#phistory

pre-2009

philip michael lester is from rawtenstall in rossendale, which is basically a tiny village place near manchester. in 2006, he won a shitty b&w camera from a cereal box and started making video blogs with it. he posted his stuff on youtube, on a channel he called 'amazingphil'. (fun fact: he deliberately chose a channel name that started with the letter 'a', since names with letters earlier in the alphabet tend to get prioritised for various things.) and he was actually one of the first notable british youtubers, like. ever. he primarily either talked about little anecdotes from his life or made weird (yes, they were mostly downright weird) skits about random things in these early videos. a lot of the skits would also have strange, almost psychedelic editing.

daniel james howell is from -- well, it depends. he sometimes says he's from reading, sometimes he says he's from wokingham, and sometimes winnersh. reading is the one you've probably heard of because of the festival. wokingham is a smaller town that's right next to it, and winnersh is a downright TINY town right next to that. anyway, the point is he grew up in quite a small community, and a critical part of his childhood was that it was extremely homophobic, and he was very traumatised from that, to the point that it led him to clinical depression and YEARS of baggage down the line.

2009

this isn't, like. absolutely crucial information. but it is a fun fact. in early 2009, in a video, phil did a tarot reading, in which he drew a card called "the knight of wands", which predicted the entrance of an energetic warrior into his life, who is quick to love or hate. this, strangely enough, literally predicted dan. (phil insists on this fact. dan doesn't believe in tarot, or, as you'll later see, much of anything.)

in the middle of 2009, a bit before dan's 18th birthday, he makes a twitter account. he uses this account to relentlessly tweet at phil, because he finds they have many things in common (which they did! they both liked the game final fantasy and the band muse, and i'm sure i'm forgetting some other stuff, but oh well). initially, phil didn't really reply, but soon enough, he started tweeting back, and their twitter interactions grew quite frequent. then, they started posting about their friendship and skype calls and stuff on formspring and dailybooth. this was also the era of the really soppy, gay tweets exchanged between them, lmao.

also, dan creates his own youtube channel after much encouragement from phil! he calls it 'danisnotonfire', and posts his first video ('hello internet') in early october.

then, 19th october 2009. (later lovingly dubbed the 'phanniversary'.) this is the day they first meet in person. dan travels from his childhood home in wokingham all the way up to manchester for this. they decide to record a video together; a q&a. literally the very same day they meet. and they call it 'phil is not on fire'. (from here abbreviated to 'pinof'.) no one was doing stuff like that video at the time. it literally feels like a fever dream. i love it. it was posted to the amazingphil channel, and a lot of phil fans had no idea who the hell dan even was at the time. and this video turns into a yearly thing, so every year since that video (until 2018), there was an annual, highly anticipated pinof video, usually posted in november.

but we're not there yet. so, this was also around the time dan and phil got together, as boyfriends/partners/what have you. yes, literally, like, a couple weeks/max. months after knowing of each other's existence. iconic. they keep seeing each other in person, periodically. it's mainly dan making the trip up to manchester, but occasionally phil did also visit dan in wokingham. and they keep filming videos together when they can. they also attend quite a few early youtuber events together, where they make acquaintances and sometimes friends (notably kickthepj!). although it is is a running joke that dan and phil have no friends, lol, since they're massive introverts that prefer to stay inside and play video games instead of go out.

2010

dan completed school in 2009 and took a gap year into 2010, in which he focused on uploading videos to youtube, at this stage still just for fun. his appearances and mentions in phil's videos became much more frequent and pronounced, and he kept going to youtuber events and stuff like that. this was the stage dan and phil really started being oftentimes clumped together when being referred to. not fully, yet, since phil's channel was still much bigger and they weren't, ehem, living together yet (but that does happen quite soon, actually).

this was also the start of the era of llamas and placentas. for some reason, llamas dominated the consciousness of the internet during this time, and dan really latched onto it. i mean, he had llama merch, and he wore this iconic hat with a llama on it all the time. as for placentas, well, apparently dan really enjoyed the idea of them (?) and he liked saying the word. he would bring them up in pretty much every video he was in. this branding really stuck, to be honest, and he had trouble outrunning it even years down the line.

as for phil's branding: in 2009, some fans gifted him a lion and lioness plushie, and he used to use the youtube annotations feature to make a little story with them at the endscreens of each of his videos. this was why lions became very synonymous with the amazingphil channel. alongside this, he did this thing every video called 'draw phil naked', in which he would display some fanart of himself drawn naked (but either the artist themself would censor it or phil would). he just started the series on a whim one day (i think also in 2009?), but it was a solid part of his branding now.

something worth mentioning to provide context for later happenings: on valentine's day of this year, phil made a cute video for dan about their relationship (which, by the way, was in ABSOLUTELY NO way, shape or form supposed to be public information. dan was still very deeply in the closet and was not ready to reveal any of it to anyone at this stage.) and posted it on his main (or side? idk, i've seen both versions) channel, but as a private video only dan had access to. they did NOT want this getting out, and had NO intention of it being seen by anyone other than themselves. this will become relevant later.

after completing his gap year, dan enrolls into the university of manchester to study law, and obviously moves to manchester. by the way, phil also lives in manchester now.

