IDB

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:30 am**

I kind of zoned out because it's 2 am, so I'll have to givd my thoughts later after rewatching it.

flarequake wrote:
sparkle wrote:
thephandommenace wrote: - That outro reminding me of fetus Emma's outro.
OH MY GOD THAT IS WHAT IT REMIDNS ME OF!!!!

have we come full YouTube circle, Emma copies Dan, Dan copies Emma... and it always has rock crushes scissors

Now that's funny. I wonder if he's actually seen those videos or if it's a coincidence. The glitch does go well with his personality and style of content.

It is like Emma's old intro!

Speaking of which, I noticed a couple similarities between Dan and Emma's diss tracks. (Emma's came out about a month before his.)

Emma's diss track -

"no one's cared about pop punk since 2007"

"one video a month and you think that's fine"

Dan's diss track:

"you've got hair that was cool in 2007"

and obviously the iconic "a month without uploading he comes back with a tag"

(also emma's diss track is so underrated)

why did this have to be on top of the page

I also just remembered the flip flop stock photo recreation that was in PINOF 8 was done by Emma nearly two years earlier in Emma and Luke vs. Stock Images

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:41 am**

Artdefines06 wrote:reaction to dan's video: (not really timestamps because I'm lazy. also its under a cut because its slightly a self indulgent wank.)
-As someone who only has a passing knowledge of and vague interest in memes, he has already lost me right off the bat. Before watching this video I will say I think memes are important because they allow us to share a sense of humor and laugh together, but they are actually quite niche and unknown to most of the world. It is entirely possible to be on the internet and never encounter them if you only go to certain websites like facebook and recipies.com or something.
While I understand most of his audience probably knows what he is talking about, he does not explain what a dank meme is and that kinda bothers me because I only barely understand the surface of the concept, and don't like the idea that this thing I think is kinda silly and not important defines the purpose of my existence...
-Do I find myself wishing for a different life? Yes...I want a house and child and more money etc. I also want the high fantasy he is talking about, with adventure and intrigue. I can't make the first happen easily, but the second is considerably more attainable. I just have to walk through a dodgy part of town at night, or sign up to build houses in africa, or do anything other than sit in my room and write fanfiction all day....
-"Our boring time" - I hate to tell you danny but your time is what you make of it. You want interesting go do something interesting instead of watching anime all day lol.
-Then I realize dan has (says he has, im going of his own words here) anxiety and anytime he does go outside to do something has a slight panic attack and regrets it for the next week. So maybe he can't. I know I can't without lots of support and therapy and meds.
-Love the EA harvesting money using sims dlc dig. Its like the shocked look on his face everytime he finds out phil bought a new expansion pack for the sims. I approve.
-OK. We could not just hop in a boat and change the world by discovering a new continent. There was maybe a handful of people that did that? The rest were peasants and slaves and farmers and people trapped in boring jobs so they could pay their taxes lol. Nothing has actually changed.
-You don't have to get a job at space X, but you totally could. You don't even need to learn math, you could be a secretary or a janitor or a social media guru and still contribute to the cause.
-What about slice of life animes? What about sitcoms like friends where nothing super exciting happens, its just kinda real life?
-2 minutes in and he finally says its about him and not about us. Surprise Surprise. It wouldn't be a dinof video if it wasn't hidden psychotherapy for danny.
-speaking of which breaking out the maslow!! That lovely psych 1 class coming into play!
-We COULD do lots of meaningful things but....We can't leave what we know behind. Because once you enter a new reality that is now your present. After it becomes mundane wont you want to leave that behind too? Isn't it an endless cycle of the grass is greener on the other side?
-four and a half minutes in he explains what memes are and gets to his point. You can tell he never got to english 103 because this would have been an automatic fail as a college essay. This is a highschool essay where you try to bring the readers in first. College dgaf.
-"The great journey of our time is not outwards, but inwards" I want this on a shirt. I also want it in the first 30 seconds of his video.
-"Meming is a valid career choice" says the man living in a fancy flat on his piles of money. if you are getting paid for it and it making your life better rather than just wasting time and trying to pretend everything doesn't such than sure, good for you. For the rest of us I would consider a day job as well.
- "stop procrastinating and go do it". Do what? Make memes for a living? Where? How? Is that an actual thing? Like the person who always wins the cracked caption contests? I'm confused. Or is this actually about dan forcing himself to put out a video about memes because that is his job and pays his bills. Is he talking to me or himself.
(Hint: I think it's himself)

-four and a half minutes in he explains what memes are and gets to his point. You can tell he never got to english 103 because this would have been an automatic fail as a college essay. This is a highschool essay where you try to bring the readers in first. College dgaf.

