Early MCYTblr Interviews: gayminecraftmen

today's interviewee is @gayminecraftmen, a mcytblr veteran and member of dreamlying! below is a transcript of the questions and answers, today under a readmore for your scrolling convenience.

Q: What, to the best of your recollection, was your experience in early MCYTblr?

A: This is going to be very longwinded - I would say that I had a pretty unique experience during that time. I joined in early July of 2020 after being inspired by georgeeehd/tommyofcolor/lmanburg - all the same person, Reese's blog. Can't for the life of me remember what his first url was. I got my kickstart in the fandom through him, I started out as one of his anons and when I decided to make a blog of my own he gave me a shoutout. The dream team fandom was still very small at the time, so i'd say a lot of my "popularity" was only because I was one of the firsts. There was nothing truly special about what I was posting at the start of my blog, it was basically all dnf. This eventually went hand in hand with truthing, the thing I'm sure most people remember me for, and something I'll go into more detail on later.

Now, as for the more unique aspect of my time; I never looked at my dashboard. I mean, I didn't need to! All I ever needed to do was look at my notifications and people were feeding me information about what was happening in the fandom. I was 15 during my time in mcytblr, I had no real interest in building a community in the fandom if the community was seemingly being built around me. I felt like a celebrity, people in my ask box were concerningly parasocial towards me - I've got some old screenshots of asks that still creep me out a bit. It was all a huge unhealthy ego boost that made me very manic at times. Anyway - because I rarely even checked other people's blogs at the time, I'm a pretty unreliable source when it comes to anything but my own experience. I ended up deactivating on March 13th 2021 because I hadn't been genuinely into mcyt since.. I want to say October or even September of 2020 and my blog had been losing traction since the start of 2021. It just wasn't fun for me anymore.

Q: What was the general fandom attitude towards creators? More specifically, has the attitude around "boundaries" evolved since then?

A: Like I said I can't really speak on the general fandom, but I can say that in my circle the general concensus was "they're celebrities, they'll never see us, who cares?" I mean, it was tumblr, there were no creators around to see us talk about them. There was truly no worry of any consequences. For my truthing circle specifically, if you saw gay, you said gay. Later on down the line I realized that no, dream and george are not planning their honeymoon in Barcelona, but it ended up being funnier to continue the bit than denounce it altogether.

Q: I recall that you were part of "dreamlying". What was that like? (and, as an aside; is it odd to be considered infamous within a tumblr fan community?)

A: Dreamlying was, and still is, just a friend group. That's literally it. Yes, it's a friend group infamous for doxxing, and truthing, and starting a number of rumors, but still, it's not like we were constantly scheming the next big heist. You can find a number of posts detailing the origins of our group on roxytonic's blog, all conveniently tagged as "#dreamlying" so I won't get into all that at the risk of being redundant. And yes, it's incredibly weird to me that people still consider us to be infamous. Myself, especially as I actually only had a bit over 500 followers. (granted, I am aware that many people checked my blog without following and even more had me blocked). I think my least favorite part about it all is all the lies that other people tell about us. Like, while going through your blog I saw a post where someone had said I was the one who wrote the SBI crit post, a post i hadn't even known existed until I saw you talking about it! As far as I know, whoever wrote that post never had anything to do with dreamlying, and they certainly weren't a member at any point. Yes, we are partially to blame for spreading a bunch of lies about ourselves for fun, but to see just how much that spiraled out of our hands is astounding.

Q: Are there any specific dramas/discourse that you remember from the "dreamlying" era?

A: The dreamlying hijink that I think is the most infamous was the leaking of the fact that dream wasn't registered to vote. This was veeerry early on, and wasn't even a group effort, (as far as I remember nothing pertaining to doxxing ever was. It was usually just one member going off on an internet excursion on their own and sharing with the class as they went). I don't even think dreamlying had even been formed yet, or it was incredibly early. Either way, that can be attributed to Reese, as I'm sure many people remember. Finding this out was as simple as going into Florida's voting records and searching up Dream's name, something that had been doxxed by others beforehand. Frankly, I still don't understand why this was such a big deal to people.

