Montavon 1 Walden Montavon Ms.

McAlister ENGL 1101-002 11/12/2012 Nerdfighter Ethnography

Text scrolls across the screen, old typewriter fount accompanied by the harsh clicking sound of the antique machine. The text reads Two Brothers, One Video Blog. 365 Days of Textless communication. This is the common intro to the now quasi-famous YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. It features the two brothers, John and Hank Green whom, in order to attempt to create better and more meaningful communication between themselves, have agreed to spend a year making daily communication videos through pioneering video blogging on a growing website called YouTube. This unique form of communication has spread to involve a large discourse community that communicates through YouTube and other online resources. A middle aged man then appears on screen sporting slightly messy hair, glasses, and rumpled blue T-shirt. Its Monday May 14. Hank, your video on Friday prompted an intense disscusion in the comment section of brotherhood2.com 1There is a slight pause and it seems as if the camera has jumped back a foot. The specific question at hand: whether or not the Nerdfighters should build a time machine and go back in time and kill Baby Hitler. The odd question seems to be brushed aside as a normal topic of discussion. Hank, when it comes to Baby Hitler killing, people tend to fall into one of two camps. The first camp says we shouldnt kill the Baby Hitler...The other camp of people say, are you crazy?... We need to go back in time and kill Baby Hitler. This is a common opening to this new style of communication. This absurd discussion draws the viewers in and also furthers the discussion between not only Hank, the other brother, and also the Nerdfighters.

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Transcript from video, Brotherhood 2.0:May 14th: The evil baby orphanage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtATGzpTOFk

Montavon 2 Nerdfighter: The general term for anyone who is a fan, or is part of the community who watches vlogbrothers, or any vlogbrothers related videos. They can also be people who enjoy the same sentiments about the world in general, or people who want to be referred to as a nerdfighter. A nerdfighter is a person who instead of being made up of skin and tissue is made entirely of awsum.2 This is the incredible condition of this discourse community, the videos that started out as plain communication between brothers now spark discussions which include thousands of likeminded people. To this date, more than one hundred thousand people have viewed this video. The entire idea for this video, and the following parts of the communication are based around a discussion started by Hank and continued by the thousands of people who watched that video and discussed it. Hank, it seemed that the two camps, pro-Baby Hitler killing and anti-Baby Hitler killing would never be able to reconcile. But then along came commenter Brooke, who suggested The Evil Baby orphanage. The creators of the discussion not only read these comments, they bring them up in videos, and carry out the discussion with people like Brooke in their spare time. These conversations are ever-lasting. The community has now created a standard running joke, the idea of the Evil Baby orphanage. Just like many other jokes this one is still used today, six years later. These jokes are a staple of the community and bring the members together. They are a common discourse that allows the members of the community to reference older material discussions they have had easily. They allow the members of the community to feel included. These jokes usually stem from older videos, and are basically references to things that are or have been viewed as slightly humorous by the community, and are now used frequently. The following jokes are commonly used in conversation.

From video, How To Be a Nerdfighter: A Vlogbrothers FAQ. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyQi79aYfxU

Montavon 3 The yeti: This is the name given to Johns wife Sarah. She has chosen to have her identity hidden in the videos, and never appears on camera. The joke was that she is a scarce as the yeti, and she is now endearingly referred to as that. In your pants: This is quite a complicated joke. It started off as a discussion about how book titles are always humorous when followed by the phrase In your pants. This joke was then used to describe the description of the video, or a place on the website where links and information about video is generally place. Because Vlogbrothers videos are generally filmed from the waist up, and the description is directly under the video, the discretion of the video is now referred to as In my/your pants Evil baby orphanage: Another joke, coming from a community discussion about whether or not, if given the chance, nerdfighters would kill baby hitler. The idea was then proposed to build a time machine and take all the evil babies in the world to a mountain orphanage where they would be raised to do no harm. The idea has since been expanded upon, and even has a card game named after it. The video then transitions to other ideas, and news about the vlogbrother community. It describes the mis-explained wikipedia article about a book John Green wrote. Sounds like a fairly good book, but it doesn't sound like the book I wrote. The general news of things happening in the Nerdfighter community is then announced, and the video ends. It might seem hard to believe that there are more than the two brothers who create these videos involved in this community. It is surprising, but the vlog brothers have a very active community. As seen in the previous observation, some of these members choose to communicate on a blog site, which used to be called brotherhood2.com, but is now at nerdfighters.ning.com. There are many other ways that people choose to communicate in this community. In the internet world, there are levels of participation running from lurker t o creator. This spectrum of members chose to range from creating their own material, to adding