The English Major in me yelled TIGHTEN IT UP several times at the screen, no lie.

I think he needs to go back to university and get a degree in something creative. He needs the outlet for that brain of his.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:44 am**

DatCog wrote:Ugh I saw the centipede on Twitter

Do we know if Phil is home now? I'm only wondering because the centipede was trapped under a glass on a wooden floor but Phil's room has white tiles like the gaming room

I thought that too until I realized that the bug wasn't on a wooden floor, but actually on a piece of cardboard. I didn't notice it till hours later and when I did it made sense as the flooring wouldn't be that dirty nor is the flooring in the flat that dark. However there's still the weird medium beige colored flooring(?) on the top left. It might just be a corner wall in his room but hey you never know.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:46 am**

I wanted to see how the comments were like and, though clearly the majority is just praise or shitposting, i did find comments saying they found the video confusing and 2 respectful and interesting comments exposing why. They aren't at the top but they are reachable so I'd say Dan will most likely see them. I really hope he does see them, improves and does not feel discourage to give it another shot. Honestly I played it down in the tweets but it really does frustrate me that there is no easier to just point out our criticism without sounding blunt to Dan, and I think he would also appreciate it actually:

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:52 am**

confusedpanda wrote:
DatCog wrote:Ugh I saw the centipede on Twitter

Do we know if Phil is home now? I'm only wondering because the centipede was trapped under a glass on a wooden floor but Phil's room has white tiles like the gaming room
I thought that too until I realized that the bug wasn't on a wooden floor, but actually on a piece of cardboard. I didn't notice it till hours later and when I did it made sense as the flooring wouldn't be that dirty nor is the flooring in the flat that dark. However there's still the weird medium beige colored flooring(?) on the top left. It might just be a corner wall in his room but hey you never know.

Ha ha that'll teach me to make assumptions based on photos I've seen on my phone! It's obviously cardboard now I've looked at it on my computer

Edit: just looked at it again and I'm returning to my original theory that it's wooden floorboards! They need a clean but then so do mine here

Photo of centipede under spoiler:

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:56 am**

Everyone's responses to the vid are so interesting, I've really enjoyed reading them! Not much else to say other than what I've already said, but I am glad to see there are people that genuinely enjoyed the video as it does make me sad to think of Dan excitedly uploading a video that he's proud of only to be met with negative reviews.

confusedpanda wrote:
DatCog wrote:Ugh I saw the centipede on Twitter

Do we know if Phil is home now? I'm only wondering because the centipede was trapped under a glass on a wooden floor but Phil's room has white tiles like the gaming room
I thought that too until I realized that the bug wasn't on a wooden floor, but actually on a piece of cardboard. I didn't notice it till hours later and when I did it made sense as the flooring wouldn't be that dirty nor is the flooring in the flat that dark. However there's still the weird medium beige colored flooring(?) on the top left. It might just be a corner wall in his room but hey you never know.

Struggling to see that as cardboard tbh, it really looks like it's on floorboards to me. I don't think the floor is dirty, just marked as most floorboards are. The beige thing on the left looks like the wall to me, messily painted. The wall colour doesn't match his bedroom walls which makes me think that's not his room (unless it's just a trick of the light or something). But then, he did imply that he's home when he replied to someone and said he should give the keys to the apartment to the centipede. Mysterious

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:54 am**

I'm seeing it as EITHER, wall in a corner with a floor that needs cleaning. OR he's put it in a glass and slid some cardboard under it, picked it up, and its given the illusion of join between floor and wall. But cardboard, unless its super thing, is too thick to do that with

but the pattern of the thing under the glass looks like cardboard. If thats floor/carpet I'm surprised.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:00 am**

DatCog wrote:
confusedpanda wrote:
DatCog wrote:Ugh I saw the centipede on Twitter

