I found this really interesting so i thought i would do some research into it and holy shit it gets weird. I know this is long but its worth it i promise:
That is a real review from that tripadvisor account [
michaelH1459PZ ] (for those of you who don’t know, Michael is Phil’s middle name) , but it isn’t for that bar. the review is for Sky Bar Bangkok, Thailand (I cant link a specific review, but if you filter by excellent reviews, couples, jun-aug, and English you will get a short list and it is near the top). It reads as follows:
“
this place is beutiful i went here with my fiance and we got engaged everyone was so nice and kind he enjoyed the views (which are amazing!!) and i loved the food this was the most fun ive ever had
“
there are several typos. the writing style is more like Dan’s but we all know Dan is a snob so i feel like he would have written a more eloquent and detailed review. Also, “this was the most fun ive ever had” fucking really??? That’s really reaching and probably the most damning evidence for this being written by some demon phannie as a plant.
BUT there is another review (use the same search criteria) from that same account that actually is for Ozone Bar at the Ritz-Carlton in Hong Kong. it reads as follows:
“
Pricey drinks but for the amazing views i would pay any day. me and my fiance loved the selection of drinks i will remember this place forever, it is an amazing place to have any celebration with loved ones. It’s on the 118th floor of the building but there is an elevator. what a day.
“
Here’s where it gets weird:
I saw someone saying that it didn’t make sense that the reviews would be posted on the same day as they actually went to Ozone (August 29th). We know that dnp went to the Ozone bar because Phil tweeted (this) and (this). These tweets were posted on August 29th at around 1:25PM Hong Kong time. I noticed that on the tripadvisor review photos, the ozone seems to have 2 different lighting options, one for day and one for night. The photos phil posted show Ozone’s night lighting mode despite having posted them in the afternoon, so i did some digging: August 29th was a Monday and Ozone doesn’t open until 5PM on Mondays, three and a half hours after they posted the photos. This means that they must have gone before the 29th and taken the photos then!
“But when?”, you ask. I am 100% sure it was on the 28th. In the process of trying to pin down proof of the exact date that they left Australia, I discovered that in
Dan’s Farfetch’d Quest in Hong Kong at 4:07, you can see on Dan’s phone that that video was filmed on a Saturday (meaning Saturday August 28th) and when he returns to the hotel room at the end, you can see that Phil is wearing the shirt seen in the Ozone photos. My hypothesis would be that Phil took the meds that Dan brought him, Dan cleaned up, and they went out for the night.
It is entirely realistic that they would have gone to Ozone on the 28th and written a review the next day. On August 30th at 9:21AM GMT, Dan tweeted this in reference to their flight back. We can infer that they flew back on August 29th. What better time than a 12 hour flight to leave tripadvisor reviews using in-flight wifi?
Because the review from the sky bar in Bangkok mentions getting engaged and the review from the ozone bar mentions already being engaged, it can be inferred that (if this is legit) they would have visited Thailand together before August 28th and gotten engaged then. Neither one of them has ever tweeted about gong to Thailand, but it is possible that they spent August 5-6, 2016 there. Here’s how:
Dan did a livestream on August 3rd (a rare Wednesday livestream the day after DAPGO was announced) and mentioned that they would be be in a recording studio on August 4th (18:42) for a mysterious reason (looking back this was most likely for recording The Internet is Here). They sent out a few tweets (1/2/3/4) between the 5th and the 6th that were generic with no photos or indicators of their location. We have no physical proof as to where they were on these days and therefor no proof that they were not in Thailand. Tweet 1 would have been sent around 10:30PM Bangkok time on the 5th and tweets 2-4 would have been sent around 4PM Bangkok time on the 6th which is totally reasonable. They were in Hong Kong on August 7th based on this tweet. it is technically possible that they flew in from Bangkok earlier that day as that photo was taken at night leaving the nights of the 5th and 6th totally open. We have no proof that they were not in Thailand.
There are two other tripadvisor reviews from this account. One is for a hotel in Reading, England. It reads:
“
the bed was very comfy as the duvet was perfect for winter time the location was stunning and we really enjoyed the staff and how kind they were it was very close to our family and easy to find i would go again
“
This hotel is located 20 minutes from Dan’s hometown of Wokingham. Forgive me if I missed something but I can’t remember them ever mentioning them going to visit Dan’s family together. That of course does not necessarily mean it has never happened. When Dan visits his family alone (for Christmas and such) he stays with them as is evidenced by his complaining about the lack of wifi and heating, but it is possible that if he and Phil were to visit together, they would stay in a hotel nearby if there was not enough for for the both of them.
The other is for the London zoo. It doesn’t appear to contain anything of topical significance so I won’t post the full text, but you can follow the link if you want to read it. However, these 2 reviews are still important and contain vital evidence. Stay with me here. If we imagine that everything I have suggested is 100% true, there should be no evidence to the contrary in the other 2 reviews. Brief recap: The Sky Bar Bangkok review describes getting engaged. I am suggesting that happened on August 5th or 6th 2016. The Ozone bar Hong Kong review mentions that they are engaged. They were at Ozone on August 28th 2016. All 4 reviews by the account were posted on August 29th 2016. dnp were not in England at all in between these dates (they were in Asia and Australia the entire time). The zoo review and the Reading hotel review mention being there with another person, but not that that person was their fiance. If this were some demon phannie planting evidence, I would assume that they would have fucked up here. I would think that they would have mentioned that the reviewer went there with their fiance (which would have proved it as a fake because they could not have visited any location in England between August 5-6 when they got engaged and August 29th when the review was written).
