Intro
Sometimes it seems like the world would be better off without the internet. What do we do when the technologies that promised to connect us, divide us instead? What do we do when the internet spawns trolls and bullies and misinformation? What would it take to make the internet … kind? In today’s episode:
- two different teens whose lives were changed by the internet in very different ways
- the story of how Hank and John Green built a social media empire out of curiosity, empathy, and hope
- and what we can learn from them about building an internet that we really want to be part of
I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to I Heart This.
Hook
In 2011, eighth-grader Rebecca Black was trying to find her place. A little over a year before, she had just transferred to a new school. Her old school had been much smaller and she’d experience a bit of bullying there. Rebecca was looking for a fresh start. And she thought she’d found it in her new school’s theater program.
A born performer, Rebecca had been dancing since she was three. She loved the show “Glee.” And now she found a bunch of kids like her. They all seemed so open, so talkative, so welcoming.
One of those friends had hired a music video company to produce a video of her. It was a vanity outfit. For a few thousand dollars, they would make videos for teenagers from the affluent southern California suburbs. They’d film the kids singing, add a bit of animation, and some simple chord progressions.
Rebecca asked her mom if she could do it too, and to her surprise, her mother said yes. Rebecca didn’t write the music or edit the video. That was part of the package that the company sold. But mostly, they were selling dreams … dreams of being discovered … dreams of starting a musical career. Rebecca picked a song about looking forward to the weekend. She spent a few hours recording over Christmas vacation and another day a few weeks later filming with her friends. It was fun. In February, the company posted the video on YouTube.
Almost a month after her video was posted, it was picked up by a television personality … from Comedy Central. He roasted the video in a blog post titled, “Songwriting isn’t for everyone.” That same afternoon, another comedian shared it on Twitter with some 20,000 followers, calling it the worst video ever made. Rebecca was riding home from school in the back of her mom’s SUV when the messages started coming in on her phone. Rebecca’s video had been discovered, but not in the way she imagined. In a matter of hours, she went from anonymity to widespread public ridicule.
The company offered to take the video down, but Rebecca opted not to. It seemed like doing so would be caving to the bullies … letting them win. She’d already been a victim of bullying at her old school. She didn’t want to stop doing something she liked just because people were putting her down. But the put-downs only intensified. Within three weeks, her video got more dislikes than any video in YouTube history. Over the next month, her video, “Friday,” would collect 100 million views … and the comments would overflow with cruelty. The abuse was relentless. People telling her they hated her. People saying terrible things like wishing that she would get an eating disorder. And much worse things which I will not repeat here. There were death threats; the FBI got involved.
When the abuse spilled over into her IRL school, Black left … again. For the second time in two years.
100 million views in under a month. The entire internet had become her bully. The kid was 13!
Why It’s So Hard to Appreciate
Sometimes, it seems to me, that the internet brings out the worst in us.
Lowest Common denominator
Rebecca’s story is notable for its scale, but it is far from unique. The internet can be a terrible place. Sometimes I wonder whether life might be better without it. It has fractured our attention, exacerbated a loneliness epidemic, sowed mistrust in science and institutions, widened political divides, and handed megaphones to hate groups and white supremacists. It has elevated flat earth nonsense and baseless conspiracy theories, divided neighbors into information silos, it has enabled scam artists to prey upon the vulnerable, and it has hypnotized us into fantasies when the real world desperately needs our attention. The internet is a machine designed to harvest our attention, a place where the consumer is the product. It rewards self-aggrandizement and attention-seeking and manufactures outrage, division, and misinformation … sometimes on purpose, but often just as a byproduct of its architecture. And when people’s vulnerabilities are exploited or mocked, like Rebecca’s were, cruelty can be amplified until it’s deafening, in a way that the rest of us are helpless to contain.
What are people who care about kindness and truth to do? I often find myself just wanting to leave it altogether–to turn off my phone, go outside, and (on my least generous days) let the whole thing burn itself down. But there is a reason that I don’t. Let me tell you the story of Esther Earl.
Moment of Change
Esther was a confident, outgoing, and energetic kid who loved Harry Potter. In 2006, Esther was starting over new. Her parents had just moved to France with their five kids as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It was there, at a hospital in Marseille, that Esther was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She was 12.
Seeking treatment, Esther’s parents moved back to Massachusetts where doctors told them that Esther’s cancer, so badly metastasized, was terminal. Most of what I know about Esther comes from the period of her life after her diagnosis. This is because when the physical boundaries of Ester’s world began to shrink, Esther reached out for community and companionship online. She blogged and made videos. She was on Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube where she spoke and wrote with frankness about what it was like to live with illness … about her fears … and her loneliness. She was funny and charming.
