Dan & Phil Part 70: giving the people what they want

[autumnhearth]

There is a poll between two designs so make sure you vote! The difference is just on the sleeves. Personally I went with Plant Boy, though I understand that symbols would be more gender inclusive, I definitely don’t like the ones he chose. Like what does the Cancer symbol have to do with him? Ohhh I see it’s wingdings. Thanks, but no.

Crud top of the page, let’s make this better shall we?

[sonicgreen]

Edit - I voted for the Wingdings merch design because the symbol in the middle looks like '69', obv.

shit, you right

[rizzo]

Can I vote neither?

The first one’s cute but I kinda hate that he’s playing into the plant boy “fan trope”.

[allsaintshowell]

not a fan of phil's merch tbh... hopefully that's not the only design he has. something i didn't notice until today when i went to the pop-up is that the long sleeved tour shirt that says "GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT" on the lower back says "CONTROL" on the left sleeve. i'm here for them constantly dragging this stupid fandom.

thankfully my friend doesn't care about the hate and can deal with it and have a laugh about it, but imagine if she didn't have as thick of a skin. someone brought up fans cropping people out of their m&g pics to just be the lads, and that's been happening with both of my pictures. i don't mind it, but it's annoying to watch people have a double standard about cropping fans vs cropping one of the lads.

[animad]

Personally I think id be much more likely to wear Phil's merch than dans atm (I really don't like the font on the back of dans upside smiley jumper and I much prefer lighter colours) but I agreeI kinda hope this is still a draft. Especially if it's plastic printed on that never lasts long for me.

(Also wingdings was not my first thought on I saw '69' on the arm of that sleeve lol)

[liola]

I'm not a fan of the plant trope but I understand that it's part of his branding and he does love houseplants.

I prefer the symbols one, I got a very much mature snort out of me with that 69 sorry Phil.

What I do enjoy, though, is him sharing some concept ideas with us and asking for opinions, it's very much appreciated from me and I hope he continues doing it!

[sonicgreen]

but I agreeI kinda hope this is still a draft. Especially if it's plastic printed on that never lasts long for me.

I think you're referring to screen-printing? Which it will most likely be— Dan's merch is. (the other option is digital printing, but it never comes out as well on fabrics.) One downside is screen-printing is more expensive, and this is a hoodie. I'm estimating the sweatshirts will be like $40-$60 each.

[dancy]

I love it tbh, a lot more than I liked Dan's merch! It's cute and definitely something I'd wear but my 15-y/o brain did made me giggle at the "69"

I doubt that's all he's got in mind though. I'm still expecting socks after that one live show and probably a T-shirt with another kind of design and maybe some more accessoires (just like Dan).

Edit: Well, there you go

[thewaytobehappy]

I love the sweater. Totally something I'd wear if I wanna feel snug on a chilly fall day. I'd prefer a soft grey to white, but I still think it's hella cute.

I knew Phil's merch would appeal to me more than Dan's. I hope he'll have some nice tshirts as well.

[autumnhearth]

not a fan of phil's merch tbh... hopefully that's not the only design he has. something i didn't notice until today when i went to the pop-up is that the long sleeved tour shirt that says "GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT" on the lower back says "CONTROL" on the left sleeve. i'm here for them constantly dragging this stupid fandom.

thankfully my friend doesn't care about the hate and can deal with it and have a laugh about it, but imagine if she didn't have as thick of a skin. someone brought up fans cropping people out of their m&g pics to just be the lads, and that's been happening with both of my pictures. i don't mind it, but it's annoying to watch people have a double standard about cropping fans vs cropping one of the lads.

I think it’s interesting that it says

GIVE THE PEOPLE
WHAT THEY WANT

On individual merch, I’m more likely to wear black than white, but would really prefer grey. Still Phil’s jumper design does have a nice aesthetic/color scheme, it’s just not for me. I do see lots of love for it on Tumblr so that’s nice, despite the overdramatic voting “civil war”. But everything on Tumblr is overdramatic, see this morning. Anywho. Shades of green would be lovely, or some purple. As long as it’s not the exact colors of the AP duvet.

[000dia000]

I prefer the symbols, but I'm completely lost as to why he has a 69 on it too, am I missing something? Also, he should use his brand and have more coloured shirts. Something different and outside the box than just black and white stuff. He should be more creative.

I love plant!boy though. It's not as bad a trope as existentialism, so I'm not surprised he's trying to brand off of it. I think if this was an actual shirt I would buy it but idk until I see the final draft, but I like the concept.