2011

the same branding i mentioned remains, by the way.

dan and phil saw each other more often than not at the beginning of 2011, since they lived in the same city now. fun fact: dan had no idea how to do laundry so he would always haul all of it across the city to phil's flat so he could do it for dan.

in june(?) of this year, dan drops out of university since he hates his law course, and then in august, dan and phil move in together, into what is their iconic manchester apartment. phil is unemployed, and dan has dropped out of university, so at this point, neither of them are super certain about their futures and and basically putting everything they have on the youtube thing working out, which, by the way, was incredibly risky -- even more so than nowadays, since not a lot of people even really knew of youtube at the time, let alone considered 'youtuber' a job. but they were getting sponsorships for companies and stuff periodically, so i guess something made it seem like it might have been economically viable?? idk man.

anyway, after this, the youtube glitch happens. remember that valentine's day video i mentioned? yeah, it's leaked to the public. only to a couple of people, and only for a short time, but it was recorded and spread like crazy across the phandom.

(so, quick intervention-slash-side note. at this point, people were already speculating about dan and phil's relationship, and i'm fairly sure their ship name -- phan (phil + dan) -- was pretty widespread. i'm not sure whether the term 'phandom' was, yet, but a lot has changed since 2011 and a couple years afterwards, dan and phil embraced the word phan (even before being out as gay or in a relationship), because honestly, the word play is too good here. back to the vday video.)

immediately, dan and phil themselves rushed to shut it down, since they were not ready for their relationship to be public by any means, and since the phandom was, all things considered, not that big yet, the video was and remained suppressed for a good while. unfortunately, there is more where that came from. but we'll get to that later.

also in 2011, the start of something called the 'super amazing project' happened, which is (i'm a bit hazy on the details here) a channel that was owned by a media company(?) called 'my damn channel', in which dan and phil did a weekly video about, well... various things. each episode was a series of fun segments, and i won't get into the details, but the format lay the groundwork for their later radio shows on bbc radio 1.

speaking of, dan and phil were offered their first christmas special radio show on radio 1 that christmas! which (sort of) marked the beginning of their radio show host era.

2012

now, this was a rough year when it came to phans, or phannies. there's some discourse around what exactly dan and phil fans are called. originally, it used to be 'phans' for regular fans, and 'demon phannies' for the really crazy phan shippers (which we'll get to). nowadays, the term 'phannie' is the most popular, and ensdorsed by dan and phil themselves fairly recently, probably because 'phan' is also the ship name and it can get confusing.

anyway, we'll get to that in a moment. first, other notable things of this year.

they post their iconic 'a day in the life of phil and dan', one of the comfort videos ever. unfortunately, they don't know to not doxx themselves online (since it was still relatively early days of having as prominent an online presence as they did -- like, no one knew better), and post literally the view out their window and the little pathway in front of their apartment complex. yeah... they were stalked.

this is also the start of their (quite long) younow era, which is a livestreaming platform, on which they would (separately, phil on saturdays, dan on tuesdays) go live for an hour weekly. they actually rarely missed a week! they shared all sorts of miscellaneous info in this, from factoids about their life, to opinions on shows and music, and they also mainly just read the chat and responded to the comments and questions there.

later that year, they moved from manchester to their first apartment in london, where they stayed for almost five years.

okay, now to address the elephant in the room. as i mentioned, the phandom at the time was... rough, especially on dan. people were speculating on dnp's (dan and phil's) sexualities left, right and centre, and they were claiming very vocally that dan and phil were in a relationship. which, i mean, they were, but they were nowhere near ready to share that with the world, and this era honestly just kept making it even less likely that they ever would. (side note: because i knew about all the harassment and stalking and stuff, i, as many phannies truly did not believe they would ever actually hard launch right up until the moment they did. it was really that bad.) something particularly triggering for dan was that people relentlessly, persistently kept asking him if he was gay (especially in the younow streams), and i think they knew it was just a very vocal minority that was doing this, but the truth of the matter is that it was very vocal, and the constant scrutiny about his sexuality really re-traumatised dan (who, if you remember, had a very homophobic childhood). this was the era in which he was known to be very defensive, constantly shutting down claims about him being gay, in livestreams, on twitter, and on one memorable occasion, he made a video called 'FANDOMS', venting out his frustration about them, and clearly quite aimed at his own fandom.