My personal favorite dreamlying happenings were the more absurd rumors that we had started. My personal favorite being that dream's legal team sent a cease and desist to dreamwasfound/georgesoot for defamation of character, which was what we told people was the reason for his deactivation. It's insane to me that anyone ever believed that for even a second. Another favorite, one that never really caught on with the public, was that Ranboo was an ex member of dreamlying. That one was never stated outright but I remember a few subtle hints being thrown out. Sadly, I don't think anyone took the bait on that one.

Q: Moving on from dreamlying-- you mentioned being part of "ebblr" [enderbees tumblr]. Was that different from your experience in previous fringe communities?

A: Not to stroke my own ego, but I do think I had a large part in the creation of ebblr. A lot of the larger ebblr bloggers were my anons at one point. I would say the main difference in my time discussing enderbees, was that I never watched a single tubbo or ranboo stream. Every single piece of information that I had to go off of was sent to me through asks. I barely made any original posts on the topic, again mostly just responding to asks. I remember when people were first trying to think of a name for the ship, I jokingly proposed the name "boobees." I got sent death threats for that.

Q: What do you remember from that time?

A: The enderbees timeline is endlessly hilarious to me. I can't remember all of the specifics but I do recall there being a decently specific timeline of their relationship that people agreed upon. What I remember the most though was when Ranboo came to live with Tubbo for awhile on a visa (unrelated: I believe there was also serious talk of him committing tax fraud with said visa). At the point of the visit, people were already convinced they were dating. It seemed that Ranboo was a pretty ungrateful guest and I believe he ended up leaving early. That's when people started theorizing the breakup. It was later revealed on a stream that Tubbo had Ranboo muted on twitter - this really cemented things. I think people even outside of ebblr could see that their relationship was rocky after that trip, they weren't doing streams together much at all and their friend groups seemed to divide. Again, all of this information was fed to me secondhand, so I may be missing a few beats or be hyperbolizing some things, but this is how it seemed to me as far as I can remember.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to speak on/about?

A: Don't believe anything about dreamlying that doesn't come directly from a member's mouth (roxytonic's blog being an outlier in this case). Second-hand accounts are essentially useless here, considering how much we lied, or "poisoned the well" as roxy put it. So, unless you're specifically looking to gather information on how we were percieved, most of what you're gonna find on us is simply untrue. If anyone happens to be reading this interview and has more questions, I am probably open to answering them as long as they aren't too prying! My inbox on gayminecraftmen is always open, and I really do love talking about my experiences in this fandom.

craziest part of the mcytblr-archive interviews is seeing all the old popular critblrs talk about their experience of being "big" blogs and how similar that ia to my experience. except i was just a humble c w*lbur apologist but you get what i mean. the ego boost and everything

yoo, u should probably do an interview with @mcytblr-archive

that'd be interesting, you're one of the users I remember the most during 2020/2021 mcytblr

signed

- an old mcytblr mutual of urs

oh hell yeah that sounds fun

I still need to read Seeing Like a State but I think I really fell into the legibility goosechase at the time because I just couldn't think at the individual (blog) level. Obviously certain blogs interact more with certain blogs than other blogs but looking back it's not like I could predict how, when, and why they would interact. That's more in the realm of sociology than anthropology — which is very good, but I very much took a qualitative approach — and even then sociology doesn't always claim predictive power (e.g. Luhmann's sociology was primarily descriptive).

I still think fringe mcytblr is the best term that could have been used for the following RADA project because it was so so general but I think any other name that wasn't critblr or truthblr or whatever would've worked equally as well. "Fringe" obviously carries a structural/conflict connotation but does it necessarily carry a social connotation? Does it carry an epistemic connotation? Fringe could just as easily mean distributed specificity. And then there's the fundamental question of whether legibility is even necessary. I find myself thinking more functionally these days: what is the use of X? So what was the use of legibility independent of validating the theoretical structure?

And so "It's not what you know, it's who you know" becomes much much more salient in mind. I think small DMs and 1-on-1 conversations and even an occasional interview and just asking around instead of guessing all the time would've led me to the history of mcytblr quicker, and more accurately. I mean Tumblr's search capabilities are the mud sinking the cathedral isn't it? Eventually I became a part of the DTeamblr 2/3/4 Discord servers (fly high #corner-3) but the discussions were still very communal.

