Nerdfighters: Insider View from a YouTube Persona

Google Tech Talks
August 8, 2008

ABSTRACT

What do Peeps, Catcher in the Rye and Happy Dances have in common?

On Friday, YT content Hank & John Green (Brotherhood 2.0) are visiting the Chicago office. They are currently ranked #49 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Directors in YT -- just 7 positions behind Oprah and 2 positions behind Google. The Vlog has been featured on BBC radio and the Wall Street Journal and has a dedicated fan base of over 20,000 viewers (called Nerdfighters.)

Check out this sample video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1M5VHF3no&feature=PlayList&p=D11540E...

Join us for this Q session on: their subscribers / fans and how they interact with them; how the last 1.5 years of video blogging has been and being part of YT / online video phenomena, etc.

Background:
Hank and John Green, Brothers for over 27 years, decided not to write to each other during all of 2007, and instead make daily video blogs.

Though the project "Brotherhood 2.0" has now ended, they decided to keep updating the YouTube channel at least once a week. Additionally, the community of nerdfighters that they helped create is now stronger than ever, and lives at: http://www.nerdfighters.com

Speaker: John Green
THE LONG BIO FOR BOOK REPORTS, THE INSANELY CURIOUS, AND/OR STALKERS

John Green is a writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana (by way of New York and Chicago) with his outrageously wonderful wife, Sarah. John's first novel, Looking for Alaska, was published in 2005. It won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, and received many other accolades, which are discussed at some length here. The movie rights to Looking for Alaska were acquired by Paramount, and Josh Schwartz (creator of The O. C. and a very nice guy) is currently working on the screenplay. It has also been translated into 13 languages.

John's second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, came out in September 2006. Katherines was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and was also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.

John grew up in Florida before moving to Alabama to attend boarding school--and yes, that school bears some physical resemblance to Alaska's Culver Creek. After graduating from college in 2000, John worked for six months as a student chaplain at a children's hospital. It was there that he started thinking about last words and the book that became Looking for Alaska.

John lived for several years after that in Chicago, where he worked for Booklist Magazine, a fantastic book review journal. While there, he reviewed hundreds of books of all varieties--from picture books about Confucius to romance novels about Confucius (really!). His reviewing specialties included the literary fiction, books about Islam, and books about conjoined twins. John has read 11 books about conjoined twins (there are, it is worth pointing out, more books about conjoined twins currently in print than there are actual conjoined twins currently alive. In this sense, conjoined twins are like serial killers). John's book criticism has also appeared in The New York Times Books Review.

John has also written for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and for Chicago's public radio station, WBEZ. If you want to be inundated with jokes about John's ex-girlfriends, peruse the "On the Radio" archives. Katherines readers will be unsurprised to learn that John often writes about trivial intellectual pursuits for mental floss magazine.

What else? John and his brother Hank created the year-long video blog Brotherhood 2.0. He is a total Dumpee. He likes sushi and country music and Nintendo. (Note: Those words, in that order, have never appeared on the Internet.)

Speaker: Hank Green
http://www.ecogeek.org/

During the entire year of 2007, my brother John and I ceased text-based communication, and instead made daily video blogs. Brotherhood 2.0 videos have now been viewed over 4 million times.

The Vlog has been featured on BBC radio and the Wall Street Journal and has a dedicated fan base of over 20,000 viewers (we call them Nerdfighters.)

About Eco...

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[vlogbrothers]

we are so on google tech talks. -John

[robynnealane]

As a 17-year-old who watches John and Hank, I would like to politely say that you're wrong. They continually encourage Nerdfighters to make a difference in the world. We have formed a community of people who support each other and realize that it's important to be intelligent and help others. That's why we're NERDfighters.

Look at the Project for Awesome. They got hundreds of Youtubers to support charities on their videos. These guys are a positive influence in a sea of negative ones.

[thiswillneverbeme]

YOU LIE JOHN! ive been in an airport for only six minutes. We got delayed so we had to run to get our transfer. We went like to 50 yards and hopped on our next plane. less than six minutes!

[EllipsisStudios]

I want to watch this so badly but the lighting is terrible and the sound is really quiet... I CAN'T TELL WHAT'S GOING ON, GOOGLE.

[cptrichall]

@vampirica89 To be fair vampirica, these were people who work for Google and apparently quite a few of them were in marketing.

[vampirica89]

I cannot believe how the most of the questions were about stupid advertisements. These people in audience are so uncreative. There is an unlimited amount of more interesting stuff that you'd want to know from John and Hank. Just saying.

[781228XX]

I wonder if that's where he bought his baby got back ringtone?

[liahna89]

hearing your thoughts on the nature of the community and how it has been built up was so jokes. You and Hank are an inspiration to so many kids out there. I'm glad I found the Nerdfighters community, even if I did stumble across it rather late. I hope you find this comment because I really just want to say thanks and I hope to see the nerdfighter community going for a long time yet. Best Wishes!

[ayerhead07]

Wow, I clicked on this video and just started watching/listening while I was doing something else, and didn't realize how long it was until it was over. I love listening to John and Hank talk about this.

[Sergentpeper1967]

Did you stop to think about the hypocritical nature of your comment? You are "wasting" your time on here just like us...so dont preach to us about how John and Hank are bad for a country, when in fact they are inspiring us to straighten out the environment and help people along the way.

[Sergentpeper1967]

Yea, jpm, I do believe that Nerdfighting is about "decreasing WORLD suck."  So it's not just about a country. ^_^ Best Wishes!