and, as if to top it all off with a lovely cherry, it is during this era of dan vehemently denying everything that the valentine's day video is leaked for a second time. this time, the phandom is bigger still, extremely vicious about phan proof, and this is when dan and phil claim the video was made as an april fool's joke, and then later scrapped, just to have something to respond to phannies with. this was an immensely stressful time for them, and phil has stated it was almost a relationship-breaking moment for them.

now this isn't to say they hated their fans, though. in fact, even at the height of gay denial, they always encouraged fanfiction and fanart, even explicitly gay ones. they're never had a problem with that, as so many people falsely believe, but they're always just wanted people to respect their right to privacy, and them as people of their own right, and not confuse them, the real people, for the fictional version of them from the fanfics. in fact, it was obvious they really loved their fans, and still do. they would always be super excited to meet fans, graciously accepted, appreciated, and even utilised gifts from them, and would never truly talk badly of their fans, no matter how annoyed they were at them.

ANYWAY -- in december 2012, dnp ended the super amazing project, and were offered another christmas show on radio 1! this really marked the beginning of their radio show host era.

2013

in januarly, dan and phil started a weekly request show on bbc radio 1, which was apparently very fun, but a lot of it seems to be lot media now. this was the origin of 'dan vs. phil', though, where they play games against each other.

this year was when youtubers, especially the british ones, blew up. it was when the 'brit crew' (y'know, zoella, alfie deyes, etc.?) blew up in prominence, and while dan and phil were never part of the brit crew, they were certainly taken along for the ride.

dan hit a million subscribers in april, and then two million in july, and then three million in december which was crazy numbers for the time, by the way, since still relatively few people even watched youtube yet.

phil hit a million subscribers in june, by the way. there were a lot of solo dan fans, since he generally made funny skits that were relatable to a wider audience than phil's channel, which mostly consisted of random stuff. seriously, you could NEVER predict what the man was about to do next.

this era was marked again by many youtuber conventions, MANY youtuber collabs since it sort of became the ultimate way to almost 'trade' subscribers, and generally just marked a super busy time for dan and phil.

they also just largely stopped engaging with a lot of the 'phan' stuff floating around, probably since, again, they were busy as hell, and they probably hoped it might go away by ignoring it. whether it did or not, at least at the time, is... debatable. tumblr certainly wouldn't have agreed.

2014

the beginning of this year was honestly just much the same: conventions, awards, collabs. something worth noting is that they've stated they tended to avoid interviews, since they were deathly scared of saying something wrong (read: gay-sounding), causing them to miss out on many cool opportunities. :<

in august, they ended their request show on radio 1, which was around the same time phil hit 2 million subs.

in september, they started a new show on radio 1, called 'internet takeover', which was technically weekly, but dan and phil themselves would only be on it monthly(?, if i understood it correctly). around this time, dan hit 4 million subscribers.

also in september, they created (drumroll please) danandphilgames! this was huge for phannies at the time, because while dan and phil had been a duo in people's minds for a while now, their channels and content was still technically separate. but this was a joint channel, which was big. it birthed many, many iconic dan and phil series, such as the sims series, dan vs. phil, their undertale playthrough, spooky week, gamingmas, and more. (side note: this channel, as of oct 2025, is simply called 'dan and phil'.)

i'll expand on some gaming channel stuff now. the sims series is still ongoing and their sim 'dil howlter', who is supposed to be a mashup of and and phil (hence the name. dil = dan + phil, howlter = howell + lester) became a huge part of dan and phil lore, featuring in iconic stuff later down the line (we'll get to that). the sims series has some iconic lore that would take too long to explain (as if this post isn't going to be long enough already), but it's really fun and cosy, so i'd definitely recommend giving it a watch!

dan vs. phil is a series in which they compete in various games, for which they took a tabletop from their rental apartment and turned it into a board to keep track of scores. every time one of them wins something, they gain a sticker that is related to the game on their side of the board. they took that board with them when they moved out of this flat, so it's technically stolen property, but eh. it became too iconic to leave behind.

spooky week is a tradition they do in the week leading up to halloween, in which they post playthroughs of scary/horror games every day. they usually thematically decorate the gaming room too! in 2025 they sort of branched out and also did things other than gaming for spooky week, though. also worth mentioning for the spooky season is halloween baking! they bake a different sweet treat every year for halloween. all dan and phil baking videos are iconic and the utimate comfort videos, actually.

finally, gamingmas (taking you out of the chronology for this one, since the first of these was in 2016, but it felt fitting to mention in this section anyway). they didn't do one in 2025 (understandable tbh, they've been so busy), but it's a thing in which they try to post a video every day of december until the 24th, sort of like an advent calendar. they usually decorate the room for this too!