All this to say that I really do think fandom is about interpretation and transformation and generativity and that getting hung up on RPF is kind of getting hung up on that elemental currency. I don't think you can ever escape interpretation. Did you know that our brain always constructs your conscious experiences and perceptions? The degree of construction is up for debate but it's safe to say a fuck ton of it is constructive (as in synthesis). We're always interpreting what we see in front of us and in our heads. If block men and their actors happen to stumble into some people's brains, live and let live.

100 days multiverse naow. or dominion smp. or both

all i know about dominion smp is that vikingpilot pluralcoded and also gjost. also one time i interviewed him for the mcytblr sexyman polls

oh is tjis about legundo. Hes the pig guy right?

hi ranboo interviewer for mcytblr here. hows the Not Playing Minecraft For A Month strategy going? bad? hoho thats no good! so you'll play minecraft more then so you can win right?............... ranboo?

Them trying to appeal to mcytwtt that way isssss interesting since last time i saw mcytwtt they both hated mcytblr and were kind of consistently shitty to eret

i can confirm this is true. maybe not so much about the hating mcytblr part, a lot of them just straight up don’t know tumblr is still a website at all. they find us funny sometimes. i think they see us as zoo animals of sorts.

but their treatment of eret is consistently vile, yes. back when i joined the dsmp fandom in early 2021 eret was on a lot of people’s dni lists for a couple uneducated remarks they made on.. arguably rather niche queer topics. i mean “uneducated” in the literal sense that they didn’t understand, and because obviously as a queer person eret must understand all aspects of queerness instantly and never ever ever slip up or not know something, this was unforgivable. this died down towards the end of the year, but to this day i still see people being gross whenever they post a pic of themselves. disgusting amounts of what is, ultimately, just straight up queerphobia and body shaming, especially when the pics are of them expressing their queerness in some way (wearing a dress, breast forms etc)

their marketing directly on twitter is incredibly transparent “we don’t know what any of this is but come to our website for more of it” sort of tactics, like the most generic responses to popular mcyt posts. twitter users unfortunately eat this right up though, so i don’t expect that they’ve done enough research into the mcyttwt demographic to know any of the intricacies of it all, because they really don’t need to. most twitter users aren’t going to join tumblr, but they WILL engage with the tumblr account because “BRAND KNOWS MCYT?!?!?!?!?”, which is still good marketing. from the perspective of literally anyone who isn’t a young mcyttwt user though it all comes across as very obviously out of touch LMAO so. yeah it’s very obvious that they barely know anything about eret at all, let alone twitter’s relationship with them. you can tell that from the interview alone, the phrase “you got a lore episode” instead of “you did a lore stream” said it all tbh 😭😭 (and the fact that in talking about this lore stream, the tumblr lady just made vague references to fanart and positive responses, very much keeping it on topic of tumblr engagement. which is what the podcast is about yes but also definitely shows that she doesn’t understand what she sees in the mcyt tags)

i guess with this podcast they’re trying to appeal more to existing mcytblr users than mcyttwt tho but still… not a fan of a cc being turned into socmed advertisement. no hate to eret for taking the opportunity, it’s gotta be cool from their pov, but hm

achilles!!!! i just saw ur interview with mcytblr archive and omg ur so sweet ^-^!! of course we were friends dude ily. we are bonded through mcyt and rtc you can not get rid of me

HEARTYYYYY HI !! ily too yourw so swag...... so real we r stuck together like. those fish that hang on sharks idk whaf theyre called. spins around with you 4ever !!!!!!!

another “people being positive about tommy” compilation because the smp exile storyline is making me sad

Timestamps:

Lazar&Vikk Meeting TommyInnit on Dream SMP 1:04:31 

Phil June 19th 2020 3:58:20

Scott and Wilbur MCC 9  

Soldiarity, Cap, Krinios, Krtzy MCC3 1:13:29

HeyItsJoe and Wilbur Interview 1:13:13

Phil July 13th 2020 2:45:42

Breaking News: MCYTblr Election

by beacon-lamp, Updated October 13, 2020 

On October 12, 2020, tumblr user @adhddream announced their bid for presidency of MCYTblr.  In any other fan community, this announcement would have perhaps elicited a few laughs, but would have ultimately been an insignificant and forgotten about in a few hours.  However, MCYTblr is just Built Different.  The post gained traction and multiple members from all parts of mcytblr, from dteamblr to sleepyblr to hermitblr, began announcing their bid for candidacy that evening, because no one had anything better to do on a Monday night.

