History WebVideo / Danisnotonfire

* FatalFlaw: Lack of foresight. Dan can't predict how impulsive and irrational his audience can be, who don't really care for his boundaries and will create jokes and memes for the sake of it. A recurring theme with Dan is how he doesn't think through the consequences of his actions, either getting carried away when he's having fun or severely underestimating how his actions will come back to haunt him in the future.
** He made a website for himself when he was 12 and didn't expect a fan to find the website in his adulthood. In a similar vein, Dan explains that he openly expressed his sexuality online when he was younger, not expecting someone to find his online posts and use them against him.

* AscendedFanboy: Dan spent years watching [=YouTuber=] [[WebVideo/AmazingPhil Phil Lester]], until eventually becoming friends (and later, roommates) with Phil through incessant tweeting and video commenting (an unlikely turn-of-events that he would later parody in a mock how-to video). Dan told Phil that he'd always wanted to make videos on Website/YouTube, but just didn't think he would be any good. With Phil's encouragement, Dan gave it a go anyway and the rest, as they say, is history.

** During a game with Phil, Dan and Phil agreed that the punishment for failing would be allowing the other person to make a post on ''Website/TwitterX'' on their account. However, Dan lost, and Phil made an erotic post on Dan's account. Dan was not only embarrassed by Phil's... creativity, but it convinced Pete Wentz of ''Music/FallOutBoy'', A.K.A Dan's childhood hero, to stop following Dan's account.

* AnAesop: Dan has several major lessons in "Basically I'm Gay" that derive from his personal experience coming to terms his sexuality while internet famous:
** Dan has gone against his more obsessive fans before, but in this video, mentions that his online following felt threatening to him once they started speculating about his sexuality, and only made him feel more insecure. He says that digging through someone's life and tracking down their details just to fulfil your narrative about them or answer your petty questions is unhealthy and scary.
** Dan says he feels comfortable without the need for labels, but makes it clear that the ever-growing list of identities and sexualities being declared can be genuinely very helpful to somebody who just needs a term that connects with them to help them accept themselves. While some people may not feel the need for labels, others do, and Dan thinks that's okay.
** Dan thinks it's awful to reduce their struggle to come out by saying "we knew" after they do so, even if you had suspicions about someone's non-heterosexuality. It doesn't validate the person who has been scared to bring it up, and it sounds objectifying and selfish because you're treating their struggle like a game that you've won.
** The last lesson offered in the video is that coming out is far more difficult than others might think, and shouldn't be a source of pressure. A person's sexuality shouldn't be their defining quality, so let them come out naturally and on their own terms. Dan also notes that stereotyping, while sometimes accurate, is still a problem as well as self-oppression.

* FatalFlaw: Lack of foresight. Dan can't predict how impulsive and irrational his audience can be, who don't really care for his boundaries and will create jokes and memes for the sake of it. The fanbase has made jokes and memes about everything he does and has taken them way too far, to the point where Dan has called them out multiple times for doing it.
** He made a website for himself when he was 12 and didn't expect a fan to find the website in his adulthood.
** Dan makes a dis rack as part of a "Roast Yourself Challenge". He did it for a laugh, only to find out that a fan had illegally uploaded it to iTunes under Dan's name, causing it to climb the Hip-Hop charts and become more popular than ''Music/KanyeWest''.
** Dan and Phil make a craft channel, only for their fanbase to repeatedly post the line "Don't cry, craft!" across [=YouTube=] to a point of infamy.
** Dan shows how his dog had eaten a cake he and his mother made, only for the fanbase to criticize the dog's name and praise the animal for eating it.
** A tragic example came from his coming out video, where he explains that he openly expressed his sexuality online and didn't expect someone to actually find his online posts and use them against him.

* DudeLooksLikeALady: Dan often pokes fun at how he looks very feminine.
** In "Personal Space": "Oh my god, Becky, I just saw the tallest lesbian ever and she was such a pervert!"

He also has a gaming channel with his roommate and fellow [=YouTuber=] WebVideo/AmazingPhil, over at WebVideo/DanAndPhilGAMES. All tropes relating to those videos should go on the channel's own page.

In 2018, his presence on [=YouTube=] significantly reduced, partially explained by a large video he was making. At first, it was just his main channel, but since December 2018, all of his ongoing collaborative series with Phil were ended or put on indefinite hiatus for the time being, leaving his direction on the platform unclear. He has alluded to one or multiple projects in the works, and later confirmed he had been spending his time off writing a book. In the summer of 2019, he came out on [=YouTube=] with a video titled "Basically I'm Gay". In 2021, his book about mental health, ''You Will Get Through This Night'', was released. In 2022, Dan released a video documenting the DevelopmentHell going on during his time away from [=YouTube=] which put him off creation, but declared a commitment to returning to online content and announced a world tour.

* NoSocialSkills: Lampshades this frequently. Whenever he's with friend and fellow [=YouTuber=] Louise Pentland, their combined awkwardness invariably ends in disaster. In the video "Dan is leaving me" on Phil's channel, they discuss how Dan sometimes speaks too quietly for people to hear him, and Phil has to speak up and bail him out of such situations.

* NoSocialSkills: Lampshades this frequently. Whenever he's with friend and fellow [=YouTuber=] Louise Pentland, their combined awkwardness invariably ends in disaster.

* TotallyRadical: Dan has reputation for having a "millennial" sense of humour and a tendency to hold onto old Internet memes, particularly from the 2010s.

* ThoseTwoGuys: With Phil. Contrary to most Youtube duos, they originally weren't a double-act and rose to fame on their own respective channels. However, from 2014 to 2018, it gradually became rarer to see one without the other: they live together, very frequently appear in each other's videos, have created three collaborative side channels, got their own radio show on [=BBC1=], were offered a dual cameo by Disney in the UK version of Big Hero 6, hosted award shows together, and would side by side for interviews or conventions. Perhaps the epitome of this is that they've also won a 'Best Vlogger' award despite it usually only being won by one vlogger.