YouTube was a much smaller place back then. It wasn’t yet the place where everyone went to learn how to fix your lawnmower or stream music videos. There were no celebrities or “influencers.” YouTube basically consisted of nerds making short comedy sketches for their friends. And Esther found a home there.
Around that same time, a pair of brothers in their late twenties, John and Hank Green, had felt like they’d begun to grow apart. John was living in New York City while his wife, Sarah, was in graduate school at Columbia and he was trying to make his way as author of young adult novels. Hank had just finished graduate school himself, worked as a web developer, and was ran a wonky environmental blog called EcoGeek … 2 1/2 thousand miles away in Missoula, Montana. They saw each other about once a year for the holidays and hardly spoke except by text. In late 2006, at the same time that Esther’s family was reeling from her cancer diagnosis, John and Hank decided to try an experiment–to communicate every day of the next year with four minute video blogs on YouTube.
It would be fun. Maybe this new medium would reinvigorate their brotherhood, so they called their project Brotherhood 2.0. John and Hank were undeniably ambitious, goofballs, curious, thoughtful, and unabashedly nerdy. And somehow, Esther discovered their channel and became one of their earliest fans.
Somewhere in that exponentially growing little Petri dish, Brotherhood 2.0 touched a cultural nerve. In July, Hank performed a song he wrote about his anticipation of the final Harry Potter novel called, Accio Deathly Hallows. This was back when YouTube had a front page, and Accio Deathly Hallows landed Brotherhood 2.0 right on it. By the end of the year, the pair had a whopping … 10,000 subscribers. And if you’re thinking about laughing at that number, dear listener, consider the fact that only a tiny handful of channels on YouTube at the time had subscriberships over 100,000.
But the Green brothers had started a vibrant community of people just like Esther. Friendships were forged. Projects were started. Relationships started in the comment threads of a video spilled over into real life. While such YouTube communities might be familiar to us today, in 2007, the kind of interactive online camaraderie that had formed in comment threads and video conversations was exciting and new. So when the Brotherhood 2.0 experiment ended, John and Hank redubbed themselves as the vlogbrothers and decided to just keep on going.
Today, YouTube creators talked about monetizing their platforms, but in those early days, vlogbrothers just grew kind of organically, Hank would ask a discussion question like “How come horseradish looks like mayo but tastes like poison?” And people would riff on that in the comments.
Part of what made the vlogbrothers so compelling was this mix of silliness and earnestness. They would make videos wondering aloud how it was that giraffes have sex, and then they’d take a deep dive into explaining the 2008 stimulus plan or the Greek debt crisis.
In one video, John imagined a video game called Nerdfighters where all the passions that earned one the designation “nerd,” became superpowers. “The band geek would be, like, ‘I will destroy your ears with my tuba!’ And the theatre guy would be, like, ‘I am an expert at sword fighting!’ And the English nerd would be, like, ‘Hmm, I know a lot of Shakespeare quotes!’ And the response from their fans was immediate. People declared in their comments that they were nerdfighters and declared their own superpowers with glee. And so the fandom, in collaboration with their two leaders, dubbed itself Nerdfighteria. And in true nerd style they came up with a salute, a motto “Don’t Forget to Be Awesome,” (usually shortened to DFTBA), and a mission … to decrease what they called worldsuck.
Esther found in Nerdfighteria what so many others did, a place where people could express their deepest curiosities and unabashed enthusiasm for things … a place that expanded the boundaries of cool beyond football and rock and roll, and a place that honored the awesome in all kinds of quirkiness. It makes sense that a group of people that formed basically around passions that other people had judged them for, has become renowned for being open and welcoming.
As John and Hank’s notoriety spread they found themselves with invitations to speak at all kinds of nerdy events which included a 2009 Harry Potter conference where he was approached by a teenaged girl from Massachusetts who told him he was awesome and introduced herself as Esther.
In her final days, she made her own videos on YouTube, short little things with grainy video and scratchy sound. She is by turns funny and poignant, much like the vlogbrothers. She talks about being afraid and lonely and bored. In a TED talk her father gave in her remembrance, he tell of how Esther and John Green had kept in touch and become friends. John would call her on the phone and tell her about a new book he was writing. It was about illness and would it be okay if he talked with her about hers. And Esther was happy to share–as frank and forthright as she’d always been.
Esther died on August 25th, 2010 after living four years with cancer. She was surrounded by her family. Her older sisters were singing to her and holding her hand. She was 16. Later that week, John posted a memorial, celebrating her, on the vlogbrothers channel entitled, “Rest in Awesome, Esther,” words that her family had etched on her tombstone.
