Minecraft YouTuber Dream SMP Flag Spotted At Anti-Vax Rally

Right this moment in London, a big a rally was held as a part of a collection of world gatherings in opposition to masks, vaccine passports, and lockdowns. And for some motive, an individual at Saturday’s occasion was noticed waving round a flag linked to a preferred Minecraft roleplay server.

The flag’s look, which was waved round proudly in a viral video, then sprouted a Twitter trending subject round “L’manburg.” Humorous factor: L’manburg is a pretend in-game nation that started on the favored Dream SMP Minecraft server. Whoops!

Dream is a mega-popular Minecraft speedrunner who has over 24 million subscribers on the platform. It’s not simply that he’s a giant YouTuber who’s now just about the face of video video games on the platform. A part of what makes him so notable is that his subscriber base exploded exponentially over the course of a couple of 12 months. Recognized for his “Minecraft Manhunt” movies that garner tens of tens of millions of views, he’s usually noticed making an attempt to beat the sport as shortly as potential whereas different gamers attempt to kill him.

Dream, together with different common Minecraft content material creators and streamers, is a component of a big roleplay server named Dream SMP. He owns the server and helps preserve it, serving to usher followers by way of varied user-created storylines. That server is crammed with quite a few characters, alliances, and factions that make up what’s principally a fictional society. Considered one of these factions is called L’manburg. Right here’s how the Dream SMP Wiki describes it:

L’Manburg, was an unbiased nation-state within the Dream SMP. It declared its independence from the Higher Dream SMP on July 29, 2020 and gained its independence after the Dream Staff SMP vs. L’Manberg Struggle on August 2, 2020. It was reformed as Manberg on September 22, 2020, however was restored on November 16, 2020. It was destroyed and completely disbanded on January 6, 2021.

In accordance with the wiki, this was one of many few factions/nations on the server to have its personal flag and nationwide anthem. Although it now not exists, followers nonetheless care about it sufficient to have made it bodily actual. This brings us to the individual seen waving round a flag for this pretend nation at a rally that’s, mockingly, targeted upon pretend and false disinformation about vaccines.

How does one thing like that occur? It’s potential that the individual seen with the L’manburg flag on the rally was a troll, there to easily execute a joke or make the folks on the rally appear dumb. However it’s additionally potential that it was an accident.

A fast web seek for “Freedom Flag” brings does certainly deliver up the L’manburg flag in the direction of the very prime of the outcomes web page. The outcome depicts an Amazon web page for the flag up on the market. This itemizing doesn’t point out Minecraft or video video games anyplace within the prime part. It additionally solely prices $9, with free Prime delivery. What a deal!

This was the theory floated on Twitter by former (😢) Kotaku reporter Nathan Grayson.

There may be an precise Freedom Flag that doesn’t pertain to a online game. It was created by a person in Virginia in 2001, after the 9/11 assaults in the US. This Freedom Flag is supposed to be a logo that honors and remembers the numerous victims of that tragic terrorist assault. It’s potential the individual waving this Minecraft flag had meant to purchase this extra somber and symbolic flag.

All of those particulars, alongside the truth that the flag was being waved round with a Trump flag, meant that it quickly went viral. Whereas online game flags or emblems are routinely noticed at issues like protests, often there’s a transparent connection between the 2. Possibly, for instance, the online game factor represents an identical worth because the occasion. However on this case, there are solely theories.

Some are noting that the person holding the flag seemed to be an older individual, which might simply feed into the narrative that the entire thing was an accident. However age doesn’t preclude you from taking part in Minecraft, after all. It’s 2021. Something is really potential.

Kotaku has reached out to YouTuber Wilbur Soot, the creator of the L’manburg flag and a common historical past nerd. At one level, he wrote up a surprisingly detailed rationalization behind the L’manburg flag’s design and that means on Reddit again in December 2020.

As for Dream, he infamously discovered himself in some sizzling water again in June after a bunch of speedrunning moderators and personalities got here collectively to publish a prolonged paper, full with figures and complicated math, about why it was doubtless that Dream cheated to win some Minecraft information. Whereas he initially denied it—and even employed a mathematician to disprove the allegations—he later admitted the reality. Regardless of this controversy, nonetheless, his movies and channel are nonetheless extraordinarily common.

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