2015

oh, march of this year changed lives. dan and phil, with no prior warning, post a little video. it's a trailer of sorts, clearly. but what for?

... oh my god, they're releasing a book! ... ... ... wait, oh my god. THEY'RE ALSO GOING ON TOUR?

is how i imagine the reception to that was. so yeah, dan and phil announce their book, 'the amazing book is not on fire'/'tabinof', documenting their journey as youtubers so far, which is then released in october of that same year, as well as their TOUR, 'the amazing tour is not on fire'/'tatinof', the uk leg of which also starts in october.

btw, quick intervention in case you're confused by all the '-inof's. dinof = danisnotonfire, aka dan howell, aka the original '-inof'. pinof = phil is not on fire, the iconic q&a series. tabinof = the amazing BOOK is not on fire, dnp's first book. tatinof = the amazing TOUR is not on fire, dnp's first tour.

another iconic thing in 2015 was the birth of danandphilcrafts. this is a joke channel made for april fool's, on which they posted a video of them making paper snowflakes in... well, let's just say, quite an unsettling manner. this is where the 'don't cry, craft' joke/copypasta originates. and phannies spammed that shit under every comment section at the time, to the point where people started absolutely hating them. there were two more danandphilcrafts videos the two consecutive years that followed, and a fourth and final one in 2024. by the way, this joke channel got so many subscribers that youtube had to send dan and phil a silver play button for it, lol.

i would say that this era was probably when the phandom was at its peak, too. at least, that's what i've heard from older phannies. they were especially booming on tumblr, so much so that dan, at the end of the year, made a 'top dan memes of 2015', something which he continued to do several times after.

side note: dan hit 5 million subs in august of this year, and phil hit 3 million in december.

2016

they're quite busy touring first their america leg, then their australia leg, then their europe leg of tatinof for the most part of this year.

in april, they end their 'internet takeover' radio show, marking the end of their radio show days in general.

in august, dan hit 6 million subscribers.

in october, dan and phil, yes, the two of them together, won the award for 'best vlogger' at the radio 1 teen awards. this marks the beginning of them always winning awards jointly, as if they are not separate people. it's a running joke within the phandom, actually.

they also announce and release their second book this year, called 'dan and phil go outside'/'dapgo', in which they document their journey on tour. it's mainly a picture book with memories and anecdotes from the tour scattered throughout. they did a promotional event for the book that they called 'dan and phil go outside on stage event', just for the sake of being able to abbreviate it to 'dapgoose', lmao.

this was also the year in which they were heavily stalked (again, due to the phan thing). people retraced their steps, found out where they lived, contacted family members that did not want to be part of public life, all for the possibility of finding out if phan was real. dan and phil, to this day, talk about how they literally could not do anything remotely gay in public (even things that won't normally be considered particularly romantic, but would if people saw them doing it), because they were deathly paranoid it would end up as a headlines.

2017

a lot happened this year, so strap in.

so, some things you should know about dan and phil. firstly, they both joined the internet as emo little guys, with iconic emo fringes that eventually became so ingrained into their branding that they were reluctant to change it. also, dan hated his natural curly hair for years and years, even though most fans loved it and wished he would stop straightening it. secondly, dan, at this point, was known as the edgy/existential one, which phil was known as the bright, innocent one, which was pronounced both by how they dressed (dan in all black mostly, and phil in bright colours, which tbf still hold to this day) and how they acted, with dan always making sort of dark(ish) jokes and phil going as far as censoring every time he even accidentally swore (not often), despite not censoring most of dan's swearing.

okay, so, on the very first day of this year, dan announces he will no longer be straightening his hair. people go wild, because dan with his natural hair had been such a rare sight, and also because he lowkey just looks so much better with curly hair, lol.

in march, dan kind of disappears for a week, and when he comes back, he says on a livestream for people to remind him to tell them what happened at a later date. now, why am i mentioning this? this was an incident that proved how insane the phandom could get, this one offhanded comment about something happening that led to dan disappearing for a week led to DOZENS of absolutely INSANE fan (mainly phan-related) theories. people were constantly harassing dan about it, thinking some crazy shit like dan and phil had gotten secretly married, or divorced, or had adopted a child together or something. we'll come back to this.