It has been less than 24 hours since the event spontaneously began and there are already too many candidacies to keep track of.  Luckily, a blog dedicated to compiling the list of people running and their policies, because this is Completely Normal Behavior.  Notably, an Anarchy Party has emerged from this election chaos and I have been told that some members of the party have begun to acquire worryingly large amounts of TNT.  There are also rumors of an assassination plot, as well as a rebellion, being planned but nothing has been solidified at this time.

Given that there are still people roleplaying in the reblogs of a textpost I made last night, it is likely that this election will not lose traction any time soon.  However, very few logistics of this event have been made clear to the public, but here is what we know so far:

The requirements for candidacy in this election are: a president, a running mate, a [Some Word]2020 campaign name, and 7 policies.  Posters, logos, and political ads are not necessary but highly encouraged.  Please contact @mcytblr-elections once your candidacy has been officially announced so that they can keep track.  The candidacies will be narrowed down to 7 parties, which will be listed on the official ballot.  The vote is rumored to occur in 1 week, but further clarification will be needed.  It is also unclear how the 7 final parties will be determined.

Lastly, participants are also being asked to tag any posts related to the election as “#mcytblr elections”.  If you would like to never hear of this election again (and no one would blame you), consider blocking the tag.  

Please check back later for more updates on the election.

Disclaimer: For legal reasons, everything stated above is a Joke.  This is not a Legitimate Election for any office of value.  The results of this election will likely have No Consequences or Effect on this community.  Any political conversations are purely roleplay because everyone in mcytblr apparently has some background in performing arts/theater.

EXCLUSIVE: Special Interview with Tapeworm2021's Spokesperson, @popcornsalty !

Miro: Could you introduce yourself and your party?

Poke: Hi! I am Poke Popcornsalty, the spokesperson of Tapeworm2021. I use she/her pronouns.

Miro: Awesome! So Ms. Poke, could you tell me a bit about this lorekeeper gala you attended recently? I heard some interesting things happened there.

Poke: Well it- it was certainly one heck of an experience. There was a cursed knife and gem, somehow, which traumatized [NAME REDACTED FOR SAFETY]! And there was an attempted murder, and they killed this merperson! The cookies were good, though. Still, they will be paying for my therapy. Bea of the Tapeworm party attended and saw these things as well, and it was horrifying!

Miro: Oh no, really? Do you have any suspicions as to who attempted the murder?

Poke: I saw it- it was the merperson they killed. Their security is..... efficient, I will say. In the sense they are efficient in not getting much info out of the attempted murderer! To clarify. To the best of my knowledge, they killed the merperson for attempted murder. And I report this with no exaggeration- when i attempted to tell some lorekeepers about the odd knife and gem, (and they saw the knife fly through the air! Out of the room!) they simply shrugged their shoulders and said this was normal. Is this meant to be the highest voted for party-? With 37%-? I digress. On to the next question, please.

Miro: Oh- um, alright! What is tapeworm2021's policy on the larger mcyt community (hermitcraft, 3rd/last life, etc) and will you take measures to represent them when they are largely overshadowed by the dsmp side?

Poke: Tapeworm2021 wants to help these communities- such as implementing education on tagging. And when we take power, we will ensure fans from smaller smps will have representatives.

Miro: Lovely! I'm sure they will be glad to hear that. I must know- are there any dsmp characters Tapeworm2021 strictly does not endorse? I'm aware this is a controversial subject, but I'm afraid it must be touched upon.