The community of Nerdfighteria, remembers her every August 3rd, as Esther wished, by reaching out and extending an “I love you” to family and friends.
Why Amazing
There is a strange symmetry between the stories of Rebecca Black and Esther Earl. Both were about the same age when their lives were transformed by the internet. Both were looking for somewhere to belong. Both were hoping to be noticed and hoping that they had something to contribute. It is where the parallels end that my questions begin. Why were Rebecca’s contributions judged so harshly while Esther’s were honored? Why did Rebecca find ridicule and while Esther found love? And what can I do about it? How do I … how do we … make the internet more like the place that Esther found and less like the one Rebecca did?
I think it’s worth taking a closer look at Nerdfighteria for some answers.
The first thing you might notice are the elements that make it seem like the secret nerd club that you dreamed of having in middle school: the inside jokes, the catchphrases. There are Nerdfighter holidays and rituals. There’s even a salute. Some online pundits … the kind that advise aspiring YouTubers about how to grow a rabid fan-base, make much of all these … but really, I suspect all that is mostly window-dressing … the byproduct of people having a good time together.
Second, you might look at the content …all the things that John and Hank have made. I first came to Nerdfighteria a few years after Esther died. By then, John had finished the book he had talked about with her. It was, of course, the novel The Fault in Our Stars, arguably the most important young adult book of its generation. It became a bestseller even before it was printed due, in no small part, to the online community that had been Esther’s home. The book, of course, is dedicated to her memory.
But when I first stumbled onto the Vlogbrothers videos, I didn’t realize who they were. I’d just ended up there because I was a nerd interested in nerdy things and their videos were the kind of thing that showed up in the kinds of searches I was doing. And then, I was caught off guard by how poignant they were. It was some months, however, before I realized, “Oh my god. He’s the Fault in our Stars guy!”
Hank and John have continued to create new things with seemingly boundless energy. Their spin-off YouTube channels include a virtual online university with free lectures on nearly every subject one could hope for; a science news channel; a PBS partnership about paleontology and the history of the Earth; a channel that delivers stunning Attenborough-like videography of the microscopic world. And that’s jus the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens more. They founded VidCon, the world’s largest conference for online video creators. They’ve both written bestselling books. They’ve hosted at least four different podcast. Hank invented a pair of 2-D glasses for folks who have trouble with 3-D movies. (That’s got to be my absolute favorite.) They founded a subscription sock club that has earned millions of dollars for charity. And after Hank was diagnosed with cancer himself, he started doing stand-up comedy. Oh, yeah, … and there’s also the “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” a retelling of Pride and Prejudice through the medium of online video. And also … Hank toured with a band that played nerd songs for, like, four years. Oh, and also … they created Subbuble, a subscription service that gave audiences a way to fund the creators that didn’t rely on ad revenue or corporate sponsors. Did I mention that they made explainer videos about how to vote in every state? The number of things they’ve produced is so mind-boggling that some Nerdfighter somewhere created a website called “days since Hank Green started a new thing .com.” As of this writing it has been 24 days since Hank invented a new NYT-style connections game called 4×3.
The scope of their work is amazing. But … just like the secret club trappings … I don’t think content alone, however prolific or creative, is enough to explain the loyalty people feel to the online community around it.
So I’d like to offer an alternative explanation … I think that the real reason for the Vlogbrothers success … the reasons that they won the hearts of people like Esther … are the values they hold. And I don’t think anyone can say exactly what was in the secret sauce, but I have a three-part guess: curiosity, empathy, and humility. These are things that John and Hank model all the time and that they built into Nerdfighteria as it grew. Let’s take them one by one.
Chief among those values is curiosity … an unironic enthusiasm for learning about the world. As John says, “Nerds are allowed to LOVE stuff, like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself LOVE it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is, ‘You like stuff,’ which is not a good insult at all, like, ‘You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.” This attitude was built into their work from the literal beginning. In the very first Brotherhood 2.0 video, Hank gets delightfully distracted by the reflection of the camera screen. “I can see my eye … in my eye,” he says.
Hank and John aren’t just comfortable with the unknowableness of the world. They delight in it. Everything is a mystery. Everything has another layer. And so does everyone. And this has infused so much of their work with a playful generosity and empathy. A core tenet of Nerdfighteria is to “Imagine others complexly” … to remember that we do not know and cannot know the intricate inner lives of other people. Nerdfighteria a place where simple stories that divide people into good and bad and us and them are readily disarmed.
