Ablissa wrote: ↑Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:30 am
bestfriendsclub wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 11:52 pm
I was enjoying the gaming video until Dan threw a pencil at Phil's eye. Now I'm upset. That was not okay, you should never hurt your friends on purpose. I know they say it's just a joke, but laughing at someone when you hurt them doesn't make the pain go away. And you don't need to be violent to be funny.
Abuse victims are afraid to speak up or defend themselves because the abuser says it wasn't that bad, you're overreacting, can't you take a joke, it's okay for me to hurt you because I love you, you deserved it, etc.
And they think everyone else will say that too. And they're showing any abuse victims in the audience that it is okay to hurt your friends and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if it wasn't that bad, it wasn't nice either. I'm going to speak up every time I see violence going unnoticed because I want everyone I can possibly reach to know that they can speak up too, and they don't need to tolerate it.
I don't want to discredit your opinion or your feelings, if this affected you negatively then that is 100% valid, and I definitely agree about abuse victims. I just... I'm not sure what brought it on?
I mean, it was clearly a joke between two people who are very close. I think that assuming they are condoning abuse (or that Dan is abusive?) based on something like this is a really long shot. As in, extremely long, so long that it's out of realm of possibility.
Everyone has their own impressions of course, but I think that we can't start assuming every little thing is
bad. They playfully hit each other etc. in a bunch of videos, it's just their type of humor, they are clearly super comfortable with each other. Everything points to that. There is nothing wrong with joking around as long as they both consent to it, which obviously, they do.
I don't know, I'm worried I'm being offensive or something but honestly, if you are completely serious, I feel like you are being too severe on Dan and Phil.
I didn't mean to imply that this was abuse, I tried to separate the part where I talked about abuse and the part where I talked about this video, I just think it's not okay to throw a pencil at anyone, especially at their eye, because it could hit them in the eye... Am I the only one who thinks that?
I haven't come to the conclusion that it's all consensual and
if Phil had a problem with it he would say something. In the video where they reacted to The Slap, Dan consented to being slapped by Phil, but Phil didn't consent to being slapped by Dan but he did it anyway.
The first time I saw Dan hurt Phil, when he was hitting him in the Sonic video which is now deleted, Phil didn't consent to that, the look on his face is burned into my memory. He was scared, it looked like he couldn't believe Dan would actually hurt him. And I couldn't either. He tried to stop him, and Dan didn't stop. This showed Phil that telling Dan not to hurt him won't stop Dan from hurting him, that speaking up doesn't work. That was the last time I ever saw Phil try to stop Dan from hurting him, because it didn't work, and I think that's why he doesn't even try anymore. And because everyone thinks it's okay to hurt your friends as long as its a joke, Phil might not even know that he's allowed to ask him to stop.
I've never seen them have a conversation about boundaries so I'm not reassured that they have. I think, if given the choice, Phil would choose not to be hurt at all.
So again I don't think Dan abused Phil in this video, and I don't think Dan is abusive, but if he did that to me, or anyone else, I wouldn't be okay with it, and I'm not okay with him doing it to Phil, and just in case there's anyone like 11 year old me reading this, I want everyone to know that you don't have to accept people hurting you, ever, under any circumstances, no matter how insignificant it seems.
Because if you believe it's okay for people to hurt you sometimes, anyone can make it seem like it is always one of the times when it's okay. So I believe it's not okay to hurt anyone ever. When I was being abused, they would make the excuses: it was just a joke, I deserved it, it wasn't that bad, and it was okay to hurt me. I would look around and see nobody disagreeing. All I saw was more people explaining it away, whether they were talking about harmless fun or scary violence, all I could find were people reinforcing my abusers excuses, because they say the same thing when it is serious and when it's not. I never saw anyone stand up to it, so I accepted it.
When I saw Dan throw that pencil at Phil, I saw myself in his shoes, and I remembered all the times I had things thrown at me, and I remembered feeling like there was nothing I could do to stop it, both when it wasn't abuse and when it was.
I realize that I'm talking about two different things here, so
TLDR; 1: Don't hurt Phil for fun, it's not fun for Phil
2: if no one is speaking up for you, I will.