Happy Birthday Hank

Hi, Hank.

1. Happy 33rd Birthday.

2. In the past, we’ve gotten you extremely elaborate birthday presents here in nerdfighteria. We got you a piece of the James Webb Space Telescope, planted many trees in your honor, and so on. This year, I’m giving you the biggest and best present ever:

You don’t have to do anything elaborate for my birthday this year. I know this is a huge relief to you, and I happen to know it’s the present you want most of all. 

2a. Also I am getting you a niece/nephew, which is a bit time-consuming at the moment.

3. I was going to make a video about this, but I didn’t because I just had oral surgery and there are a lot of stitches in my mouth.

4. You are a great brother, a made-of-awesome nerdfighter, and a person who is changing the world in cool ways. And I love you.

5. Nerdfighters, if you want to join me in celebrating Hank’s birthday, why not make a loan to an entrepreneur in the developing world through kiva.org? If you’re new to kiva, your first loan is free.

the more everyone knows just what a nerdfighter is, the more the definition hardens. The most beautiful and intriguing parts of any identity tend to be the fluid ones. And the young people nerdfighteria attracts, after all, are often as confused and lonely and frustrated as they are because they don’t fit into the boxes, a problem that can hardly be resolved by creating a new one.
Michelle Dean, on the New Yorker’s web site, succinctly making a point that I’ve been trying to make for ages about why we don’t want to be on TV or have nerdfighteria be a “mainstream phenomenon.”
effyeahnerdfighters: edwardspoonhands: singing-towers: Congratulations Hank and John! There were a lot of these to choose from to reblog, but I’m picking this one because the only other tab open is Fishing Boat Proceeds.  This is obviously a really huge feeling, something that doesn’t really make sense, but also feels perfectly natural…and of course totally impossible. John and I owe a lot to a lot of people. To each person who ever cared enough to subscribe, to share a video on facebook, to email one to a friend, to donate to the P4A, to make a video response, to comment, to rate our videos with five (now non-existant) stars. To try something new, to care about creators as well as creations. To want to be a part of something unusual and weird. To every person who was a little too excited about Accio Deathly Hallows or who dragged their friend over to their computer to show them the cool, thing they found….even if their friend didn’t think it was, in fact, all that cool. To the teachers who show our videos in class. To everyone with a DFTBA tattoo, or a hanklerfish in your notebook. To the people who have been watching since ‘07, and the ones who found us last week. To the citizens of Nerdcrafteria, the team at EffYeahNerdfighters, the sub-reddit creators, and the mods in Our Pants. To the Lizzie Bennet lovers, the SciShow Fans, the Crash Course Students, the Swoodilypoopers supporters, and of course, in every way, to the Nerdfighters.  TO ALL OF YOU…WE ARE IN A WONDERFUL, FASCINATING, CAPTIVATING, GLORIOUSLY DEEP HOLE DEBT TO YOU AND WE LOVE IT DOWN HERE SO MUCH.   Thank you all. We love you guys! Congrats <333 What Hank said. To celebrate one million subscribers, the nerdfighters of kiva (including Hank and me) are trying to get to $2,000,000 in total loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Join now and you can make your first loan entirely for free thanks to the generosity of some rich people. Thanks. DFTBA.
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effyeahnerdfighters:

edwardspoonhands:

singing-towers:

Congratulations Hank and John!

There were a lot of these to choose from to reblog, but I’m picking this one because the only other tab open is Fishing Boat Proceeds. 

This is obviously a really huge feeling, something that doesn’t really make sense, but also feels perfectly natural…and of course totally impossible. John and I owe a lot to a lot of people. To each person who ever cared enough to subscribe, to share a video on facebook, to email one to a friend, to donate to the P4A, to make a video response, to comment, to rate our videos with five (now non-existant) stars. To try something new, to care about creators as well as creations. To want to be a part of something unusual and weird.

