What happened with Crabstickz?

Everything you could ever want to know about Dan & Phil.
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felucca
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What happened with crabstickz?

This post is about:
> Why Chris Kendall stopped hanging out with Dan & Phil in 2013
> Where they stand now

Short answer
No one knows what happened, or even if something happened.

Long answer
Chris, Dan & Phil and PJ made a bunch of videos together mostly in 2011-2012 and became known as the "Fantastic Foursome". In 2013 Chris had a bit of a YouTube crisis and life-in-general crisis, where he withdrew from YouTube saying he wanted to start making only videos he really felt like making and stop catering so much to his audience. He seemed generally dissatisfied with life and started taking long unexplained breaks from YouTube. Eventually he also stopped hanging out with Dan and Phil. There are a lot of theories about why he did that, ranging from "omg there was super mega drama!" to "eh, I guess life just got in the way, as it does." Below you can find what information we've got and use it to judge for yourself.

Notable D&P/Chris things that happened in 2013
- Jul 23rd | Filming of "I Can't Even: Geek Week Special" for Chris's channel, D&P among the contestants. [screenshot from filming it]

- Aug 5th | Chris answers questions on ask.fm, about his career, his life in general, and the other members of The Foursome - saying they were never really that good friends and The Foursome was more of a YouTube thing, and now they're all busy with their own careers. He then deleted his ask.fm account and wrote an apology. All of his answers are included in the link above and below is as screenshot of his apology:

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- Aug 8th | I Can't Even: Geek Week Special is uploaded (including a phan joke about D&P's wedding.)

- Aug 21st | D&P film their vlog "A Day in the Life of Dan and Phil in London!" which features Chris. This is the last time they're seen in a video together.

After this, their communication just kind of ceased to exist without explanation.
Phil and Chris didn't tweet each other after July 6th 2013.
Last Twitter exchanges between Dan and Chris were in August 31st and September 25th 2013 (but the September one is one-sided as Dan doesn't answer Chris' tweet.)
(PJ and Chris kept tweeting each other.)

UPDATE: None of the links are currently working since Contweets deleted a lot of old stuff. If anyone's got screenshots of their tweets, kindly PM felucca or one of the forum mods, thank you.
Notable things in 2014
- Literally nothing. Complete radio silence.
Noteable things in 2015
- Chris re-launches his YouTube career (it doesn't last).

- May 11th | Chris tweets saying it makes him sad to hear people ask him about the Foursome when he hasn't talked to D&P in two years, and it's his fault because he made bad choices "as I often do."
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^ if somebody has a screenshot with the date on it please pm felucca or one of the forum mods.
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- Dan avoids talking about Chris in a liveshow where like 90% of the chat is taken up by questions about Chris, but answers a question about PJ (so smooth, Dan).

- June 29th |Phil and Chris tweet each other for the first time since 2013.
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- Vidcon happens
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- All three of them play a part in PJ's webseries Oscar's Hotel (Chris as the lead, D&P voice acting in one episode.)
Noteable things in 2016
- April |Chris starts doing liveshows on Younow, mentioning Dan, Phil and PJ every so often when asked. Below are some (but far from all) of the mentions:

--> NOTE! All of these should be watched in context. Chris likes to keep an ironic tone which does NOT translate at all in writing. <--

- In his liveshow from 9 May 2016 (1:03:00) he's asked what happened to the fantastic foursome and answers: "Nothing happened. It's just a thing that happened four years ago. Nothing happened. It doesn't exist." [link]

- In his liveshow from 11 May 2016 (time???) he's asked if he's Dan or Phil and answers: "I wish I'd never done videos with Dan and Phil. It's like I'm just in their shadow now. I'm just a poor man's Dan and Phil. I'm not as talented as PJ. I'm not as good looking as Dan. I'm not as cute as AmazingPhil. What am I? What's my part in the fantastic foursome? What do I do? What am I here for? You broke me. I'm a broken man. Ah, well. Fuck it." [link]

- In a liveshow at Vidcon 25 June 2016 he's asked about them twice (15:00 and 19:15) and says "I don’t even know if Dan and Phil are here. I might be going to watch Dan and Phil Live in Hollywood tonight. Isn’t that incredible? One minute, they’re just a couple of fools in their bedrooms and now they’re performing in Hollywood. Heh. We all used to be friends, but they’re so busy now… Anyway, let’s get back to the broadcast." Question: "Have you ever met Dan and Phil?" Answer: "Yes. Like I’ve been inside their house. I went over and we hung out. We watched Buffy. They’re just too famous for me now, they’re on a world tour." [link
So why did they stop hanging out in 2013? Theories
Some people assume there was drama behind the scenes, while others think it was just a matter of them not having the time/energy to nurture the friendship, when Chris was in the middle of a personal crisis and all, and they maybe weren't the best of friends to begin with, and Dan and Phil are generally known for being crappy at maintaining friendships that aren't 100%. (As you can probably tell, I personally lean more towards the second option.)

This liveshow from 2015 by Chris' friends Jimmy (jimmy0010) and Chels (Ophelia Dagger) sheds some light on how Chris might have felt/feel about the situation:


0:20
J: What happened to crabstickz? Crabstickz is fine.
C: He's doing his thing.
J: Crabstickz is fine, I saw him last night. He's a good guy, he's a really nice guy. He's fine, he just doesn't like Youtube anymore really. Because... he's found it's not made him happy, and he... he's got a lot of Dan and Phil's, ehm, subscribers... subscribed to him.
C: Ugh!
J: Just cuz they think he's a cute boy with a fringe.
Fits right in with Chris' Youtube crisis, all his shade against "fangirls", and some of his ask.fm answers. Perhaps he was unhappy with the kind of audience he attracted and how a sizable amount of them were really Dan and Phil fans - it's easy to see why he would want to kill off the Fantastic Foursome and distance himself from D&P professionally. Perhaps he took it too far and managed to distance himself from them completely in the process. Or life just got in the way, as it so easily does. It's anyone's guess. Judging by Chris' tweets in 2015 though, he blames himself for losing the friendship because of "bad choices".
dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas

:dh:
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