[knq]

We moved on to discussing plant merch while I went tl;dr about bullying oops

okay, if we're all talking about the same girl here which we probably are, none of that is true. i'm her friend, we met because she sold me her spare vip, we spent the whole day together, and i filmed her vip as she did mine. she was super sweet to both of them! she gave them her dissertation research on both of them separately and the effect they have on their fans' mental health. she talked to both of them, hugged both of them, and cropped her pic the way she did to reflect the fact that her and dan's last names are one letter apart and the crop on her insta from tatinof in 2015. i literally don't know where this rumor that she hates phil and was rude to him is coming from.

it's so interesting watching people actually play into the mob mentality that this tour is exploring because holy shit, this is hell.

Okay but her dissertation actually sounds fascinating. I love that shit. It makes me wonder if anyone's research on dnp or other YouTubers has reached the level of publication where I could find it through the university library. It seems like enough people write about them and, I assume, other YouTubers.

People are saying some straight up horrible shit about her, and it always annoys me how everyone can be so behind Dan and his anti-bullying campaigns, and then in the next breath jump on someone who does something they don't like.

I think this has been mentioned before and it's a really interesting topic. If you focused exclusively on Dan as the sole source of anti-bullying guidance, I'm not sure you would get the message that bullying is always or even mostly inappropriate.

Obviously people should be learning about these things in school, from their parents, and from other life experiences! But if you were to just focus on the messages that Dan sends: yes, he's verbally against bullying and he talks about the negative impacts. But he also has a complicated relationship with his audience where what others interpret as bullying, Dan explains as shared humor and a form of bonding.

Example video!

Daniel Howell 2 years ago (edited)
this video is so cringe because literally all the tweets were just jokes from my followers which they didn't understand *facepalm*
but we did talk about nicer internet and cyberbullying at the end which is a good thing so ¯\(ツ)/¯?

I'm not saying Dan is wrong here. It's just that what the person at the BBC understood as bullying, Dan read as humorous and affectionate. The same could be said for fans: they see something that looks like bullying and Dan responds positively to it. Bullying appears to be acceptable and even desirable under certain circumstances, and those circumstances aren't at all clear or universal.

Which is a complex kind of communication that I do think works in person (see: all the times dnp have said 'I hate you' to each other in obvious affection.) But through the internet I'd argue that tone between strangers is often lost, and whether or not you interpret something as humor or hate is going to vary a lot based on factors entirely outside of the interaction.

Example video #2! Between 2:55 and 3:30, Dan on 'rat as a term of endearment' and 'weird internet humor'

to which Dan's conclusion is "In case anyone's watching this and they're like, wow, Dan's subscribers are really abusive. [...] Yeah, no, I think they're being nice. I'm kind of not sure to be honest. That's fine."

Is he joking about not being sure? I don't know. And that's kind of my point.

Dan can be against bullying, but if he responds to what you perceive as abusive in a positive manner or by defending it--and added to that Dan's tendency to focus on the negative comments he receives and pay attention to them, thereby rewarding it--there's a really complicated and contradictory message about bullying in there somewhere. It's certainly not simply 'bullying is wrong and you shouldn't do it.'

I want to come full circle and say I don't think Dan or the messages he sends can or should be blamed for any bullying that goes on in the fandom. People are fully responsible for their own actions, and more often than not bullying is clearly coming from a place of hostility and can't be blamed on humor or misinterpretation by either the person sending or the person receiving the message.

None of this really applies to attacking the fan, either, but perhaps a bit to the 'meme-ing' of Marianne hate. I just have a lot of semi-connected trains of thought that sometimes crash together and form a post like this.

[human]

Urgh. The plant boy thing reminds me of the childish branding that Oli White did for Cactus Boy. Do not want. He's so quirky and could do literally anything so colour me disappointed with the designs tbh. I'll probably still buy something though because I support him and he seems to really like the designs.

[lesterchuu]

woke up to seeing phils merch idea and i gotta say, its pretty aight. even though most of my wardrobe is black, im still pretty obsessed with anything green and has plants on it - heck my hair is green for like two years now. yet ironically, i never bought dans merch since im pretty picky with it comes to buying anything fandom related. i didnt even think about the gender inclusive-ity aspect since im pretty gender indifferent myself. i bought this omocat fudanshi (boys liking boys love) sweater even though theres a fujoshi (girls liking boys love) one simply because.....idk? i liked it? i understand that someone had said that the plant boy trope is already a thing, but as a general aesthetic, it pretty much describes phil (more like dead plant boy tho, amirite - im sorry phil)

but speaking as someone who has basic ass graphic design experience and has sold merch in cons for like 5 years, the design is not too bad. im actually ok with the font for the plant boy one but im not liking the black outline. maybe if he changed the colour of the outline into a more pastely colour or just took it all out in general, then itll look much nicer - but thats just my take. its still pretty cute as it is. as for the wingdings font, i cant take it seriously because of the 69 on it...im sorry....i have the maturity of a 5 year old apparently.