then, dan and phil announce they will be moving apartments (though staying in london) due to the current apartment that is lowkey falling apart, being too loud, and also because there was a gas leak in the apartment that literally went unnoticed for months, and they don't want to go through a repeat of that. this leads to the whole two-apartment conspiracy thing. basically, dan and phil were tired of filming videos in their own apartments, their own bedrooms, even, for so many years (which is so fair; work-life balance is important), so to get around that they... simply rented two apartments, one on top of the other. they lived in one, and filmed in the other. they didn't even confirm this until like 2022, lmao.

at the same time, dan changes his whole online presence from 'danisnotonfire' to 'daniel howell', since every time he did anything, people would credit him as 'danisnotonfire' instead of his real name, which was getting annoying, and also because the old username was still lowkey associated with old branding (ehem, llamas and placentas, ehem). this drove people insane 2.0, because the 'danisnotonfire' thing was so iconic by now (i mean, that's literally the origin of the '-inof's), but dan's content doesn't really change at all, so in hindsight it wasn't that huge of a deal.

in october, dan posts a video titled 'daniel and depression', in which he opens up about having struggled with clinical depression for years, about what his experience with it has been like, about going to therapy, about taking antidepressants, about how he's only able to talk about it now that he feels genuinely better. he lowkey becomes the token mental health guy after this, but it's kind of really cool that he was so open about it at a time where so many people were still reluctant to talk about mental health and stuff.

shortly after, in another livestream, addresses 'that week in march', that i mentioned earlier. he says he disappeared that week because he was going through severe withdrawal from a sudden lack of antidepressants (that he had forgotten to order early enough) and that he was having a monumentally shitty time. this... really shut people in the phandom up, and made them realise they no, they did not in fact know these people in real life, and i think made a lot of people realise how harmful and invasive and plain inappropriate they were being, making everything about their phan theories.

around that time, they also release their party game, 'truth bombs', which was apparently conceptualised by phil, the master of insane icebreaker questions. i won't explain how the game works, but it does seem really fun, and they play it in this video, where they also explain how it works.

in november, dan and phil announced their second world tour, 'interactive introverts'. the whole theme for the show was 'giving the people what they want', and dan has later said that this was the case because he wanted this tour to be everything the fans want from them; he genuinely thought he would never come back to youtube after the tour, so he wanted to justify is departure by just doing everything they wanted him to do. he was tired of the whole pressure of 'phan', he was tired of making content in general, and dissatisfied with what he was doing.

i think something also worth mentioning in 2017 is the following. so, on one hand, phannies are being as weird as ever about phan, right? but on the other hand, this is the year they lowkey start not fully hiding their gayness...? i mean, not only do they address the fact that fans want two of their male sims to get together (this might even have been in 2016, btw), but they play a dating sim called 'dream daddy', in which you necessarily play as a male character, but have the option to choose between dating men and women... and they choose men... also, generally, the jokes on their gaming channel are allowed to be not only kind of more explicit now, but also quite casually gay. so clearly, there has been some kind of shift at this point. in fact, loads of youtube comments from this era literally make that comparison (along the lines of 'dan in 2012: i'm not gay!, dan in 2017: i <3 boys they are my favourite they're so lovely'). and they're not wrong; the shift is noticeable.

2018

so, 2018. the year starts off strong with dan tweeting a picture of phil's birthday (30th january) cake for the year, which says 'show me your philussy'. this is the first of many insane birthday cakes dan had got phil. it's amazing.

their two sims go from potentially gay to explicitly gay throughout the course of the year. such a cute little boy-next-door thing. seriously, go watch the sims series.

anyway, the other thing that happens, right before they go on tour, after shooting all the promo photos with the old hair, is that phil finally (last to the party) gets rid of his emo hair. i mean, he had outgrown it ages ago, but he had kept it for so long because he thought people though of him as 'the guy with the hair' on the internet, but it was truly, really, just not who he was anymore. he kept up the black hair dye for quite a while afterwards, though. he's naturally sort of mousy-haired, by the way.

they continue uploading to the gaming channel throughout the tour, and while phil uploads to his main channel semi-regularly, dan lowkey doesn't upload for months. now, this isn't entirely uncommon, since dan has had trouble keeping a consistent upload schedule due to his mental health in the past, to the point where that's another running joke, but he also stops livestreaming on younow.

