said they aren’t dating and never will. but.
"have no plans to" does NOT actually = never.
if i say, "i have no plans to go to the grocery store this week," what would you infer from that? what you should infer is that right now, this current week, i will not go to the grocery store. however it would be really odd to assume that just because i am not going to the grocery store this week, that i will never go.
maybe a grocery store trip analogy is too biased, since everyone has to go to a grocery store eventually and dng do not have to date eventually.
let's use a different example. if i say "i have no plans to quit my current job" would you assume from my saying that, that i will always have that job? life is unpredictable. just because i have no plans for my employment to end, does not mean it won't end anyway. i mean, sure, i could end up working there the rest of my life. plenty of people spend their entire lives working for a single company. but i could also quit one day due to dissatisfaction with my job/employer/wages or because i found better employment elsewhere, or because i got fired unexpectedly.
the point? the phrase "no plans to ___" simply means no current plans. it's not a definite, and it's not a never.
this phrasing is so interesting to me because it means dream used foresight, and we all know he's good at that. he knew he would blow up on youtube, and he did. he uses it all the time in manhunts (and explains it to us in his analysis vids), and uses it when he's playing games against people he knows well. so allow me to adjust my tin hat here, but i think dream foresaw (or currently foresees) that there could possibly come a time when "no plans" is made obsolete. and hey, i could be wrong, but it’s still interesting that he has used that same phrase multiple times to describe their relationship status. it could even be subconscious for all we know, rather than premeditated. i just think he words it that way for a reason though. he’s a smart guy, it’s very plausible.
still, it really is perfect phrasing to use, because it's so flexible. even if things change later, what he said was never untrue. there were no plans, but things happened anyway. i believe he says it this way because it allows him to be honest with everyone now, to keep anyone who goes too far in line, and keep the things (or feelings) he wants private to stay that way, while also not putting him in an uncomfortable position later and no need to explain himself if things ever do change.
he never lied or technically even misled anyone, and no one will be able to say he did looking back either, because all he ever said on the subject was that they aren't currently dating, which is true, and that they have no plans to, which is cleverly versatile wording.
