Dan & Phil Part 94: Year of the Rats

[CapriciousCrab]

'Breaking up' with Dan would be easier if people stopped shoehorning him into every bit of content Phil puts out. And I get it, people miss Dan and want to know what he's doing and how he is. But trying to use Phil as the vehicle for getting updates on Dan's life, which isn't Phil's job or responsibility, is pretty shitty. When Dan has something to share he will, and no amount of badgering Phil in video comments or livestream chats is going to change that.

Do I think Dan could have done a better job with communication? Yes, absolutely! But sometimes people fuck up and handle things badly and don't know how to make things right again. I'm sure most of us have been in that position, yeah? And as much as he irritates me at times I don't think he set out to deliberately hurt or anger the majority of his audience. Especially when he knows Phil also has to deal with the fallout.

tl;dr- let Phil's content be his own, Dan's not the devil incarnate, cultivate your phandom experience.

Also? I love timestamp so thanks to everyone who takes the time to post them!

[Phanshy]

Since I personally don't want to go round in circles when we all have pretty fixed opinions on the Dan situation I'll talk about something else that's a huge love of mine, a lot of my favourites have been listed but here's a few others. I've put some mild spolers, trigger warnings and opinions in brackets.
From beging to end - Brazilian film (includes a consensual incestuous relationship)4/5
Lillies - Canadian film (Told a lot through a play/flashback in a prison, deals with self acceptance jealousy, lies and deniel) 4/5
Were the world mine - American musical version of midsummer night's dream. (Turning homophobes gay for a brief period) 4/5
Eyewitness - Norwegian 4 part crime series (I'm more in to the romance than the crime story but there is some shocking violence) 5/5
Children of god - Bahamian film ( deals a lot with how being ashamed of your sexuality manifests in different people, religion and violence) 4/5
Proteus - South African film set on Robben island (deals with a interracial prison relationship in the 18th century, deals with a lot of issues around race and sexuality at that time as well as corporal and capital punishment)5/5
Hawaii - Argentinean film (From the Director/writer of Plan B mentioned in the first post childhood friends meeting as adults) 5/5
The way he looks - Brazilian film (rare lgbtq+ film depicting a main character with a disability he's blind.) 4/5
Hidden away - Spanish film (love story between a Spanish teen and a refugee) 4/5
1 last chance at paradise - British film (about being in lockdown with your ex as the world is ending but in a low key way. Kinda fitting for now) 4/5
North sea texas - Belgian film (coming of age discovery of sexuality type of film) 4/5
Boys - Dutch film ( Teen first love coming of age) 5/5
Harvest - German film ( Low key realistic film about falling for someone)4/5
War boys - American film (kind of a Trashy film tbh but it's worth all of the nonsense for David sewing George's T-shirt and removing cactus spikes from a sensitive area (it's available on YouTube) 3.5/5
Get real - British film (great 90's film about s secret relationship between two boys in high school it has a really great coming out speech about the damage caused by the assumption of heterosexuality) 5/5
Los jornaleros - Mexican American film (about the world of undocumented migrants in the US one of whom is gay but very much closeted it's a bit soapy but a subject not often explored in lgbtq+ films) 3.5/5
Just a question of love - French film (relationship between someone closeted and someone out and the toll it takes, contains someone being outed to their parents) 5/5
No regret - South Korean film (quite over the top in parts but well worth a watch does include prostitution, kidnapping and self harm) 4/5
Grande ecole - French film ( focuses on the class and racial division in france as well as coming to terms with your sexuality) 4/5
Private romeo - American film (A Romeo and Juliet reading in a all boys military but it continues outside of the classroom) 4/5
Romeos - German film (somewhat still a rare depiction of a young gay trans man played by a trans actor) 5/5
Morgan - American film (another rare depiction of a gay character with a disability, the main character is newly in a wheelchair it's much more a film about him accepting that than his sexuality but the love story element of the film is great and realistic) 4/5
The falls - American film trilogy (explores the world of Mormon missionaries and how the two guys deal differently with their churches ad families discovery of their relationship.) 4/5
Boys on film - series of short films from around the world I'd highly recommend especially the earlier ones [Hide=]( some do have very difficult/controversial themes)(4/5)
Out in the dark - Israeli Palestinian film (depicting a cross border relationship does have violent scenes) 5/5
Because of a Boy (You'll get Over It) - French film (teen coming to terms with your sexuality) 4/5
Beautiful Thing British film ( Another great 90's film typical coming of age type does also touch on family violence) 4/5
Sorry for the long post I couldn't get hide to work for spoilers.

