Daniel & Phil Part 44: This isn't a forever home

[vincentian]

Agree that the name change didn't need a main channel video, which I'm afraid will fulfill Dan video quota for May as Playlist and traveling is coming All hype & teasing on social media is hilarious though! Maybe Dan just thought the 2017 memes were getting a bit sour and threw people a bone in the form of his re-brand. Dani Snot On Fire is stuck in my head now.

Do we think Phil is already in Florida? I think he might be judging from the time of his last tweet (presuming he tweeted in the morning).

[mysterylovescompany]

I can get used to "Daniel Howell". I think it's not as silly as it might sound. He's not retroactively changing anything, after all: he's acknowledging that "danisnotonfire" was what he was once known as, and so it's on merch and the book, but at the same time, he's saying that he wants to move on from it. Which is cool.

I think the reason for Daniel instead of Dan was a thoroughly thought-out choice; he and Phil are generally stringent about separating public lives from private. Daniel Howell isn't the 'real' him, but he now feels it represents his public self more than danisnotonfire does.

I did like that the petition he signed was mentioned. We were wondering about that ages ago.

[DatCog]

I'm happy for him that he wants to move on from his old branding. As a newer fan, I always found the placenta llama stuff a bit cringe so I'm totally into the new 2017 Daniel Howell! I'm glad he made a video which was an entertaining 7.39 minutes and wish him all the best.

Move - done
Rebrand - done
Secret project - ??? time to start speculating

[spider]

Thinking about Dan and trends as well, I know everyone praises Dan for embracing his curls as him accepting himself more buuut I'm pretty sure I remember him saying that part of the reason that he is rocking his natural hair rn is that it's just a trendy thing right now and that when it isn't anymore he might straighten his hair back to death again? He seems very vulnerable to whatever is cool lately. idk despite Daniel being his actual real name I'm not sure this rebrand is in any way more timeless because of how inspired it seems to be by trends.

Dan always does things because he wants to and makes excuses because he is insecure. He became more confident with his curls and he is keeping them because like he said his straight hair was flat and he had to fix it a lot. But he thinks he has to defend himself by saying curls are trendy.

Like quietphan said his name was always Daniel Howell on Facebook. danisnotonfire was like a different person from who he is in reality especially in 2017.

I'll miss the ending noise and flame graphic most, I think.

same! i was actually happy for 0.5 seconds when it still showed up, only for my hopes to be crushed immediately. now i have a horrifying vision of a connorfranta-esque cursive "Daniel Howell" showing up to ukulele music and whistling. but i'm also looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, and if maybe the inception noise will stay at least.

Watched Dan for years and will not miss danisnotonfire except for his ending screen. If his new ending is pastel and soft and neat or has any ukulele I will unsubscribe before he can say 'Daniel Howell'.

[capybantsa]

Oh gosh, so I was gonna make a post about this in the thread the other day but I forgot. Now I wish I had done it, because this would seem much more impressive

I'm an amateur psychic and I've been having psychic dreams about D&P, especially D. That's actually why I've gotten into them so much recently (as much as I am anyway). The dreams made me interested in observing them more.

I can tell you other stuff if you're interested, but the major themes for Daniel in the dreams have been him struggling over his public identity, not having a clear idea of what direction he wants his career to go in, feeling low self-worth/self-esteem, struggling over whether or not to be explicit about his sexual orientation, and just the other night (the one I was gonna post about), deciding to trust/be real with the phandom more and start what I now realize to be rebranding (in the dream he was messing around with usernames and different types of videos, don't know why I didn't realize it meant rebranding lol I'm terrible at this psychic thing please end me).

I also got in the most recent dream that he does in fact browse and post on some forums incognito but

[morbit]

It's interesting how much this resembles the rebranding Shane Dawson did by getting rid of his fringe. It had the same build-up: talking for a year or two about how much he hated that hair, that it didn't suit him as an adult, that it was an old comfort thing. And then he finally cut it off and did a video about it, a sort of 'homage' wrapped in self depricating jokes.

