The Valentines Day Video
This page discusses a video titled ":3," colloquially known as the "Valentine's Day Video," "VDay Video," or "The Video That Shall Not Be Named." It is meant to provide context on something I believe is a major event in Dan and Phil's history. I personally believe there is an importance to presenting information even regarding sensitive topics so that we can learn from what has happened in the past so we do not repeat it.
I am aware some of the screenshots containing quotes by Dan and Phil may contradict some of the information written in the text portion of this post. There were times when they made statements regarding this topic that contained false information. This topic has been extremely thoroughly researched and this post was put together very meticulously. Clicking on the dates in this post will bring you to the corresponding archive page.
On February 13, 2010, a video titled ":3" was uploaded to LessAmazingPhil. This video was shared only with Dan likely through a YouTube feature that allows uploaders to share private videos with specific users. On the date of viewing, Dan left a comment on this video with his main youtube account danisnotonfire and Phil replied to the comment using his second channel LessAmazingPhil.
The video would remain private until the morning of September 17, 2011. On this day, there was a glitch in YouTube's system that unprivated many private videos from a variety of different users on the platform. One of these videos was ":3."
The screenshot below is the only screenshot I will be sharing of this video. It is solely a reference point. Note that Phil's bed is not fully made and his desk chair is visible on the right side of the screen. This differentiates it from Phil's main channel videos “My fish died :(“ and “Sea Panther” in which he wears the same shirt. If you see a photo, gif, or video that matches this in appearance, do not share it.
A small handful of fan pages at the time posted about the video before Dan and Phil noticed it had been unprivated by the glitch. At 3:40 PM, the video was no longer available and Dan and Phil began to send messages to fan pages who had posted it as well as reuploaders asking them to remove the video and attempt to explain.
Dan also supposedly replied to a tweet about the video at around 4:15 PM. It was deleted shortly after.
After this, talk of the video was subdued for a while and the video's existence was not very widely known.
On October 31, 2012, the video was reuploaded to Tumblr and began to spread like wildfire. At this time, Dan was very active on Tumblr and also had a sideblog called "customerservicedepartment" where he would answer questions from fans and received and answered a handful of questions about the video.
Phil files a copyright claim on every upload of the video he discovers. Many people are also constantly on the lookout for new reuploads to help him in this process. YouTube automatically flags any copy of the video that is uploaded to their platform via their content id system.
I once again want to emphasize that this is a sensitive topic within the community. You are free to believe whatever you want about whether the video was authentic or a prank, but please respect that this video is a sore spot for Dan and Phil and the community.
