I've got a few more questions if you don't mind. Since you know quite a bit about Munchy, what was the state of the server and playerbase like from an inside perspective? What started BadBoyHalo and Skeppy's partnership? Honestly I barely know anything about Skeppy so more info about him would be nice in general. Were there any major events Dream had a chimpout over?
God that stupid song actually gave me a headache the first time I listened to it, Dream's terrible autotuned singing made me want to jump off a bridge. I don't know how any of these stans can listen to this garbage.
The state of the server like 2019 before Dream got famous? Like any community that's been around for a few years, there's an old guard who all know each other, and newer players. Most new players were assumed to be from Skeppy's channel or from BBH's growing fanbase of 12 year olds. People like Dream or other administrative or developer staff knew who all the people in the old guard were. It'd only have about 200 players spread across 3 different gamemodes, so it was pretty tight-knit.
Dream was pretty highly regarded on the Prison server, recent maps had been run by newer developers and there's always been a sense that the older maps that dream ran were better. In 2019, before launching his youtube career, Dream came back to run Map 6 on the prison game mode.
The playerbase on prison is pretty toxic. People have been dox'd a lot, they've been ddos'd, people character assassinate each other, generally take the game way too seriously. It does kinda add to the fun though. Dream always argued it was meant to be toxic, but people in the playerbase would always push the boundaries of what's allowed.
Another peculiar thing about Munchy is it's actually pretty difficult to get banned from. There's a "purgatory" system, and unbans are literally sold on the shop. You can either load up a hack client and cheat your way through purgatory or buy and unban and get straight back on the server, so it's really not uncommon for people who've been banned multiple times to keep coming back, or even be good friends with staff. Fuckwad's story kinda exemplifies that, as does that I can't tell who it is because multiple people were unblacklisted around that time.
Talking about Skeppy or BBH's channel was considered cringe. Most people cared more about how the mass of fans joining would lag the server out than for any of BBH's content.
Skeppy was originally a fan of BBH's channel before starting his own channel. His channel ended up being more successful than BBH, and knowing that BBH is kind of a mong, he made a joke staff application for a video. He then trolled BBH by getting staff to give him perms to grief Munchy, although there were always backups. He later ordered 72 pizzas to BBH's house. People liked the chemistry between them and they were getting a lot of new fans from the trolling vids, so they basically decided to keep it going.
I think Skeppy's channel was a key part of Dream's rush to fame. Dream knew how SEO and youtube algorithms worked, and he was friends with 2 youtubers who were a regular feature in minecraft youtube algorithms at the time. My view is he asked Skeppy to start the "Minecraft but" trend to pave the way for Dream's planned content. Skeppy and BBH's success was definitely the blueprint for Dream's.
Chimpouts from Dream, hmm... There was this one time a player on the server was catfished and exposed as a pedophile. Everyone thought the guy who did the catfishing was a legend, and had finally got rid of a dodgy player no one liked who was creeping on girls on the server. But Dream banned the pedo AND the catfisher because he was "causing trouble". He got a load of shit for "exposing it in the wrong way" after posting about it in the forums (thread deleted unsurprisingly).
The catfisher did later get unbanned by another admin, but the pedo stayed blacklisted.