[icedcoffeestan]

I'm not trying to be rude or combative but what "behavior" am I exactly supposed to be holding Dan accountable for right now? He *literally* hasn't done anything recently.

IDK y'all. You can obviously feel all your feelings however you want to feel them but the way some of y'all have been talking about Dan lately makes me feel like we're talking about two entirely different people.

Like when I see phrases like "holding someone accountable for their behavior" (or "questioning his character" a few weeks back) it makes me think of the youtubers exploiting this crisis to sell expensive and ineffective ppe merch to their fans, or the youtubers filming themselves ignoring quarantine orders or purposefully not listening to the cdc's safety recommendations, or the youtubers spreading dangerous misinformation about covid-19 on social media, or the youtubers posting tone deaf luxury good hauls and showing off their million dollar mansions at a time when millions of people are losing their jobs, or even just youtubers like Tr*sha P*ytass who generally behave in a way on social media that is actively harmful and damaging to others. Not a dude like Dan whose just....minding his own business and not posting very much right now.

But anyway I think that just comes down to a difference of expectations (and also a bit of that whole parasocial relationship thing malday mentioned but I'm not ready to get into That right now. I highly recommend everyone watch Olly Thorne's video about it though.) I'm not 'not holding him accountable for his behavior.' I just genuinely don't see anything wrong with what he's doing at the moment. It's fine if you do. But it's a bit strange to accuse anyone not mad right now of some failure of accountability.

My expectations of Dan are fairly simple and I just don't feel like he's failing to meet them right now. Like, in BIG when Dan said that he wanted to be able to do things without an audience so he could be able to royally fuck things up without having to post a public explanation I kind of just....took him at his word? I know a lot of people saw that moment as a throwaway line about hypothetical romantic entanglements but that interpretation never made much sense to me. I just took it as Dan's general life outlook moving forward.

So with that in mind it doesn't surprise me that at this time in his life when he's taking career and life risks (which we all know he is - the marathon, the stuff he was pitching in LA, the production (?) company thing he set up in London, etc) he's not telling us about it until it's completed and definitely happening. So when he does stuff behind the scenes and then every month or so replies to someone on twitter that yes, he's still working on that stuff behind the scenes, it doesnt bother me because it doesnt conflict with what I personally feel Dan told me to expect.

(Also, and this is just a me-thing. But I think another reason I'm okay with how Dan's going about things right now is that even though we're getting significantly less content right now, the stuff we have gotten out of Dan in the past year has felt more personally meaningful to me than any of the solo Dan content we got in my previous years in the phandom. (For me specifically that was obviously big things like BIG, but also smaller things like Dan walking in solidarity with two incredible social justice organizations at Pride, the one-on-one interactions he had with fans at pride, participating in charity livestreams like the one he did last week and Olly's during the summer, his increased politicl engagement on twitter, etc.) Like I'm aware this is probably an incredibly unpopular opinion, especially right now, but getting these occasional moments of feeling blisteringly proud of Dan >>> any non-BIG dinof. And yeah obviously he could do both but that's not the point I'm attempting to make. What I'm saying is that if I had to choose between the version of Dan we get occasional glimpses of in 2019/2020 and the version of Dan that semi-regularly uploaded in 2017, I'd pick the former every time. Again, I'm WELL aware that this is a VERY unpopular opinion but .)

TL;DR: We all just have different expectations. People who aren't mad at Dan right now aren't being pushovers or enabling bad behavior - we have different expectations of our fan/creator relationship with Dan then you do.

[flarequake]

I thought it just came up again cos he did something and we got to talking again.

I didn’t take that bit in BIG as meaning everything creative was going to be private from then on, partly cos at that point we thought it was him maybe coming back to YouTube, but also cos he was talking about his personal life. I get keeping works in progress private until they’re ready, obviously.

