yes to that, dan teach me your ways, i would love to know how to talk about stuff that affects me directly without outing myself without meaning to each time (yes that's an actual problem i face lol)phamnotof wrote:I adore this moment and yeah, it does feel significant to me. And I must too praise his ability to talk about something like this and not directly adress it as either an "us" or "them" thing - that takes some skill. But as someone also riding that rainbow, the way he speaks so warmly of it & the insight he provides feels very involved. Not many people in privileged groups have that amount of empathy and understanding, no matter how well-meaning they are.oqua wrote:Hi! This is a very interesting post, thanks! I feel like I never watched that liveshow all the way through or something? Idk, when I listened to the part you linked just now it seemed totally unfamiliar to me, and I'm pretty sure that if I'd heard it before I would have remembered it because it's really intriguing.sia wrote:Hello everyone, I'm just another first time poster. Sorry for changing the topic, but there is just something that I feel went a bit under the radar in march about Dan (yay for another bingo topic).
I'm also suspecting like a lot of people here Dan is doing some kind of slow coming out lately but for me personally this has been the strongest piece of evidence. I mean I like all man attraction mentions like the next person, but lets be real; a lot of male and female straight celebrities/youtubers talk about being attracted to same sex people and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people are just universally beautiful for whatever reason. So yeah I'm talking about this particular tumblr post in combination with this mention in a liveshow.
http://danisnotonfire.tumblr.com/post/1 ... c-teenager
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIAkEEvhrSI from 8:50 onward
And yes Dan is not being direct in this two mentions and he is being very sneaky as usual but I just feel that in combination they basically confirm that he considers himself part of LGBT+. So we can see from the tumblr post black-on-white that he is indeed thinking about his personal experiences when he later talks about it in the liveshow. Because he never elaborates that there. And you can see how bloody careful is with his word choices. I actually believe his leprechaun mention is also connected with the whole rainbow thing. So how I understand this whole thing is that as little as five years ago (and 2012 is slowly becoming almost 5 years ago) he felt confused and needed a community where he would feel accepted for who he is no matter what color of the rainbow, so basically not straight. And what is especially interesting to me is how he then proceeds to talk about how real life is not like the internet; how homophobia is still present to this day (and throws that probably in there) and it just got me thinking if he is talking about some specific situation he himself is still in to this day.
I have no opinion on what kind of community tumblr actually is and I also feel that is kind of irrelevant in this situation because like every social media you see on tumblr what you want to see. So I would love to here your opinions because this is something that I've been thinking about for some time now and I just waited for things to become a little calmer around here. I am in no way expert in the whole coming out thing, so please correct me if you feel I've been wrong in any way.
I do want to point out that this liveshow was on March 15th, two days before St. Patrick's Day, so that might explain why rainbows and leprechauns were on his mind...since rainbows and leprechauns are kind of the symbols of St. Patrick's Day haha. That being said, he's talking about communities and people being supportive of people on the fringes of society and then he mentions rainbows? It does seem significant, in spite of the proximity to St. Patrick's Day.
Personally I don't think he says anything that could really be counted as confirmation that he "considers himself part of LGBT+". You're totally right about how "bloody careful is with his word choices" lol; it's kind of amazing how he manages to talk for so long yet avoid ever giving specifics. But then again... like, what else could he be talking about, when you get down to it? Since he's a white male, I feel like it pretty much has to be gender/sexuality stuff or mental health stuff. And there are little things, like his repetition of the word "positivity" and the fact that he alludes to racism and homophobia (as opposed to, say, social stigma about mental health), that make me feel like his comments do apply more to sexuality than they do to mental health. But obviously he's being very vague and general, and probably trying to say things that apply to all of his viewers, not (necessarily) to himself in particular.
Basically I don't think it's possible to come to any definitive conclusions, and ultimately we don't have any way of knowing what was actually going through his head as he was talking, but there's some fascinating stuff embedded in there all the same.
I transcribed the liveshow comments below... because I just process things better when they're typed out haha.
(13 March 2016)
Tumblr post -
i wish i had tumblr when i was a neurotic teenager don’t take this community for granted okay
(15 March 2016)
YouNow quote -
Chat: “Hope you’re okay; your tumblr post was deep.”
Dan: “Was it deep? I suppose so. But I think it’s, like, erm, what I was saying… was… even like — When did Tumblr become like a proper thing? Like 2010? 2011? When did Tumblr like really become trendy, not like come into existence? — But anyway, like, even like five years ago, there weren’t really… I mean there was like Myspace and Bebo and Facebook, but they were all lame social networks, and like Myspace was full of idiots and like Bebo was full of chavs and Facebook was boring like it is… But Tumblr — the general community vibe of Tumblr is very positive, and supportive, and kind, and now there’s this website where people can spend all of their time where there’s just a lot of positivity and like the general majority of the community encourages kind of these positive messages of support, and especially all the people on the fringes of society that need communities to find support — that’s, you know, a good— that’s what the majority of Tumblr is for. And…erm… there wasn’t anything like that, even like five years ago or ten years ago, so to everyone who was like ‘I feel like I’m a weirdo’ for… any of the ten billion reasons why we’re all… leprechauns… er… there wasn’t really anywhere… where there was an overwhelming amount of people that kind of reflected this positivity at you? Whereas now, no matter what… color of the rainbow, weird, you know, corner of the planet that you’re on, you can go onto this website called Tumblr and there will be a huge community of people that will be there for you to relate to — was what I was saying. That’s just cool. So if you ever— ‘cause we’re all in a bubble sometimes, of social media, where we’re like ‘What? We live in a world now where nobody’s racist or homophobic or whatever’… No, it’s like, the majority of people on Tumblr are, you know, progressive when it comes to these issues [laughs] but, you know, the general scope of the world is probably pretty horrific still, unfortunately. Erm, and that’s what… I mean, it’s not just Tumblr. Obviously, like, Twitter… And the YouTube community, like, you know, the actual creator community, the people that go to conventions, they’re all very kind; they’re the same group of people… So it’s just saying, like… don’t take it for granted.”
Catallena I love your posts, some great insights & yeah, I've been thinking along those this for quite a while, too. It's a part of why despite being European & definitely wanting to see the show live, I'd actually prefer they ended TATINOF in the US.
i love that liveshow moment and it is indeed very telling as you guys said, he clearly feels involved directly and as a white male from a first world country there's not much he could be talking about that isn't sexuality, maybe mental health yeah, but sadly that goes hand in hand with being queer lots of the time
what he said also made me think a lot about the influence tumblr had on me as a teenager, and i can easily say tumblr saved me from my own sexuality crisis (made my first tumblr in 2010 at 15, started figuring out i was bi in 2011) and i don't really want to think about how that would have gone if i didn't have that support network, so yeah i loved that he brought that up and made me realize how lucky i am in that aspect (well, early days tumblr was also toxic af and gave an eating disorder and encouraged self harm, but it did still help me, and it's a better place now and teens now are getting an even better community and i'm happy for them)








