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This Man, often called the Dream Man, is a conceptual art project and hoax created by Italian sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella.

In 2008, Natella created a website called "Ever Dream This Man?" describing a supposed mysterious individual who has reportedly appeared in the dreams of numerous people around the world since 2006. In 2010, Natella revealed that the site was a hoax as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign.

According to the story on the "Ever Dream This Man?" website, the first image of This Man was sketched in January 2006 by a "well-known psychiatrist in New York", based on the descriptions of a patient who claims he was a recurring subject in dreams, despite never knowing a man like him in real life. The psychiatrist sent the image to fellow professionals, and collected the testimony of four more people who claimed to recognize the man. In a 2015 interview with Vice, site creator Andrea Natella claimed that he first dreamt of This Man in the winter of 2008, wherein the man: "invited to create a website to find an answer to his own appearance". Following This Man's instructions, Natella created the website ThisMan.org, including an identikit image of This Man created using the mobile app Ultimate Flash Face. Natella has received thousands of letters and emails from people about who they think This Man resembles, ranging from fictional characters like The Man from Another Place from Twin Peaks and the dummy from The Twilight Zone, to real public figures such as Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Stephen Hawking. Several followers of Muhammad Qasim bin Abdul Karim—a Pakistani public figure who has claimed to have dreams from God, as well as of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, future events like World War III, and Judgement Day—have claimed that Qasim is This Man. The Dream Imitation Theory: People only dream of This Man after having already learned about the phenomenon and the image has left an impression on their minds.

On October 12, 2009, comedian Tim Heidecker made a Twitter post about This Man, tweeting that it was "scaring the shit outta me." While Natella's previous marketing stunts only garnered local attention, This Man was the first time his work got international recognition. The most common version of the meme was in the form of a flyer featuring the identikit image and the following text:EVER DREAM THIS MAN?Every night, all over the world, hundreds of people see this face in their dreams.

Upon This Man's initial surge in popularity, internet users posted several internet memes spoofing the site's "Ever Dream This Man?" flyer, replacing This Man's face with headshots of characters and public figures like Robbie Rotten, Karl Marx, and Barack Obama.

In May 2010, it was announced that filmmaker Bryan Bertino used the story as a basis for a screenplay, also titled This Man, to be produced by Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures. In January 2024, Japanese filmmaker Yujiro Amano released a teaser trailer for a film adaptation, titled THIS MAN, that is unrelated to the Ghost House project.

A story arc in the 2021 manga series Dandadan, published on Shōnen Jump+, features defective alien clones modelled after This Man, something acknowledged by the official "Ever Dream This Man?" website. Chapter 3 in the 2024 manga series "The Urban Legend Files", (都市伝説先輩; Toshi Densetsu Senpai) published on Shōnen Jump+ features a character trying to have a dream about This Man. In 2026, issue #269 of the webcomic Bite-Sized Archie, published by Archie Comics, referenced This Man in a strip titled "That Man".

The “Man in Dreams Flyer” found in the Finnish indie game Fear & Hunger 2: Termina is a direct reference to This Man, with the face of one of the game’s villains, Per’kele, in place of the original.

Quick Facts

• In 2008, Natella created a website called "Ever Dream This Man?" describing a supposed mysterious individual who has reportedly appeared in the dreams of numerous people around the world since 2006.
• In 2010, Natella revealed that the site was a hoax as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign.
• A story arc in the 2021 manga series Dandadan, published on Shōnen Jump+, features defective alien clones modelled after This Man, something acknowledged by the official "Ever Dream This Man?" website.
• In 2026, issue #269 of the webcomic Bite-Sized Archie, published by Archie Comics, referenced This Man in a strip titled "That Man".
• In a 2015 interview with Vice, site creator Andrea Natella claimed that he first dreamt of This Man in the winter of 2008, wherein the man: "invited to create a website to find an answer to his own appearance".

Source material: Wikipedia - "This Man". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.