As the origins of the community center on the Green brothers, their personal stories and their story as the Vlogbrothers are fundamental narratives in the community’s culture. The particular format of the Green brothers’ YouTube channel, and the way in which both of them always shared their values and beliefs when reflecting on different issues made them very relatable personalities in which YouTube users became very invested. As more people started subscribing to their YouTube channel, stories about the Green brothers and about the way they interacted with their audiences became reference points for newcomers to understand the kind of community that was forming. Their success as vloggers and as entrepreneurs has grown over the years, and their stories are widely shared among community members.
John and Hank Green in early Brotherhood 2.0 videos, 2007
As of January 1, 2007 John Green was a 29-year-old fiction writer living in New York, and Hank Green was a 26-year-old web-designer and environmental writer living in Montana. Throughout the Brotherhood 2.0 project, they shared their lives and personal projects with the community, always being very open about their values and beliefs. In this way, the community members learned about their personalities and personal stories. So, for example, John was very open about his writing and publishing process, as he was in the midst of finishing a novel during Brotherhood 2.0. On the other hand, Hank shared the travels he took to write about environmental issues on his website. At the same time, the brothers also openly shared their thoughts on political issues and the importance of civil and political duties, human rights issues and environmentalism. They also shared their passion for knowledge of all sorts, from social to natural sciences, to literature and music, to popular and Internet culture. The Green brothers always kept a positive, optimistic and humorous mood on their videos through their personalities, and by giving each other silly challenges or punishments as ways to entertain and engage their audience.
John and Hank Green in a video in 2013
(in the computer screen: a Twitter stream of questions sent by Nerdfighters.)
Nowadays, stories about the Green brothers’ journey as vloggers, and about their successful personal projects and community projects, abound on the forums in which members gather. Moreover, both John and Hank are regarded as role models by the community members, and as forerunners in using vlogging as a format to engage with an audience by a large group of current YouTubers. The narrative about them became the foundation for the community’s culture as it complies with Bruner’s description for why narratives work: the story of vloggers may be generic, but this one has particularities that stand out due to the unexpected success and scale, breaking normativeness and canonicity.
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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