The Vlogbrothers
Making it Cool to be a Nerd since 2007
Who are these unlikely heroes, and why would they be on a website about teaching English?
Right from start, it's important to know that the Vlogbrothers will not be for every English teacher. They are irreverent, frequently profane, and sometimes bawdy (not unlike Shakespeare).
However, every English teacher has had students who are bright, talented, perform academically--or maybe not-- yet are only marginally engaged in class. The Vlogbrothers offer a way to these students' hearts and minds.
You'll find information about them and their projects below, and some of their videos about literature on other pages.
In which John and Hank give a brief overview of the first three years of
the vlogbrothers youtube channel, discussing, among other topics: Puppy
sized elephants, the Yeti, the Katherine, their real jobs,
nerdfighters, nerdfighteria, Hank's web site, John's books, John's
refusal to blink, Ze Frank, decepticons, DFTBA, stuff on heads,
gatherings, french the llama, puff levels, giant squids of angers, tiny
chicken disease, secret siblings, in your pants, and other details of
nerdfighteria.
About the Vlogbrothers
From the FAQ of Nerdfighters, their social media site
Q: Who are John and Hank?
A: John is the Printz Award-winning author of Looking for Alaska, An abundance of Katherines and the NYT Best Seller Paper Towns. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his lovely wife Sarah, his son Henry and his dog Willy. His brother Hank is the brain behind Ecogeek, the web's largest environmental technology blog. Hank lives with his wife, cat and XBox 360 in Missoula, Montana.
Q: What is Brotherhood 2.0?
A: After noticing that their relationship had for years consisted primarily of emails and instant messages, John and Hank swore off all textual communication with each other for 2007. Instead, they made public video blogs back and forth every weekday for the entire year. (They got holidays off.)
Q: What’s a Nerdfighter?
A: Hmm. Watch the videos from February 1st, February 17th, and July 25th. (If you don’t want to watch those videos, then you are probably not a Nerdfighter.)
Links to pages & projects of Nerdfighters:
Q: Who are John and Hank?
A: John is the Printz Award-winning author of Looking for Alaska, An abundance of Katherines and the NYT Best Seller Paper Towns. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his lovely wife Sarah, his son Henry and his dog Willy. His brother Hank is the brain behind Ecogeek, the web's largest environmental technology blog. Hank lives with his wife, cat and XBox 360 in Missoula, Montana.
Q: What is Brotherhood 2.0?
A: After noticing that their relationship had for years consisted primarily of emails and instant messages, John and Hank swore off all textual communication with each other for 2007. Instead, they made public video blogs back and forth every weekday for the entire year. (They got holidays off.)
Q: What’s a Nerdfighter?
A: Hmm. Watch the videos from February 1st, February 17th, and July 25th. (If you don’t want to watch those videos, then you are probably not a Nerdfighter.)
Links to pages & projects of Nerdfighters:
- The Blurbing Book Club
- One of the discussion categories on Nerdfighters: Debates, Intellectual Discourse, and Current Events
- Project for Awesome: Every year on December 17th, members of the YouTube community have gathered together to promote charities in their videos and then promote those videos, ensuring that they get a lot of views.
The Vlogbrothers Effect
Gemma, a 19 year-old from Miami, Fl. wrote about the Vlogbrothers on "Radical Parenting: Parenting Advice Written by Kids"
Excerpts:
Today I’m writing about something I’m passionate about: Nerdfighteria.
Nerdfighteria began with John Green, a young adult novelist, and Hank Green, who runs an environmental technology website. In 2007, brothers John and Hank Green started the Brotherhood 2.0 project. The deal was that they were going to spend an entire year of textless communication. That meant no instant messages and no emails. The video blog was their main form of communication. As the year progressed, they started to gain fans....
Nerdfighters was the name given to the fans of the videos. They work on decreasing World Suck. World Suck is whatever is wrong with the world: global warming, injustices, poverty, and the like. There’s no secret initiation, no robe-wearing elders standing on an altar. If you want to be a Nerdfighter, you are one. Nerdfighters are what made this community feel real. I was just a girl watching a series of videos. But when the title Nerdfighters came up, that’s when it felt like I was part of a club – albeit, a virtual club....
