The video of the "Have You Ever Had A Dream Like This" kid first went viral online with little to no context, showing a young boy going on a long, stuttering ramble of a question.

The now-viral video peaked during a comfortable middle period of meme history. Internet strangers were no longer a novelty people put their efforts into tracking down, and the memes themselves hadn't quite figured out how to monetize their five minutes of fame.

So, for the longest time, no one knew who the "Dream Kid" was, but that changed in 2021, when the boy behind the meme finally stepped forward and explained all.

Here's a look at what Joe Cirkiel has been up to since he first went viral nearly 15 years ago.

What's the "Have You Ever Had a Dream Like This?" Video?

The video that would become known as "Have You Ever Had a Dream Like This?" began circulating in mid-2011. A short YouTube clip showed a young boy in a red sweater stumbling through a sentence so hopelessly tangled it veered into accidental poetry.

"Have you ever had a dream that that you um you had you you would you could you'll do you," the kid stuttered, brows furrowed and eyes darting around the room. "You want him to do you so much you could do anything," he finished, straightening up and letting out a big smile at having finally gotten his words out.

The video was originally posted by YouTuber mrblueangeldood on June 2nd, 2011, and quickly spread across Reddit, BuzzFeed and the Tosh.0 blog. Within weeks, it had racked up thousands of views and now stands at a cool 85 million.

For a lot of people, it didn't matter where the clip came from, but it was its ambiguity that made it stick online. Plus, it was an age before AI made music remixes as easy as the click of a button, so people spent the next few years remixing the video and breathing new life into the meme.

In May 2013, YouTuber ItsDrewsif turned the clip into a full-blown metal anthem, with stuttering guitar riffs underscoring each word the young boy spat out.

A year prior, YouTuber harvestsun had posted a video editing the young boy's face over Martin Luther King Jr. during his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, complete with an echo and awkward cuts to a silent audience.

Still, more curious internet users eventually figured out that the original footage came from a 1999 Turner Classic Movies home video called Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales.

Narrated by Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon, the tape featured a series of animated bedtime stories interspersed with interviews of children having very animated discussions about their dreams and nighttime routines.

One YouTuber, lololark, uploaded a longer compilation of those interviews in 2011, with the stammering boy's clip tacked on at the end, right after the first credit rolls.

Who Is Joe Cirkiel, and How Did People Find Out He's the Stuttering Kid?

The "Have You Ever Had A Dream" video continued to gain viral traction in the 2010s and became a certified internet classic after being included in a well-known YouTube meme and viral video playlist simply called "important videos." But people still had no idea who the boy actually was, even knowing that he was probably all grown up by now.

In July 2021, the mystery finally ended. YouTuber Wavywebsurf had made a history video about the meme, prompting an anonymous tip from someone who claimed to know the kid in the video.

"He probably won't want to be out there like that," the message read, "but I thought it was cool you were looking." The tipster even provided a name, Joseph Cirkiel.

Wavy reached out to Cirkiel, who finally acquiesced and confirmed that it really was him in the clip. To verify the claim, Joe Cirkiel provided childhood photos, including one of him in the same red sweater seen in the clip.

The resemblance was undeniable. "It’s the same guy," Wavy said in his follow-up video. "A spitting image."

In a 2021 interview with Know Your Meme shortly after this, Cirkiel recalled how he was a kindergartener at Northeast Elementary School in 1999 when a film crew showed up for the Goodnight Moon special. According to him, his mother was determined that he make the final cut in the video.

"She was the one who picked out the red, the now signature red sweater, got my hair cut done recently," he said. "Basically, I was kind of being coached, I think, in the car on the way there a little bit."

Joe Cirkiel told us he remembered feeling competitive and giving the producers plenty of footage to work with, making it an ironic turn of fate that it was his stammer that made the most lasting impression.

What Was the Stuttering Kid Actually Trying to Say, and How Did Joe Cirkiel React to the Video Going Viral?

For years, fans speculated about what the boy was trying to say, and in 2015, a Redditor floated the theory that it was a garbled quote from Disney's Hercules: "Haven't you ever had a dream? Something you wanted so bad you'd do anything?"

Joe Cirkiel eventually confirmed the long-running fan theory when he opened up about the backstory in 2021. "So I was trying to quote that to the best of my abilities," he said in his interview with Know Your Meme, "that was the deepest thing 5-year-old me could think up."

He didn't even realize the connection until years later, during a movie night his freshman year of college. "The moment I heard Hercules chime in with 'have you ever had a dream,' it was this like out-of-body moment," he recalled.

At the time, he just wanted to sound profound, but the line came out tangled, filtered through a kid's excitement and limited vocabulary.

In hindsight, he thinks that earnest messiness is part of why the video stuck. "I think it brings a sort of childlike innocence that you don't really see in memes very much," Cirkiel said.

But Joe Cirkiel also said that his initial reaction to learning he was a meme was more complicated than that. He first saw it as a teenager, when a friend sent him a link to the clip on Reddit, saying, "You're not gonna believe this, that video that we were in when we were in kindergarten, somebody posted that clip on the internet."

"Initially, I wasn't too into it," Cirkiel admitted. "I didn't like the idea that somebody I didn't know was taking that clip and putting it on a website I didn't know."

Plus, even before the video went viral, his family had turned it into a private joke, playing the DVD at reunions for years. By the time the internet rediscovered it, Joe Cirkiel had already lived through years of gentle ribbing over his stammer.

Still, he acknowledged the joy it brings people. Some fans use it as an intro to their Twitch streams. Some even said they plan to quote it in their wedding vows. "That part of it's really nice," Cirkiel said.

What’s Joe Cirkiel Up to Today, and How Is He Capitalizing on His Meme Legacy?

Joe Cirkiel appears to live a relatively quiet life these days, albeit one that's occasionally interrupted by strangers recognizing him from a childhood clip. He went to business school in Hong Kong before starting his own consulting firm in Montclair, New Jersey.

Back in 2021, he spent some time exploring digital art and photography, with plans to mint his portfolio as an NFT collection. He used to post his generative AI art on his Twitter / X account @dreamkidjoe, but the frequency of his work took a dive around 2023.

Cirkiel went on to start his own blockchain and NFT consulting firm, in addition to working in the family business.

Though he missed the initial wave of internet meme monetization, Joe Cirkiel seems comfortable letting the meme live on without trying to control it.

"I like that it happened," he said. "But I'm not convinced that it’s going to totally change my life one way or the other."

The best way to keep up with Joe Cirkiel these days is to become one of his followers over on LinkedIn, where he regularly posts updates about his work, and you can also follow him on Twitter @dreamkidjoe.

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For the full history of the Have You Ever Had A Dream Like This kid, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information. To see the rest of our "Where Are They Now" series, you can find them all here. Stay tuned for next week's editorial!

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