[queerofcups]

I feel the need to pop in to say that the idea of holding Dan accountable falls really weirdly on my metaphorical ear.

Its very difficult (perhaps impossible?) to "hold Dan accountable", even if he did something requiring that (which I don't think he does but that's neither here nor there). To hold someone accountable requires either some authority over the person or a personal relationship that they want to maintain positively.

We don't have personal relationships with Dan that he wants to maintain. Our singular, collective fan relationship with Dan, at least from his side is obviously more complex than "audience engagement = good (or =money, ymmv) = must maintain audience engagement", no matter what our expectations of it may be. So I think that's moot.

The little "authority" we have over him is wielded in that fan relationship and only really works if there's a mass number of people protesting (there've been a couple of those moments, usually around them being uninformed white and or/European people and making a bad call around something related to race or ethnicity). It *feels* like, again feels, I'm saying feels because I want it to be clear that this is a feeling and not a statement of fact, that some of the frustration from Dan-critical folks is coming up b/c folks are wanting phandom to mobilize and do this same thing around Dan's perceived inactivity. I'm not naming every criticism of Dan as coming off that way, but any time the word accountability comes up, I'm like ????how????. And that seems like a super frustrating place to be in. If I saw a dude that I liked doing something I thought was fucked up and everyone was defending him, I'd also be pretty annoyed.

But I'm confused about what the next step is? It seems like IDB comes to this exact same impasse every, oh, two or three days or so? Certainly every time Dan pops his head up. And I don't know that there's actually a next step other than Dan returning to 2017/18 levels of activity (seems unlikely), a lot of people changing their minds about Dan's behavior in all sorts of directions (also seems unlikely) or people just...moving on.

I dunno, that's just my two cents.

[knq]

I wonder if Dan watched Tiger King?

Phil did, and we’ve been told Phil makes you feel like a horrible “blerson” if you don’t join him.

But Dan said he doesn’t “hate watch” anything when he was asked about some Logan Paul video. And I have no idea why so many of us have watched Tiger King if not for its car crash like nature.

So, did Dan and Phil watch Tiger King together?

[malday]

I don't even see anything wrong with people asking Phil about Dan because they miss his face or vice versa, it's not something they can't handle. Really, who cares about any of this right now it appears so insignificant in comparison to what's going on with the world.

[Amiaw]

I don't even see anything wrong with people asking Phil about Dan because they miss his face or vice versa, it's not something they can't handle. Really, who cares about any of this right now it appears so insignificant in comparison to what's going on with the world.

I mean this is a forum to talk about youtubers so that’s why we’re here and commenting. And I can’t speak for everyone but Dan and Phil have said they want to do their own thing so the problem with spamming Phil about Dan is that imo it shows a lack of respect for his hard work and the content he’s putting out. Some of the comments on his video are “this isn’t the same without dan” “I miss dan, sorry phil but you need him” and his live show chats are no different. If someone wants to know how dan’s doing ask him directly and if he doesn’t respond then it should be on Dan.
Now if Phil brings dan up in a video or mentions him that’s one thing but when he avoids mentioning dan and still gets the same treatment it just looks like people are only here for dan.
Just my two cents though

[CapriciousCrab]

Well, I'm here commenting because this is a forum and conversations are happening. And tbh there's only so much pandemic news I can take before wanting to hide under my bed until it's all over.

[malday]

I don't even see anything wrong with people asking Phil about Dan because they miss his face or vice versa, it's not something they can't handle. Really, who cares about any of this right now it appears so insignificant in comparison to what's going on with the world.