John and Hank Green... are all about helping others and accepting yourself. It’s okay to be a nerd. It’s okay to jump in your seat impatiently while you wait for the next Harry Potter movie to begin. It’s okay to be yourself. However, we should always remember that we’re not the only people in the world. Also, we’re not just mere passersby in the world. We should help the world, both its people and the Earth. Before them, I was an incredibly selfish teenager. I used my strengths to benefit me and only me. I never considered how my actions could affect others because anyone that wasn’t me just wasn’t important. But they inspired me to be a better person. Weeks after I started to watch their videos, I struggled to think of ways to help others...."
(Italics added.)
Excerpts:
Today I’m writing about something I’m passionate about: Nerdfighteria.
Nerdfighteria began with John Green, a young adult novelist, and Hank Green, who runs an environmental technology website. In 2007, brothers John and Hank Green started the Brotherhood 2.0 project. The deal was that they were going to spend an entire year of textless communication. That meant no instant messages and no emails. The video blog was their main form of communication. As the year progressed, they started to gain fans....
Nerdfighters was the name given to the fans of the videos. They work on decreasing World Suck. World Suck is whatever is wrong with the world: global warming, injustices, poverty, and the like. There’s no secret initiation, no robe-wearing elders standing on an altar. If you want to be a Nerdfighter, you are one. Nerdfighters are what made this community feel real. I was just a girl watching a series of videos. But when the title Nerdfighters came up, that’s when it felt like I was part of a club – albeit, a virtual club....
John and Hank Green... are all about helping others and accepting yourself. It’s okay to be a nerd. It’s okay to jump in your seat impatiently while you wait for the next Harry Potter movie to begin. It’s okay to be yourself. However, we should always remember that we’re not the only people in the world. Also, we’re not just mere passersby in the world. We should help the world, both its people and the Earth. Before them, I was an incredibly selfish teenager. I used my strengths to benefit me and only me. I never considered how my actions could affect others because anyone that wasn’t me just wasn’t important. But they inspired me to be a better person. Weeks after I started to watch their videos, I struggled to think of ways to help others...."
(Italics added.)
Still more...
Nerdfighters are members of the open-to-all internet community that has spawned around the Vlogbrothers. The community is often referred to broadly as Nerdfighteria, and consists of YouTube users; fans of John Green, Hank Green, or the Vlogbrothers show; as well as people who adopt the term because they believe they fit in with the community. The term was coined by John when he encountered an arcade game by the name "Aerofighters" which he mistakenly read as "Nerdfighters" .[6] While it was initially passed up as a joke, the term Nerdfighter was quickly adopted as the name for the community that rose up around the Vlogbrothers and the Brotherhood 2.0 project.
Nerdfighters, no matter why they personally chose to adopt the term, unite under the mantra of being “made of awesome,” as stated by John and Hank, and are banded by the idea of fighting to make the world a better place, and eliminating the negative aspects of the world (referred to as “worldsuck”).[7] More generally, a nerdfighter can be described as a person who enjoys learning for themselves for their own entertainment and benefit, rejoicing with others who enjoy a similar ideal, and being an individual who wishes to help make the world a better place through a tight-knit community that spans the globe. Nerdfighteria is an open community, and anyone can join. The only rules of the community are: 1) Don’t be mean, and 2) DFTBA (an initialism, not an acronym, as an acronym is pronounceable) coined by the Vlogbrothers meaning: Don’t Forget to Be Awesome.[8]
The Vlogbrothers interact directly with their community, and the community aids in supporting the Vlogbrothers’ endeavors - including in nerdfighters aiding in supporting Hank as a musician and John as a novelist – as well as supporting different events including the Project for Awesome, raising $10,000 for the This Star Won’t Go Out campaign (a cancer benefit fund), and various personal projects of individual nerdfighters. Nerdfighters tend to interact through community events, but primarily through social media, including but not limited to: YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Ning, and a community wiki.
Source: Wikipedia
