Dan and Phil turned a 16-year relationship reveal into a lesson on parasocial boundaries

Dan Howell and Phil Lester — mega stars of a mid-2000s cohort of British YouTubers that blazed the trail for what we now know as the creator economy — are in love.

Yes, those of the terminally online ilk, it's true. No, people who had been half paying attention to Tumblr trends for a decade, they hadn't really confirmed it before this. But, don't take my word for it, take theirs. And maybe you'll learn something about yourself (and fandom), too.

In a 46-minute satirical "conspiracy" documentary, skillfully evoking the popular 2010s YouTube format, the creator duo confirmed what fans have speculated for nearly 16 years: that the creative partners, roommates, and best friends have been romantically linked the whole time, and that they've remained silent about it because of intense societal pressure. In less than 24 hours, it racked up more than 1.8 million views.

The duo, ship name Phan, has been at the center of one of the internet's most fervent romantic conspiracies for more than a decade. They spawned entire blogs and fan accounts and a relitigation of what's known online as "RPF," or "real person fiction," a fan fiction phrase that grew to encompass an ardent belief that two real-life celebrities are actually infatuated with each other.

RPF is a taboo subject in many fandom spaces. Recall Larry Stylinson — CALM DOWN — the decades-long conspiracy that Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson of One Direction fame are secret partners. Both parties in the relationship have long denied a romantic fling, with Tomlinson emphatically begging fans to cease their speculation and even blocking mentions of the ship name on social media. A decade since the band's hiatus, and with one of the members tragically gone, Larry shippers are still posting anyway.

Not all RPF is so extreme. In fan fic, it's an exceedingly common category that is usually constrained to the lead actors of a fan-favorite TV show or random cross-industry pairings between musicians and F1 drivers. In Hollywood, it can be an ingenious marketing tactic. Some online speculated that Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell's Anyone But You press tour was an attempt to generate RPF buzz that could push the movie's box office numbers up.

But, for many, RPF bleeds too closely into the boundaries of real life. "Sometimes I felt like when I looked at Phil, I felt the gaze of these people in my head," Howell opined in the video, calling it a state of "apocalyptic constant stress."

At a time when celebrities are increasingly pushing back on parasocial relationships and calling out the entitled behavior of fans, it would be justifiable for the two YouTube phenomena to leave it at that. To face the camera and tell fans — bluntly — that it's their fault. That many of them took it way too far (they did). That it was incredibly invasive to stalk them online (it was) and even more so to stalk their movements in public (nearing a literal crime). It became impossible to separate their budding careers from each other, fearing that a romantic association would consume their individuality; they rejected promotional events and censored themselves in videos to keep personal information away from fans. To confirm the RPF conspiracy would be to validate the near-abusive behavior. Reflect on that a bit, Phan-dom.

Howell and Lester have spent too many years online, and love their fans way too much, to fall into that binary.

A modern blueprint for responding to parasocial bonds, Howell and Lester spend the first 30 minutes of the video telling fans what they already know, parroting back their own behavior over a decade. It's not really to shame them. They stand outside their old flat, where fans scoped out Google Street View specs to recreate it in incredible detail. They wear tin foil hats while pointing at a conspiracy board, filled with references only Phan stans should know. They concoct the perfect ship in a lab. They've been aware of it all.

Then, they turn the metaphorical camera to the viewer and themselves. "A lot of the 'bad guys' weren't bad people," says Howell. "They were just young people that had absolutely no idea what the effects of their actions were."

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Howell had a complicated childhood, he explained, closeted and clouded by an extremely homophobic upbringing. Now he wants a fresh start, based on authenticity. Lester, who was privately out before Howell, was there for him through it all — much like Phan was for their viewers. "This is not a video for you to be like, 'I need to beat myself up about this. I feel so bad. I need to stop watching.' It's not about that," adds Lester.

They reiterate this because Dan and Phil, the duo, truly understand what fandom entails. They were helping architect modern fan spaces with their peers in the 2000s, and participating in it themselves, right as YouTube and the idea of a "creator" being a celebrity came to fruition. Combine this with what fandom can mean for queer youth, specifically, and the wishful thinking of a generation of similarly closeted LGBTQ+ fans. It's much more nuanced than one may think.

Fandom researchers have long explored the intensity and importance of fandom, even before the internet complicated the relationship. In a 2023 interview with Mashable, researcher Nancy Baym explained how previously normalized fandom behaviors are actively being renegotiated: "The expectation that you ought to be online engaging your people, showing them these more private moments, has opened up a constant need to negotiate boundaries, part of a much broader blurring of boundaries between work and home, professional and personal, public and private."

So, at the 30-minute mark, the partners reestablish the rules: Shipping is fine, fan fiction ("creative writing") is all good, but no digging into their private moments and certainly no sexual speculation.

Howell and Lester are resetting those boundaries, rooted not in anger but in compassion for their younger selves — and the fans who changed the trajectory of their lives. "Forgiveness and growth is such an important part of life," says Howell, a point he repeats later. "In the same way we want the people in our lives to give us patience and grace and the benefit of the doubt if we ever make a mistake, I have to extend that to the world."

Watch the full video below — It's worth every minute.

This article reflects the opinion of the writer.

Chase DiBenedetto is the Social Good Reporter at Mashable.

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