Hi, everyone! My name is Dave Johnson. I'm a community manager for a couple of
channels here on YouTube
I'm a community leader and a former Nerdfighters community leader as well.
I think Liz created this channel with the sole purpose of reminding me how old
I am because I started being a Nerdfighter in 2008. Yeah, that long ago.
Some people can't even remember that long ago. In mid-2008, I was introduced to two nerdy
brothers through charlieissocoollike. Now, I watched some of their videos and I would
go back at regular intervals and watch a few more and come back and I know they were
still improving all the time and their content was great thought-provoking. It
was really good content you couldn't really find on Youtube at that
point. I watched them intermittently till about 2009 I think. When we had a family
tragedy and my grandma passed away. Everyone went over to my grandma's house they
all sat around and talked to one another. I stayed home on my own and I was just flicking through internet
pages just trying to distract myself from the grief and the thoughts. I came
across Nerdfighters Ning. Now this won't mean something to a lot of people
because it's not around anymore.
The Nerdfighter's Ning was a social network setup by Hank and John as a way of just
bringing the fanbase together so they could discuss things and share things and plan
things. I found it and created an account and I just delved into the chat.
Before I knew it, I was surrounded by a lot of supportive people who were
because I said what was wrong, because I couldn't really distract myself so I
thought maybe talking about it with
a lot of random strangers might help, But it turns out they were really really supportive.
But yeah I was really taken aback by how supportive this community was even
then its in fledgeling days it was becoming this really supported close-knit network
of people. I then started using the website everyday and then through that I
eventually became a chat moderator, then I became an administrator, then I became
the head-administrator, and I run the website up until the beginning of this
year. Now that is how I really got integrated into Nerdfighteria. That's how I
found the Vlogbrothers, but it's what's led to. I started doing this is an
experiment and then I created a Youtube channel for video updates on the Nerdfighters Ning
because some people don't like reading a wall of text. They would prefer to
listen to someone speak or watch someone speak. And channel that then was
NerdfightersInfo, which was literally you know information for Nerdfighters, I
repurposed it and then in 2013 we decided to create a collaboration channel
and we started it and it grew and grew and grew.
Flash forward to 2016, there has been over a hundred Nerdfighters and Non-Nerdfighters who have
appeared on the channel. It's grown into this vast but close-knit community circle of
friends and it has given me some of the best experiences of my life in the last three years.
Pat: "Hi Dave!"
Dave: 'Hi!"
Pat: "How's it going?
Dave: It's going confusingly."
The sun. And that.
[Music]: "I'm Unfabulous!"
Well, apparently you can get five people..."
Hello! *whack*
Hello, I'm Josh and the producer of The Social Corner. I'd like to thank the
volton volunteers f***
Like people do 95% of the time. Am I right?
Look at that crazy person!
Omar (camera person): "I have to film all the meetings, Dave. It's all for posterity's sake
Omar: "Say Hi, Tyler!"
Tyler: "Hey, Tyler."
Omar: "See?"
"Why does everyone....? No, you're supposed to..."
That is how I found the Vlogbrothers. 2016 now, I'm as I said, a
community manager on a couple of big channels for Youtube. I also run the NFI
community and I'm part of other channels as well and I've got so much going on now
and it's all influenced through YouTube, through the Vlogbrothers. So it's quite
literally a life-changing Youtube channel. Just maybe not in the way people would have expected.
As I always say, DFTBA
thank you very much for watching, have a great day, guys, and I can't wait to hear
your stories.