Dan & Phil Part 77: getting that d........vitamin

[autumnhearth]

I don’t think they indicated when the next ls would be, just that the Rize give away would happen next time... as they have been saying for quite some time now. I had a dream the other night that Phil tweeted he would be going live on Rize, like as a solo ls, which doesn’t even make sense.

Couldn’t Phil just pop an allergy pill to be with teh kitties?

[alittledizzy]

Ooh so they're back in the editing suite. I know Phil said they were sitting in for the sound and color grading, and I was really hopeful they'd continue giving us updates throughout!

[Catallena]

Hm. I hope they'll be completely done with the movie soon to get focus back on YouTube...

I just randomly had a look at DAPG and the views on the gaming channel are REALLY down atm. And I'm not saying 'compared to their 2015-16 peak' I mean, compared to literally 6 months ago. I wonder if it's because of the close connection with the main channels which are inactive right now. People are less likely to get gaming videos recommended to them since there's no other D&P content to watch, and inconsistent uploads makes the algorithm work against them even harder.

We've debated about the future of the main channels lots, but now I'm kinda wondering about DAPG. They obviously like doing it, but the phandom is not really delivering on views rn and gaming is not top content on YouTube anymore. If D&P keep up their 'once in a blue moon and whenever we feel like it' schedule for the main channels, I think DAPG might not be able to sustain itself and become unprofitable. And while I have good faith that Phil will get back into the saddle, his numbers for solo videos are down too. Dan was always the strongest link in the trinity, but will he still be after his disappearance?

I hope they'll be able to crawl out of this somewhat sudden downward spiral soon, but they need to get to work asap to do it. Not wait until Spooky Week. They really missed a chance by not doing a good play through of a popular game that gets people invested and returning to the channel during tour. The easy flash games and stuff are all fun enough, but when I look at what was uploaded during tour it definitely has vibe of 'yeah we're a bit busy rn so here's a game i guess lol #buytickets' and taking their audience for granted while other fandoms are rising.

Am I making a blatant attempt at stirring up a debate because I'm bored? Maybe.

But hey if no one's watching free videos no one's gonna be paying for that tour movie either :') Especially if Dan returns to his main channel only to spon something yet again. Some people weren't pleased about that tour trailer either and he had only been gone for 3 months by then. It's double that now.

[alittledizzy]

Hm. I hope they'll be completely done with the movie soon to get focus back on YouTube...

I just randomly had a look at DAPG and the views on the gaming channel are REALLY down atm. And I'm not saying 'compared to their 2015-16 peak' I mean, compared to literally 6 months ago. I wonder if it's because of the close connection with the main channels which are inactive right now. People are less likely to get gaming videos recommended to them since there's no other D&P content to watch, and inconsistent uploads makes the algorithm work against them even harder.

We've debated about the future of the main channels lots, but now I'm kinda wondering about DAPG. They obviously like doing it, but the phandom is not really delivering on views rn and gaming is not top content on YouTube anymore. If D&P keep up their 'once in a blue moon and whenever we feel like it' schedule for the main channels, I think DAPG might not be able to sustain itself and become unprofitable. And while I have good faith that Phil will get back into the saddle, his numbers for solo videos are down too. Dan was always the strongest link in the trinity, but will he still be after his disappearance?

I hope they'll be able to crawl out of this somewhat sudden downward spiral soon, but they need to get to work asap to do it. Not wait until Spooky Week. They really missed a chance by not doing a good play through of a popular game that gets people invested and returning to the channel during tour. The easy flash games and stuff are all fun enough, but when I look at what was uploaded during tour it definitely has vibe of 'yeah we're a bit busy rn so here's a game i guess lol #buytickets' and taking their audience for granted while other fandoms are rising.

Am I making a blatant attempt at stirring up a debate because I'm bored? Maybe.

But hey if no one's watching free videos no one's gonna be paying for that tour movie either :') Especially if Dan returns to his main channel only to spon something yet again. Some people weren't pleased about that tour trailer either and he had only been gone for 3 months by then. It's double that now.

I actually don't think this would happen. I think it takes a whole lot for a youtube channel to be literally unprofitable. They have almost no overhead; the platform is free to use for them, and they're absolutely guaranteed to make back whatever they put into purchasing a game package or buying a game outright.

