On February 19, 2007, in the midst of a conversation about first concert experiences, John noticed that two of their viewers had commented they had never been to one, so he came up with the idea to create a fund in which they would collect money to help their viewers go to a concert. At that point, that idea reflected the intentions of creating a more cohesive community in which members would help each other out. But on March 5, 2007, John announced that he had adapted the fund so that it would serve the purpose of decreasing “suck levels” worldwide. “Suck levels” was interpreted as any type of negative occurrences that could happen due to misfortune or social injustice in the world.
By this time, the Green brothers had already been very expressive about their opinions on different world issues and how important it was to help others. For that reason, his aim in creating this fund was to have a way to increase the worldwide level of “awesomeness”, and this meant doing things from sending their viewers to concerts, to helping the fight against malaria. At that time, the ways in which the funds would be collected or distributed were not planned out, but John anticipated that this was the beginning of a significant project. Nowadays, the Foundation to Decrease World Suck is a non-profit organization registered in the United States.
Logo from fightworldsuck.org
Over the year of Brotherhood 2.0, and over the years since then, the Green brothers have continued to find ways in which the Nerdfighters can actively engage in philanthropy, whether through their foundation or otherwise. In this way, generosity and altruism became part of the values with which the Nerdfighters identify, and one of the reasons they are able to relate to one another.
All of these projects are of significant importance to the history of this community, as they represent the tangible effects that the Nerdfighters have been able to achieve together. In this way, narratives about the ways in which Nerdfighters fight against “World Suck” are also very popular among community members, as they are narratives that clearly illustrate how online communities can break away from conventional expectations and achieve extraordinary goals.
The Green brothers have organized numerous projects to collect funds for various causes and have done so successfully at various extents, but for the purposes of my research, I focused on two that are characterized for a high level of member participation the Nerdfighters at Kiva.org, and The Project for Awesome.
The narratives explored in this series of posts are the results of the pre-study I did with the aim of finding the most prominent themes and narratives that emerged throughout the first year of the Nerdfighter Community.
Each of these posts explores the stories and themes that are the basis to understand the culture of this community, its activities and overall atmosphere. Each section explains a theme or narrative that Nerdfighters have adopted as shareable stories through which they make sense of their culture.
More narratives:
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