I liked Dan's video. It felt like he was finally taking off an uncomfortable sweater. Not sure I like that he rebranded to 'Daniel' though, but that's just my personal taste. He's Dan to me so Daniel Howell doesn't have the same ring to it in my opinion.

I'm just waiting until Phil does the same thing. They have a joint brand after all and probably want their usernames to fit together. Usually it's Phil that makes a type of video first that Dan "copies", but then again Phil has never expressed any remorse about his username. But honestly his username was never as cringey. Maybe he won't ever change his channel name, but for some reason I'm hoping for him to change it to Phil Lester.

I've been watching Dan for some time now, before he started backtracking from the placenta/maltesers/delia smith/lol random thing and I feel like he grew out of it at the same time I did. I liked it at the time because lol random things was still clickable before cringe culture took over. I hope Dan moves past that part as well. Sure we all like self depricating jokes now, but it's almost time to get rid of that too. That's the only thing I didn't like about the new video. Sure, he said that he wants to be proud of the past and not delete the videos, which I like, but he still doesn't seem to fully embrace it.

Regarding the tabinof/tatinof/pinof thing I don't see a problem with it. For new viewers, the first thing they'll see when they watch older videos of Dan's is his old branding and the "danisnotonfire" end screen. It's like when a band has different eras depending on their albums. It's just a new way of being known/famous, and I think it'll work the same way. Some fans will be sad they missed out on that era, others will embrace that this is who he is now and prefer it to the old stuff. And for those of us who's been around for the whole thing there will be split opinions, but I think we're all just sucked into it enough to stick around regardless.

//sorry this got long. i never post and i had a lot of thoughts about this.

[captainspacecoat]

As usual I am late to the party, but I just wanted to say that I'm really happy for him that he changed his username! I agree with others that have said he didn't really have a choice BUT to make a video about it - can you imagine the uproar if he'd just gone ahead and changed his name to 'Daniel Howell'?

I think he handled the video really well - it was the perfect length and the editing was snappy (for some reason the Taylor Swift flashbacks really made me laugh) - it reminded me that he genuinely can make entertaining and clever videos (in my opinion). And it didn't come across as condescending at all to me (and I'm usually very sensitive to condescending-liveshow-Daniel), just straight-forward and honest for the most part. Also where was the dig at Phil(/AmazingPhil)? That didn't register to me.

But yeah, to me this seems like something he needed to do for his own happiness/sanity. I think he'd genuinely outgrown the old branding and I understand why he was embarrassed to be associated with it, so if changing his username makes him feel more comfortable/authentic then that's fine by me!

Dan always does things because he wants to and makes excuses because he is insecure. He became more confident with his curls and he is keeping them because like he said his straight hair was flat and he had to fix it a lot. But he thinks he has to defend himself by saying curls are trendy.

Completely agree with this! I think Dan embracing his curls was less about keeping up with trends than Dan makes it out to be, and is part of Dan maturing over the last few years and becoming somewhat more comfortable with himself. I think it's evident that he's grown a lot and that he was deeply uncomfortable/insecure with elements of his personality/appearance in the past, and just because he's changed now doesn't mean that that insecurity has entirely gone away.

I'm the same in that I always downplay things and make excuses for fear of judgment, and while I'm not trying to project or anything I do see that in Dan. While he will likely shake up his appearance again in the future (as humans tend to do), I do think Dan keeping his hair curly is more reflective of Dan genuinely starting to embrace different aspects of himself that he has previously tried to suppress than of him trying to keep up with trends.