three very important videos are uploaded this year. firstly, in july, 'what dan and phil text each other', which turns into the first in an ongoing, iconic, annual series that a lot of phannies have said replaces pinof for them. then, in october, the 'massive pizza mukbang', which is a fan-favourite comfort video, because it involves dan and phil doing nothing in particular other than eating and yapping, and it lowkey just feels much more (parasocially, it is all parasocial in this house) personal than anything they had really uploaded before. thirdly, in december, 'phil is not on fire 10', the final one, marking the end of an era.

at the end of 2018, dan and phil do 'dilmas', a series of consecutive sims videos to mark the end of (what we now call season 1 of) their sims series. in the final video of this series, on christmas eve, they announce that the gaming channel is going on a hiatus. in dan's own words, this would apparently not be like the one direction hiatus, and definitely more like the fall out boy one, even though he later admitted he really wasn't planning on coming back at the time at all. he said he really needed this break to come to terms with all the things he had been avoiding facing, or had not had the time to face in the rollercoaster of his career, the primary subject being that he was gay and still dealing with debilitating internalised homophobia that he desperately needed to deal with.

what an end to the year.

2019

as phil has said, in this year, he felt like he was left to babysit the kids, a bit. he didn't know who he really was without dan, and just sort of continued to do his own thing on his main channel.

as for dan... he basically disappeared not just from his main channel and the gaming channel, but also from the internet as a whole, for several months.

the hiatus calmed a lot of phannies down. they were almost forced to go do different things for a while, find other media to occupy their time (although again, the amazingphil channel did still post regularly, god bless).

and then it's june. and, well, possibly one of the most life-changing videos ever dropped on the daniel howell channel. this video is called 'basically i'm gay', and i'd recommend for everyone and their mother to watch it. it is so very dear to me, and quite possibly a masterpiece. in it, dan opens up about the traumatisingly homophobic environment he was raised in, and his constant internal struggles with his sexuality growing up. about his suicide attempt. then, how meeting phil changed his life in how he was accepted for who he was for the first time, how phil was his only light in the dark. this was the hard launch for a lot of people. in this video, he calls phil is 'soulmate', and describes their relationship as 'more than just romantic. [phil is] someone that genuinely liked me. i trusted [him].' and, like, everyone had grown UP and calmed DOWN atp, so basically no one was jumping at this info, picking it into a thousand tiny pieces and analysing what it could possibly mean anymore (which happened a lot with less significant things before), but instead finally just accepting what dan and phil were willing to share and demanding no more from them. at this point, the phandom knew and and phil, no matter what the exact details of their relationship was (romantic or platonic or sexual or whatever), were partners in life. and that was finally enough.

phil later that month also came out as gay, documenting some of his own experiences growing up gay, although his story involves significantly less trauma. afterwards, he also releases an updated 'draw my life' video, in which he opens up about parts of his life he couldn't mention before due to being in the closet, and just other, more personal parts of his life that he hadn't really talked about on his channel since he has always wanted it to be a place people could go to escape their real lives for a moment, and he had never wanted to weigh down the mood by talking about his personal issues. also, he's quite a private person generally, and i would say this video is actually one of the most personal ones we have about phil.

the coming out also marked a shift in the way phil chose to present himself online. he was really, really no longer the nice, innocent phil that so many had characterised him as for so long. instead, being able to be open about his sexuality brought out parts of his personality that he had been probably suppressing(? idk the right and accurate word for this, forgive me) prior to it.

2020

dan has, by the way, completely disappeared from the internet again. well, okay, no, after coming out, he did some interviews and stuff, where he talked about being queer again. good for him; he finally got to talk about it after 28 years of repressing it.

and look, he does cameo in some amazingphil videos, notably in the one where phil rescues an injured pigeon (steve <3), but also some others, but he's either only a disembodied voice or a series of body parts; he's not really in the videos. phannies during this time were being driven mad, and i mean, not only from the lockdown, but also from the way they were calling even a stray word or two from dan in one of phil's videos 'joint content'.

dan and phil have said this time of their life was another time they were very close to breaking up, because not only had they been kicked out of(?) one of their apartments, so they only had one now, and were therefore forced to spend all their time together due to lockdown, they were also... moving again! so all their stuff was crammed into cardboard boxes. apparently, they wanted to rip each other apart. i get that, honestly.

but yeah, not only were they moving, as they announced right at the end of 2020 on a joint(! truly joint this time) livestream on a platform called stereo, but they had in fact bought a house together, the interior of which they had wholly designed themselves! this was quickly dubbed the 'forever home' at the time, and later people started calling it the 'phouse'.

side note: you'll see a 'ph-' attached to the start of a LOT of words in this phandom. it's possibly THE biggest phandom inside joke. it's basically always just a portmanteau of the words 'phan' and '[insert word here, e.g. house]', but it's fucking hilarious every time.

