One of the biggest internet conspiracies of the 2010s has finally been laid to rest: YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester are dating. In fact, they’ve been dating “the whole time,” as Lester put it in a video uploaded to their joint YouTube channel on Monday, Oct. 13. After more than a decade of content creation and public speculation, Howell and Lester have confirmed that they’ve been in a relationship for the past 16 years. The two addressed long-standing rumors and explained why they waited so long to reveal the truth about their relationship. The news went viral, making headlines across the globe, and sparking celebration online among both current and past fans. The 46-minute video has amassed over 3.6 million views since its upload.

The two have been making comedy, gaming, and lifestyle videos on YouTube together since 2009 and moved in together in 2011, but neither had ever publicly spoken about their relationship. “This huge secret about who we are and what our status is makes every single day impossible,” Lester said in the new video, explaining why they decided to share this information now.

The video came as a shock to many viewers, putting an end to one of the longest-running conspiracies on the internet. Many old subscribers returned to rejoice in the good news. Hannah, a longtime fan of 13 years, had stopped keeping up with the duo years ago until hearing the recent news. “I’m so happy to finally know the truth now,” she said in a Reddit message. 

Yet it’s not necessarily the truth itself that is surprising people. Many outside their core audience assumed the relationship was already confirmed. “I thought they came out years ago,” said second-year Lottie Horton, an undeclared student at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. “… I remember … it being a topic of conversation when I was still in high school.”

Leila Sherriff, another second-year undeclared student at Lang, said she felt the same way. “I was sort of confused because I … vaguely remember them doing a video a couple years ago that seemed to address this,” she said. “But I’m not sure if it was … as decisive as this one.”

Sherriff was right. While the two have heavily alluded to the nature of their relationship over the years, this is the first time they have made an explicit statement about it. The pair knew that many had already assumed the truth. “We are openly gay and have been living with each other for 15 years, so it feels kind of like a fair assumption,” Lester said in the video. “… but it’s a big scary deal for us, it’s kind of like another mini coming-out.”

Howell and Lester individually uploaded official coming-out videos to their respective YouTube channels (@danielhowell and @AmazingPhil) in June 2019, after a decade of content creation. While Lester’s video was just under eight minutes and amassed nearly 5 million views, Howell made a multi-chaptered, 45-minute video essay about his experience coming to terms with his sexuality while growing up and being watched under the public eye of the internet. His video, which discusses the traumas of internalized and social homophobia and other mental health issues, has over 13 million views. 

While neither coming-out video directly addressed the current nature of their relationship, fans took it as the closest they’d come to an official announcement. It was also, at the time, the most transparent either creator had been about how their audience’s behavior affected them.

“There was actually an acceptance among a large majority of the fans that they were probably never going to fully confirm anything,” Alien (@alieniinvasion) said in a conversation on Tumblr. A relatively recent fan, they began watching Dan and Phil 2020. “After everything they’ve went through and how much they’ve spoken about or joked about how harmful the digging, stalking, and harassment [from fans] was on them, I think a lot of the fans began to self-police each other and accept that they deserve their privacy.”

The duo also addressed the harsh negative impact that invasive fan speculation had on their relationship in their video. “Being a fan of Dan and Phil was just as much about their funny content as the secret mirror world of content that was solving the alternate reality game of their relationship,” Lester said on the nature of the height of their popularity in the early-to-mid 2010s. 

Discussing the same topic earlier in the video, Howell said, “This idea of Dan plus Phil — oh, it was a popular idea.” The two detailed ways in which fans crossed boundaries, taking the shipping to a whole new level. “[It] became so big we could not ignore it,” Howell said.

Dan Howell and Phil Lester were some of the first content creators to gain major success on YouTube. Lester began uploading videos in 2006 and Howell followed a few years later in 2009, which is also the year the two uploaded their first video together as well as the year they started dating. Their audience steadily grew as YouTube became more popular, particularly among young teens. The two gained millions of subscribers and followers on their channels and other social media accounts. They became radio hosts for BBC in 2013, published a No. 1 New York Times bestseller in 2015, and produced their first ever global stage show, “The Amazing Tour Is Not On Fire,” in 2016 — the most successful YouTube stage show at the time, only overtaken by their subsequent tour, “Interactive Introverts.” 

“They’re such pioneers of YouTube,” Alien said. They later addressed the obsessive behavior from fans at that time. “The audience was primarily very young … I think a lot of them were probably digging to find the queer joy that they weren’t allowed to experience themselves.”