Do we know if Phil is home now? I'm only wondering because the centipede was trapped under a glass on a wooden floor but Phil's room has white tiles like the gaming room
I thought that too until I realized that the bug wasn't on a wooden floor, but actually on a piece of cardboard. I didn't notice it till hours later and when I did it made sense as the flooring wouldn't be that dirty nor is the flooring in the flat that dark. However there's still the weird medium beige colored flooring(?) on the top left. It might just be a corner wall in his room but hey you never know.
Ha ha that'll teach me to make assumptions based on photos I've seen on my phone! It's obviously cardboard now I've looked at it on my computer

Edit: just looked at it again and I'm returning to my original theory that it's wooden floorboards! They need a clean but then so do mine here

Photo of centipede under spoiler:

The problem is that deppy's floorboards upstairs (based on Dan's tweet of the TV set up from a few weeks ago) and most likely thoughout the house looks something like this:

The floorboard groves don't match up to the groves on this flooring in the photo phil posted, however, it definitely matches cardboard box groves. Also they lines in the supposed flooring of Phil's room are way too close together and scattered which is why I probably noticed it at second glance

Also in the tweet phil does say it's in the glass, so idk, but the texture does remind me personally of anything but cardboard.
i have no idea why I'm doing this, I literally just can't sleep because of a damn cold, I'll just go and try to get some sleep because it's far too late where I live to even be awake.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:05 am**

Re: Dan's video
Dan's video was a roller coaster of emotions for me. Generally, I either tend to roll my eyes at his antics or love them dearly, which means his ls are almost always either a top or a flop for me. But in this video, I went from over :wtf: to . I see this video as him dipping his toes into some different content, which I am 100% here for. He should go a bit slower about it though because I and many others did not understand everything and I think I will have to rewatch it a few times to fully understand what he's on about. Why did he rush it so much? 10 minutes are better for the algorithm anyway and there was enough to talk about to fill even more than that. Doesn't make sense to me but I can't look into his head so

All I can say is: Keep going Dan, I really like content like this. Just a bit slower and more understandable, please.

This was so repetitive, sorry.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:06 am**

three days without wifi they come back with...opinions on dan's new video without having been able to read everyone else's posts...i apologize in advance if what i say has been said 200 times before already.

i actually enjoyed dan's video quite a lot, but...in a different way than usually. to me, it had a bit the vibe of a rambl-y liveshow mashed up with neat editing. i've seen people mentioning the pacing and i'm inclined to agree -- halfway through the video, i too had a moment of thinking "...where the hell is he going with this?" but to me personally, that didn't make the video unpleasant to watch at all. it made me really curious to see where he's going with his next uploads and the channel in general. i could see it as a video we can look back in a year or so and identify it as a sort of transitional one. so i think part of why i liked the video is because it seemed different in style to me and i think it's really cool if he's trying out new things to see what works with this new daniel howell thing. apart from that -- it didn't make me laugh and, true, there's probably potential out there for a dan video about this topic that's just, like 130% of this one. but i thought it was interesting and entertaining to listen to his toughts, the editing was on point, and a bonus point goes out to the new outro (and that means a lot coming from a person who paused his last video in a moment of silence for the old one, clutching their laptop, shedding a few tears...or maybe not quite that dramatic).

did i miss anything important since thursday? did anyone figure out if the bonsai in dan's video was the real thing or the plastic replacement?

edit re: confusedpanda's post about phil's floorboards: i actually thought it was cardboard and he had swiped it under the glass to lift the centipede up...?

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:25 am**

This is a great discussion, as dontpanic said it's a shame there aren't still video responses. Everyone's got so much to say, I think we could all make a more thorough video than Dan.

As Grey said, though, I do think it just wasn't meant to be so deep. Saying "it's a shitpost" doesn't necessarily cut it, though, since he and all of us are deeper than that so we've got pages of analysis of it. I think the reason I enjoyed it so much was because I didn't think about it deeply at all and was happy to go with memes as a fun way of commenting on life and the self-deprecation etc of wanting more like in movies and books, but not being so adventurous in reality. I was surprised he didn't end the colonial exploration bit with the way they rode roughshod over people and loads died of disease (well, he did mention syphilis).

I loved papierklemmen's post. Laughed a lot at "maybe we're all mushrooms".