[lilabet]

I prefer the symbols, but I'm completely lost as to why he has a 69 on it too, am I missing something? Also, he should use his brand and have more coloured shirts. Something different and outside the box than just black and white stuff. He should be more creative.

I love plant!boy though. It's not as bad a trope as existentialism, so I'm not surprised he's trying to brand off of it. I think if this was an actual shirt I would buy it but idk until I see the final draft, but I like the concept.

It says plant in wingdings as far as I know

[autumnhearth]

@watsonian very good points, fascinating indeed.

[yeetussy]

I guess I didn’t realise how much of a Tacky Bi I am but I’d wear the hell out of the plantboy one if it came in grey (which it most likely will be available in??? At least I’m hoping so…).

Not only that, there’s no way my mom would be cool with my having 69 on my shirt, no matter it being for the cancer symbol or not. Also probably be made of for wingdings as well as the 69 at school. Idk too many risks and all that.

Maybe if there were no print on the sleeve it’d be even better

[alien]

I actually kinda like Phil’s merch concept so far. I prefer the symbols over the “plant boy” but would buy “plant boy” over the symbols simply because it looks like a 69 and I wouldn’t wear something with 69 on it lol. Idk why it has to say anything and why it couldn’t just be a shapes design. But I do like the overall design and vibe it’s got going on! And I’m excited to see more!

[chiccola]

Off topic

So I stumbled upon this video this video about F*elix and Marzia getting engaged (it's not clickbait, but I didn't have the patience to watch it), and I was wondering what would be the chances of them inviting Deppy to their wedding? Surely PJ+Sophie will be invited, not so sure about their relationship with D+P after the whole PDP drama went down and they've tried to distance from them since then. And then of course there's the question if D+P would accept, seeing how they're mid-tour and all.

[phantastically-avg]

I think I like Phil's merch so far. I'm not sure if I'd wear it, but it's cute. I know some people aren't sure about it, but I'm sure Capita£ester knows what'll bring in the bank.

Oh, and team symbols over words... if I didn't have 69 in it. I don't care if it's wingdings, everyone who sees it will think one thing.

In other news, the boys are on their way to Scotland.

[so_cheesy]

We moved on to discussing plant merch while I went tl;dr about bullying oops

okay, if we're all talking about the same girl here which we probably are, none of that is true. i'm her friend, we met because she sold me her spare vip, we spent the whole day together, and i filmed her vip as she did mine. she was super sweet to both of them! she gave them her dissertation research on both of them separately and the effect they have on their fans' mental health. she talked to both of them, hugged both of them, and cropped her pic the way she did to reflect the fact that her and dan's last names are one letter apart and the crop on her insta from tatinof in 2015. i literally don't know where this rumor that she hates phil and was rude to him is coming from.

it's so interesting watching people actually play into the mob mentality that this tour is exploring because holy shit, this is hell.

Okay but her dissertation actually sounds fascinating. I love that shit. It makes me wonder if anyone's research on dnp or other YouTubers has reached the level of publication where I could find it through the university library. It seems like enough people write about them and, I assume, other YouTubers.

People are saying some straight up horrible shit about her, and it always annoys me how everyone can be so behind Dan and his anti-bullying campaigns, and then in the next breath jump on someone who does something they don't like.

I think this has been mentioned before and it's a really interesting topic. If you focused exclusively on Dan as the sole source of anti-bullying guidance, I'm not sure you would get the message that bullying is always or even mostly inappropriate.

Obviously people should be learning about these things in school, from their parents, and from other life experiences! But if you were to just focus on the messages that Dan sends: yes, he's verbally against bullying and he talks about the negative impacts. But he also has a complicated relationship with his audience where what others interpret as bullying, Dan explains as shared humor and a form of bonding.

Example video!

Daniel Howell 2 years ago (edited)
this video is so cringe because literally all the tweets were just jokes from my followers which they didn't understand *facepalm*
but we did talk about nicer internet and cyberbullying at the end which is a good thing so ¯\(ツ)/¯?

