Nearly six years ago, just before the new year of 2007, John Green brought up a radical idea to his younger brother Hank. He might have just thought of it in passing. He definitely had no idea how much of an influence on his life this idea would become. It was called Brotherhood 2.0. But, low and behold, on January 1, 2007, Hank uploaded a video to Vlogbrothers, entitled Brotherhood 2.0: January 1. Within this video, Hank made a promise: both of the brothers would go an entire year without having any textual communication whatsoever and the brothers would make a video every alternate weekday and upload it to Youtube. Failure to uphold these rules would result in punishment.
Many repeating features of Brotherhood 2.0 include Song Wednesdays, the term Nerdfighters, saying DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome) and adding “in your pants” to the ends of book titles.
At the end of 2007, the Vlogbrothers had gained enough popularity on Youtube to be persuaded to continue making videos, although less frequently.
The brothers have taken on many different projects, including the creation of VidCon, The Youtube Project For Awesome, DFTBA Records, and many more Youtube channels including Crashcourse, Hankgames, Hank’s Channel, LizzieBennet, SciShow, and TruthorFail.
These two extraordinary brothers went on a journey that most of us would be terrified to do. They wanted to get closer together and decided to put hours and hours into each of their four-minute videos in order to make that happen. They have gone from talking to each other one or two times a year to talking almost every day. They have brought this amazing community together just from trying to talk to each other. They did crazy, fun and, sometimes painful, things to amuse each other and their community.
The Nerdfighters. They are the community of people who watch the vlogbrothers’ videos. They are a group of awesome individuals who love to do awesome things. They are nerds, and many people may think of that as a bad thing. However, John once explained in a video to Hank that “…nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff, like jump up and down in the chair can’t control yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff,’ which just isn’t a good insult at all. Like, ‘You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness!’”
When people call me a nerd, I smile and say thank you, as there is no way anything else could possibly be more rewarding and awesome. Life and knowledge and learning and discovery and books and science and math and the universe and thinking and experimenting and creating make me excited about being alive, and that is what being a nerdfighter means. My fellow Nerdfighters and I know that life is full of awesome.
It might have taken a couple of made-of-awesome brothers to show us that, but every time we flash the nerdfighter hand sign, you can be sure that worldsuck just decreased a bit.
Best Wishes and DFTBA