Montavon 4 to the discussions going on in the community, like other Youtubers, to hosting real life gatherings of people, or simply to participating in annual events or discussions. People who had started broadcasting their lives on YouTube, with or without the starting influence of the Vlogbrothers, are top contributors to the community discussions. Usually these discussions are about world events, or other relatable subjects. They use much of the same discourse that stems from the original vlogbrothers videos. Many of these top contributors or close friends to the vlogbrothers, are referred to as Secret Siblings. Secret Sibling: an honorary member of the vlogbrothers. These are close friends or top contributors to the discussions hosted by the brothers. Real life gatherings are ways Nerdfighters meet up and do things together outside of the internet. Sometimes these organizations are hosted by a creator or artist who participates in the nerdfighter community. Notably, Alex Day, a content creator, entrepreneur and longtime nerdfighter hosts, many gatherings in the UK where he lives. These can range from Sopio tournaments, a card game created by him, and played by many nerdfighters, to concerts. Most notably, the largest real life gathering of nerdfighters and YouTube creators is Vidcon. This is a conference hosted every year in Los Angeles, and is an event put on by Hank Green. At the core, this is a place for people who love and create YouTube content, to come together and discuss and learn about videos from one another. It also draws quite a large group of people who want to meet and learn from their favorite creators, and make new nerdfighter friends. The last vidcon was hosted in 2013 and had an attendance of over 12000 people. This is incredibly huge for an internet community. Annual discussions are hosted on Youtube and are a great example of how the Nerdfighter community converses. These videos come in the form of tag videos. Tags are when specific people are asked, or tagged, to respond to a video. One of the large discussions that takes place every year is the Nerimon or Alex Day Survey. This is generally a series of

Montavon 5 questions strung together, and answered by many different nerdfighters. A typical survey goes like this. The video opens on a very plain bedroom, tan walls and a greyish bed. Some cards are stacked in the corner on the windowsill, but besides this the room seems empty. A younger man is sitting in the middle of the screen, his extravagant rhinestone shirt contrasts with the plain background. Its been a year which means its time for the annual youtube survey 2013. As usual anyone can play along. Here we go. Alex day is known for his fast paced and engaging discussions. Whats your biggest fear? I think there is two levels to this, I think you have a biggest fear which is the surface level fear. I have a fear of dogs Then you have your inner turmoil fear, which is you know, if you were a character in a novel, what your whole story would be based about. For mine it would be dying without having done anything meaningful with my life. This is the type of question asked in the survey. It is designed to attempt to engage the community in a type of discussion that lets the other people in the community know what makes them tick. This highlights a very interesting aspect of the nerdfighter community. All of the people involved develop as deep as a relationship with each other as a real life community does, even through a hindered means of communication. This plays upon the types of people who use these communities. The people who go to nerdfighter community for conversation are there to seek real friendships. When you are talking to people who you cannot see, you lose all of the constraints and judgments a physical relationship has. The nerdfighter community also has strong goodwill intentions. From the project for awesome and all of the other charity organizations sprung up around the community, anyone who needs help will be accepted. These qualities help the members of the community become great friends. Project for Awesome: An annual event where members of the nerdfighter community are asked to advocate for their favorite charity. Money is then raised for that charity by hosting a live viewing of the videos and having secret siblings give out prizes to top contributors.

Montavon 6 Decrease world suck : this is a general Idea behind many of the Vlogbrothers videos. Once John and Hank realized that they had such a large following of people, generally passionate about the same problems, they started a campaign to decrease the amount of suck in the world. They have since run the project for awesome annually under the slogan of DFTBA, or Dont Forget to Be Awesome. The survey continues, with questions like when did you find out santa wasn't real, what's the best idea you've ever had, what's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done, and if you could only pick one career for the rest of your life what would it be?. These questions have a balance between humor and seriousness that is another odd trait in this community. things like the Evil Baby Orphanage, are funny and cute ways of thinking, but are often followed by serious and deep thoughts. These surveys are then responded to by generally anyone who wants to be involved in the community. The idea is for people in the nerdfighter discourse to give a sample of what is going on in their heads at that time, and to contribute to the general consciousness of the community. Another fascinating way that this is accomplished is by a series of videos called Day in the life of. This is a semi annual event where people bring a video camera with them through their day and show the community what is going on in their lives. It is an innovative way to substitute actually visiting a person. Through these observations of different types of video discourse that happens through the Nerdfighters on youtube, we can see the community as caring and quirky. The have developed their own terms both relating to the technical usage of the website, and to terms specific to the types of discussions they carry out. In general, this is an amazing community to be a part of.