"Tighten it up" is a great point too, jesuisuneleve. I saw it more in his fanfic, but if he did read more, plan it out and then tighten it up, he could be a lot more informed and coherent. I was thinking he might enjoy studying philosophy and sociology, but something creative might suit him better (only he actually knows, ofc). He can take the time if he did a part-time degree perhaps. I wonder if he would.

Interesting what teamug said about the generation gap and being ten years older. I'm also ten years older than him and what stuck out to me was something else, a generalisation he tends to make of people 35+ being stuck in jobs they hate as opposed to kids hating being at school. As someone with a resume like Swiss cheese and perennially unemployed, just finding a job let alone one that suits me and I can hold onto would be amazing. Being stuck in one is no fun either, I just got out of one that was dragging me down with it, but it is weird to hear that generalisation. I'm not au fait with memes like a Redditor might be any more than the average Tumblrite so I don't have a great deal more to say there, though my friend the memester enjoyed the video (he's about 23).

Also, lurker he replied to someone on Twitter that that is the real bonsai tree that he's desperately nursing back to health. I'm glad the real one's hanging on, poor plant dad trying so hard.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:29 am**

lurker wrote:three days without wifi they come back with...opinions on dan's new video without having been able to read everyone else's posts...i apologize in advance if what i say has been said 200 times before already.

i actually enjoyed dan's video quite a lot, but...in a different way than usually. to me, it had a bit the vibe of a rambl-y liveshow mashed up with neat editing. i've seen people mentioning the pacing and i'm inclined to agree -- halfway through the video, i too had a moment of thinking "...where the hell is he going with this?" but to me personally, that didn't make the video unpleasant to watch at all. it made me really curious to see where he's going with his next uploads and the channel in general. i could see it as a video we can look back in a year or so and identify it as a sort of transitional one. so i think part of why i liked the video is because it seemed different in style to me and i think it's really cool if he's trying out new things to see what works with this new daniel howell thing. apart from that -- it didn't make me laugh and, true, there's probably potential out there for a dan video about this topic that's just, like 130% of this one. but i thought it was interesting and entertaining to listen to his toughts, the editing was on point, and a bonus point goes out to the new outro (and that means a lot coming from a person who paused his last video in a moment of silence for the old one, clutching their laptop, shedding a few tears...or maybe not quite that dramatic).

did i miss anything important since thursday? did anyone figure out if the bonsai in dan's video was the real thing or the plastic replacement?

edit re: confusedpanda's post about phil's floorboards: i actually thought it was cardboard and he had swiped it under the glass to lift the centipede up...?

Dan replied to a tweet saying the bonsai was the real one, and he was trying to nurse it back to life (and he was kind of glad it was out of focus).

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:20 am**

dianapml wrote:

A philosophical PhD thesis? That person has clearly never written one academic essay in their life.

See, and this is why I worry a bit. I have only been following D&P for a bit over a year now and that's why I can't assess how Dan will react to the mixed feedback he is receiving. Some people are praising the vid to the skies, other are (constructively) pointing out its flaws. Now, is Dan going to put this on himself - not scripting well enough - or is he going to think that those who had a problem with the video are just not "smart" enough to get it and shrug it off?

I don't wanna come off as chauvinistic but I believe that we have a higher level of discussion on the forum here compared to on Youtube. Which makes me think that it's the "smart"/older/more educated/non-tween* people who don't get the video. So I hope Dan sees that too and is critical towards his work instead of just accepting that a (minor) group of his audience isn't content.

*I really really hope no one is offended by this. But I think you also know what I mean :/ There was a lot more constructive and critical discussion going on here than on YT

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 11:55 am**

LtrllySusan wrote: A philosophical PhD thesis? That person has clearly never written one academic essay in their life.

See, and this is why I worry a bit. I have only been following D&P for a bit over a year now and that's why I can't assess how Dan will react to the mixed feedback he is receiving. Some people are praising the vid to the skies, other are (constructively) pointing out its flaws. Now, is Dan going to put this on himself - not scripting well enough - or is he going to think that those who had a problem with the video are just not "smart" enough to get it and shrug it off?

I don't wanna come off as chauvinistic but I believe that we have a higher level of discussion on the forum here compared to on Youtube. Which makes me think that it's the "smart"/older/more educated/non-tween* people who don't get the video. So I hope Dan sees that too and is critical towards his work instead of just accepting that a (minor) group of his audience isn't content.