2021

dan and phil start a whole series on stereo documenting their moving and home designing process, in which they basically just yap for an hour, and after such a long time of a barren wasteland of actual joint content, it is literally like the first rain after a drought.

anyway, dan then casually drops that he's written a book about mental health, and that that's what he had been doing the time he was away. the book is called 'you will get through this night'. i have it, though i havent fully read it yet. it's been fun and very thought-provoking so far.

dan still doesn't post anything on his main channel, but he DOES appear, fully this time, in several amazingphil videos, doing random stuff like playing cards against humanity (phan edition), letting phil cut his hair (to promote dan's book), and explaining why he had to call an ambulance. and, like, even more stuff!

2022

the return of dan. in may, dan posts a video onto his channel, almost three years since his previous one, 'basically, i'm gay', titled 'why i quit youtube'. in it, he talks about, well, what it says on the tin, the tldr version of which is that he was constantly stressed due to the competition on youtube, which was worsened by his mental health struggles, and he wanted to create a show with youtube originals that he poured his life savings into, but they then ignored him and rejected him many months after leaving him hanging, which further fucked with his mental health, but then he wrote a stage show called 'we're all doomed!' to deal with it all, and he's going to tour it. he also said he was going to actually come back to youtube in 2022.

and he did. he started a new series on his channel called 'dystopia daily', and it was very befitting of his whole new doom-and-gloom branding. but it was actually just mostly funny. at least, i thought so. apparently, the reactions were mixed, because some of the humour was genuinely too dark for some people's tastes.

in september, the uk leg of 'we're all doomed' starts, and then the american leg follows basically immediately in october. on the american leg, we are blessed, for the first (well, first-ish, but i don't have the time to explain the previous lore since this is already ridiculously long) time, with sister daniel. which is basically dan finding a sexy nun costume in a spirit halloween and putting it on for laughs, but then discovering it actually really works on him. an icon of lesbians worldwide. this is the first we see dan being truly comfortable in explicitly feminine things; it's heartwarming.

by the way, we discover later that when dan was away from phil for 2.5 months for the american leg of the tour, it was the longest they had been apart since 2009, and phil had a crisis and dyed his clothes, the towels, and the bath mat in their house green.

2023

in the beginning of the year, phil opens up about why he hasn't been uploading as much, and it's because he's been having dizzy spells constantly, and he finally went to get it checked out, and also see a therapist about his health anxiety, which has been occupying his thoughts a lot.

he then starts uploading quite frequently again, and dan appears in some of the videos too, although he's also still busy touring his show until march of the year, when the main tour ends.

in august 2023, dan ends his 'dystopia daily' series.

something was in the air at that time. people -- phannies -- hinted a certain... shift... in the air. and they were fucking right to. because on the 15th of october 2023, there is an upload to danandphilgames for the first time in almost five. years. also, jacksepticeye is in it.

and they're back! all of a sudden, as if nothing had changed (although a great deal had), dan and phil start regularly uploading on the gaming channel again. and amazingphil is uploading regularly.

phannies had literally not even dared to DREAM of times like this for the past couple years. and the content was lowkey better than ever, because as dan put it: "we're all older, gayer, and phil can say 'fuck' now". and it wasn't limited to gaming anymore, really. they uploaded their 2023 baking video to the gaming channel, and they started doing a pinof reaction series, which they also uploaded there.

so many people come back to the phandom that had left during the hiatus, and they fit right in because dan and phil's content had evolved with their fanbase. and also, they've remained unproblematic this whole time, unlike... certain other youtubers i shall not get into. but basically, the vibes are better than ever, especially since everyone's matured now and aren't constantly harassing dan and phil.

2024

the uploads to danandphilgames and amazingphil continue, and it's really evident that dan and phil well and truly have stopped giving a fuck. they throw the word 'phan' around like it's nothing, they very extensively talk about being gay, they say things (especially innuendos) that would send 2010s phannies into a coma. (there are literally compilations of these things on youtube.)

in february, the first danandphilbeats album is released, which is (amazing) synthwave music they made in collaboration with lowave records, so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to have cool music in the background of their own videos, and they also made the music royalty-free, so anyone can use it in their own videos!

in march, they start a series called 'reacting to phan twitter' on the gaming channel, in which they react to twitter (and sometimes tumblr) memes their fanbase makes about them. hands down one of the most iconic and hilarious dan and phil series.

