Zalfie.

When people decide to start posting videos on YouTube, they give up a large chunk of their privacy and in turn, give complete strangers the chance to voice their opinions on them. 99% of which are amazing, but the odd mis-judgement slips through. It can be very easy to become invested in youtubers lives, you want to wear what they're wearing, you end up eating what they eat, know what they are doing and you get frustrated if you see something you don't like and judge them on things you'd never judge a stranger on the street for. Unfortunately, viewers of youtube only really get to see the amount that youtubers themselves allow. For some, this may be as little as 20% of their lives, for others who vlog everyday and are a lot more brave, this could be as much as 80%. You will never REALLY know how these ordinary people, filming their lives through a lens feel, or what they may have been through. It's difficult for some to distinguish the difference between "YouTube Celebrity" and "Person who kindly provides free internet content showing little chunks of their lives in order to make others happy".

Myself and Alfie have been friends for a long time, we were "shipped" (when someone wants you to be in a relationSHIP or a friendSHIP of sorts - something I was never aware of previously)  non-stop from the beginning and every little movement or word spoken or photo taken was over analysed beyond anything we could have ever expected which, once we actually started liking each other, became very overwhelming. Going through the stages of an early relationship is actually very daunting for me, now imagine if I was doing that in front of hundreds and thousands, if not millions of people. Even typing that makes me anxious! haha. 

We decided to keep it to ourselves and hang back a bit until we were ready to chat about it with you all. We have seen the vast amount of you who have truly supported that decision and for that we are extremely grateful. We understand that you really want to know all the ins and outs, but it would be so lovely of you to please respect our decisions. We didn't have to write this blog post at all, but we wanted to share this with you in the hope that things will die down a little and that every instagram picture of myself, Alfie or even our friends and families posts, aren't bombarded with "Is Zalfie real?"  or "ZALFIE". I know that shipping is completely harmless fun and it's just something that fandoms love to do, but you have to be extremely aware that it can affect more than just the people you are shipping. Our friends have even become affected by it. They spend hours editing vlogs and not enough people care to comment on how great the video is, just the fact that alfie may have looked at me in a certain way. We're not asking you NOT to be excited or pleased for us, but please don't over analyse us on other peoples content that they have worked hard to achieve. Just leave them lovely comments about how splendous their video is :) 

We also want to express that we will not be an "online couple". In that sense, I mean that we won't be vlogging romantic meals out, or us holding hands, or doing ultra soppy or coupley videos and instagrams. It's something we'd just like to keep to ourselves, which we have every right to want to do. There is a lot that we share with you, but our relationship is something that we would just like to keep and enjoy on our own. We understand that there will be slip ups in vlogs and tiny little over analysed things, but we really don't want that to continue to such an extent. Some things have been so over analysed that they have been completely distorted and that's confusing for a hell of a lot of people. We have seen the repercussions of online relationships, good and bad, and if anything were to ever happen between myself and Alfie, or we were to just end up as friends, we'd like all this to be kept private as it could get really messy and nasty between fans and viewers of our separate content, and that is the last thing we would ever want. :)

Some of you may be confused as to why I'm writing this now, well, if you missed the drama or don't own a tumblr account, my good friend Jim had a shot in one of his recent vlogs of my laptop background, which was a photo taken on holiday of me and Alfie (just for the record, we aren't kissing, he is pouting and i'm smiling haha - just to clear that up). Alfie and I were very underprepared and not ready to tell viewers and readers about our relationship and never had a plan if something were to be revealed. This is why it has taken us a few a days to let this all sink in and decide what to do. We could have ignored it, but we didn't want to do that, as it was far too obvious and you all mean alot to us. Please just for one second think how the three of us felt at the time. Jim, who is my BESTEST guy friend, I love him to pieces, was absolutely devastated and I was in complete shock as to what to do. I want to just make it clear that Alfie and I were in absolutely NO WAY annoyed at Jim, it was my laptop screen, therefore it was my mistake. 

Frustratingly, this all came out on the day that Tyler and myself decided to do a spoof boyfriend tag. (It was filmed 4 weeks ago, and as he has a whole schedule for August, that was our alloted date). You have no idea how badly I wanted to tweet "WHAT AWFUL TIMING". haha. A few of you speculated that it was a publicity stunt, which I can assure you, we are not that clever or manipulative to ever come up with a scheme like that. I would also like to point out that to those of you who think this whole "Zalfie" thing is just for views and publicity, we would have documented every second of it from the very beginning if that was the case. We really, truly just wanted privacy and that was very hard at times. 

For those of you who are gutted that Alfie is not a single man, I give you 100% permission to stalk, flirt and hug him until he is blue in the face! *Alfie takes over the control of the keyboard* Please don't start going crazy wild when Zoe and I take pictures, create videos and meet up with people of the opposite sex! We both have friends of different genders and that is OKAY! p.s thanks *passes laptop back to zoe*

To summarise, YES Zoe and Alfie are together and Zalfie is a thing, but Zoella and PointlessBlog will continue as they are without any real-life Zalfie-ness. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over the last few days and have understood exactly how this situation sits with us, we couldn't be more grateful to have such amazing viewers with such great respect and morality. Also, to those of you who really couldn't care less about this whole situation and are just happy to continue reading and watching and aren't hard-core zalfie shippers (which I'm assuming is the majority of you), I apologise for having to make you read this haha. 

This will be the first and last thing we ever address about the Zalfie situation! Thanks again and we'll continue on as normal now :)

Love you guys!

♥