*I really really hope no one is offended by this. But I think you also know what I mean :/ There was a lot more constructive and critical discussion going on here than on YT

This is one of the few times I hope Dan seeks out discussion of himself. YouTube comments that I've seen have been a mix of '.... I didn't understand UNSUBSCRIBE' (exaggerated obviously), 'I loved this and found it entertaining', and 'YASSS daddy' :wtf:

If he is lurking here, then I think an advantage of seeing discussion like this is that he gets long commentary that is easy to follow? If he continues like this he's aggressively moving away from danisnotonfire; he's going to have a period where people bitch about it. He's going to need to assess what is and isn't working, and change it. Not because I think he needs to pander to the fans, but because I think he wants to make every video perfect and I believe he can push himself to that. (a bit shit because it's youtube and homemade, but perfectly shit)

I think he needs to make a few more videos to get used to the rebrand; I think it's more important that he's got something done, he's got that awkward 'first' video out of the way and I think we are going to see him develop over the next few videos. I can almost guarantee that some things will be changed.

Saying that, it's clearly a video thats made an impression. I've watched it four fucking times already

can someone please edit 'I like her she has girl balls' over dans new outro. please.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 12:23 pm**

As someone who is the same age as Dan but doesn’t really care about memes all that much this video just didn’t do much for me. That and the fact that while I think I know what he was talking about, I disagreed with him on quite a few things. Though his end message was pretty nice.
Certainly not a video that I’ll rewatch.

For me Dan’s new outro kind of reminds me of the Supernatural intro.

LtrllySusan wrote:
dianapml wrote:
A philosophical PhD thesis? That person has clearly never written one academic essay in their life.

Yeah there is no way this vid is PhD thesis worthy.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 12:58 pm**

sparkle wrote: If he is lurking here, then I think an advantage of seeing discussion like this is that he gets long commentary that is easy to follow? If he continues like this he's aggressively moving away from danisnotonfire; he's going to have a period where people bitch about it. He's going to need to assess what is and isn't working, and change it. Not because I think he needs to pander to the fans, but because I think he wants to make every video perfect and I believe he can push himself to that. (a bit shit because it's youtube and homemade, but perfectly shit)

I think he needs to make a few more videos to get used to the rebrand; I think it's more important that he's got something done, he's got that awkward 'first' video out of the way and I think we are going to see him develop over the next few videos. I can almost guarantee that some things will be changed..

I mean, I think it's pretty insulting to Dan to just assume he doesn't know all of this already, and more. If he did rush it, it's probably because vidcon is coming up and he wanted to get something out now (and if he does do, or has already started, the tinder spon, maybe he wanted to put the ad between some non-spon content and timing is a factor). And no, a bunch of armchair YTers expressing opinions on his content does not amount to constructive criticism, wherever they happen to post them and however old they are (and however big of a fan they consider themselves to be). I hope what happens is he gets some feedback from other YTers (you know.. actual peers) that he respects in between schmoozing at vidcon, surely someone will ask him what he was going for with that vid (and whether they think it came across) and he'll get something actually useful from that, if he wants to.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:00 pm**

SquishPhan wrote:
LtrllySusan wrote:
dianapml wrote:
A philosophical PhD thesis? That person has clearly never written one academic essay in their life.
Yeah there is no way this vid is PhD thesis worthy.

i was hoping that person was kidding

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:11 pm**

fancybum wrote: I mean, I think it's pretty insulting to Dan to just assume he doesn't know all of this already, and more. If he did rush it, it's probably because vidcon is coming up and he wanted to get something out now (and if he does do, or has already started, the tinder spon, maybe he wanted to put the ad between some non-spon content and timing is a factor). And no, a bunch of armchair YTers expressing opinions on his content does not amount to constructive criticism, wherever they happen to post them and however old they are (and however big of a fan they consider themselves to be). I hope what happens is he gets some feedback from other YTers (you know.. actual peers) that he respects in between schmoozing at vidcon, surely someone will ask him what he was going for with that vid (and whether they think it came across) and he'll get something actually useful from that, if he wants to.