Poke: Well-well now. I cannot speak for other members of the party, but I, as an individual, personally believe it is wrong to condemn anyone for their opinions on dream smp characters. I make my friends based on how nice they are to everyone, not which fictional character they call their meow meow(which is not to say that fiction doesn't affect reality, but that's a different can of worms). I- I know people who are "c!dream/c!techno/c!phil apologists" who have been far more polite and understanding to me then some inniters, in fact, here on tumblr. So it is my opinion that I only do not endorse c!schlatt chuckles light-heartedly But those are just my feelings on the matter. And as a party, rather then disliking any particular character, we fully endorse c!tommy! I hope this answers your question, I can elaborate more on details, if you so wish.

Miro: Fascinating! This answers my question perfectly, thank you. Lastly, is there anything you would like to say to my readers before you go?

Poke: Ah- well. We, the Tapeworm party, welcome new twitter people! We will give you a frog, if you want. Stay hydrated, y'all.

[Ms. Poke also requested I include this image:]

MCYTblr Interviews: goatedgreen

our interviewee is @goatedgreen, who kindly wrote up their analysis of 2020-2021 mcytblr! below is a transcript of their analysis.

i'd say that late 2020 and early 2021 is when the "meta" variety of posts started becoming more popular, as that was when the dsmp went from something people saw as a funny joke roleplay server, so something with actual depth of characters that warranted analysing!

but i would say the thing that really kicked off the dsmp as a serious roleplay in and ofitself was of course SAD-ists first animatic (warriors). i remember having subscribed to them just a little before the release of it, because they had animated a few of the funner moments of the dsmp prior to that, but nothing near as serious and cinematic as Warriors.

to say the reaction was big would be an understatment. there were of course a few fanfictions (around less than 100, with the focus being more fluffy, and the fics were still looked down on because the RP hadnt separated itself enough from the Real People yet). i remember reading the first EVER fanfcifion that made the roleplay "realistic" set during the FIRST L'manberg war (august 2020) that detailed tommy and tubbo (the C! moniker not being added to them yet) and thought it was INSPIRED

but then warriors released, and everyone sort of had this realisation like.. "oh! this really is a STORY!" and started taking what they were seeing in the streams so much more seriously.

and i would say that just in time for that, came the POG2020 versis SWAG2020 (versis coconut 2020) . i remember at the time, a lot of people thinking "surely the main story is over now right? l'manberg is free, theres nothing more to tell, anything else would be dragging out something that's already great" and i remember agreeing

but then of course we got the Pogtopia arc, which i think really was the beginning of the "prime" of dsmp as a whole. pogtopia to doomsday (post exile) was seriously some of the best stuff the dsmp has put out (which shows, as it was followed by a pretty big hiatus in streams) , and was like... the BOOM of meta analysis (specific blogs i recommend for older meta, is daggryet, and cupcraft)

i remember daggryet also producing entire transcripts of important lore streams so that people could go back and reference what was said in order make both streams more accessible, and allow people to be more accurate in their quotes of characters for analysis purpose

i just really LOVED the well-meaning debate and COPIUS amounts of DEEP character analysis from this era (there was, of course still discourse, but it didnt feel as malicious as it started to feel later on, when divides between story focus became more vast, and people started pitting characters against each other and splitting into "apologist" factions)

Declaring a rivalry with all other reporters/newspapers/etc. I was here first, get off my spot 🔪

EEYYYYY MY OTHER DAD SAID HED BAIL ME OUT

Their askbox is currently closed otherwise I would also attempt to bail you out of MCYTblr prison please know this

But also pog to moon dad for takin that initiative!

this is mcytblr-archive-- wanted to say for the critblr crowd that i don't intend to (and indeed couldn't) replace roxy in any way! they've been a very big inspiration and gave words to a lot of the phenomena that i noticed but could never quite grasp-- given this vocabulary, i initially wanted to break down mcytblr history through archival as someone who was there for it! however i realized recently that i am one man with a patchwork memory, and it would be a far more historically useful endeavor to take accounts from all over mcytblr. it's been fantastic thus far, and i can't believe the response i've gotten!