I don't think the lowered views are that drastic. Anyone can look at the latest financial figures that dropped for them a few days ago (it's public record) and they doubled their income between their two primary/individual channels between 2016 and 2017. Literally - AmazingPhil and Dan Howell Ltds both doubled. Even if they take a hit in 2018 from the channels, we know they're supplementing that with tour ticket sales, tour merch sales, and two solo merch line sales.

I think people also over-estimate in general how many views a youtuber needs in order to stay not only profitable but very successful. There are people with 100k subs out there making an actual living off of it. There are people like Anthony Padilla and Tyler Oakley, who barely gets 100k views on a video despite having over millions of subs who are gonna be doing just fine financially for a long time and don't seem to have any plans of not doing youtube even if their incomes stem from youtube-associated projects and not direct channel views anymore. Their incomes are a lot more diversified than I think is easy for a lot of us to grasp since most of us just have the kind of situation where we do one job, we get one paycheck. Dan and Phil - and most top tier youtubers - are already in the position where just having money makes them money. So the whole argument of views is almost more of an ego thing than a genuine worry. Not that vanity issues can't still be stressful, perception matters to everyone no matter what they say, but imo I don't think Dan and Phil have made bad choices financially or for their future financial security.

That said I do of course hope they come back with something big on the gaming channel soon. I'm not so sure a series is the answer - I think in their eyes it probably doesn't seem smart because when they did do series' before it never retained views from one part of the next. I'm sure we can argue lots of reasons, like with Undertale how long between uploads, etc. But retrospective numbers still don't indicate that a series would do better for them, it indicates it would just hit a point of diminishing returns almost immediately. I'm also sure that if Adsense stopped giving them what they consider reasonable for the effort they put in (lol) they could just open up to more sponsored content. (Hopefully they won't - but like, damn, Shane Dawson is rolling in views and he still doesn't breathe without both the inhale and the exhale being sponsored by different companies.)

Semi-related: the vanity aspect in terms of phandom wanting their faves to still look like the most popular would be fixable if phandom weren't so fragmented, I think. Other fandoms are cohesive enough that they'll set up watch parties or all try to view a specific video at the right time in order to boost views. I mean, if Dan can tweet about moths and get 78k likes imagine if those people could center themselves around something other than Dan and Phil's direct words long enough to give flagging videos a boost of 78k views in one go. It wouldn't take doing that many days in a row for videos to hit a million views. But it would also probably take someone like UpdatedPhan broadcasting it for anyone to pay attention because short of... actually Dan and Phil there's no real other source for reaching that many phans at once. And even UpdatedPhan has limited reach, because for example their last instagram post has 360,000 likes. I mean, instagram phandom trying to do a timed group watch once a day would take no time to get a video to millions, but who even knows how to communicate with instagram phandom. Literally, someone tell me, I have no idea.

Final note: Their game choices and gaming not being top content on youtube does definitely have something to do with flagging views, but some of it legitimately is youtube itself. I just checked, I got no notification (no pop up, no email) for the Pong video and it did not show up in my subscription box. I knew there was a video posted because of social media, otherwise I'd have had no idea.

[opendoor]

Ya the last two videos especially have really low viewcounts! I think it's the algorithm. Interesting that the inactivity on their solo channels might be affecting it. I feel like they can get it together, they've obviously been pretty distracted by the tour.

Someone said this on here a while ago, but I think they should do some sort of conclusion for dan vs phil . Like a finals contest or something. Maybe when they fill up the board- they're getting close. They could start a new round/competition after, but it'd be nice for it to go somewhere.

[glitterintheair]

I genuinely believe that if they were worried about their views they would have definitely taken action already. I agree that gaming especially is not the most popular thing on youtube anymore - i remember some months ago jacksepticeye tweeting about how youtube is not that great at the moment for gamers - but dnp clearly still love making those videos.

Honestly, other than the inactivy of their solo channels (btw, i'm reaaaaally starting to miss Phil's solo content, please Phil deliver), I wonder if not having an upload schedule is affecting them as well. The other youtubers I follow all have one, or at least they let people know beforehand when they intend to upload. Maybe that could help a little to let everybody know that a video is coming and catch their interest in an immediate way. Phil has done that sometime for his main channel videos, iirc.

