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. The story gained widespread attention in the late 2000s. 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. Several days later, another of the psychiatrist's patients recognized the drawing and said he was a figure in his dreams as well; the psychiatrist sent the image to fellow professionals, and collected the testimony of four more people who claimed to recognize the man. Since then, the site claims that more than 2,000 people from cities across the world claimed to have seen the man while sleeping.

Anonymous stories from alleged witnesses vary in his behavior and actions in their dreams, whose content ranges from romantic or sexual fantasies, attacking and killing the dreamer, to giving cryptic life advice. His relationship with the dreamer varied between accounts; in one, he was the dreamer's father, while in another, he was a schoolteacher from Brazil with six fingers on his right hand. His voice was also unidentifiable due to the fact that he rarely spoke, as well as the difficulty in remembering sounds in dreams versus images. There were some recurring themes in his messages, such as telling dreamers to "go North."

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 [Natella] 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.

An actual living human that looked like This Man was never identified. 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 people claimed they themselves were This Man, including an Indian guru named Arud Kannan Ayya, who cited it as proof of his miraculous powers. Several followers of Muhammad Qasim bin Abdul Karim, a Pakistani public figure who claims to have dreams of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, future events like World War III, and Judgement Day, have claimed that Qasim is This Man. Many people each year have reported of seeing this man in their dream, and some even say they know who he is.

ThisMan.org posited five theories about This Man's origins:

The story of This Man started gaining attention from internet users and the press in 2008-9. It was not until October of that year that views of the site skyrocketed. In a short period of time, it garnered more than two million visits and 10,000-plus emails from people sharing experiences with This Man and sending photos of those who looked like him. 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: