Good morning Hank, it’s Tuesday. So I recently read a book that is
about um, us. It’s called Narratives, Nerdfighters, and New Media by
Jennifer Burek Pierce. It’s an academic work about online community in general,
and nerdfighteria in particular. And of course I shouldn’t pretend to
be objective about it, I shouldn’t pretend to be objective about anything actually.
Anyways, one of the things discussed in the book is how Nerdfighteria is
often constructed as a place, both in the sense that there are maps
of Nerdfighteria, and in the sense that there are rules and norms when
you are here that you understand may be different from the rules
and norms elsewhere. But in this imagined place, there is lots of real
activity. Social connections form, art gets made, memes are memed.
This is definitely going in the background by the way. Anyway,
reading this book I was reminded of the Mary Ann Moore poem where
she writes that great poetry involves the creation of imaginary gardens
with real toads in them. Like the place is imagined, but the people
and the work inside of it are very real. So there’s a chapter in the book
called connections, commerce, and philanthropy that tackles some
of the complex questions around these sorts of communities,
including like, who owns these real toads? What are we going to
do about money? How will the value that’s being created get
captured and who will capture it? The easy answer is that the creator
owns it right, like Hank and I own Vlogbrothers videos and so
whatever money they make is our money. But even if we try to
take that straightforward approach it gets complicated because Youtube
owns the vlogbrothers channel and they are certainly part of the value equation.
And also, you make the videos more valuable by watching them. But also
because your comments and art and so on are not just responses
to the videos, but also expansions of them. Take for example, Pizza John.
Do I own that because it’s my face taken from a screenshot of my video?
Or does Valerie own it because they made the design? And when Alice
makes this, who owns it? Does the person who was terrorized by Dr.
NeverSneezer Scrooge own part of it? Now I think current laws are a wholly
insufficient guide on this front, but to be fair it’s hard to make laws on who
owns what when so much creative production is a remix of a reblog of a retweet.
So instead of being governed entirely by laws when it comes to creating and
capturing value, Nerdfighteria is also governed in part by norms. It is uncool for
instance, to repost something without credit. And it’s governed in part by the terms
of service of private corporations, which you know, tend to be a little bit rigged.
For instance, google receives just over 45% of all revenue generated by
Nerdfighteria within the Youtube platform, and that does seem a little bit high to me.
The other 55% percent goes to Hank and me, which also seems quite
high because I don’t think that money belongs to Hank and me, I think it
belongs to Nerdfighteria. Which is why, in the end, half of it goes to
grants for educational creators, and the other half goes to charity.
As Burek Pierce puts it, Nerdfighteria’s answer to this conundrum in part
is to recognize that money accrues from creative work and to make a gift of
it to others. But of course, we have to emphasize the “in part” in that sentence
right? Because Hank and I are only able to not make money from Vlogbrothers
and DFTBA because we make money other ways. Me from selling books,
Hank from having 12 million jobs. And all of that work is in varying degrees
bound up in Nerdfighteria, like yes, I wrote books before I made vlogbrothers
videos, but I have certainly talked about my books on vlogbrothers
and they have reached a wider audience as a result, and I have
kept a lot of that book royalty money. So where’s the line? And where should
the line be? Those aren’t rhetorical questions by the way, and I would
love your thoughts on them. This book helped me understand why I
struggle with those questions and also how over the years our viewers have
pushed us towards considering issues around value and ownership more carefully.
But reading it I was also reminded of something else, even if Nerdfighteria
has generated tens of millions of dollars for efforts aimed at social good,
money is nowhere near the most important thing that Nerdfighteria makes.
It makes joy, it makes connection, and it makes opportunities for me
to better understand the universe and my place in it. And I wouldn’t
want to put a price on any of that. Hank, I’ll see you on Friday.