Being a senior in high school has been a wild ride this year. There has been a pandemic going on, our senior year is messed up, and we’ve had to apply to colleges without actually knowing what the campus looks like. I never thought as a senior in high school that I would be rejoining the Minecraft fandom.

Let’s rewind for a second. When I discovered YouTube in middle school, I ended up watching a variety of different YouTubers, but mostly Minecraft YouTubers. Some of my favorite people I watched as a preteen consisted of StampyLongNose, Aphmau, SkyDoesMinecraft, and DanTDM. When I entered high school, I stopped watching a lot of these people as I was no longer into watching Minecraft on YouTube. Their content wasn’t something I was into anymore, and I moved onto other content creators on the website who drew more to my attention.

Now, four years have gone by and I was hearing about the uprise of some man named Dream. I tried so hard not to go down the rabbit hole of Minecraft YouTube, so hard. It wasn’t until I was constantly getting videos on TikTok about the Dream SMP (a popular multiplayer server ran by Dream), and being told by my friend from the United Kingdom to start watching their videos when my Minecraft obsession came back.

I am no way complaining about being sucked back into the community of Minecraft YouTubers and Twitch Streamers. It’s actually really interesting to see the differences between the people I watched in middle school compared to the people I’m watching now. For one, the whole Dream SMP group curses a whole lot more than any of the YouTubers I watched when I was younger, but that could be because I watched a lot of “child friendly” creators.

Another thing that really surprised me about the Minecraft community is how young everyone is on the Dream SMP. As a middle schooler, everyone that I watched were adults and at least over the age of 21. There are at least four people on the Dream SMP that are younger than me, two 19 year olds, and almost everyone else is in their early 20s. It honestly blew my mind when I learned that.

A lot of the recent Minecraft content that I watch is very storyline based and located on Twitch, a website that lets creators go live and stream games). In the Dream SMP, almost everyone participates in a script and plotline to keep viewers entertained. There have been multiple wars, many explosions that destroyed a nation (on multiple different occasions), and a whole lot of small storylines that follow around certain characters.

Out of everyone that I have watched over the last couple of months, my favorite Minecraft players have been GeorgeNotFound, KarlJacobs, and Tubbo. George hangs out with the “Dream Team”, the original group that started the Dream SMP, which consists of Dream, GeorgeNotFound, and Sapnap. Their group extends a bit to the “Feral Boys”, adding on KarlJacobs and Quackity to their chaotic group. My other favorite Minecrat player is Tubbo, who is not as chaotic as the Feral Boys, but just as fun to watch. His videos and streams are a lot more chill and laid back, which can be really nice when you don’t want to watch something storyline heavy or crazy.

When it comes to watching these Twitch streams live, it is usually a hit or miss. It is most common for English Minecraft players to go live in the evening for them, but midday for us. I’m usually stuck at school when the notification goes off for their streams, which is very frustrating when it is something I’m looking forward to. (Yes, I know I can go back and watch the video later, but I really enjoy watching the streams live.) Luckily, it is easier to watch any of the American Minecraft players since they all go live in the evenings after school and activities are done for the day.

If you want to give the Dream SMP storyline a chance, I would suggest searching up Blueberry TV and watching the playlist labeled “Dream SMP Binge Watching Order”. That playlist should hopefully help you watch everything from The Disc War, L’Manberg, TommyInnit’s Exile, and the many other storylines that are weaved into the Minecraft videos. There is a lot to take in with these videos, and the plot doesn’t even stop there! Dream SMP members stream almost every day, either hanging out on the server or adding to the plot line to move the story along.

Rejoining the Minecraft fandom was one of the last things I planned to do as a senior in high school. If I’m being honest, though, I don’t regret spending countless hours watching people run around a Minecraft server. It has brought me tons of enjoyment these last couple of months, which is something I definitely needed after being so stressed from school, the pandemic, and applying to colleges.