(that said-- the similarities between me and roxy are indeed numerous and striking. i blame our time in the gnfkitten mines and time spent lurking critblr and dlying, though roxy uses much bigger words than i do 😅)

Lowkey I would be totally fine if you replaced me and/or just used RADA as a stepping stone. Not sure if you read my "seeing like a state" post but I think a lot of my speculations were really just that -- speculation, without really putting boots on the ground and talking to people and interviewing them. And that I think already puts you a mile ahead of me

P.S. I just re-found my "mcytblr shenanigans" tag, I think I have some mcytblr elections stuff in there (which DTeamblr 2/3 Discord DEFINITELY manipulated, I was literally there lol)

The CC's Responses to the MCYTBlr Sexyman Polls, Thread 4: This Is Getting Seriously Out Of Hand

welcome welcome welcome all and sundry to the fourth thread we've had to make on this topic, because folks, there is a LOT of material!

our name is Keys and we'll be your host for... the rest of this event, since nobody else is really doing anything else like this. since we're on thread four, i figured i might as well let y'all know what's going on here and a quick recap of what we've been covering, as well as some facts and questions that literally nobody has asked.

if you are anywhere in MCYTBlr and indeed in other fandoms here on Tumblr, there's a good chance you've heard about the MCYTBlr Sexyman Polls, which I've helpfully put in the title of this post so that people don't get confused! if you haven't, though, the polls themselves are hosted by the @mcytblrsexymen blog and are heavily inspired by Tumblr's own Sexyman Polls of 2022, but specifically for the MCYT fandom. they've been going on since Feb. 5th, 2023, or 6 days ago as of today, with the later polls often gaining upwards of 20,000 votes!

if you want to see all of the shenanigans and hijinks going on within the fandom (and subfandoms) itself here on tumblr, the best place to get a good luck at all of that is at the blog itself, which I linked above. fellow journalist @salemoleander has also whipped together some INCREDIBLE short videos going over the events and tragedies of this event since day 1, one of which I've been featured on myself!

this thread, and all threads before it, which if you're interested are linked to in my pinned post on my blog, are focused rather on the nominees' reactions and responses to this poll. i take screenshots on Twitter to post here, and also try and get stream clips to quote, although since I never watch streams this is a bit difficult for me. i also have done an interview with a nominee himself, and with one of the mods on the official blog itself!

FAQ

Q: Lots of nominees are campaigning really hard for themselves. Are you going to cover that? A: I have before, yes, but to keep things as unbiased as possible in the spirit of journalism I'm probably just going to drop that. Sorry Joe Hills.

Q: There's a lot of people submitting things as soon as they happen to the blog itself. If that's going on faster than you can cover it yourself, then what's the point of this? A: Well, this has always been something we've been doing for fun. I assume people follow the main account as well if they follow me for this, but they can get their news fresh from the spigot there. I'm just here to make funny jokes about it and vibe.

Q: I've seen you refer to yourself as "we" and "us" sometimes despite maintaining that you're just one person running the blog- what's up with that? A: That is not a typo! The person behind this blog (hello, that's me, I'm typing this) is plural, and in fact we are very casually open about it. We regularly switch between referring to ourself as "us" and "we." This is an advantage in several ways because not only can we accurately pull off the "over to you, Keys! over to you, Keys!" joke like, forever, it also provides some Headmate Enrichment™️ whenever someone wants to join in on the fun. Also plural people are just inherently cool and wouldn't you want to have a cool person bringing you news?

Q: Where's the Dominion coverage of this? A: We have made the executive decision to not include the Dominioners since they have single-handedly made our life hell and made up half of our second thread. No hard feelings.

And now to the actual reporting.

JoeHills and ZombieCleo have been spotted campaigning quite heavily for themselves over on Twitter, as per the norm the past few days!

Martyn has been spotted on his stream voting!

Quackity made a tweet yesterday evening saying he didn't know what he won but thanks anyways!

Also, this isn't exactly a nominee update nor an external one but shhh, the polls have gone live during the U.S.A Superbowl. This is hilarious to me because our father is a huge sportsball fan and this is like, gay person sportsball for the rest of Tumblr. Godspeed to the mods.