Dan & Phil Part 41: what in domestication

[karma_yeah]

I wouldn't call it 'dumbing down' exactly, but when you do it (self deprecating humor) so often, it becomes trite and completely loses its impact. Then it begins a downward spiral, from boring to annoying to eye-rolling, and can eventually become "not watching". Too much of a good thing can go really bad.

[fancy_nancy]

I didn't even watch it all the way through I was so bored with it. Some parts of it made me laugh but overall, I didn't enjoy it that much. Also, whenever I hear white people say "I'm 23% this and 47% that and actually 0.0003% this" I roll my eyes so hard I see a little bit of my brain.

[kuensukki]

Phil's AP way of talking, moving and just looking into the camera just feel so completely fake now that we see him in a more natural and calmer vibe so often on the gaming channel I think. That's what made it off putting for me personally. I wish Phil would start bringing his DAPG ways to AP.

I think especially after the documentary and ls' and gamingmas where we got to see chill phil (and I fucking love chill phil), AP does tend to come off as more ingenuine and "try hard". I didn't like the video, I'd go as far as to say it was a bad video, bland and lacking charm or any skits/editing that makes AP videos interesting. The thing is, at this point phil can get away with making videos like this guilt free because he hasn't set any self-regulated standards for his channel. At a point, too much is annoying, but none at all also becomes an issue. Especially knowing Phils capabilities and talents, I can't help but think he's really holding himself back and I can't for the life of me figure out why?!! He's pretty good at inspiring himself to do things so it's not that he's lazy. I just think he's been boxing himself into this character that can't do much but sit on a bed and it's frustrating because real phil sometimes is a stark contrast.

Don't get me wrong, I love Phil and I love AP, but I'm also at the point where it's clear to me how limited he is by his channel and it's sad to me. Of course I have no right to since I'm just someone who voluntarily watches him but I want him to be aware that a video is not well received and pick up on that instead of focusing on the positive comments and continuing with a formula that's getting old. I feel like he's self aware to an extent; it's where his "this channel has no integrity" comes from but I also think he's too stubborn/scared to change. Of course it's just one video that was lackluster, and his other videos this year have been really enjoyable so I'm gonna write it down as a filler and hope it goes uphill from this one

[CallMeAyana]

Tbh, I kinda forgot that Deppy actually have individual channels due to them uploading on DAPG so frequently, that it actually surprised me that Phil posted a vid on his channel I might give the vid a watch, but not today.

[alittledizzy]

While I definitely do agree it wasn't the most exciting video, I think it still shows some of that Phil character growth we're seeing on the other channels. The delivery is more standard AP so that's deceptive but the pregnancy references (in the future video, and this one) being related to himself (thus eliminating any potential for there to be a no homo interpretation) and also the subtle jokes about guys (the very first hints of which started around the anime recs video, but continuing on in this) still exhibit that same character growth to me.

I guess maybe what it comes down to here with me not liking it is that I watch to see Phil more than I watch to be entertained, though. If Phil were a youtuber I went to solely for entertainment value I might be unhappier with it instead of neutral but willing to find the positives.

[DeadlyNova]

I liked the video a lot. Don't know if I'll rewatch it, but I did like it.

I always find those DNA test videos interesting, so much so that I've watched them for lots of random youtubers I don't even watch just because it's fascinating to me. So to see it from Phil was very nice.

[mio]

And you can't tell me that stuff like "I might be half cangaroo" or basically everything he said about genetics that has nothing to do with science at all - aren't his way of adjusting the topic to a younger audience. I mean it's fine, it's just not a very grown up video, no matter the topic

I would say they're his way of making the video content entertaining to any of his audience that didn't show up for a science lesson. I'm guessing Phil himself couldn't actually tell you the science behind DNA testing. It wasn't meant to be an educational video; it was just Phil discussing the results of his personal test. Not using explicit language and explicit sexually mature terminology in humor doesn't mean it's aimed at children, it just means that Phil doesn't use mature humor.

Let me just clarify one thing then I'll let this go..
To me adult vs. kids humor has nothing to do with the level of explicity at all. I mean every 12yo can make jokes about sex. I can acknowledge that he's come a long way in that regard, but ultimatively I watch them for their entertainment factor.
And grown-up humor/entertainment to me is more about the complexity and creativity that is put into a thing, jokes that are unexpected, need background knowledge or experience to be understood, that kind of thing. Kid's humor is more predictable and often flat. Like sometimes when i rewatch stuff I used to love as a kid I go very hard on the kind of jokes, but I can still like the thing. And Phil's so funny and intelligent in other videos, this is the main reason why it irks me.
Maybe even more right now, after we just got the mark of oxin video, where even 14yo Phil showed how brilliant he was back then already.