[hello9217]

Low views on the last video make since because, as phil himself said in the video, a video less than 10 minutes is not favored by the algorithm and therefore will not be recommended to people. I recently started watching this youtuber and youtube decided to put one of his videos on trending and reccomend it a lot and he gained over 170,000 subscribers, making him get over 1 million total, and that video got 5 million views, and now his videos hit a million when they upload. They usually at most would get 600k. He even said in the video where he was talking about it that he had no idea what he did to favor the algorithm but he’s happy youtube is recommending him. Its kind of crazy that youtube has this much power to make someones channel or to make someones channel disappear.

[flarequake]

I don’t have anything to contribute, but the comment about Shane Dawson’s many spons made me so does walking past my deppy calendar, that photo is so funny. I wonder how much some companies spend on spons across all the people they work with. Skillshare seems to be endless, can hardly move on art youtube without it.

[snokoplasmic]

I genuinely believe that if they were worried about their views they would have definitely taken action already.

This has always been the thing that makes me not worry about their views -- as bad as it may look to us, I'm certain that they're smart enough to know if they're really going downhill, and that if they were, they would be doing at least something to fix it -- which they don't seem to be doing. That's what makes me believe that everything is fine on their end, that views have been quite obviously dropping but it doesn't seem like it's any bump in the road for them besides people looking at them and being like "lol dan and phil's careers are dying"

[wiccamoody]

I agree with everyone saying that they would have taken action by now, and like @alittledizzy said, they're not hurting at all. I know I was actually pretty shocked to see their individual companies more than double in income from 2016 last year, and factoring in tour and all the youtubers IRL's worked with (including deps own individual merch) over the past year, they're doing extremely well (if you want to feel bad about the status of your bank account, here's Dan and Phil's individual returns from last year). Pretty set for that forever home and dog I guess.

[Ataraxia25]

[Ablissa]

While Phil is sat home, Dan was fetching loads of pizza, apparently?
(@Ataraxia25 beat me to posting the tweet )

I hope he's okay, I guess he hadn't had time to focus on his mental health for the past few months and it must be catching up to him now.

[LtrllySusan]

@Ablissa, I think he was just the one opening the door and taking it from the delivery person. Phil has said before that he doesn't like that so much. (I can relate)

It's sad but I'm not surprised Dan isn't doing amazingly, especially considering the tweets of the last days. But it's great of him to actually address it and open up more in that regard.

[Ataraxia25]

haha i'm sorry @Ablissa
im kinda worried for him (even tho, i'm sure he knows what's best for him and all)
also : WHY did he freaking go and get the pizzas ? why not have them delivered?

also, i know he fills the void but i hope for his stomach that there's one pizza for him, one for phil, one for martyn and one for cornelia

[lilabet]

haha i'm sorry @Ablissa
im kinda worried for him (even tho, i'm sure he knows what's best for him and all)
also : WHY did he freaking go and get the pizzas ? why not have them delivered?

also, i know he fills the void but i hope for his stomach that there's one pizza for him, one for phil, one for martyn and one for cornelia

It’s good to get out of the house when you’re sad/depressed. It’s usually quicker as well if the restaurant is nearby. I think some of those pizzas are probably sides. From previous videos they usually eat one each.

[glitterintheair]

Well now I'm sad too after Dan's story. Can he like send some pizza over here? It would be appreciated.

No but really, I hope he's okay. He said some things along the lines of being scared of going home once tour was over and while there's no way of knowing that's the reason why he isn't feeling great, it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

[itasca00]

Ouch, my heart! I wish I could just give him a giant hug right now.

[hello9217]

Like Dan said in the last liveshow, tour offered him a purpose and everyday he knew what he was going to do when he got up. I'm sure it's hard to go back to "normal" life after coming back from something like that. Glad dan's got the pizza to fill that hole and glad he feels comfortable enough to share that with us.

[citizen_erased]

I hope Dan isn't just filling the hole with pizza though, but also with that d........vitamin.