But I think what captured my heart most of all when I started watching the vlogbrothers videos was a genuine spirit of humility, something that is extremely rare in a social media world that incentivizes constant self-promotion. Hank and John have been enormously successful. And, yet, they continue to apologize for their mistakes, wonder aloud about their uncertainties, publicly wrestle with the choices that keep them up at night. Despite the enormous amount of content they produce, people trust them because they are careful about checking the truth about the stories they share and because they think about the impact that telling those stories might have. As they’ve grown, they’ve used their influence to nurture other creators. The Brain Scoop, Sexplanations, How to Adult, Mental Floss, the Financial Diet. Throw a stone into a nerdy corner of YouTube and you are likely to find someone who is making content that was supported by Hank or John.
John and Hank articulate and model these values in most everything they do, but I think what’s really transformative is the way that they invite the community of Nerdfighteria to live those values with them. , and the reason that people feel a loyalty to and and pride in this community.
From the first inkling that there was a community there at all, Nerdfighteria mobilized to help people. In their first year, Hank and John organized about 400 YouTubers to simultaneously upload videos promoting their favorite charities. This mass action exploited the early YouTube algorithm in a way that flooded the YouTube landing page with what became known as the Project for Awesome. Over the course of its 18 year history it has raised over $27 million dollars.
Nerdfighters have organized more than 750,000 microloans for people in the Global South. They’ve worked with Partners in Health to build a state-of-the-art maternal health facility in Sierra Leone, the country with the highest natal mortality rates in the world. And right now, Nerdfighteria is pouring energy into the quest to end tuberculosis.
In short, I think what has made this internet subculture so big, so enduring, and so constructive are the same things that have made it the type of place that welcomed, listened to, and supported Esther Earl. In a world fixated on the idea of forging a personal brand, this community built a brand on brotherly love.
Conclusion
Back when the architecture of the social internet was first being built, it was sold to the world as something that would bring us together. I think it’s safe to say that social media in general has failed to deliver on that promise.
Apologist for these social media companies might say that the internet is just a tool and it’s actually HOW we use it that is harmful … that the internet is just us, and that if the internet is cruel, simple-minded, and rife with misinformation, then maybe that’s because that’s who we are. If people choose the sensational over the meaningful, well then … maybe that’s just what people want.
But I don’t buy that. Not surprisingly, the folks who might make this argument stand to make a great deal of money from a lack of regulation. Social media isn’t just a raw and unedited reflection of who we are. It is a human invention that operates by the rules we gave it. And the rules that people built into it were designed to harvest people’s attention and direct it towards advertisement. It was designed to incentivize clickbait.
It’s little wonder then that the video production company that sold Rebecca Black a dream of being discovered had built a business model around churning out cheap and vapid content … or that the comedians who started the shame-storm that Rebecca has to endure were so caught in chasing likes and views that they forgot that they were dealing with real-life, human 13 year old girl. The internet doesn’t destroy trust and amplify division by accident. We made it that way.
But there is another way. We can build our online lives with our best values in mind. Nerdfighteria is certainly not the only online community that has done this well and, indeed, they still have their shortcomings. But they did give me an inspiring example of how one might build online communities of humility and kindness and curiosity and hope.
Hope is another recurring theme on the vlogbrothers. As John recently told Rachel Martin on NPR, “I keep learning again and again that hope is the right response to the human condition. And I have to learn this again and again because despair is an incredibly powerful force in my life, something that I have to battle on an almost daily basis. So much of my brain tells me that there’s no reason to get out of bed or do anything because nothing matters. People are so monstrous and capable of such horrific behavior toward each other and toward the world. That despair is so powerful because it tells this complete holistic story. It explains everything. Everything is the way it is because everything and everyone sucks. What an incredibly powerful way to look at the world. It just happens to not be true.”
Nerdfighteria gives me hope that we can do better. That the social internet doesn’t have to slump down to the lowest common denominator. That we can build places where the vulnerable, the outcast, the sick can find love. And that that love can grow out of the screen and become something tangible in the real world, the world that ultimately matters.
So, here’s one more story that gives me hope. Rebecca Black, the theater nerd who loved “Glee” and whose childhood was devoured by trolls started making videos on YouTube–no vanity production company, just her and her camera. And then she started writing songs and posting them online. Can you imagine? Sometimes when you love something … like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself LOVE it … it can give you the strength to endure whatever the world thinks.
She’s on tour for the next few months with her second studio album.
Don’t forget to be awesome.
Outro
Check out our show notes to check out my sources for this story as well as links to the YouTube channels of Rebecca, Esther, and Hank and John. Please support I Heart This by doing three things
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I Heart This is written, edited, and produced by me, Ben Lord. Our logo was designed by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. Our website is iheartthispodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. And, as always, Be kind. Be curious, and be thankful.