To every person who was a little too excited about Accio Deathly Hallows or who dragged their friend over to their computer to show them the cool, thing they found….even if their friend didn’t think it was, in fact, all that cool. To the teachers who show our videos in class. To everyone with a DFTBA tattoo, or a hanklerfish in your notebook. To the people who have been watching since ‘07, and the ones who found us last week. To the citizens of Nerdcrafteria, the team at EffYeahNerdfighters, the sub-reddit creators, and the mods in Our Pants. To the Lizzie Bennet lovers, the SciShow Fans, the Crash Course Students, the Swoodilypoopers supporters, and of course, in every way, to the Nerdfighters. 

TO ALL OF YOU…WE ARE IN A WONDERFUL, FASCINATING, CAPTIVATING, GLORIOUSLY DEEP HOLE DEBT TO YOU AND WE LOVE IT DOWN HERE SO MUCH.  

Thank you all.

We love you guys! Congrats <333

What Hank said.

To celebrate one million subscribers, the nerdfighters of kiva (including Hank and me) are trying to get to $2,000,000 in total loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Join now and you can make your first loan entirely for free thanks to the generosity of some rich people.

Thanks. DFTBA.

Source: singing-towers

Hi, People Going to Vidcon

1. I am very excited about Vidcon, and I hope that everyone has a ton of fun. Yay Vidcon and yay to Hank for creating it and bringing it to life.

2. Quick reminder: I have anxiety problems that make it difficult for me to handle the pressure of, like, being in a room of 6,000 people, let alone having one or several of those 6,000 people talk to me.

2a. This is not something I particularly like talking about, because A. I’m a bit embarrassed about it, and B. it’s private, and C. the phrase anxiety disorder is thrown around so much that it has lot a lot of its meaning. 

3. I go to therapy and take medication to help me manage this condition, and it is not (at least these days!) paralyzing at all. Like, I am very comfortable leaving the house; I am even quite comfortable when nerdfighters recognize me at Target or something and say hi. (That’s nice! Feel free!) I can meet people without having panic attacks, etc. These things exist on a spectrum, and I’m lucky to be relatively healthy.

3. That said, I do sometimes have panic attacks which can be kind of debilitating, and that’s not something I want to happen at Vidcon, because then I wouldn’t be able to do all the stuff I have to do. To minimize the chance of that happening, one has to sort of know one’s boundaries, which is why, for instance, if you ask me for a hug, I will probably say no. (The idea of hugging a stranger is frankly pretty terrifying to me.) It’s also why I may seem awkward or distant (or just extremely anxious) if you run into me on the elevator or whatever. Meeting one nerdfighter in Costco is a very different input to my nervous system than meeting thousands of nerdfighters at Vidcon.

4. Lots of people have said in the past that meeting me at a signing or whatever is disappointing or unpleasant because I clearly struggle to connect in the way I would like to connect with you. There are a lot of reasons for this—anxiety is one but probably a bigger one is that when there are many people in a line I want to be nice to the people standing in the back of that line as well as the people standing in the front of it. This may be especially the case at Vidcon, where things are very tightly scheduled and there are 6,000+ attendees.

5. So if you don’t meet me, or you do meet me and I’m an asshat, or you only see me at a great distance and I appear to be shaking like a dove giving birth, please know that none of this is a reflection on you.

All this noted, I am really looking forward to Vidcon, and I think it will be—as it has been the past two years—an amazing weekend of YouTube existing IRL.

Why Aren’t You on TV?

I’m asked every day why Hank and I haven’t tried to create a TV show.

We’ve been approached many times to do TV shows, but while we’re happy to listen and discuss ideas with people, we’ve so far turned down these opportunities, even the very tempting and lucrative ones. Here’s why:

1. When you work with a cable channel or production company, you don’t own the show you make or control the manner in which it is distributed.

2. It’s easy—and only getting easier—to watch shows like CrashCourse and SciShow on your TV.

3. We really believe that what is strong and beautiful about nerdfighteria is that we create it—every day—together. All of us. And if we were on TV, I worry we’d lose that sense of connection, which Hank and I have enjoyed so much the last five and a half years. Like, the Sherlock fandom and the Doctor Who fandom are great communities, but they are about Sherlock and Doctor Who. Nerdfighteria isn’t, and never has been, primarily about Hank or me. It’s about celebrating nerdiness and decreasing worldsuck. We really value that and don’t want it to change.