Hmmm, I get where you're coming from - there's such a mess of clashing opinions coming from the audience (most of whom have no experience making youtube videos) that it'd be pretty difficult to glean any sort of obvious constructive criticism from them.

But I have to disagree with you that the only criticism that counts is that which comes from other youtubers. By that logic, only professional writers can give meaningful feedback to fellow writers, and constructive criticism from non-writing readers is meaningless. A lot of the criticism of this video is well-meaning, and is backed by logic. I've seen very few "I hate this it's shit Dan's not talented he sucks at making youtube videos!!!!" and a lot of "This didn't really hit the mark for me personally due to reasons a, b and c. I support Dan in his endeavours to take his channel in a new direction, so maybe it would be helpful for him to see where he could improve."

While I don't think there's any need to be unkind to Dan, people are well within their rights to calmly express why they didn't like the video or what about the video didn't resonate with them, and perhaps it could be beneficial for Dan to read accounts from viewers (aka the target audience of the video, unlike his yt peers). So long as the critique is coming from a place of love and respect (which I think most of the reviews on idb have been), I can't see what's wrong with that?

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:19 pm**

teamug wrote:Perhaps it is the ten years I have on Dan and his gen, but I don't place or see an inherent value in memes, I get the 'sarcastic simple one-liner funny footnote on life' aspect, but as a method of "discovering the world" and/or "our place in it" (as D says in the vid), that I don't agree with. Personally, anything you want could be that instrument for discovery, innovation, self-reflection. Music, writing, building lego forts, disassembling modems. Dan choose memes as a unifying lynchpin for a generation, but he fails to see that each generation has its' own, and there are usually many. (also, geographical, cultural borders, sometimes a great thing there isn't one here). Also, as I am of the gen just before Dan, this seeking a "mission or calling" because we are stuck in a "funny point in time" 1) omg, I've become my parents when I say 'nope, feeling like that doesn't make you or your gen unique'. 2) Dan, your timeline between #flatearthNOT and aliens is too broad and fcuks up your argument from the start, which annoys me greatly, I know it's meant to be taken as funny jokey, but imo you lose credibility points for your opinion, when you then target your timeline to your generation, you've then ignored everything that has happened between 240bc (thanks Eratosthenes) to 2000.

I'd have enjoyed seeing more, I found his pov interesting, but too narrow, as if his gen is all about the memes, which I know it's not. Maybe this will be a series with other gen identifying stuff. EDIT: or go far more indepth about why specifically the meme is used by your gen./EDIT. Tbh, I think the increasing rate of innovation, engineering, escalating simultaneous advancements in multiple fields makes it hard to pin down certain significant moments as generation defining moments. In ye old days, gen moments took place at a slower pace, people were satisfied for a longer period, how many of us are still awed at the successful landing on an asteroid? It's only been months.

I hope discussion is what Dan wants from this new(ish) video, but how the hell is anyone going to get anything to reach him? Tweet it line by line? Discussion is great, bring it Dan, but youtube is a hard place to do it.

I agreed with a lot of this post! About memes:
In evolutionary psychology, there's an idea about "memes" being like genes except they carry cultural information rather than genetic information. This pertains to the idea of how do animals learn and carry on traditions and culture. In this idea, "meme" doesn't specifically mean an internet meme. But it's like a little piece of our culture that we pass to others. There are opposing arguments to this view as well. I'm not an expert on this at all, but my favourite prof taught about this in one class I took and I thought it was so interesting and kind of relevant here. I don't think it's what he was referring to but I think there is somewhere he could go with this meme idea. It is definitely an interesting topic to me and not limited to our current generation. In fact, it applies to ants too! Haha.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:20 pm**

Just got home and watched Dan's new video. After reading all the discussion here, I'm a bit surprised it got such an enormous and varied response, but as LeftHandedism said

LeftHandedism wrote:It seems to me that Dan's getting what he wants out of this video: people talking about something he's said that approximates what he actually thinks about a topic he's interested in, rather than all about alien abduction in the Sims or who's touching whom. I think the discussion here has been more intellectually interesting than it has been for a while.

