Why The Vlogbrothers Are The Best People Ever

John and Hank Green are some of the most influential and important people of our time. John Green, of course, is an incredible, amazing, heartbreak-causing author, whose books have been on the New York Bestseller's list multiple times. You can tell he's made it because TFiOS (an abbreviation for his bestselling book The Fault in Our Stars) is preprogrammed into the smartphone dictionary. Oh yeah and also let's remember the time that President Obama (!!!) told John's baby to "not forget to be awesome," a catchphrase on John and Hank's channel. Hank is a musician, runs environmental website EcoGeek, and is involved with countless other projects, such as the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Crash Course, and SciShow. Together, they have performed a sold out show at Carnegie hall, and at the time this post was published, their channel, vlogbrothers, had more than 1,600,000 subscribers.

Here's their basic vlogbrothers/nerdfighters FAQ video:

Through their channel, the vlogbrothers have created an online community of nerdfighters (who fight for nerds, not against them).

In general, the nerdfighter community - collectively referred to as nerdfighteria - is a very positive thing. Obviously it's a good example of reclaiming a previously derogatory term for empowerment - now, thanks to the vlogbrothers, being called a nerd is more a term of affection than an insult. Besides, nerds are actually pretty cool. As John says, "nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff...Nerds are allowed to love 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 is just not a good insult at all. Like, 'you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.'"

Their channel has both kinds of nerds - Hank, the science nerd, and John, the word nerd. I like this because, as a complete book nerd who knows little to nothing about science or math, I sometimes find myself feeling almost  like a fake nerd. However, John and Hank are both incredibly intelligent and creative in very different ways.

My favorite thing about their channel is how inspiring their videos are, especially when it comes to learning. This is one of my all time favorite videos:

"Study broadly and without fear," John says. This is essentially the message you can take away from their channel - they encourage you to follow your passion, wherever it may lead you.

Hank Green continues with this train of thought in his poem to high school graduates, Grab It By The Testicle, encouraging suddenly purposeless former students to open up to new experiences, be good people, and live life fully.

Their channel ranges from funny to serious to political to historical to current events to ranting to inspiring and back again.

As anyone who has read this blog probably knows, we love a good rant, but no one can do the rant thing better than Hank Green.

However, Hank also addresses important, sensitive issues well, as in his video explaining human sexuality (here) and his video addressing marriage equality (here).

John and Hank are also involved with Crash Course, a Khan-Academy-esque channel with weekly video installments on different topics. So far, the courses provided include World History, Chemistry, Ecology, Biology, and Literature.

Predictably, the mini-series on literature is my favorite. In his intro to the course, John explains that basically, whether the author intended the symbolism to exist or not, it's there, and if the reader finds it and learns from it then they have succeeded. His videos not only explain metaphors and imagery in the book, but also explain why they continue to be relevant and important. 

Another example of this is John's video Existential Airport Anxiety, a video discussing the increasing parallels between our modern life and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and the feeling of not being listened to, which is so common both on the internet and in real life.

As if their thought-provoking videos and inspiring careers weren't enough, both brothers are both heavily involved with charity work, and they spearhead Project for Awesome, a campaign which encourages other youtubers to make videos either benefiting or advocating different charities. John, Hank, and their thousands of viewers then promote the videos and raise money for the charities. Last year, the nerdfighter community raised over $400,000 and ten charities were granted $40,500 each. 

Although the language used in some of their vlogs can feel a bit cliche and overdone ("DECREASING WORLDSUCK BY THE POWER OF AWESOME"), I have to remind myself that they started this whole awesome "awesome" trend, so if anyone has the right to use the adjective awesome as a noun, it's them.

After a vlogbrothers marathon, you will probably feel inclined to talk very fast and very loud and feel very strongly about lots of things. Their videos are a great reminder that the internet is good for so, so much more than cute boys with British accents or the oft-mentioned funny cat videos (although I like both of those things, and the internet certainly has them in abundance). Sometimes it's easy to forget that all of the information known to humankind, literally the accumulated knowledge of the entire world is right here at our fingertips. The vlogbrothers do an amazing job providing entertainment and actual real knowledge at the same time.

You can stalk them here:
vlogbrothers channel
john's tumblr & twitter
hank's tumblr & twitter

-Maya

p.s. there are so so so so many REALLY GOOD vlogbrothers videos, that - believe it or not - I've actually limited myself to including only a few of the best videos in this post. I'll be watching one and see a different one suggested in the sidebar and open it in a new tab and by the time I'm done I have like 84 tiny tabs crammed onto my screen. (And then my computer overheats. I wonder why).