I mean this is a forum to talk about youtubers so that’s why we’re here and commenting. And I can’t speak for everyone but Dan and Phil have said they want to do their own thing so the problem with spamming Phil about Dan is that imo it shows a lack of respect for his hard work and the content he’s putting out. Some of the comments on his video are “this isn’t the same without dan” “I miss dan, sorry phil but you need him” and his live show chats are no different. If someone wants to know how dan’s doing ask him directly and if he doesn’t respond then it should be on Dan.
Now if Phil brings dan up in a video or mentions him that’s one thing but when he avoids mentioning dan and still gets the same treatment it just looks like people are only here for dan.
Just my two cents though

In all the time you've been watching them have some fans not always been disrespectful in the comments? You can bring it to their attention if you think it will change anything. But Phil has all the tools at his disposal to stop those comments, and the power to not get pressured into doing anything he doesn't want, which he has been very good at for as long as he's been on youtube, hasn't he? If he feels disrespected by the comments under his videos deep frying stuff, he can block that person, that way they would actually take the hint. Jenna gets all kinds of comments about her and julien, she turns them into memes. Maybe if Phil gets fed up he could do something similar.

[Eta] It not only looks like it but some people are actually there only for Dan, I think Phil of all people knows this. He could give some sass back on the subject if he wished, like he did in his diss track.

[Phanshy]

Judging by some of the words used someone not knowing dnp reading these posts might think Dan is some horrible scheming guy, instead of some dude with issues and flaws like the rest of us.
Parasocial relationships have been brought up a lot of times on this forum. Maybe if you have strong negative feelings towards him and presume the worst intentions, it's time for you to parasocially break up with him already. Why waste time, money, energy on someone you feel keeps disappointing you?

I don't even see anything wrong with people asking Phil about Dan because they miss his face or vice versa, it's not something they can't handle. Really, who cares about any of this right now it appears so insignificant in comparison to what's going on with the world.

firstly you do and the rest of us who commented about it clearly. None of it is really ever really that significant, there are people suffering and dying needlessly every minute of the day, it's just easy to forget about it because we aren't affected.

I don't think most of us are saying Dan is some Machiavellian character, at most he's being accused of is being thoughtless (maybe he needed to be to focus on himself)which is hard for people because of the relationship that existed at times between Dan and the phandom. To be completely shut out of basically everything even if we see it from others, ie the Star wars premier or VR thing. I'm personally over all that and the only real time I've been annoyed at him and am still disappointed in was the posting before the merch drop. I don't have a issue with him releasing merch if he wants to drop some tomorrow I wouldn't care, but it felt manipulative to me to only interact with us when he wants money, which is something I've never felt towards Dan. The post after didn't change anything for me as a damage control exercise it felt meaningless. People are allowed to be disappointed because things changed when we were told they wouldn't, people are allowed to be sad they've lost that interaction no matter how one sided, it doesn't mean we hate him, it doesn't mean we can forget everything that's gone before that made us love him in the first place and it doesn't mean we want to break up with him.

So it's not right for people in a forum to voice dissatisfaction with the way Dan (and phil) has communicated with us without in anyway setting out for him to see it, because it's not a reply to anything he's posted and he's not tagged in anyway, but it's ok to flood the live show chat with where's Dan? How's Dan? Get Dan, #Dan constantly it's honestly aggravating and I'm sure not easy for Phil because he obviously wants to respect Dan's choice to pull back from social media, if Phil's not enough don't come to the live show in the miniscule chance he mentions Dan and ruin the chat for the rest of us. if you're watching Phil's video and it makes you miss Dan (we've all been their I'm sure) why comment it on the video so it takes over the comment section when it has nothing to do with the content post on your own social media or tag Dan in something I'm sure it's not something he can't handle.
If Dan's allowed to do his own thing in peace so should Phil because they're separate creator's after all.
I really need a lesson in how to express myself concisely.

[malday]

Well, I'm here commenting because this is a forum and conversations are happening. And tbh there's only so much pandemic news I can take before wanting to hide under my bed until it's all over.

I know, I feel the same. And it's made me apathetic to issues like Dan's absence, presumed motives, etc. which I was referring to.
Hang In there

[Phanshy]

Ok so let's not say anything remotely critical about Dan where he'll never see it in case we are hurting his feelings, but bombard Phil's comments saying he's basically not enough and he can just suck it up and make a meme out of it got it.
Imagine the phandom meltdown if Phil actually blocked mentions of Dan from his comments, so it's not really a option.

[malday]

Judging by some of the words used someone not knowing dnp reading these posts might think Dan is some horrible scheming guy, instead of some dude with issues and flaws like the rest of us.
Parasocial relationships have been brought up a lot of times on this forum. Maybe if you have strong negative feelings towards him and presume the worst intentions, it's time for you to parasocially break up with him already. Why waste time, money, energy on someone you feel keeps disappointing you?