[iero]

Phil surprised me with that upload, wasn't expecting it

The Neanderthal bit made me laugh but overall I found it kinda meh

[lurker]

i've been rewatching and thinking a bit about phil's new video, and i've come to the conclusion that i just can't help but feel a bit disappointed. that doesn't mean i thought it was bad -- i thought it was entertaining and quite funny, nothing super special but also nothing that had me seriously disappointed. i just feel like the idea per se had the potential to be something more or that phil's humour which i like very much could have made it something that would have made it stand out between other videos like this? i can't really explain what i expected, but to me the video felt a bit like phil was doing the bare minimum -- looking through the results with the camera on and reacting to them. which was entertaining. but i kind of wish it had been funnier, or weirder, or just, like, 15% more, just because i think it had the potential to be. does that make sense? i'm not sure. also not sure how much of that is just me thinking "jeez that thing cost 100 dollar do something more!"

[/fɪl lɛstɚ/]

I think if he had actually told us this video was coming and there was a bit of build up then it'd be slightly disappointing. But I was so excited that it was a surprise upload that I think I could have watched anything.
Part of the reason, I reckon, that the video wasn't as funny or interesting as some of the other AP videos was because his results weren't interesting. Okay, he's a little bit Swedish, a little bit French. (The listing which body part was what Nationality thing was funny- if I remember correctly it was a Swedish eyebrow).
But if he had opened that thing up and saw, I don't know, that he was 10% Japanese, or Spanish, or American or something, then I think he would have had the creative fodder to do something cool with these results. As it were, however, the tests show us what we already knew - he's just a white English guy. Not much you can do with that.
I enjoyed the video because I just like to see Phil. And I like DNA tests. But I can see why a lot of you were meh about it.

[bee]

I saw this video about DNA results by Boyinaband awhile ago that I liked a lot then,

while I was watching Phil's video I kept on relating to that one so it was a bit meh for me. He got a lot of the same results as well
Also random Dan mention in that video as well lol now I rewatch it

[nephilimcat]

I understand where all of those who didn't enjoy the video very much or are a bit disappointed, are coming from, even though I loved the video. The AP voice does annoy me a bit and I'd love to see creative stuff on his channel (or somewhere else). But I don't know, maybe he actually likes the channel the way it is. It makes the whole thing a bit easier and people do enjoy his content after all. Who knows Also, I feel like this was a video he just did spontaneously when the results came in, which is probably why we got it this unexpectedly.

I'd love it if he actually traced back his ancestors to figure out who they were, I think more people would enjoy that, but it's not that easy and I'm pretty sure takes some time. It's impossible to trace everything back to the one female ancestor we all share, but the more famous your ancestors were, the farther back you can go. I envy royalty, they know a huge amount of their ancestors!

[bee]

I'd love it if he actually traced back his ancestors to figure out who they were, I think more people would enjoy that, but it's not that easy and I'm pretty sure takes some time. It's impossible to trace everything back to the one female ancestor we all share, but the more famous your ancestors were, the farther back you can go. I envy royalty, they know a huge amount of their ancestors!

He didn't really mention the part with the information on lineage from the male and female line, but there you can go up to thousands of years ago. So you can see the migration routes and places of origin and everything. Maybe Phil wasn't into that as much, and it takes some time figuring that map&information out, or thought his audience wouldn't care. BUT IT'S SO COOL AND INTERESTING I'm jealous
/sorry nerd out

[fancybum]

Meh, I found that video pretty boring. I think I would have preferred him reading his results during a liveshow where he would have been less AP and the jokes (even though they would have been the same jokes) might have had a more natural delivery. His try-hard-ness and ~I'm WaCkY and EnERgEtiC~ schtick lends itself better to the sketch-ier vids like the gym one. Excitedly reading boring DNA results into a camera just didn't do anything for me. But he probably wanted to get another video out before all the travelling, so just rushed it. Whatevs. As long as they keep the gaming content consistent they can be as boring as they like on their mains, the 'overly energetic YTer' vibe that pops up there is grating on me anyway. I find the liveshows and gaming (minus some of Dan's screaming) more human, and therefore more enjoyable atm, anyway.

