LtrllySusan wrote: ↑Thu Apr 19, 2018 8:45 am
Since we are literally posting tumbleweed GIFs, I have a question until we get that sweet vlogussy.
What have you learned from or through D&P?
Your answer can be as deep or as mundane as you like!
I'll start: I learned that I don't have to sneeze if I tickle the roof of my mouth with my tounge (insert Phil gif). I also learned about the concept of mental health and that my own was apparently not so good.
Tough question to really answer
My affection for them is more irrational and emotional than intellectual. I just plain like them. The aim of their content is to entertain and not really to teach, and that's how I approach them.
I'd say it's only in a roundabout way I've learned about myself and others through watching them or engaging with the community.
I learned i could consider myself a 'fan' of someone after all. In general i'm not interested at all in celebrities or the popular culture around them. I have never identified much with a subculture and kept a distance from hypes. Still when it came to Dan and Phil, I sought out others to talk about them, or find out more about them. I like their content, but over the years i've become much more interested in who they are as people to the degree that the content has almost become immaterial. Or that's definitely how it feels in the current drought :mrgreen:
Being attached to total strangers with whom you basically always are only going to have a one-way relationship with, is a pretty puzzling thing for me. Why is it that I care more for these people than some people i know 'in real life' How is it possible that you can feel someone is 'sorta' your friend even though they aren't even aware of your existence? To which degree can you see you love Dan or Phil knowing that they are pretty private and so much of who you think they are is more or less projection and speculation? Do you like the person, or do you just like the ideal of a certain person, an 'icon' that's based on some real facts about who that person is but is at least just as much based on your thoughts of who someone is? Is this different really with other people you know (to varying degrees)?
When it comes to the broader 'fandom', my experiences have been mixed. I think any sort of fandom has a lot of interesting psychological and sociological aspect to it. On the one hand, i've met some people I would never have met otherwise if it wasn't for our shared interest in D&P. On the other hand, i've met people I wish I didn't
Sometimes, the umbrella that being a mutual 'fan' of someone provides can be tricky. You think you understand a person to a degree or that they understand you. Sometimes that just doesn't turn out to be the case. While i broadly agree with most of the values I think Dan and Phil hold dear themselves, there's some narratives I see in parts of the fandom that I don't agree with at all. It's properly hard at times to understand where even your family or best friends come from, so it stands to reason that things get very murky when you're talking about political or ethical issues that sometimes get raised in relationship to things D&P (didn't) say. In some ways, the fandom is diverse and in others it's not. Still even in the little corner of the internet that you could call the Dan and Phil bubble, endless arguments can arise from how we differently interpret words in liveshow or a video. Not to mention broader narratives about their lives or issues like racism, feminism, or lgbt rights.
While i'm happy and I think it says something we're talking about "progressive" issues at large, i'm also worried and angered by the pollution I see of these issues by what i would call the 'regressive' left - with very reactionary and illiberal ideas behind them. This was new to me. When it comes to the more political topics of debate (one of my major interests ), the topics of debate are by and large very much discussed through the lenses of american, Anglo-saxon lenses. Which somewhat makes sense, since us viewers and uk viewers make up for a good majority of their followers. But it's a rather narrow view, that has made me realize just how much water will still have to run to the oceon before the idea of a "world society" as articulated by the English school in international politics can begin to flourish.
Sadly, us politics has moved so much to the right that i was already made aware of movements like the "tea party", "alt right", "men's right activists" and some of their backward ideology. What came as a surprise to me though is that i see similar backwards ideas articulated on the left, or at least echo's of them would be adopted by a good chunk of people in the fandom. So i've seen the liberal viewpoint perverted by some people on issues like racism, feminism and privilege. What i've learned from that (once again) is that we can use same words and think we fight for the the same ideas yet mean complete different things when you get to concrete topics of discussion.
)
