About five years ago, I was bored and decided to type a bunch of my favorite author names individually (including "john green") into the search bar of YouTube. I was opening a Pandora's box without even knowing it. What I found, once I searched for John Green was an insane amount of videos (probably around 500 at that point) between him and his brother Hank Green.
I had been in internet communities before, mostly for fanfiction writing/reading/sharing. I started with Good Charlotte fanfiction and then moved into Harry Potter and then dabbled in some High School Musical and Hannah Montana and a few other fandoms. The main community I was a part of, however, was the Good Charlotte community. Once fandomination was shut down, a group of the Good Charlotte fanfic writers decided to start a site called GCfanfics. The site grew rather quickly and, because fandomination had a forum section that allowed writers and readers to talk about their work, their fandom, and themselves among other topics, the creators of GCfanfics opted to set up a forum as well. This is where a lot of the community was created.
Like many communities, we grew apart. Some got busy with college, others with high school, still others with just life in general. Some just lost interest in the fandom or the community. I was a mix between being busy with high school and just losing interest but half-way through my high school career I realized how much I missed that community.
It was, then, only by chance that I found Nerdfighteria. I'm getting ahead of myself with the vocabulary, but bear with me. John and Hank Greens videos were already a big chunk of YouTube when I found them. At that point, I had only used YouTube to watch old music videos, watch funny short animated skits, and occasionally use it to prove something to someone. It had not occurred to me that people might use the video platform as a form of journaling. I had heard of video diaries before -- I saw them used in a few movies and television shows. But an actual video web log was somewhat foreign to me.
Once I found the first video, it took me several weeks to watch all of them. It helped to watch all of the previous videos so I could understand inside jokes like "French the llama," and "giraffe love." John and Hank were hilarious and informative. John would frequently talk about literature or world news while Hank tackled science. After Hank wrote and performed a song called "Helen Hunt" he began writing more and more songs until "Accio Deathly Hallows" came out and he became known for not only his vlogging with his brother but his music.
While John and Hank continued to communicate with each other through YouTube (the idea was that, for the first year, they would not use text based communication to communicate with each other because they felt like they were kind of drawing apart), a community began to build around them. People, mainly young adults, began watching their videos and subscribing to their YouTube channel. Thus Nerdfighteria was born.
The people who follow John and Hank Green, for the most part, call themselves "nerdfighters." These people do not fight nerd -- they are people who define as nerdy and work to "decrease or fight" "world suck," which is basically how much the world sucks -- be it because of poverty, because of wars, because lack of water, or whatever it might be. Nerdfighteria has teamed up with the HPA (Harry Potter Alliance) and Kiva among other donation based and world-suck-decreasing organizations to decrease world suck.
In the meantime, they are just awesome in general. They're fun and creative and make cool things. They are an excellent support system and great for if you need help on your homework. Most of all, they are built-in friends. There are so many nerdfighters that there has to be at least one other who shares your specific interests. Many nerdfighters are fans of Doctor Who and Sherlock and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
But when I found Nerdfighteria, I was able to understand a whole new part of the internet. I started watching Charlie McDonnell (charlieissocoollike), Alex Day (nerimon), and others. The other day, I started watching Laci Green's (lacigreen) videos. This is what I love about the internet: the sense of community it can create among people who are not only your neighbor, but in the neighboring continent.
No comments:
Post a Comment