[gnostic]

Well clearly the only thing we have left is for Daniel and Philipp to get hitched late summer and IDB is gonna be 3/3 for this year's predictions

[AmazingOCD]

Well clearly the only thing we have left is for Daniel and Philipp to get hitched late summer and IDB is gonna be 3/3 for this year's predictions

Honestly, with just how well IDB has predicted everything lately, I can see that happening.
(In my dreams)

[bluewho]

felucca

Thoughts that relate to this. So one of the reasons for the change to Daniel that he gave in his video is that it sounds 'softer'. He's been all about this soft trend crap lately and I wonder what will happen when the internet collectively moves on from it. Stuck with the soft Daniel name but ban all the soft colors in his closet just like how he banned the leather? Thinking about Dan and trends as well, I know everyone praises Dan for embracing his curls as him accepting himself more buuut I'm pretty sure I remember him saying that part of the reason that he is rocking his natural hair rn is that it's just a trendy thing right now and that when it isn't anymore he might straighten his hair back to death again? He seems very vulnerable to whatever is cool lately. idk despite Daniel being his actual real name I'm not sure this rebrand is in any way more timeless because of how inspired it seems to be by trends.

I do agree that he probably started thinking about the name 'Daniel' because he had to use it for his Daniel-Dream-X character. But just because it's inspired by a trend doesn’t mean it can't be a genuine reflection of who he is, it doesn't mean he can't genuinely identify with it. In terms of what he himself has said about why he likes it:

I think along with the 'softness' trends comes a lot of fashion that would stereotypically be troped as feminine but which Dan genuinely likes, like the glittery nails, pastel colours, a general attitude of calm contemplation and an appreciation of the beauty in the moment of things (?)
These are all things I think Dan genuinely identifies with - not confining your fashion choices based on gender norms, and he's always stopping to appreciate the taste of some ice cream or the smell of some candle. So I think in this way he thinks the name 'Daniel' reflects him more as he associates it with these things. He also says he thinks it sounds more sophisticated, and I think he associates this with paerhaps being more philosophical and political and generally knowledgeable (?). All things he would identify with his new self, or the person he would like to be now. He even says 'I love it'. To me 'love' is pretty strong. 'Love' to me suggests he feels pretty strongly that he likes that, that he identifies with it.

in the dream he kept rejecting different aspects of his personality and Phil kept trying to hand him different objects that belonged to Dan but Dan wouldn't have them.

I'm on team already missing the fuck out of the cringy 2006 branding. Llamas or not it was a good branding. But I get it, too.

I do get the impression that some of Dan's loathing of his own branding relates in some way to his low self esteem. It seems somewhat of an overreaction to me when he's talking about deleting his old videos etc, and his peculiar reaction to 'Hello internet'. The old branding had cringey aspects, like llamas and placenta and all I wear is black etc, but these were almost just small jokes that were peripheral to content that was actually pretty funny. Old Dan was a nice person, I quite liked him and I don't think he quite deserves all the flack he gets.
Anyway Dan may again turn around and decide that this new phase is also cringey for being too pretentious or w/e and similarly decide 'everything must go', and regret his name change. So I agree Catallena that his love for the name change may not be timeless.

where was the dig at Phil(/AmazingPhil)? That didn't register to me.

+1

[shoe]

i also enjoyed the video as a whole! i don't quite understand where the "condescending dan" view comes from. he's super sarcastic, and pokes fun at everything (including himself), but i don't ever feel like he's talking down to me. i'm ready for the rise of wholesome howell! (on a side note, there should totally be wholesome howell/lighthearted lester emoticons. anywhere to suggest this?)

We have an emoticons thread for that very purpose!

[Ashling Rae]

Im not going to lie, when I first saw the notification, I thought "He really f-ing did it." I'm glad he changed his username 1. for his sanity and 2. for the fact that I won't feel like I have to tell people I'm a fan of "danisnotonfire" anymore. Lol. Maybe I'll just start referring to them as Dan Howell and Phil Lester. All of his reasons were totally fair.

I do sort of cringe at "Daniel Howell" just because they both end with the "el" sound and that sounds bad to me. But whatever, it's his name.

I will say I had a particularly heartbreaking dream last night that when they said duplex, they actually meant two separate, but connected apartments, and that they were no longer technically living together. I was a bit sad at the thought, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

[auri]

Now that I've slept and have some thoughts about this, I think I'm ready to ramble about stuff. Bear with me.

