My name is Scott Perkins. I became a Nerdfighter in late 2008 after my dad died.
I was in a really dark place and I was spending all my time on the internet, wasting time.
And I ended up on Youtube
and I started watching a lot of Youtube videos. One link led to another link, led to another link,
and I ended up on, I think, the video of John waxing his chin.
I went back and I watched them all from the very beginning and watched this project
evolve and watched you embrace the community that grew up around you.
And realized that there were other people in the world that were
imagining people complexly. It put into words something that I’d been
trying to put into words for a long time. And it got me back into writing. And actually,
I ended up writing a novel. And all of these things sort of became
possible because I got back into the world and came back from a really dark place.
And you guys have been there, whether you know it or not, at some really dark moments.
NerdCon happened in the wake of my mom’s death.
I was in a really funky weird place and coming here to NerdCon
kind of pulled me out of it, got me back into the world.
Because I have a habit of hibernating like a lot of writers do and becoming a miserable misanthrope.
And this community has really kept me out of that head space and given me some place
to put my more manic thoughts. And it’s really been a growth experience for me.
I'm KT. I'm from Denver, Colorado, and when I was in eighth grade there were
about seven girls in my class named Katie or Katherine or Kaitlyn or Kate.
I was in the library. I saw on the top of the shelf, like featured by the librarian,
a book called An Abundance of Katherines.
I was like, “Oh! That is the story of my life!” So I checked it out, and
I read it and that was probably in early 2007. In the Summer of 2008,
my parents made me move from Park City, Utah to Cincinnati, Ohio.
and it was a horrible and very lonely summer. I didn’t know anyone.
I didn’t have any friends. I was 15.
It was awful and so, I started watching Youtube vlogs. And I found Charlie McDonnell
and on his “How to Make Tea" video there was a Hank Vlogbrothers video.
I don’t remember which one, it was right in the video. So I watched it, and I
was like “That was funny!” so I started watching them again. And then I saw John’s
“How to Organize Your Home Library” video and he was like, “Author copies of
Looking for Alaska...Author copies of An Abundance of Katherines.” and I was like, “Wait what...WHAT?!?”
Then I Googled him and was like, “OH MY GOD, he wrote that amazing
book that makes me want to tell stories and makes me feel like stories are
so important!” And that’s how I became a Nerdfighter. Being a Nerdfighter is
is amazing because it means that you have a network of people that you have
something very deep in common with all over the world. Like, for example, I was
in Ireland with my mom and my brother and my aunt. We went to
a very touristy, like dinner in a castle thing, and there was this harp player,
and she kept looking over at us. She was super cute. And my brother was like,
“Oh, I think she’s looking at me…like ooooo…” I was wearing this shirt!
Blood! And afterward she came up to me and was like,
“OH MY GOD, I’ve never met a Nerdfighter before!
You’re wearing a Pizza John shirt. This is amazing!”
We exchanged Twitters and Tumblrs, and it was so cool that
in this country that I had never been to before, I met someone that I had this in common with.
I found people because my favorite joke was in Hank’s first Fifty Jokes video.
It’s the, “Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?” joke. Cause it was dead.
My aunt made that up. And now people tell it to me and I'm like, “Oh, you’re a Nerdfighter!”
Something that is so personal in my family has like spread through the world
in the coolest and craziest way. It’s just so cool to have
a worldwide community of total strangers that you’re instant friends with.