I don't even see anything wrong with people asking Phil about Dan because they miss his face or vice versa, it's not something they can't handle. Really, who cares about any of this right now it appears so insignificant in comparison to what's going on with the world.

firstly you do and the rest of us who commented about it clearly. None of it is really ever really that significant, there are people suffering and dying needlessly every minute of the day, it's just easy to forget about it because we aren't affected.

I don't think most of us are saying Dan is some Machiavellian character, at most he's being accused of is being thoughtless (maybe he needed to be to focus on himself)which is hard for people because of the relationship that existed at times between Dan and the phandom. To be completely shut out of basically everything even if we see it from others, ie the Star wars premier or VR thing. I'm personally over all that and the only real time I've been annoyed at him and am still disappointed in was the posting before the merch drop. I don't have a issue with him releasing merch if he wants to drop some tomorrow I wouldn't care, but it felt manipulative to me to only interact with us when he wants money, which is something I've never felt towards Dan. The post after didn't change anything for me as a damage control exercise it felt meaningless. People are allowed to be disappointed because things changed when we were told they wouldn't, people are allowed to be sad they've lost that interaction no matter how one sided, it doesn't mean we hate him, it doesn't mean we can forget everything that's gone before that made us love him in the first place and it doesn't mean we want to break up with him.

So it's not right for people in a forum to voice dissatisfaction with the way Dan (and phil) has communicated with us without in anyway setting out for him to see it, because it's not a reply to anything he's posted and he's not tagged in anyway, but it's ok to flood the live show chat with where's Dan? How's Dan? Get Dan, #Dan constantly it's honestly aggravating and I'm sure not easy for Phil because he obviously wants to respect Dan's choice to pull back from social media, if Phil's not enough don't come to the live show in the miniscule chance he mentions Dan and ruin the chat for the rest of us. if you're watching Phil's video and it makes you miss Dan (we've all been their I'm sure) why comment it on the video so it takes over the comment section when it has nothing to do with the content post on your own social media or tag Dan in something I'm sure it's not something he can't handle.
If Dan's allowed to do his own thing in peace so should Phil because they're separate creator's after all.
I really need a lesson in how to express myself concisely.

I don't want to repeat what I wrote in the reply to Amiaw, but that's basically it.
I feel this has been happening since I can remeber and so has the discussion around it repeated again and again, im desensitized to it, I understand some are not, im sorry.
Someone in a previous post said something about curating your fandom experience, and I think that's the only thing you can do, not read comments, avoid chat and chose not to care about those comments at all, for your peace of mind.
Take care

[Amiaw]

To change the subject Dan just followed a real estate company on Instagram based out of LA. Looking for a home or does he just like looking at the different properties?

[flarequake]

One thing with comments about Dan in Phil’s live shows and videos is both of them have rarely addressed things that they don’t like, especially directly or seriously, so it keeps happening partly cos Phil doesn’t say anything (though people doubled down on spamming ‘protip’ or whatever (iOS just tried correcting that to ‘Portia’ of all things) because Dan tried to tell people not to, so what can you do). I don’t know if these things bother them, by now they’ve seen enough of it all and deal with it how they want to, which seems often to be ignoring it, so idk how much Phil’s happy to just suck it up anyway. It often surprises me how little they address annoying things cos the creator has so much power in guiding their audience like that, it’s why Thomas Sanders’ is so incredibly wholesome (from what I can see, I’m not in it, but I see some). It’s pretty crap to see things like ‘you need Dan’, somehow I hadn’t seen specific comments like that.

[knq]

To change the subject Dan just followed a real estate company on Instagram based out of LA. Looking for a home or does he just like looking at the different properties?

If there was ever a time to enter the housing market it was... any other time but now. Both dnp seem to like architecture and pretty buildings. Almost like they'd like to design their own home. Hmm

[malday]

Imagine the phandom meltdown if Phil actually blocked mentions of Dan from his comments, so it's not really a option.