I'm not saying Dan is wrong here. It's just that what the person at the BBC understood as bullying, Dan read as humorous and affectionate. The same could be said for fans: they see something that looks like bullying and Dan responds positively to it. Bullying appears to be acceptable and even desirable under certain circumstances, and those circumstances aren't at all clear or universal.

Which is a complex kind of communication that I do think works in person (see: all the times dnp have said 'I hate you' to each other in obvious affection.) But through the internet I'd argue that tone between strangers is often lost, and whether or not you interpret something as humor or hate is going to vary a lot based on factors entirely outside of the interaction.

Example video #2! Between 2:55 and 3:30, Dan on 'rat as a term of endearment' and 'weird internet humor'

to which Dan's conclusion is "In case anyone's watching this and they're like, wow, Dan's subscribers are really abusive. [...] Yeah, no, I think they're being nice. I'm kind of not sure to be honest. That's fine."

Is he joking about not being sure? I don't know. And that's kind of my point.

Dan can be against bullying, but if he responds to what you perceive as abusive in a positive manner or by defending it--and added to that Dan's tendency to focus on the negative comments he receives and pay attention to them, thereby rewarding it--there's a really complicated and contradictory message about bullying in there somewhere. It's certainly not simply 'bullying is wrong and you shouldn't do it.'

I want to come full circle and say I don't think Dan or the messages he sends can or should be blamed for any bullying that goes on in the fandom. People are fully responsible for their own actions, and more often than not bullying is clearly coming from a place of hostility and can't be blamed on humor or misinterpretation by either the person sending or the person receiving the message.

None of this really applies to attacking the fan, either, but perhaps a bit to the 'meme-ing' of Marianne hate. I just have a lot of semi-connected trains of thought that sometimes crash together and form a post like this.

Bullying is an important topic but I don’t think these are good examples.

Celebrities reading mean tweets and responding to them sassily/half-joking in front of a camera had been a thing way before Dan started working with the anti-bullying campaign. It’s a fixed format for promo, and not a platform to educate people. It’s a way to capitalize and make fun of the inevitable stupid comments. Viewers obviously enjoy watching that, regardless of what they think about bullying. And the channels get their views and money. It is what it is, a talk show segment, nothing more, so the expectations shouldn’t be high.

Dan and Phil themselves started the rat thing in their collab video with Anthony Padilla,
which they clearly thought through and knew (or should have known, knowing their audicence) would become an inside joke. I can’t take this too seriously.

Dan rambles in his live shows all the time. It’s not a good idea to overanalyze it and draw huge conclusions. He probably just couldn’t find better words to end a sentence as it happens very often when he’s nervous. It’s not easy to tall coherently about... anything for 45 minutes.

The purpose of the anti-bullying campaign isn’t (only) to teach people that bullying is bad. Hopefully everybody who’s above the age of 8 understands that... The goal is to teach people how to act when they see bullying online, what to do, how to report it, respond to it etc. If you visit the stop speak support website, that’s clear. Exactly that the phandom police needs to learn, so instead of organizing witch hunts they would act a bit more mature.

re: bullying (it’s long)

[dancy]

Off topic

So I stumbled upon this video this video about F*elix and Marzia getting engaged (it's not clickbait, but I didn't have the patience to watch it), and I was wondering what would be the chances of them inviting Deppy to their wedding? Surely PJ+Sophie will be invited, not so sure about their relationship with D+P after the whole PDP drama went down and they've tried to distance from them since then. And then of course there's the question if D+P would accept, seeing how they're mid-tour and all.

Oh, I do think there's a chance they'll invite them. Felix and Marzia do still occasionally like Dan or Phil's Instagram posts (like the London pic from yesterday), so I wouldn't really say they've distanced themselves from D&P. However, when it comes to the other way around...I definitely think the boys were aware of the negative reaction after the birthday party bc I can't recall them ever speaking about or interacting with Felix and Marzia since then. They didn't even like the initial engagement picture, which is kinda what you'd expect a friend to do but we of course don't know anything about their interactions irl (they could've continued speaking to each other and congratulating them via text). Not sure whether they'd accept the invitation but the wedding date is currently unknown and could be in 2019 depending on what season they want their wedding to be in.

[allsaintshowell]

what a pretty boy.

[liola]

Is it too much to hope for a dapg video?

[lefthandedism]

In other news, the boys are on their way to Scotland.

I have to agree with Dan that any train journey to, from, or through Scotland is one of the best things ever. (I once saw a vibrant, unbroken, triple rainbow from a train in Scotland. )

To be more about Dan, I hope he's having lovely, relaxing thoughts and enjoying the little break. Their schedule is looking increasingly brutal.