Personally, I quite liked the video's message, even if the way Dan presented the premise was overly simplistic for my taste (see swofro's great post a few pages back ), and if he did it that way to make fun of that kind of whining about how much the time we live in sucks and idealising our (fictional) representation of the past and the future, he didn't make it clear enough. On the delivery, firstly, I like waffly Dan like he's in his liveshows, liveshows' Dan is the best Dan! That said, the whole video felt like a product of a very long, very personal, reflection process, doesn’t surprise me he's been thinking about it for two years, but he didn't take us through it, even a little bit. That's why the college drop out series was so good IMO, it was tied to his own (if slightly fictionalised) personal situation, whereas here he doesn't touch upon it at all. I mean, I understand Dan doesn't want any more attention to his personal life than is already here, but without that, it does seem like he's a "man living in a fancy flat on his piles of money" complaining about his life with no good reason. Btw, sorry Artdefines06 for quoting only this part of your post, I wanted to give it a shout out, I think you make some very good arguments, even if I look at this from a somewhat different perspective

Artdefines06 wrote:reaction to dan's video: (not really timestamps because I'm lazy. also its under a cut because its slightly a self indulgent wank.)
-As someone who only has a passing knowledge of and vague interest in memes, he has already lost me right off the bat. Before watching this video I will say I think memes are important because they allow us to share a sense of humor and laugh together, but they are actually quite niche and unknown to most of the world. It is entirely possible to be on the internet and never encounter them if you only go to certain websites like facebook and recipies.com or something.
While I understand most of his audience probably knows what he is talking about, he does not explain what a dank meme is and that kinda bothers me because I only barely understand the surface of the concept, and don't like the idea that this thing I think is kinda silly and not important defines the purpose of my existence...
-Do I find myself wishing for a different life? Yes...I want a house and child and more money etc. I also want the high fantasy he is talking about, with adventure and intrigue. I can't make the first happen easily, but the second is considerably more attainable. I just have to walk through a dodgy part of town at night, or sign up to build houses in africa, or do anything other than sit in my room and write fanfiction all day....
-"Our boring time" - I hate to tell you danny but your time is what you make of it. You want interesting go do something interesting instead of watching anime all day lol.
-Then I realize dan has (says he has, im going of his own words here) anxiety and anytime he does go outside to do something has a slight panic attack and regrets it for the next week. So maybe he can't. I know I can't without lots of support and therapy and meds.
-Love the EA harvesting money using sims dlc dig. Its like the shocked look on his face everytime he finds out phil bought a new expansion pack for the sims. I approve.
-OK. We could not just hop in a boat and change the world by discovering a new continent. There was maybe a handful of people that did that? The rest were peasants and slaves and farmers and people trapped in boring jobs so they could pay their taxes lol. Nothing has actually changed.
-You don't have to get a job at space X, but you totally could. You don't even need to learn math, you could be a secretary or a janitor or a social media guru and still contribute to the cause.
-What about slice of life animes? What about sitcoms like friends where nothing super exciting happens, its just kinda real life?
-2 minutes in and he finally says its about him and not about us. Surprise Surprise. It wouldn't be a dinof video if it wasn't hidden psychotherapy for danny.
-speaking of which breaking out the maslow!! That lovely psych 1 class coming into play!
-We COULD do lots of meaningful things but....We can't leave what we know behind. Because once you enter a new reality that is now your present. After it becomes mundane wont you want to leave that behind too? Isn't it an endless cycle of the grass is greener on the other side?
-four and a half minutes in he explains what memes are and gets to his point. You can tell he never got to english 103 because this would have been an automatic fail as a college essay. This is a highschool essay where you try to bring the readers in first. College dgaf.
-"The great journey of our time is not outwards, but inwards" I want this on a shirt. I also want it in the first 30 seconds of his video.
-"Meming is a valid career choice" says the man living in a fancy flat on his piles of money. if you are getting paid for it and it making your life better rather than just wasting time and trying to pretend everything doesn't such than sure, good for you. For the rest of us I would consider a day job as well.
- "stop procrastinating and go do it". Do what? Make memes for a living? Where? How? Is that an actual thing? Like the person who always wins the cracked caption contests? I'm confused. Or is this actually about dan forcing himself to put out a video about memes because that is his job and pays his bills. Is he talking to me or himself.
(Hint: I think it's himself)

So, overall, an interesting video, hope Dan's going to continue to talk more about the things that he's genuinely interested in. Also, I liked the outro, but didn't like the new background - feels too empty for me, but not balanced enough to pass as a good minimalistic design, keep working on it Dan

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:33 pm**

captainspacecoat wrote: While I don't think there's any need to be unkind to Dan, people are well within their rights to calmly express why they didn't like the video or what about the video didn't resonate with them, and perhaps it could be beneficial for Dan to read accounts from viewers (aka the target audience of the video, unlike his yt peers). So long as the critique is coming from a place of love and respect (which I think most of the reviews on idb have been), I can't see what's wrong with that?

