MEET JOHN AND HANK GREEN!: Part 1: The Vlogbrothers
By: Omar Ateyah
Creative Writer
Hank Green (nerdy man on left!), John Green (nerdy man on right!) (courtesy of google images)
Above are the Vlogbrothers, Hank and John Green. Hank is a musician, entrepreneur, and internet success. John is a novelist (author of bestsellers The Fault In Our Stars, Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, and An Abundance of Katherines) and internet success along with Hank.
They found their fan base back in 2007, when the two had an idea, burgeoning with ingenuity. John and Hank both live in different parts of the country so they wanted to find an efficient and interesting way to communicate; they chose Youtube. The brothers decided that they would abandon all textual communication for one whole year, from January 1st, 2007-December 31st 2007, and would only speak to each other through video blogs. Hank would post a video one day, and John would post on the next; the project was to be called Brotherhood 2.0, and they called their channel the Vlogbrothers.
The year was a breeze of enjoyment for John and Hank; the project was successful enough and if either brother neglected to post a video on his day than an amusing punishment would be in order. Also, a punishment would take place for the brother who posted a video that was longer than four minutes long. Here’s a video of Hank completing a punishment due to an infringement of one of these rules (Note: this video takes place in 2009 after Brotherhood 2.0 ended, and the brothers decided to continue the channel):
Thus, the Vlogbrothers have been functioning ever since. Although, since Brotherhood 2.0 ended (2008-present), the Vlogbrothers have modified their schedule so instead of posting videos every day, John posts videos every Tuesday and Hank posts his videos on Fridays.
Over the nearly eight years, John, Hank, and their viewers (known as Nerdfighters and they are proud nerds who tread the footsteps of John and Hank) have developed many inside jokes that only long time Nerdfighters and readers of John’s books would understand. Some of the jokes include referring to John’s wife as the Yeti (due to her lack of appearance in the videos), amusement in the concept of Black Santas (from John Green’s Paper Towns), adding In your Pants to the end of book titles, and saying the initialism of DFTBA (standing for Don’t Forget To Be Awesome), and many more! Here’s a video of John and Hank describing Nerdfighteria (the online community of the Vlogbrothers and the Nerdfighters), the Utopia of nerds!
One of the best clauses of the Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria is the Project For Awesome, often shown as P4A. The Project for Awesome is a 48-hour livestream event in which John and Hank gather themselves and other popular Youtubers to raise money for certain charities. They sell all different kinds of perks, the money for which all go to selected charities.
Often John Green posts videos called, ”Questions Tuesdays,” in which he answers “real questions from real Nerdfighters”.
Here’s one Question Tuesday video:
John also posts very insightful videos of his novels that really do prove his genius! Here is John answering questions about his novel, Paper Towns:
Finally, as promised, I thought I would share with you Zeno’s Paradox, which is coincidentally John’s favorite paradox. Zeno’s Paradox basically states that before you could walk through a door, you have to walk halfway to the door, halfway to the halfway point, and so on. How will you ever get through the door?
Now, are any of our K12 iCad students Nerdfighters? Are you interested in joining Nerdfighteria? Have you read any of John’s books? Have you listened to any of Hank’s music? Let me know in the comments below!