I think I've been waiting for some kind of rebranding since 2014, at least from 2015. At some point, as I realized Dan is actually older than I am (three years aren't that much, yes, but it is still three years) and all of the "I only wear black and have existential crises three times a day and lay face down in the corridor" stuff just started to sound very very odd to me. The dinof persona started to be very different character from DAPG!Dan and I preferred DAPG!Dan over dinof!Dan. I never disliked dinof!Dan, but the contrast between DAPG!Dan was just too clear for me. Sometimes it's actually hard to me to realize that dinof and DAPG!Dan are the same person. Or the Dan he acts like when he's in Phil's channel is also dinof. You get what I'm trying to say?

For months and months I liked AmazingPhil channel so much more than dinof, even though dinof was the channel that got me into them back in 2010. But I felt like Phil acted the same way in all the videos and he doesn't have such a strong difference in his AP-persona compared to other Phil personas. I think dinof started to give me so much secondhand embarrassment that it started to be hard to enjoy it. But yeaah, even if this is only chancing his name and burying the llamas and stuff like that. But I really like that also existential crisis is burning in the new header. I love Dan, I do, but I'm very happy about this new chapter. And I really hope it will chance the content even a little bit.

Aaanyway. In the new video the way Dan said "as you may have seen on the AmazingPhil channel, Phil and I are moving out", sounded to me like, as it has been for some time now, AP is a joint channel for them. Like all of their channels just happen to be both of them. Might also just be my broken english and weird goggles I've been wearing lately but...

I am enjoying Daniel Howell already, to me it sounds very nice and soft and reminds me of how I only used my shortened nickname from my actual name everywhere, until I kind of grew up and decided to go with my actual, nine-lettered given name. (It actually happened around the same time I stopped straightening my hair, too.... Am I Dan?)

[fancybum]

Is this the most pretentious response possible to this, or is it nice and normal and I'm just on a negativity bender? Dan liked it, so good for them both. But retroactively changing anything relating to dinof (when that was what he was known as at the time) is stupid and he literally didn't ask for it anyway? Or I guess even if it's a nice gesture, 'I respect your choice' just sounds so overly serious, like fucking relax Jack. Just sucking the fun out of the room as usual wanting everything to be 'professional' and boring on YT.

/lol I'm so annoyed about everything. I hope Phil does just start calling him Daniel forever because apparently we live in the twilight zone now. All because someone changed a screen name.

[Ilovethemohyesido]

I think it loses the purpose if others youtubers change the name of their collab videos with Dan. Dan has pretty much said that he doesn't regret it but he has outgrown it. If they change the name of the collabs it would mean that the «old» Dan does the same content as this Dan.

[spider]

I'm just waiting until Phil does the same thing. They have a joint brand after all and probably want their usernames to fit together. Usually it's Phil that makes a type of video first that Dan "copies", but then again Phil has never expressed any remorse about his username. But honestly his username was never as cringey. Maybe he won't ever change his channel name, but for some reason I'm hoping for him to change it to Phil Lester.

+1 waiting for Phil Lester branding. AmazingPhil is juvenile for a 30 year old man and it makes me cringe. But maybe we should not hope too much until he changes his hair too please.

[VengefulBlue]

on the one hand, amazingphil is a very juveline channel name. but on the other hand, that's like saying phil should "act his age", which . it seems like saying that now he's 30, he isn't allowed to be silly, and i disagree with the basic idea behind that. (as anyone on twitter might have seen yesterday )

that said, i do hope his main channel persona shifts in the direction of his dapg persona. i would be cool with his name changing, but it doesn't feel as necessary? he doesn't seem to mind that it sets him aside as a 'youtube dinosaur'. that's what non-name channels indicate to me, that the person set up their channel before youtube and google were linked the way they are now.

edit: but if he doesn't change his hair in some way, i'll die

[rizzo]

Dan and Phil sound like generic radio presenters (go figure)... but Daniel and Phil, sound like the cute gay couple that just moved into your same building and always give you a friendly wave when they take their dog out for a walk.