[coffeepenguin]

I liked the new video well enough and I'm actually a bit surprised by y'all's negative reaction (granted, I don't watch a lot of other youtubers, so it was the first DNA test video I've seen in my life). I agree it's not Phil's best, though, and maybe after the showcase of 14 y.o. Phil's creativity that was the Mark of Oxin it feels especially meh, but this conversation about him limiting himself creatively and wasting his potential is also a bit, well, strange, in my opinion. Phil clearly said enough times that he's not interested in making videos like the ones during his experimental phase in 2008-2010 (sorry, I don't have time right now to find the right references, but I wanted to post this before the ls and I won't have another free moment until then). What I find interesting, though, it's that he apparently continues to view his content as creative enough even now and I think that even with the "no integrity" remark it still stands. Like, I am forever fascinated with Dan's words in a ls on their work on TATINOF: "Me, a control freak, and Phil's, like, I have a vision and I need to express it myself" (again, sorry for not including a reference). What is the product of Phil's vision is what I want to know (maybe we understand the word "vision" differently, idk). Again, with TATINOF, we know that Dan wanted the musical number and I think it's safe to assume he wrote the fanfiction scripts judging by some of his tweets (about the cowboy camping thing and lately about the cake), Phil wanted the magic bit, what about the general "plot" and Dil's role in it, have they talked about whose idea that was? I don't even know where I'm going with it, sorry, just that I don't understand this man at all

[/fɪl lɛstɚ/]

I liked the new video well enough and I'm actually a bit surprised by y'all's negative reaction (granted, I don't watch a lot of other youtubers, so it was the first DNA test video I've seen in my life). I agree it's not Phil's best, though, and maybe after the showcase of 14 y.o. Phil's creativity that was the Mark of Oxin it feels especially meh, but this conversation about him limiting himself creatively and wasting his potential is also a bit, well, strange, in my opinion.

Agreed. This was just a fun video about something he clearly found interesting. Not everything he makes has to be a creative gem. And, as I said in a previous post, this sort of throwaway video can be forgiven because there was no build up.
Unlike someone who built up his video for weeks for it to just be ISG9

[flurry]

Oh Phil's video: Glad to see I'm not the only one who found it boring. I thought the title was exciting and it had potential but he didn't seem to go anywhere with it. Saying oh I'm xx % French so maybe my eyebrow is French is just a bit silly, childish and dull to me.

Having said that, I'm excited for what their joint liveshow will reveal, if anything

[vincentian]

Agree with all critical comments expressed on Phil's new video, I am a bit disappointed as well. The video seemed rushed and I disliked the random tangents he went on and then emphasized with editing, didn't find them cute or funny. Maybe his delivery seemed forced because he got out of habit being the only presenter (especially if they were pre-filming a lot of gaming videos).
But at least we have joint liveshow and possibly april 1st video to look forward to.

[Birdie]

Believe it or not but once when we were both studying anthropology I told my friend that I thought Phil must be part Neanderthal because of the shape of his head, I’m crying right now.

I've always wanted to take a test like this one because my ancestry is from all over Eastern Europe and Asia and it would be so cool to know what actual countries my ancestors were from. I really liked the video, I thought it was really interesting. Also I loved Science!Phil. And his excitement about the <0.1% African was really cute because that must be so far back, that's probably from ancient times.

I didn't even watch it all the way through I was so bored with it. Some parts of it made me laugh but overall, I didn't enjoy it that much. Also, whenever I hear white people say "I'm 23% this and 47% that and actually 0.0003% this" I roll my eyes so hard I see a little bit of my brain.

I usually would agree with this since I’m also not keen on your typical „I’m 0,3% Native American!“ tumblr bios, but that’s really not what Phil was doing. He wanted to know where his ancestors came from and he got a bit excited about the more surprising results which I think is totally legit, especially in the context of a video like this. Everyone would be surprised if they found out they had ancestors in a place they would have never expected. Yes, he’s white and mostly English but Western European cultures aren’t all the same either so finding out he was a little French was probably exciting for him because he wasn’t expecting that and French culture is so different from English culture.

[JustMe]

Excitedly reading boring DNA results into a camera just didn't do anything for me.

I think this summarizes my experience of the video quite well. I agree not every video has to be creatively visionary but I do think when you are a major youtuber that posts about one video every two/three weeks (not counting DAPG) the quality should be higher than this video. I felt like he put in a bare minimum of effort which really shows in the video. I'm sure Phil could do lots of boring things in his videos and still make them entertaining, but the only thing he tried to do to add entertainment value was talking excitedly and making predictable animal references and that just didn't cut it for me.

BUT part of the reason this video stands out is because I hold him to a high standard. I'm also very excited by the liveshow tonight and think he will be way more entertaining than in his video

[nephilimcat]

I'd love it if he actually traced back his ancestors to figure out who they were, I think more people would enjoy that, but it's not that easy and I'm pretty sure takes some time. It's impossible to trace everything back to the one female ancestor we all share, but the more famous your ancestors were, the farther back you can go. I envy royalty, they know a huge amount of their ancestors!

