Good morning, John. Two days from now will be the tenth anniversary of the first vlogbrothers video being uploaded to YouTube.
There were people who watched that video when they were eleven year olds who can now get drunk.
In those ten years I have done a lot of things that dreams are made of.
I made so many amazing friends; I toured in a rock band; I played Carnegie Hall; I bought my first home; I grew up, stayed young, created VidCon
and SciShow and Crash Course;
helped other amazing, talented creators turn their visions into real things;
I became a bobble head, invented 2D glasses, and I interviewed the President.
But of all the things we've done in the last ten years, the thing that I am most proud of
is this community.
And I know that that sounds hokey and made up, but let me explain.
We are in a time of cultural upheaval.
Now that's probably true of everyone who's ever lived but it seems particularly strong right now.
The internet is gonna have an unknowable effect on human culture,
and I think that effect is gonna be huge and it's gonna be both positive and negative.
The thing that's been occupying my mind a lot lately, and this isn't just the internet,
this has been going on for a long time,
is the disappearance of traditional structures for community,
and that, so far, not a lot has taken the place of those structures
except for just diehard individualism.
And there are good things that come from that
but I think it's also sort of resulted in an explosion of distrust among people
and an explosion of cynicism, especially in young people.
I don't like the idea that the only thing you can put your faith in is yourself because
one, it's not true, and two, where does it leave us, in those moments that we all have
when we don't actually like ourselves that much?
And those moments might be getting more common as we see
all of these people on the internet with their perfect lives and their pretty faces
and their giant travel budgets and all their followers.
I don't want individualism to go away, nor do I think I could make that happen,
But it's so new, and so different, and so pervasive that there aren't a lot of structures
to help it exist while also not destroying society.
Now that's a big statement that's based on not a lot of research
But, I don't think it's controversial to say that we need new community structures.
Now a lot of people would and have said that John and I, we are leaders of a community,
and of course in many ways that is true,
but I honestly believe that, more than being a leader of this community, I am a follower of it.
So for ten years, we've tried to build a place where people can be comfortable and excited
and enthusiastic in a tumultuous and weird moment in history.
But we have not done that by seeing this target ten years off and charging straight through the forest at it.
We didn't know what we were doing, we didn't know how to do it.
I do what I am being told to do.
When people leave comments and they say this was my favorite video ever.
When people say, "Thank you, this really helped me," or, "I feel like a better person after watching this video,"
that's how we choose what we do.
I am being lead through this process. I don't know what I'm doing.
But somehow, over these ten years, by wanting to do this, and by listening,
we've created a community that provides joy and connection and value and even meaning
for a lot of people, definitely for me,
that doesn't look like any of the previous things that were a community.
I've got to go back and say that individualism is great like we need it, we need to believe in ourselves.
We need to give that power to individual people, but we can't also discard community.
Striking that balance is a huge challenge that we need to face right now,
because there are big problems that need to be faced, not by these leaderless collectives that
we have seen, where the individuals have tons of energy but there's no
cohesive community to focus that energy.
We need to figure out how to be both leaders and followers.
How to be both ourselves and part of something bigger than ourselves.
We've spent ten years trying to figure out how to do that. It's hard. It's complicated.
The model doesn't exist.
And this is why I say that Nerdfighteria is the most interesting thing that I have ever been a part of.
It is a model for that.
We have had the time to try the things out.
We figured out some things that worked, some things that haven't,
and other people elsewhere have also figured those things out, and they also lead us.
People from Mark Twain to Vi Hart, from Michelle Obama to Ze Frank, from Reinhold Niebuhr to Nathan Zed.
Like wide varieties of amazing people.
I really think we need to find the tools for how to do this and we need to find them pretty quick.
So I look underneath the ten years of the amazing things that we've done,
like things that are in the news, and people talked about and like, people respect us for.
But underneath all of it is this thing that's confusing and hard to understand and amorphous that is this community.
That no one understands how big of a deal it is, how interesting it is, and how, maybe, important it is.
So I say that Nerdfighteria is the thing that I'm most proud of,
of all the very cool things that I've been able to do.
I'm not saying that as some kind of like, you know, slogan to try and like, increase enthusiasm for the community,
though, absolutely I want that.
I'm not saying that just as like a cheerleader for the values of this community, though I am also one of those.
I'm saying it because it's a model for how we build community in a distributed, internet-based, hyper individualized world,
which, at the moment, we have very few of.
Which is why I am obsessed with this and I'm so proud to be a part of it and I want to say to
everybody who has watched, who has participated over the last ten years, thank you for being my leader.
Also what I'm saying is, this video is longer than four minutes, isn't it? And I couldn't do anything about that.
Not made a lot of overtime videos. I'm doing it right now because I just couldn't.
And also I had at the end I wanted to say that this community is getting together in the real world
for our first, like, this is a central place that we're trying to get as many Nerdfighters in the same place at the same time for
in Boston, February 25th and 26th at NerdCon: Nerdfighteria and I hope very much that
as many people who can come will come because I know that being in the real world with people is
an important part of community and it's an important part of me learning about this community
and being led by it.
And also since those two things, they mesh together so well, this long video and NerdCon: Nerdfighteria
I have a great chance, an opportunity if you will, to get punished in front of people.
So I've decided that I'm gonna do that. So this video is too long, punishment coming.
We will record it and upload it.
But the people at NerdCon: Nerdfighteria will get to see it live. Not sure what it's going to be yet, but I will be punished.
It's been a while and I'm looking forward to seeing some folks in February.
John, I'll see you on Tuesday.