Their audience dwindled somewhat over the years but managed to stay active and alive, even through a break from content and inconsistent uploads. Their videos consistently got millions of views, and still get hundreds of thousands, making them two of the most successful longtime content creators on the platform. In 2018, Howell and Lester announced a hiatus from their gaming channel, where they stopped posting to the page for nearly five years. In that time, only Lester continued uploading regularly on his personal channel, while Howell took a break from YouTube and didn’t post any videos for almost three years. During the hiatus, Howell published a book, You Will Get Through This Night, and produced his own sardonic comedy stage show, “We’re All Doomed,” which he took on tour around the world. Howell addressed his YouTube burnout in a video uploaded in 2022, explaining why he decided to take a break from the platform. The duo started posting content again on their gaming channel, DanandPhilGAMES (since rebranded as Dan and Phil), in October 2023, and went on their third world tour, “The Terrible Influence Tour,” the following year. After returning from the tour, the two shared in a video that they had gotten 60 million views on their joint channel since returning just nine months earlier, which Howell said was more than what either of them had ever gotten in “any single year” on their own respective channels. 

At the height of their initial popularity, the two were some of the most well-known figures on the internet. 

“They were everywhere,” Hannah said, later noting the speculation from Howell and Lester’s audience. “The idea of them being in a romantic relationship drove fans wild.” But there is a consensus online now that their fans are not as intrusive as they once were. 

“[The audience has] grown up and [is] more understanding of boundaries and their own queerness,” Alien said. “The audience today feels like a stark difference from back then: relatively contained, and very respectful and mindful of Dan and Phil as creators.”

In the announcement video, Howell broached the topic of parasocial behavior among their younger audience during these early years. “Now we had hundreds of thousands of people on the internet feeling like we are in their lives,” he said. He acknowledged that some form of attachment from fans is natural, but can reach a point that feels violating. “Some think that shipping real life people is problematic. I think that humans cannot stop this natural tendency … But then it becomes, ‘I wish they were really dating,’ … [and] a line gets crossed when that turns into, ‘Let’s find out.’” He mentioned a sense of discomfort when focus is only drawn to the relationship. “It’s weird because it’s almost as if people are no longer interested in the real you.”

Moreover, Howell noticed a shift in the relationship with their audience, particularly during his hiatus from YouTube. “Cultural perceptions [shift] towards [invasiveness on the internet]. Collectively, people go, ‘Oh, it’s not cool to do that anymore,’” Howell said. “I think that the Dan and Phil audience is one of the best places on the internet.” Since returning to full-time content creation over two years ago, the pair recognized the bond that fans formed among themselves, and how the parasocial mob that once watched their videos have grown up and created a loving, creative, encouraging community which they interact with regularly online and have seen in person on their tours. “[Our audience] is welcoming; it’s inclusive for all types of people,” Lester said.

The two stressed that they felt it important to be transparent about their relationship during such tumultuous political times, particularly for the queer community. “This is a scary time in the world,” Howell said. “It feels like things are sliding backwards … But I think that’s why it’s more important than ever that we are like, ‘you know what, hey, here we are, gay, and what?’ … We can’t live in fear anymore.”

Both fans and non-fans shared similar sentiments about the news. “The political climate is so horrible,” Horton said. “Gay people are under attack every day … Maybe they’re trying to make up a statement of, ‘Hey, you can be gay. We’re together.’”

“It’s kind of freeing knowing that they were a thing for so long,” Joseph La Vé said, a fine arts major at Parsons School of Design. “I mean, even me not being inherently within that [emo] culture … It’s kind of beautiful … It feels something like a part of history is being revealed.”

“It’s really scary in this political/social environment, so they’re kind of doing something that a lot of people wouldn’t really want to do nowadays,” Eve, @StrategyExtreme8847 on Reddit, said in a direct message. They’ve been a fan of Dan and Phil for 13 years. “It just shows that they trust [their audience] again … [And] it shows their own personal growth.”

“It’s such a monumental step in celebrating queerness,” Alien said. “And especially now in the current political climate, I just feel it was so brave and incredibly wonderful for queer people everywhere to hear this message about a queer couple overcoming as much adversity as they have in their careers, and coming out of it stronger and more joyful and supported than ever.”

At the end of their video, Howell and Lester announced that they’d be starting a podcast called Hard Launch, with new episodes going out every Monday. The first episode was uploaded on Oct. 20 and already has over 1.2 million views on YouTube and over 200k streams on Spotify. In it, they talk about the positive reception of their announcement video. 

“I thought that the internet would react in a way. I didn’t think it’d be reacting in such a huge way,” Lester said. He shared that he initially had some fears about making the video, but the support and positivity from audiences has quelled his worries. “Posting that video felt like a huge relief … I just felt like a weight had been lifted.”