* MisBlamed: in "THE PANIC ALARM", Dan tells the tale of how he was working at a store cleaning the underside of a desk when he saw a BigRedButton and, not knowing what it was, pushed it out of curiosity and ended up getting the store slapped with a £15'000 fine after his boss had to cancel the SWAT team coming over, as the aforementioned button was the store's panic alarm. Dan described it as "real serious business, actual money and 'Oh shit, the POLICE are involved serious business" and says it was his fault. In actuality, he is 100% wrong in regards to it being his fault; yes, he shouldn't have pushed the button if he didn't know what it did, but it was entirely the store's responsibility to tell him about it and what it was and thusly, had he known about it, the button would have never been pressed outside of the occasions of an actual robbery or, since the button was uncovered, being pushed accidentally.

* TotallyRadical: Dan has reputation for having a "millennial" sense of humour and a tendency to hold onto old Internet memes, particularly from the early to mid-2010s.

* LargeHam: Despite his TheEeyore branding, when he gets going, he is actually very melodramatic, animated, and ''loud''.

*** Dan shows how his dog had eaten a cake he and his mother made, only for the fanbase to criticize the dog's name and praise the animal for eating it.

* FatalFlaw: Logic and a lack of foresight.
** Logic: Dan is a very logical person who tries to think through his actions and cover every angle but he can't predict how impulsive and irrational his audience can be. As they can make jokes and memes about everything he does and take them way too far, to a point where he's called them out multiple times for doing it. During his [=YouTube=] career, he has actually wised up to the fact that there are some fans who have no concept of boundaries and will simply take whatever joke they can get and run with it.
** Lack of foresight: Dan can never really predict how far his audience will take his jokes, has multiple blindspots, and doesn't see what the consequences are going to be for his actions.
*** A tragic example came from his coming out video, where he explains that he openly expressed his sexuality online and didn't expect someone to actually find his online posts and use them against him.
*** He made a website for himself when he was 12 and didn't expect a fan to find the website in his adulthood, and he didn't expect his fans to make memes and jokes about his off-handed and awkward jokes.

** Logic: Dan is a very logical person who tries to think through his actions, covering every angle, and he knows how his audience is going to treat his content but he can't predict how irrational his audience can be as they can make jokes and memes about everything he does. During his [=YouTube=] career, he has actually wised up to the fact that there are some fans who have no concept of boundaries or parasocial interactions and will simply take whatever joke they can get and run with it.
** Lack of foresight: Dan can never really predict how far his audience will take his jokes and doesn't see what the consequences are going to be for his actions.

* FatalFlaw: Lack of foresight, Dan can't really predict how far his audience will take his jokes and doesn't see what the consequences are going to be for his actions. A tragic example came from his coming out video, where he explains that he openly expressed his sexuality online and didn't expect someone to actually find his online posts and use them against him. In other cases, he made a website for himself when he was 12 and didn't expect a fan to find the website in his adulthood, and he didn't expect his fans to make memes and jokes about his off-handed and awkward jokes. During his [=YouTube=] career, he has actually wised up to the fact that there are some fans who have no concept of boundaries or parasocial interactions and will simply take whatever joke they can get and run with it.

* {{Bishonen}}: Dan is aware of this aspect of his appearance, and has occasionally joked about people mistaking him for a woman.

* ThoseTwoGuys: With Dan. Contrary to most Youtube duos, they originally weren't a double-act and rose to fame on their own respective channels. However, from 2014 to 2018, it gradually became rarer to see one without the other: they live together, very frequently appear in each other's videos, have created three collaborative side channels, got their own radio show on [=BBC1=], were offered a dual cameo by Disney in the UK version of Big Hero 6, hosted award shows together, and would side by side for interviews or conventions. Perhaps the epitome of this is that they've also won a 'Best Vlogger' award despite it usually only being won by one vlogger.

** By all accounts, this is also how they are known in real life.

* ThoseTwoGuys: With Dan. Contrary to most Youtube duos, they originally weren't a double-act and rose to fame on their own respective channels. However, it gradually became rarer to see one without the other: they live together, very frequently appear in each other's videos, have created three collaborative side channels, got their own radio show on [=BBC1=], were offered a dual cameo by Disney in the UK version of Big Hero 6, hosted award shows together, and would side by side for interviews or conventions. Perhaps the epitome of this is that they've also won a 'Best Vlogger' award despite it usually only being won by one vlogger.

** Dan and Phil, being roommates, have collaborated on so many videos on each other's channels that it became commonplace. After several years, the two began joking about it with Phil trying to play Dan up as a "surprise guest" in his videos, with both knowing it's not a remotely surprising collaboration to any of their viewers. They've also been involved with BBC Radio with their own show, created a joint gaming channel called WebVideo/DanAndPhilGAMES (2014-), and a side channel called The Super Amazing Project (2011-2012).

* InternetSafetyAesop: Discussed on his coming out video, he explained how he embraced and explored sexuality online because he suffered horribly from homophobia while growing up. However, his bullies found the posts about his sexuality and proceeded to torture him to the point where he contemplated and even attempted suicide.
* KnightInSourArmor: Dan invokes this attitude at the end of "Why I Quit [=YouTube=]. After documenting a painful, emotionally draining and depressing time the company put him through by wasting his time and making him jump through hoops for a series that ultimately got shelved, Dan admits he still loves [=YouTube=] as a platform, thinks it's the best space available for making a creative name for oneself, and declares a reinvigorated outlook on making content for the platform, promising a return rather than confirming a departure.