4. On YouTube, we can make exactly the stuff we want for exactly the people we want. Sometimes that means getting lower ratings (for instance, Thoughts from Places videos are consistently our least viewed videos, but we still really like making them and we know that nerdfighteria really enjoys them, too). Television is driven by viewership, and all viewers are treated equally. So you can’t say to a TV network, “I know we get fewer viewers when we make this stuff, but we get BETTER viewers.” They do not understand that idea. That idea, however, is at the very core of our relationship with our community. As Hank has told me, “I don’t care how many views we get. I care how many made-of-awesome views we get.” 

If all we wanted to do was make stuff that lots of people watch, all our videos would be about animal sex. And on some level, if we had a TV show, the emphasis would be on maximizing the number of viewers, not the quality of the community, which is the exact opposite of what we want.

In one conversation with an anonymous cable network, an exec said to us, “Crash Course would be PERFECT if you were a little less nuanced and stuck to topics that interest people. Like, you know, Hitler and sex.” (Direct quote.)

I’ve read tens of thousands of Crash Course comments. No one—NO ONE—has ever asked us to be less nuanced, or to stick to Hitler and sex. That’s what I love about nerdfighteria. Our community is deeply intellectually engaged, even when that means grappling with complexity and ambiguity. 

The great joy of my life is that I get to talk with you on a near-daily basis about a huge variety of things that matter to me, and listen to you discuss what matters to you. Right now, that’s not possible on TV, which is (for better and worse) still a medium where people talk to you, not with you.

This paper jogger, which makes large piles of paper line up straight so as to minimize creases and bended corners in shipping, was given to me by a nerdfighter named Brian. I am extremely grateful to him, because it is going to make my life a lot easier in the next week, and so I asked him what I could to thank him.  It turns out today is his brother&#8217;s birthday, and that his brother has a catchphrase: Watch out for bears. (Great catchphrase, incidentally.) I don&#8217;t know if I can say it in today&#8217;s video, because today&#8217;s video is a weird live show thing, but I am going to tweet it now, completely without context, and only tumblr will understand. Thank you, Brian. Watch out for bears.
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This paper jogger, which makes large piles of paper line up straight so as to minimize creases and bended corners in shipping, was given to me by a nerdfighter named Brian. I am extremely grateful to him, because it is going to make my life a lot easier in the next week, and so I asked him what I could to thank him. 

It turns out today is his brother’s birthday, and that his brother has a catchphrase: Watch out for bears. (Great catchphrase, incidentally.) I don’t know if I can say it in today’s video, because today’s video is a weird live show thing, but I am going to tweet it now, completely without context, and only tumblr will understand.

Thank you, Brian. Watch out for bears.

This illustration nicely tracks the progression of my physical and emotional well-being during this process. (Preorder TFiOS at Amazon, B&amp;N, at your local bookstore, or in the UK. All. Preorders. Will. Be. Signed.)
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This illustration nicely tracks the progression of my physical and emotional well-being during this process.

(Preorder TFiOS at Amazon, B&N, at your local bookstore, or in the UK. All. Preorders. Will. Be. Signed.)

So in AP English…

jagblogs:

My teacher keeps talking about the argument prompts on the AP test, and she keeps saying that they never use anything controversial, an she keeps using the prompt from last year as an example. The prompt was whether or not we should get rid of pennies, and my teacher keeps saying that no one has a strong opinion on that.

John Green does.

I have a strong opinion about penny-destruction precisely because it’s the kind of thing that no one has a strong opinion about. The elimination of the penny is so obvious, and so inarguably sensible, that you will be hard-pressed to find an economist in the world who argues against it. And yet…there’s no political will to make it happen. (You can sign this petition, though.)

Anyway, there is no reasonable argument in favor of keeping the penny. I assume anyone who argued for the existence of pennies was automatically given a 1 on the AP exam in question.

(via fuckyeahsouthernbelles)