I can imagine it and can also imagine it will pass quickly like all the other phandom meltdowns before.
Its an option he's been using for years, blocking things in the comments, they both have. :peace.:

[rizzo]

To change the subject Dan just followed a real estate company on Instagram based out of LA. Looking for a home or does he just like looking at the different properties?

my immediate thought here is that it would actually be a really smart move to invest in some LA property.

if dan (or phil) needs to visit frequently for a project, why not have a permanent place to stay? all while bringing in short-term rental money with a property manager. couldn't hurt.

this is all assuming, of course, that we ever get back to normality. agreed with knq that it's really not the time.

and also if that were the case, it literally KILLS me that they're still renting in london. at this point i'm convinced they've gotta own something that they're either working on or are otherwise renting out.

[madzilla84]

Man, I almost wish I hadn’t seen that post; things like that always make me so anxious. (Really do not need any more ‘Dan’s moving to LA’ anons, sigh)

[alittledizzy]

Man, I almost wish I hadn’t seen that post; things like that always make me so anxious. (Really do not need any more ‘Dan’s moving to LA’ anons, sigh)

I don't understand how any human alive could possibly think Dan and Phil are gonna move half a world apart from each other. I may not know the context for why Dan followed them, and all I can do is speculate, but not a single bit of me thinks that whatever they're doing it's not gonna be something they do together if it's a big life change.

[oriharakaoru]

Man, I almost wish I hadn’t seen that post; things like that always make me so anxious. (Really do not need any more ‘Dan’s moving to LA’ anons, sigh)

lmao same i'm easily influenced even when i know shit is dumb. /o\ but, fwiw, the description on that instagram says "A worldwide luxury real estate brokerage" (emphasis mine) so... and some of the pics on their insta are from various places around the world.

anyway. pretty pics: https://www.instagram.com/theagencyre/

[Neons]

I've been working a lot at the moment (key worker) and my personal life has become a bit of a car crash so I haven't had time to post here, but I just want to add I also really appreciate people posting timestamps and general commentary about Phil's videos etc. I enjoy reading it all.

I absolutely loved Phil's most recent liveshow and video, both made me properly laugh when I needed it. He is on really good form right now. Basically I am just so thankful for Phil.

[blueapple_x]

To change the subject Dan just followed a real estate company on Instagram based out of LA. Looking for a home or does he just like looking at the different properties?

my immediate thought here is that it would actually be a really smart move to invest in some LA property.

if dan (or phil) needs to visit frequently for a project, why not have a permanent place to stay? all while bringing in short-term rental money with a property manager. couldn't hurt.

this is all assuming, of course, that we ever get back to normality. agreed with knq that it's really not the time.

and also if that were the case, it literally KILLS me that they're still renting in london. at this point i'm convinced they've gotta own something that they're either working on or are otherwise renting out.

Who knows. Or maybe his project requires a swanky place to film in

[Catallena]

Happy 2 years since Deppy gave the people what they wanted! One of the best videos they ever gave us and if you don't think so you're wrong



I've rewatched this masterpiece countless of times. I do still find the reacting to PINOF bit a little awkward, but considering all the years I feared for them ruining this video for me if they ever reacted to it, it really wasn't bad. I do kinda wonder what a PCOU reaction to it would look like, but that's mostly because I once edited Dan saying "and obviously we more than friends, but it was more than just romantic" under two clips of it for my phanvideo. Basically, I have a lot of feelings over PINOF.

I can't even choose a favorite part. Like I just went to rewatch it again and I went into it with ~ oh I love the couple yoga part the most ~ and then I got attacked by literally everything else? The yoga definitely is amazing, because I'm not gonna get Phil being that quotably gay and Dan putting his head between Phil's legs anywhere else except on Ao3. Plus it's also just really funny seeing two stiff giraffe men doing yoga. But them trying on each others clothes and looking damn good doing it while showering each other in compliments? The bittersweet nostalgia of the Manchester visit?? Them playing with the dog??? PHIL SAYING FUCK???????

Yeah uh. I love this video. A lot. What's y'all's favorite part? Do you remember your first reaction when it dropped? Have your feelings on it changed at all since then?

It's also been 3 years since Dan showed some skin in this legendary selfie #freetheknee