He didn't really mention the part with the information on lineage from the male and female line, but there you can go up to thousands of years ago. So you can see the migration routes and places of origin and everything. Maybe Phil wasn't into that as much, and it takes some time figuring that map&information out, or thought his audience wouldn't care. BUT IT'S SO COOL AND INTERESTING I'm jealous
/sorry nerd out

[offtopic]Really,? That's so cool! I need to take this test too. My curiosity will be the death of me. I don't want the government to have my DNA but I want to know. Argh! [/offtopic]

[Catallena]

Excitedly reading boring DNA results into a camera just didn't do anything for me.

I think this summarizes my experience of the video quite well. I agree not every video has to be creatively visionary but I do think when you are a major youtuber that posts about one video every two/three weeks (not counting DAPG) the quality should be higher than this video. I felt like he put in a bare minimum of effort which really shows in the video. I'm sure Phil could do lots of boring things in his videos and still make them entertaining, but the only thing he tried to do to add entertainment value was talking excitedly and making predictable animal references and that just didn't cut it for me.

I agree with this so much.

Phil has made plenty of boring shit entertaining to watch, but this wasn't one of them and I'm not sure he really tried. I rewatched the video this morning but it just seems like such a lazy video, like even the lie that weird lie about his mum's friend being a doctor who does DNA tests to make up some cool story was lazy. I think it's fair to expect a little more from a YouTuber with an upload schedule like Phil's (or Dan's). Hopefully he'll drop something else soon.

[mio]

Believe it or not but once when we were both studying anthropology I told my friend that I thought Phil must be part Neanderthal because of the shape of his head, I’m crying right now.

This is officially the best thing to come out of this video now

Also people who know more about these kind of tests, about the 0,1% african: is that something that shows up in everybody's test, as in we all share common anchestors from sub-saharan africa, or is it actually a hint of him having somebody from that region in his family tree some way back?

[bee]

I'd love it if he actually traced back his ancestors to figure out who they were, I think more people would enjoy that, but it's not that easy and I'm pretty sure takes some time. It's impossible to trace everything back to the one female ancestor we all share, but the more famous your ancestors were, the farther back you can go. I envy royalty, they know a huge amount of their ancestors!

He didn't really mention the part with the information on lineage from the male and female line, but there you can go up to thousands of years ago. So you can see the migration routes and places of origin and everything. Maybe Phil wasn't into that as much, and it takes some time figuring that map&information out, or thought his audience wouldn't care. BUT IT'S SO COOL AND INTERESTING I'm jealous
/sorry nerd out

[offtopic]Really,? That's so cool! I need to take this test too. My curiosity will be the death of me. I don't want the government to have my DNA but I want to know. Argh! [/offtopic]

ohh I know! Also it's not cheap either which is a shame. Though I guess it's really not a necessary test to have done haha. I wish Phil showed more of his results from this so I could research *excited*

Believe it or not but once when we were both studying anthropology I told my friend that I thought Phil must be part Neanderthal because of the shape of his head, I’m crying right now.

This is officially the best thing to come out of this video now

Also people who know more about these kind of tests, about the 0,1% african: is that something that shows up in everybody's test, as in we all share common anchestors from sub-saharan africa, or is it actually a hint of him having somebody from that region in his family tree some way back?

If these are the results from the ancestry/ethnicity DNA test (it's called autosomal DNA test, which is a different DNA test than the one I talked about above). The results from this have a range of about 7 generations I believe, a few hundred years. So yes to the latter part!

---

Hmm

[Waggle9007]

Believe it or not but once when we were both studying anthropology I told my friend that I thought Phil must be part Neanderthal because of the shape of his head, I’m crying right now.

This is officially the best thing to come out of this video now

Also people who know more about these kind of tests, about the 0,1% african: is that something that shows up in everybody's test, as in we all share common anchestors from sub-saharan africa, or is it actually a hint of him having somebody from that region in his family tree some way back?

[offtopic]I assume it's to do with the maternal mitochondrial DNA linked back to mitochondrial Eve, so I guess everyone would have it. Had it been even 1%, that would have been interesting, because that suggests a slightly more recent relation, but considering it's <0.1% it's definitely either just 'background noise' or 1-2 genes on the tip of 1 chromosome. It's likely that different genetic tests wouldn't even pick it up [/offtopic]

As a second year med student looking at medical genetics, I was so so excited by the title of the video...it was my 2 favourite things: d+p and genetics! I mean...I don't know what I was expecting, Phil's as white as they come Even so, I was kinda meh about the video. I didn't hate it (although the bit where he said his various body parts were from different countries pissed me off to no end. I'm no fun...sue me ) but it definitely wasn't my favourite of his. All in all, probably won't watch it again, but holy crap am I looking forward to the live show tonight!!