I'm literally posting just to applaud this because it's hilarious and so adorably true. Bless.

[peekatyou]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but his personal facebook (the one linked to spotify) has always been Daniel Howell. So I suppose he's always used Daniel in some capacity, just not necessarily with us.

His Facebook name was danisnotonfire though? Or are you talking about some other page I don't know about? In the live show from January 24th at around 30:06 he talks about how he “got them to change his name to Dan Howell” - I've just checked it 'cause I was beginning to feel I dreamt it. A little before that he said he thought people on Facebook were still quite articulate – “cause it’s maybe something to do with their name”, whereas with tumblr and twitter and instagram, especially when you go to the celebrities’ pages, it's mainly just people screaming in caps lock.

P.S. I like the name Daniel. Awesome.

[captainspacecoat]

His Facebook name was danisnotonfire though? Or are you talking about some other page I don't know about?

I think they were talking about his personal Facebook, not his public 'danisnotonfire' page for fans to like. In the younow Dan's talking about his public fb, not his private one. The Facebook he uses in his own personal life (which is linked to his public spotify) is Daniel Howell

[VengefulBlue]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but his personal facebook (the one linked to spotify) has always been Daniel Howell. So I suppose he's always used Daniel in some capacity, just not necessarily with us.

His Facebook name was danisnotonfire though? Or are you talking about some other page I don't know about?

his fan page was danisnotonfire, but his personal fb, which is linked to his spotify, is daniel howell

edit: captainspacecoat got there first

[peekatyou]

His Facebook name was danisnotonfire though? Or are you talking about some other page I don't know about?

I think they were talking about his personal Facebook, not his public 'danisnotonfire' page for fans to like. In the younow Dan's talking about his public fb, not his private one. The Facebook he uses in his own personal life (which is linked to his public spotify) is Daniel Howell

Oh okay, thanks for clearing that up! VengefulBlue, thank you too.

[onetruetrash]

on the one hand, amazingphil is a very juveline channel name. but on the other hand, that's like saying phil should "act his age", which . it seems like saying that now he's 30, he isn't allowed to be silly, and i disagree with the basic idea behind that. (as anyone on twitter might have seen yesterday )

Did something happen? I don't go on Twitter much, so I didn't see what happened.

[Birdie]

New channel name? Okay. No, I like it. I'm a bit surprised he went for Daniel instead of Dan too but I get his reasoning behind it, even though I don't necessarily think Dan sounds less professional than Daniel but if that's how he sees it, I get why he decided to use his full name. Being introduced to celebrities outside of Youtube, like Taylor Swift, as your random quirky Youtube screenname must be mortifying, especially when you don't connect with that screenname anymore.

Btw, I don't think AmazingPhil is that cringy or juvenile at all. It's just him, I think it still fits him quite well and I agree that being 30 doesn't mean he needs to "act his age" now. Phil hasn't outgrown his older content as much as Dan(iel) has so I personally don't see a reason for him to rebrand at this point. Maybe he will though, if it's what he wants, he'll let us know soon enough.

[VengefulBlue]

on the one hand, amazingphil is a very juveline channel name. but on the other hand, that's like saying phil should "act his age", which . it seems like saying that now he's 30, he isn't allowed to be silly, and i disagree with the basic idea behind that. (as anyone on twitter might have seen yesterday )

Did something happen? I don't go on Twitter much, so I didn't see what happened.

idk if it's just the corner of the phandom i've found myself in , so it's under a spoiler

basically i've inadvertantly followed a few underage phans, so it could have been limited to them. but someone tweeted that adults being fans of dnp is creepy, and they got a lot of shit about it. later they clarified they meant 'stanning', not just enjoying their content (and i'm old enough that i didn't know what that meant). but it was just the latest in a string of people feeling that adults should only enjoy content geared towards them, and/or that dnp (especially phil) are 'creepy' for making content for younger audiences.