alittledizzy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2018 7:20 pm
Add me to the list of people who can only watch very early videos, or videos made in the post-baking universe. There are isolated moments of those middle years that are fantastic but it's hard to appreciate them when it's surrounded by Dan and Phil being quite restrained, both with us and generally with each other. On top of it being less enjoyable in general (knowing how they act now) I always just get super distracted in my own head psychoanalyzing the things they did let through back then, and where they must have been in other areas of their life (book writing? tour planning? radio show?)
Yeah, I find myself often romanticizing their past videos and the era of like 2013-2014 as the "best" era of videos, due to the all youtube collabs, public events and individual channel videos and quality (particularly for Dan). I find that when I first got into them, a lot of compilation videos of funny/cute/phan moments used this era in their vids, so I just sort of associate this era as
their era. But in reality, whenever I look back I am unable to watch any of them. I find Dan irritable and fake, and find Phil's persona just saddening. I realized recently that I am only able to watch videos "post-baking universe" because of anything, before I know, is fake, their interactions are held back and uncomfortable to watch. It's actually strange how used to I've become (well, I suppose everybody) has to their current behavior, and believe as if they've
always been like this. They haven't. We as an audience have it good, 2013 would freak out if deppy were possibly in the back of a video on Martyn's Instagram, but now I don't think I even see it mentioned here.
However, I think the one thing that I do miss is the kind of power they had on YouTube and the power of the phandom itself. They aren't losing popularity, don't get me wrong, but I feel as if the Internet, YouTube and fandoms itself has grown so much and become more mainstream. I don't think they really have a presence as notable YouTubers anymore that they had several years ago, their subscribers and view count are a fraction of others. They've kind of lost the distinction they had as creators when they've been replaced by the next big YouTuber over and over again. This occurred to me when Dan mentioned his latest Dan memes video, and I realized there hasn't been any because his audience has moved past making Dan shit posts and annoying him, because Dan has moved past it in both his content, in his humor, and has stopped indulging his fanbase. He does very little in terms of interaction and encouragement, in fact, more and more as creators they're feeling less connected to their fanbase and have instead become actors in movies that we watch through our screens, but don't touch. I don't know, but I think the audience feels this. Dan is less inclined to be silly, interact with his audience or be "relatable" and has lost that touch that made him distinct. Most of the time, he feels just "there" with people still anticipating his videos and liking him, but him not really giving much back with meme potential. (side note:
he has connected with them via him opening up about his depression, but another's discussion entirely and memes about that would be tasteless ngl) Furthermore, the death fo his Tumblr is a nail in the coffin for his audience connecting with him. He's still a personality, and people still greatly admire him, appreciate him,
and worship him but he's lost the "danisnotonfire" part of himself. He's rebranded and moved on, so so has his audience.
Ironically, Phil has become more relatable and interactive and for some reason has had numerous fucking memes. how the hell did this happen, and people still call Dan the relatable one? smh Dan lost danisnotonfire but Phil acquired it
)
. Watching their pre-2015 videos feels like finding someone's old embarrassing teenage photos on Facebook. (Their older videos are very well made and I used to enjoy them a lot, they just belong to a different time somehow.)