on of those twitter phannies yesterday was like “soviet of you haven’t watch BIG in a while maybe you should” in regards to people talking about the hand holding in spooky week and i badly wanted to respond being like ?? basically i’m gay… the video where dan calls phil his soulmate and literally confirms everything 😭 maybe they should watch BIG again actually

there is this weird thing where some people heard dan say that the speculation about his sexuality and invasion of privacy that he endured was traumatic and somehow from that got that he hates so-called "Phan Shippers" and is against anyone talking about him and phil potentially being a couple and it's so bizarre because it's just literally not what he said at all ? and if he did say that it would be highly hypocritical because, and i cannot stress this enough, dan and phil have always leaned into the shipping thing. always. they know it gets them views and they also clearly find it funny. that was never the issue.

the actual issue has always been people demanding answers and straight up harassing them about it, accessing their families' social media looking for clues, showing up at their literal home being weird, and, while closeted, constantly asking them if they're gay. THAT was the issue, that's what dan is talking about in his video.

i'm not even saying the general shipping didn't also get on their nerves sometimes, i'm sure it absolutely did, but that's not at all what dan said really affected him mentally.

the amount of times dan and phil have joked about it, actively encouraged fanfic (both by tongue-in-cheek writing it themselves and many times saying they consider fanfic to be a good creative outlet), referred to themselves as "phan" (a term they coined themselves, lest we forget), gone along with phannie jokes about them being together, and most of all emphasised that they generally try to stay out of fan spaces (i.e. anything they aren't tagged in) because they want us to feel free to be weird and post whatever without being afraid they'll see it... i'm sorry but to then vehemently insist dan and phil hate it when people ship them and are gonna ?? stop uploading again ?? if we do it ?? fucking stupid. and unbelievably annoying. if you don't like rpf that's fine, but there are so many more important issues you could dedicate your time to than policing people going 'aww' over two lameass grown men touching hands.