#literally if i wouldve been a communications major/minor in college i wouldve had a field day writing about dan and phil

[phlondie]

but also okay adding to that last post bc my tags got waaaayyy too long, i really do think its interesting to see how the dynamic between dan and phil and their fanbase has shifted post-coming out

bc i wasnt super invested in them before interactive introverts so sometimes i’ll go back to old dnp moments and realize like man... some people *really* disrespected their boundaries. like yeah that full time internet homo moment was funny, but you know how it happened bc dan had just read the word “homo” in the chat? like.... its wild to think people were actually taking the time to watch these liveshows and fucking calling dan slurs. i feel like we’ve moved worlds away to where they give us a lot of leeway to say whatever tf we want on stereo bc they feel confident enough that shit like that wont happen anymore (and i do think they have a moderator to screen things beforehand but still)

and i really do think the change started during interactive introverts, not necessarily just after they came out. I think it was something about realizing how much older we were than they expected, and how many of us are queer too, and ofc i really dont know what the demographics of their fanbase was back in like 2014 when i started watching them but i think the stereotype was that their only fans were 12 year old straight girls (which is also fine btw! but i do think it changes things to realize that their fanbase has a lot more in common w them in terms of age and queerness. but i also dont think being a young straight fan is wrong or automatically makes them unimportant)

anyway sometimes i think about all those old moments and i feel so uncomfortable imagining what they thought of their fanbase, how they felt they were perceived, and ik dan talked about that in BIG. so its really nice to have clear confirmation that they dont like hate us after all of that (not to homogenize all of us ofc) bc honestly if i’d gone through what they had, i might want to step out of the spotlight forever, or at least distance myself from youtube.

and okay theres def something to be said for it being lowkey unhealthy to be genuinely validated for some celebrities who dont know me to say that they enjoy doing liveshows where they can interact w us, or even making content that they know we like (as in joint content, like ik their solo stuff is fine but they know and we know most of us are primarily here for joint content).

idk where im going w this, its just honestly fascinating to think about dan and phil as like, a textbook case study on how stan culture manifests (in bad ways and good ones and some gray area in between)