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By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

19th Century Reforms: Crash Course US History #15

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Nerdfighters
About
The Nerdfighters are an online community of young people that coalesced around the YouTube channel of the “VlogBrothers,” John and Hank Green. John Green is a best-selling young adult author and Hank Green is a musician and entrepreneur, and both engage in a wide variety of online educational projects. Since 2007, the two brothers (inspired by video artist Ze Frank) have uploaded two to three videos a week to their YouTube vlog (video-blog) channel. Their topics range widely, from “How to make friends,” to “Revolution in Egypt: a 4-minute introduction.”
The name Nerdfighters refers to the predominantly young followers of the VlogBrothers. As the brothers’ YouTube vlog became increasingly popular, the brothers’ followers adopted the term to describe themselves, and the VlogBrothers since address many of their vlogs to Nerdfighters or “Nerdfighteria.” Over time, Nerdfighters came to exist as a community, coalescing mostly online, on YouTube, Tumblr or on Facebook group pages, but also face-to-face, in meet-ups of informal local groups. The Nerdfighter community has reached significant proportions—the average Vlogbrother video is viewed over 400,000 times. In the yearly “Nerdfighteria census” of 2014, conducted by the Vlogbrothers, over 100,000 Nerdfighters participated. The “barriers of entry” to Nerdfighteria are kept low. As the VlogBrothers quip: “Am I too young / old / fat / skinny / weird / cool / nerdy / handsome /tall / dead to be a Nerdfighter? No!! If you want to be a Nerdfighter, you are a Nerdfighter.”
Nerdfighters pursue a shared social agenda, which they loosely define as “decreasing world suck.” As the VlogBrothers enigmatically define, “World Suck is kind of exactly what World Suck sounds like. It’s hard to quantify exactly, but, you know, it’s like, the amount of suck in the world.” This broad definition leaves much space for individual Nerdfighters to interpret what “World Suck” (and decreasing it) means to them, from being a good person or cheering up a friend, to collective acts that fit within existing definitions of civic engagement, such as donating money to charity or volunteering. For example, Nerdfighters are very active on Kiva.org, a non-profit organization enabling individuals to make small loans to people without access to traditional banking systems. The Nerdfighters also support Project for Awesome (P4A), an annual event in which members are encouraged to create videos about their favorite charity and non-profit organization and simultaneously post those on YouTube. In the 2013 P4A, Nerdfighters uploaded hundreds of videos and donated impressive amounts of money to the “Foundation to Decrease World Suck” (a non-profit created by the VlogBrothers). Nerdfighters could then vote on which charities should receive the donation.
See Neta Kligler-Vilenchik's By Any Media Necessary Chapter, Decreasing World Suck, to learn more about the Nerdfighters and other groups who employ fan activism.
Contributed by Neta Kligler-Vilenchik on 9/29/14
Nerdfighter Media
How to Be a Nerdfighter: A Vlogborothers FAQ
THE CICADAS ARE COMING!
Human Sexuality is Complicated
Crash Course US History #15: 19th Century Reforms
Revolution in Egypt: A 4 Minute Introduction
Loki: The Avengers
North Korea: Explained
Why Does Congress Suck?
Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas)
Credibility 24 structured_gallery 2014-11-03T16:00:49-08:00
How do we assess the quality of information we encounter online? What accountability or responsibility should we have over the integrity of the social justice content we decide to circulate? And, how prepared should we be to defend the claims we make to support our arguments around political issues? According to a recent survey conducted by the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics Network, 85 percent of high school aged youth want more help in learning to discern the credibility of the information they encounter online. For us, this issue is most powerfully raised by our case study of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, but it is also one which almost every public awareness effort confronts sooner or later.
Real World Example:
John Green’s “Crash Course” history lessons are comprehensive, holistic lessons on particular historical subjects created through effective and playful uses of media. John relies on a series of visual strategies from the typical historical paintings/photos but also use modern animations and graphs to supplement his verbal lessons. Additionally there are often playful uses of cinematic tricks and game show elements, such as the “Mystery Document”, in which John is playfully electrocuted if he doesn’t properly guess the author of said document. John’s language, speed of speech, and quick jumps across subjects all work to create a linguistic strategy that appeal to logic and give a sense of credibility to his historical lessons.
The investigations (and hasty conclusions) that unfolded on Reddit after the Boston Marathon bombings provide a case study of benefits and challenges faced by crowd-sourced news.
Ask Some Conversation Starter Questions.
Here are some questions you can ask to get a conversation about remix started in your community:
- What you see something in media (any media), how do you know if it's true of not?
- How do you judge credibility of a source online? What is your thought process?
- Is there such a thing as a fact?
- Have you ever been fooled? Did you initially believe something only to find out later that it wasn't true? How did you react?
- Or, did you ever assume something was false then later find out that it was actually genuine?
Take It to the Next Level.
If the HitRecord Credibility video and information contained here inspired you to action, you may want reach to the original call for submissions that inspired this video to be made in the first place. While the deadline for submissions has expired, you are always free to create your own responses to it!