in june, rather anticlimactically, their tour is leaked. yup, a third joint world tour, called terrible influence/'tit' (yes, the phandom abbreviated it to 'tit', meaning 'terrible influence tour', and dnp just rolled with it), which they have to release the trailer for early, because ticketmaster(? i think) screwed them over. this tour is the dan and phil comeback tour, commemorating (at that point) almost fifteen years of dan and phil on the internet. the insanity of it all, and the growth that's come with it, both on their part and the audience's. the tour (and the videos they keep uploading to danandphilgames during it) is interpreted by many as the soft launch of their relationship, which makes total sense, since they very liberally use the word 'phan' for pretty much everything now, and constantly make little jokes and references to being in a relationship. but again, the phandom has learnt its lesson by this point, and weren't weird about it. we honestly didn't really care, i would say? as in, we didn't care to know the details of the true nature of their relationship, because it was firstly none of our business, truly, and secondly, kind of clear as day that no matter if it was romantic or not, they were partners who had chosen each other for good.

but dan and phil themselves have said the tour and this pre hard launch era kind of let them test the waters for the real thing.

the tour started in continental europe in september, moved onto north america in october and november, and then to australia in december.

2025

we're almost there. just one more year to go.

in january, they toured the uk and ireland, and it finally ended in early february, marking the end of their 'comeback' era.

now, just like before the return of danandphilgames, phannies could sense a shift in the air. people were theorising a rebrand. after all, it would make sense now that their coming back to youtube and the media in general as 'dan and phil' is officially complete, doubly so with the release of the video version of the show in may. they continued their uploads to danandphilgames innocently enough, but something was clearly brewing.

on the evening of the thirteenth of october two thousand and twenty five, phil lester tweeted: 'if you've ever been into dan and phil you might want to be online in an hour or so' as usual, the 'or so' was doing a lot of the heavy lifting, since dan and phil have... trouble uploading things on time. well, anyway, that soon ceased to matter because the content of the video quite literally changed lives.

'are dan and phil in a relationship? the truth' listen, dan and phil have had a history of extremely well-deserved clickbait titles. not a singular phannie (that i've ever met, at least) thought this was an actual, real hard launch. in fact, i don't think anyone thought they even would hard launch, not after everything they'd been through. we were all perfectly fine with that. but dear god, was this the best thing they could have possibly done.

that video was groundbreaking in that instead of a youtuber apology video, it was a forgiving video. they talked 1. about why they hid their relationship for so many years, 2. why they're talking about it now, and 3. what the actual truth is. basically: 1. they didn't want to be seen as 'that gay couple on the internet', but instead wanted to be known for their actual work, they didn't want even more scrutiny on their relationship than there already was, and also dan couldn't deal with all the harassment when he was so traumatised from the homophobia in his childhood. 2. they recognise that the fanbase at the time at the root of this weren't bad people, but instead just very young that couldn't fully realise the impact of their actions. also, it's really exhausting to have to hide a relationship for this long, not only to the whole public eye, but to anyone new they would meet and have/want to cultivate any form of relationship with. and if not, they'll just be dragging that person along in the secret. 3. i've mentioned most of this segment throughout the rest of this post, but basically they've literally been together the whole time.

the phandom's primary reaction to this was mainly immense happiness for them, and gratitude that they would finally trust us enough to share this with us.

also in this video, they announced a podcast that they called hard launch. they rebranded the joint channel from 'danandphilgames' to 'dan and phil' (rip), reflecting how it had really strayed so far from a gaming channel at this point anyway, and how they're now officially embracing their identity as a duo.

they actually have a regular upload schedule now, which was unheard of before, because they can actually hire editors and producers and stuff to work with them, which they couldn't before since they were hiding such a huge secret.

they also started frequently posting tiktoks, which are hilarious, and the only reason i really even go on that godforsaken app anymore, to be honest. oh, they also have a patreon now, which has also had several bangers.

and they're clearly just happier than ever. they're much more unfiltered, more relaxed and comfortable, visibly happier, and they don't have to be constantly paranoid if they sound too gay or not. it's really beautiful.

which brings us to...

2026

phannies have wanted dan and phil to watch heated rivalry literally ever since it came out. and it's literally their first phupload of the year (aside from the podcast ofc), and i know it's been months but it's still literally like a fever dream hearing them talk so freely about their relationships and draw such open comparisons between their own story and hollanov's. that one video literally made me have to pause and just breathe several times, on the one hand because i was just so sad for them because of all the things they'd been through having to hide their relationship so fiercely for so long, and also because i was just so happy for them that they can talk about it now. also, just the concept. the irl ogs of hiding a queer relationship for over a decade watching a show about gay hockey players hiding a queer relationship for over a decade.