My conclusions:
It is entirely possible of course that this is just a hoax or a strange coincidence, however if it is a hoax, either they did their fucking research or have some damn good luck m8. This shit is airtight.
Final notes:
This is all in good fun, please please please do not tag this in the d*n*sn*t*nf*r* or *m*z*ngph*l tags. I will hunt you down.
This took me 7 fucking hours, 3 cups of coffee and several years off of my life. Do not repost this.
Reviewgate Update 11/28/16
This post
is to clarify a few things I’ve been getting questions about in regards to this
post. I also wanted to clear up some misconceptions, reiterate my intentions,
and correct an error.
Let’s
start with the error:
A portion
of the original post reads- “ In
the process of trying to pin down proof of the exact date that they left
Australia, I discovered that in Dan’s Farfetch’d Quest in Hong Kong at 4:07, you
can see on Dan’s phone that that video was filmed on a Saturday (meaning Saturday
August 28th)”
I mistyped. To correct this, you can see on Dan’s phone that the video
was filmed on a Sunday. August the 28th was a Sunday. I still wrote
the rest of the post per the correct information. They posted the photos of
Ozone bar at 1:25PM HK time on Monday August 29th, 2016. The Ozone
bar’s Monday hours are 5PM-1AM, meaning that it had not yet opened for the day
when the photos were posted. They went to Ozone the night of Sunday August 28th,
2016.
Clarification about the Thailand dates:
The dates I spoke of in the post (August 5th and 6th)
were purely a suggestion based on the convenience of them already being in SE
Asia for their connecting flight to Australia. I bring this up because it has
been brought to my attention that the famous “Dan wink selfie” that Dan
referred to at DAPGOOSE was supposedly taken at Heathrow Airport on August 6th
(that is when it was posted to Instagram) I have contacted the OP and I am
awaiting a response in regards to whether the photo was taken on the same day
it was posted. I will update this as more information becomes available.
However, the Sky Bar review never mentions a date or even an indicator of the
time of year that the engagement occurred and therefor disproving their
presence in Thailand on the specific dates of August 5th and 6th
does not unravel the entire theory. To do that, one would have to prove that
they have NEVER BEEN to Thailand before August 29th 2016 when the
reviews were posted. Without directly asking them (which I implore you NOT TO
DO) there is no way for us to know for sure whether they have ever visited
Bangkok.
“OK I’m gonna be honest I was really
skeptical, like wow 7 hours of analysis and dedication im all about that but
also like…why.. out of all places…thailand……but then i was like ok let’s look
at it another way, its ….not completely impossible? dnp are proven to hide
where they’re going from time to time like greece and spain all of the sudden
and though jumping from thailand to HK is kind of bizarre, its not completely
impossible seeing as they have jumped around diff countries in a short amount
of time….. and also it’s like kind of amazing to see the coincidence of their
timeline to match perfectly with the review’s…timestamps and dates.”
A lot of people have been pointing out that dnp are
quite good with keeping their trips a secret. They went to Crete and no one
knew. Dan went to Spain and no one knew. They have a history of an ability to
maintain secrecy in their travels. It is possible that they have done this in
the case of the Thailand engagement and never told us to avoid accidentally
revealing any information about their personal/romantic lives either to
actively keep the phandom out or just to keep a memory just to themselves.
Misconceptions:
-I’ve gotten a few asks related to marriage for some
reason. I never mentioned that they got married in Bangkok, Hong Kong, or anywhere ever for that matter. My only related assertion was that they became
engaged in Bangkok. Did you read the post???
-A few people have suggested in the tags, asks, or
additions to the post that this “sleuthing” was/is invasive. All the
information I used was readily and publicly available for anyone to see. What I
have done by constructing this post is take that public information and present
in a meaningful, organized way as well as inserted my own inferences and
opinions. It is merely a compilation of specific facts that could lead one to
draw their own inferences.
–Perhaps the biggest misconception I have come across is
beliefs about my intentions in doing this research/posting about it. This was
meant to be a lighthearted and fun exercise. Quite a few people appear to be
under the impression that I did this in an attempt to “prove” phan. This is
absolutely false. I have a background in science and research and I enjoy
problem solving. When I saw Jasmine’s post, my initial thought was “Those
reviews can’t actually be from dnp…. And I’ll prove it.” I thought surely I
would go to the link, find some incontrovertible evidence proving that the reviewer
could not be dnp (his fiancé not being a man for example) or that I would be
able to pin him being somewhere at the same time that we knew for sure dnp were
somewhere else. The best sign of unbiased research in testing a theory is an
experiment designed around proving yourself wrong. I tried and tried and tried
to prove that it was impossible for the reviewer to be dnp, and I couldn’t do
it.That’s what I meant by “This shit is airtight”; not that any of the
information I presented proves that the reviewer was dnp, just that there is
not a shred of actual proof to the contrary. We cannot prove that the reviewer
is not dnp with the information we currently have. Any conclusions you make
from there on are entirely your own.
Do not tag this in the d*n*sn*t*nf*r* or *m*z*ngph*l tags. I will hunt you down. Do not repost.
Interesting thing I saw looking through the profile- on the same day as the others, (August 29), they reviewed the National Gallery (where Dan took that scarf selfie) as 4/5- but the scarf selfie was posted on October 7th? It’d be a pretty long wait to post that pic if it had been taken BEFORE the 29th, as they were in aus for so long, the pic would have to have been taken before August or in the first few days of the month. Thoughts anyone?
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