I'll show myself out

Still, I'm guessing it doesn't do wonders for your mental health to come back home after 5 months of traveling and doing amazing things, and then also have to edit and thus face that show every day without actually getting to perform it. I'm glad he went out to get pizza, at least that's more proactive than staying in bed doing nothing, so that's a good sign. I'd expected him to not be doing so great when they came back, but he's still out and about and doing things and sharing things, so it could be a lot worse. I still wish I could give him a hug or something though

[autumnhearth]

I had just assumed he was sad about Stranger Things like Phil... but who knows. Um Franco Manca’s pizza menu looks amazing. I want spiced butternut squash and roasted hazelnut. And potato, tomato and pesto

[flarequake]

I just realised Phil’s “because I’m wearing my Stranger Things” jumper reminded me of a 3-year-old at a nursery I worked at being in charge of a game because he had a Ben-10 watch on. I guess Phil was reminded of it rather than having power bestowed by a brand.

Phew, good figures, boys. I’ve just been been art-pastel shopping and justifying it to myself. Peanuts in comparison.

That pizza menu does look good. Nice to be near enough to a snazzy place for a takeaway. Calling desserts post-pizza is adorable.

They’ve come home just as the weather and daylight hours are changing, that not be helping Dan either. I’ve been trying to eat better, but the carbs and sugar are there as soon as I feel rubbish

[knq]

Replace pizza with brownies and cookie dough ice cream and: same.

Dan predicted feeling down once they returned home from tour, but he's also been realistic about the touring lifestyle: it's good for his mental health but it's not great for his physical health and it's not something he could do indefinitely. I'm glad he felt comfortable sharing with us in such a straightforward manner, and I'm even more glad that a quick check of his twitter mentions reveals generally calm and supportive reactions.

On their business accounts, I'm surprised most of their money goes through independent companies when so much of their work, including spon, is done together. Also damn, that's a lot. I know I've skimmed articles about popular YouTubers before which put dnp's net worth at over a million each, but I didn't know they could make that much in a year. Yikes!

[alittledizzy]

On their business accounts, I'm surprised most of their money goes through independent companies when so much of their work, including spon, is done together. Also damn, that's a lot. I know I've skimmed articles about popular YouTubers before which put dnp's net worth at over a million each, but I didn't know they could make that much in a year. Yikes!

Does that actually include spon? I don't have sources for this so if other people do please speak up, I'm really just speculating, but I am wondering if spon deals are more like personal income? Like, the BBC was personal income, whatever they made from there was not disclosed and went into their personal bank accounts. (Or like for Rize/Crunchyroll/etc that's tour related, would that go into the tour company?)

There was also some evidence that DAPG goes into Dan's company, but I think that stemmed from some DAPG content in fan videos being claimed under Dan's name.

[Ablissa]

I don't understand business or money (which explains a lot), but those sums seem huge to me. What do they mean? Does it mean they earned that much during the year, or they have that much in the bank right now? (sorry for the dumb question)
Also, debtors are mentioned and those sums are huge too. Where could that come from?

(I'm being nosy and curious but would also genuinely just want to understand what this means using English terms. I barely understand taxes in my own language)

[Catallena]

Poor Dan. He thrives on a schedule like the tour, that's not a new thing. It's one of the many reasons why it's sad that the radio show isn't a thing anymore. It gave him a job to go to every weekend, something to work on during the week, and a boss that held him accountable for stuff. It motivated him in his other work as well and was just really good for him on all fronts.

Back to the subject on low views, while I agree that if D&P were worried they'd be doing something about it I've also seen the downwards spiral sneak up on a YouTuber often enough for me to be a bit alarmed. And I think that's mostly because of what @alittledizzy is saying about the phandom not being a cohesive unit. Aside from being disconnect between fans of various plaforms (Instagram tell me your secrets), the phandom is not really used to actually working for their faves success and relevancy other than the occasional voting on polls or whatever. Basically, Phannies are a lazy bunch. Ironically some are attracted to new shiny fandoms that are super organized. It'd be nice if we were able to organize in a more effective way. Like stop re-uploading half their new videos in bits and pieces for clout. At some point those few views that they lose from that WILL matter.