Where did I say they weren't?

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:40 pm**

papierklemmen wrote:the vid felt like a pseudophilosophical rant of someone who's stoned or drunk. you know, when you think you're saying something so smart and genuinely groundbreaking and you just can't stop talking but to anyone who's sober it just sounds like you're stuck in a thought loop without a purpose and you're in fact just arguing that lenin was a mushroom. if you wanna do shitposts at least commit to it and do a poppy.
also, dan is bored. idk it honestly felt like it wasn't as much intended for his audience as it was his own internal word vomit aimed at his own bored self. "i'm bored because i'm not doing anything worthwhile and the world is boring" is what this video screams. and then he tells himself it's ok to be a bored and rich ass white dude. k. at least he admitted it's a first world problem but y'know. and yet again his reason for choice of focus on "memes" eludes me. it's like oneday he woke up and decided that "memes" are gonna be his branding, without ever delivering on the actual memes. a meme lord with no memes. a real life example of the emperors new clothes. i don't even think he means memes when he says memes. maybe it's a euphemism. or maybe we're all just mushrooms.

This was the funniest description i have read.

But more importantly.
In the centipede picture that Phil posted, it looks like there is a wooden floor AND a piece of cardboard, that covers half of the floor in the picture, shoved under the glass.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:44 pm**

I'm having a rough time accepting this as rebrand material. In part because Dan himself said nothing is really changing all that much on his channel, give or take a logo and banner. But also, because like.... this isn't new?

What I see in this video is the same stuff we've seen for years. Dan sits down, talks to us about something, cuts in a few skits/clips/what have you, and comes to some kind of conclusion about life. The only difference is that there wasn't a Phil to help him film more exciting scenes and the thing he decided to sit down and talk to us about made no sense and had no structure.

None of this is criticism of his style, by the way. These are my favorite videos he makes. But what I'm saying is there's nothing new to this outside of him picking a more confusing topic.

I appreciate that Dan wants to talk about something a bit deeper than, say, his dislike of spoilers. And I'm definitely glad the direction he went in wasn't more of that exam tips crap. But, like others have said, he's gotta tighten up his script if he wants to get more philosophical. I want to be able to actually understand his point before I try to argue it.

For me, what ended up happening here is that he doesn't sound like someone who's come to a profound conclusion about enjoying what's available to us in this lifetime. He sounds like someone waffling on about 10 different topics, but actually not having much to say at all. And he knows how to make these sorts of videos. He does it all the time. So, my question is - why didn't he sharpen it? How did he watch this back and not notice that the whole video feels a bit like a run-on sentence?

It's easy to say, "I want him to make another and improve upon this." But my thought is that this really is just another dinof video - it just didn't hit the mark. As long as he keeps making videos relevant to him though, I'll be happy. It's only up from here!

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:56 pm**

fancybum wrote:
captainspacecoat wrote: While I don't think there's any need to be unkind to Dan, people are well within their rights to calmly express why they didn't like the video or what about the video didn't resonate with them, and perhaps it could be beneficial for Dan to read accounts from viewers (aka the target audience of the video, unlike his yt peers). So long as the critique is coming from a place of love and respect (which I think most of the reviews on idb have been), I can't see what's wrong with that?
Where did I say they weren't?

Fair point, you didn't. I personally took your post as derisive of constructive criticism from viewers in comparison to constructive criticism from peers is all - that was just my interpretation, apologies if that wasn't your intention.

Posted: **Sun Jun 18, 2017 2:12 pm**

Looks like Dan's seeking out some sort of conversation surrounding the video, be it in quiz form! Could be an opportunity to drop in some thoughts, although the comment character limit is 140 characters :/

IDB

Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner

Re: Dan & Phil Part 48: Exposing themselves via fidget spinner