While the internet has the potential to be a source of creativity, more people tend to consume it. The internet has come with connotations of laziness and lack of productivity. However, the Vlogbrothers, Hank and John Green, have encouraged people from day one to go out and be creative. The two brothers run a Youtube channel where every week they make a video addressing each other and their fandom– the nerdfighteria.
Several of the vlogbrothers’ videos are clever and funny, but every once in a while there will be a video that really forces you to think and reflect on how that applies to your life. For example, John Green made his weekly video discussing cuties, cooties and why we, as people, “are so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple for centuries, if necessary, with a single level of angry bird.”
His insights and realizations do a better job of expanding my comprehension of life as a whole, and nothing matters as much as that wisdom. How we understand the world around us and how we react to our surrounding environment is more crucial to our overall happiness than any science or math concept.
While Green is involved in several different video productions including Crash Course, an educational channel covering an array of topics from psychology to an in depth analysis of To Kill A Mockingbird, his talents expand further to being an incredibly successful author. Writing books like The Fault In Our Stars, Green has many mediums to express his observations on the human species as a whole. The book was a New York Times Best Seller, and the movie adaptation will be premiering this summer.
Yet, despite all of this success, Green’s persona in his videos is very down to earth and not intimidating. Green is a teacher, educating us on his own life discoveries, and it makes his voice even more credible if he is easier to relate to on a more personal level.
The most recent example of this is in a video a few weeks back when Green was on a press tour, doing interviews and promotions for the Fault In Our Stars movie. The tour consists of huge crowds, meet and greets and mass of interviews fitted in each day before moving on to the next city.
Green’s response to this was the most normal reaction — overwhelmed.
“I would like to stop and talk to [the fans] and have as near a normal interaction as possible given the circumstances but there were these large men on both sides of me pushing me along and lots of screaming and just in general the whole situation was no more conducive to meaningful conversation then press junkets,” said Green in a video describing one of the red carpet signings.
I know: I, like many other people, feel very disconnected to celebrities whether it being their confidence, wealth or simply their way of life. The whole concept of meet and greets being this very quick interaction between two people is very foreign and inhuman.
We as humans, when meeting a new person, look for a common interest to connect with them. However the quick interaction of meet and greets doesn’t give us an opportunity to establish any connection as all, making the whole interaction very unnatural.
And celebrities do this all the time. They have grown used to this abnormal interaction that sets them a part from other people who do not experience this every day. That lack of understanding is what builds the barrier between celebrities and fans. But Green does a great job of preventing the production of that barrier.
He establishes real, lasting relationships with some of his fans including a girl named Esther Grace Earl. Earl was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was twelve years old. The sicker she got, the less she was able to go to places to socialize and meet people. Instead, she found a large support group online, including John Green.
After Earl passed away in 2010, her book This Star Won’t Go Out was later published in 2014 with an introduction by John Green. Green also dedicated his book The Fault in Our Stars to her.
Green is very down-to-earth and manages to relate to his fans on a very human level. As talented as he is, he admits his faults and embraces them, allowing himself to be vulnerable, and when a person is willing to open themselves up to you, you have a deeper level of respect for them.
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