[Carrissa:] I’m Carrissa.
[Samantha:] And I’m Samantha.
[Carrissa:] And this is Charlie. And we’re all from Boston, Massachusetts.
So I was browsing YouTube in 2007 as one does when you are 16 years old.
I forget the title, but in the video was a man
singing a song titled “Nanny Nanny Richkid” about the people who are out in the streets of
New York City in the afternoon.
And I found it quite humorous.
I then found several other videos including a video in which Hank said he was making
a video survey. He was like ,“Oh, this will be the first of
my annual video surveys!” He never did that again.
Aha, and I made a response video to that video survey.
And I needed my sister Samantha’s help.
[Samantha:] Yup!
[Carrissa:] So I showed her the videos, and we made a video response.
I sat in different things with different things on my head
for each question.
[Samantha:] Every shot!
[Carrissa:] And for one of the questions, I sat inside my laundry basket
and I got stuck!
My first ever Project for Awesome video that you helped me with,
Hank and John saw that video, but that survey video of me
stuck in a laundry basket just lives in the halls of history
as an unviewed masterpiece!
[Samantha:] It was gorgeous.
[Samantha:] One day when I was in high school my sister was like,
“Hey, come look at this thing on the internet.” It was Hank and John, and
it was Brotherhood 2.0 and I thought, “Oh, we’re sisters, and they’re brothers!
And you showed me this, and they’re doing a thing
… and that’s a cool thing!”
I watched their videos as they came out, and we watched them together and
sometimes you would watch them first. But I would never watch them first!
And there was “My Pants.” [Carrissa:] Yeah, and then we went onto
“My Pants.” The old forum.
They say “Oh, you’ve never had to do anything to be a Nerdfighter!”
But that is NOT true!
[Samantha:] No, it didn’t used to be true!
[Carrissa:] When you first became a Nerdfighter, you were told you had to write a song.
And I wrote a song, and it was terrible!
[Samantha:] And we NEVER recorded it. [Carrissa:] You had to post it in the comments.
[Samantha:] Yup!
[Matt Palka offscreen?:] WOW!
[Carrissa:] So I wrote the lyrics in the comments ‘cause I was told I had to do it!
[Samantha:] Yup!
[Carrissa:] And it was BAD!
It never became a blockbuster hit [Matt Palka offscreen?:] Right…
[Carrissa:] As we ALL know it should have been! No idea what it was about.
[Samantha:] Nerdfighteria to me is… just a term that we coined for
people on the internet who liked Hank and John and each other
at the same time!
It was being authentically yourself and it was being really into whatever
subculture you are into or whatever nerdy thing.
Science, or History, or the Arts or whatever other disciplines exist.
It’s become like this… thing we're like…
I’ve been a Trekkie, and that’s it own separate thing.
But "Nerdfighter" is so unique because it’s like, very intersectional!
It’s not like one thing where you have to have encyclopedic knowledge
of one thing.
The “one thing” is loving learning about something.
It doesn’t matter what that thing is.
And I think it’s very cool and I love that I can just do this [Nerdfighter sign]
and have an automatic connection with people.
It’s really nice to have that as a starting point where you're like,
“Okay, as a baseline human being you are gonna have these things that
I hold important in my life by being an honest person
and thinking about problems in more than one dimension
And just… existing with an intellectual sort of veil!
But also being just unapologetically hilarious.
It’s just the right amount of immature to make it perfect!
[Carrissa:] I found Nerdfighteria when I was…
[Samantha:] 16.
[Carrissa:] 16, and I felt pretty alone in my life.
Becoming a Nerdfighter, it helped me build a stronger connection with the friends
I was building at the time. The friends I was building at the time
became Nerdfighters, my sister became a Nerdfighter
and strengthened our relationship.
[Samantha:] It really did!
[Carrissa:] and I kinda like immersed myself in it.
This is low key name-drop bragging, but the letter John wrote me
in 2007, you know saying like, “Here’s to 4 more months of Nerdfighting”
‘cause that is when they thought Nerdfighting was going to end.
I remember seeing that being kinda sad
about the fact it was ending.
But also being like, "Well, my friends and I will still have this,
the connections I made will still be there."
It was so great when it did NOT end, and it became so much more of my life!
As someone with Ulcerative Colitis, the only other people I’ve ever met
with Ulcerative Colitis, I met through the Nerdfighter community
because Hank also has Ulcerative Colitis, and so makes us really proud to also
have Ulcerative Colitis!
My sister has a service dog.
My sister lives with a visible signature of her disability,
and people shout A LOT of stuff at people with service dogs.
A lot of not chill stuff.
[Samantha:] A lot of very weird stuff.
We were walking into the convention this morning.
A woman walked by us, and she shouted at us,
“I love you, I love your dog, I hope you and your dog have
an awesome day!”
[Samantha:] Both you and your dog have an awesome day…
That’s the best thing!
[Carrissa:] It was so nice!
[Samantha:] Hands down the nicest place I have ever been is here!
[Samantha to Charlie:] Can you wave?
Good boy!