My College Essay on Nerdfighters

This is my description essay for my college english class. It's 7 pages (double spaced). I turn it in on Monday. I'll put up what grade I get when It gets back to me.

“On Nerdfighteria Island”

Chances are you have no clue what a Nerdfighter is. It is still a very underground culture; a sub-culture of nerd sub-culture. There are at least 200,000 Nerdfighters in the world at this point. The total number of Nerdfighters can be measured by the number of subscribers the Vlogbrothers, the creators of Nerdfighters, have on YouTube. Outside of this number are a tiny group of people who know what a Nerdfighter is yet are not one themselves. This group consists of friends, parents, or other relatives of Nerdfighters and possibly a few people who have caught the limited media coverage about Nerdfighters. But just what is a Nerdfighter? Even Nerdfighters themselves have trouble describing it in a nutshell. On the surface, Nerdfighters are an online community of nerds who band together to find peace, knowing that they are not alone and that there are other people out there who are just as nerdy as they are and love the same stuff they do. This sounds like a simple explanation; however, there are many things that set Nerdfighter culture apart from regular nerd culture.

But what exactly is a nerd? Based on your views and social standing you may have a different idea of what a nerd is than the next person. The main thing that makes a nerd a nerd is liking stuff. Nerds like many different things from many different aspects of life, most notably pop culture. It is easy to pick out some nerd cultures right away. Fans of things such as Star Wars, comic books, video games, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Pokémon are typically labeled as nerds. However, as long as you are obsessed enough about the subject, you can be a nerd about almost anything, such as music, books, cars, and movies. A great word to describe a nerd is eclectic. The second word that I would use to describe a nerd is enthusiastic. Nerds get very excited about the things they like. John Green, critically acclaimed young adult author and fellow nerd, says that “Nerds 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… 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 just too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”

The only way to explain Nerdfighters thoroughly is to start with its history. In January of 2007, two brothers realized that the closeness of their brotherhood had been stifled by the amount of textual communication that took place between them. They began the Brotherhood 2.0 project in which they would only use the popular internet site YouTube to communicate to each other through the use of vlogs (video blogs) for an entire year. The aforementioned author John Green and Hank Green, a web designer and founder of the website Eco-Geek, which reports on ways green technology is being developed, became known as the Vlogbrothers on YouTube. They were not allowed to e-mail, instant message, text message, or use any other means of text based communication throughout the course of the Brotherhood 2.0 project. It may not have been the first, but it was definitely the first widely popular collab channel (a YouTube account that has more than one user) on YouTube.

The project took off and slowly began to gain a following of viewers. A month and a half after starting the project, John Green made one of his videos while waiting for his flight at an airport. John visited the arcade at the airport and found a game called Aero Fighters. The text of the title was very steep and there was a piece of plastic covering the very top of the word “Aero” so at a first glance John thought the game was called Nerd Fighters. John took the idea and ran with it, as many authors are capable of doing, and began to discuss in the video what a game called Nerdfighters would be about. He began to question what it is to be a nerd and why being a nerd is seen as a bad thing. In a later video, John went on to say, "Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?” John made the point that many important historical figures were nerds and that being a nerd is something that should be celebrated. He went on to dub the viewers of the Brotherhood 2.0 project the “Nerdfighters” and the culture was born.

John and Hank later discussed in the following videos more of what Nerdfighters was about. They established that instead of bones and tissue, Nerdfighters were actually made of awesome; and that they used this awesome to fight to reduce “world suck“ levels. World suck is anything in the world that is a bad thing, such as cancer, poverty, global warming, abuse, and especially social injustice against nerds. Nerdfighters are nerds who “band together against the scourge of popular people” and fight with their brains instead of their fists. Nerdfighters fight for nerds just like Freedom Fighters fight for freedom. Nerdfighters live by the initialism DFTBA which stands for “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.” Non-Nerdfighters are typically the ones who FTBA (forget to be awesome) by promoting world suck through acts such as racism, breaking the law, discrimination, and drug use.

There are many different varieties of Nerdfighters depending on what nerd culture they most identify with. Not all Nerdfighters are the same, and one must choose which type of Nerdfighter they are going to be once they choose to become one. There are literature Nerdfighters, Zelda Nerdfighters, theater Nerdfighters and Star Wars Nerdfighters just to name a few. If a Nerdfighter is most interested in Pokémon, he or she may choose to become a Pokémon Nerdfighter and would be able to name all 493 Pokémon, will have played more than one of the Pokémon games, and will own all the Pokémon movies. A music Nerdfighter will listen to a dozen independent bands that not many people have heard of, be able to rattle off facts about the personal lives of The Beatles, and be able to play an instrument or two.

Along with the birth of Nerdfighters, the insider culture, canon, and references began. One of the first and most popular inside jokes was started by John’s friend and fellow author Maureen Johnson. She noticed that if you put “…in your pants” after a book title it made the titles significantly funnier. “My Pants” became the name for the online forum where the Nerdfighting community could interact. From here, thousands of ideas and expanse of the culture began such as putting things on your head to make yourself feel better about life, John’s “puff level” which refers to when John’s stress gets higher and he pulls on his hair making it stick up, and referring to John’s wife as “the yeti” because she is believed to exist but has never been seen in a Vlogbrothers video. These and many others, including many references from John’s novels and songs that Hank wrote, became the basis of the insider culture of Nerdfighteria. Nerdfighteria refers to an imaginary island where there all the Nerdfighters live together.

John and Hank realized they had started something fantastic. Nerds are typically the outcasts of society and are always on the outside looking in- Nerdfighters became a way for nerds to be on the inside and feel like they are a part of something. Nerdfighters are known for using their powers “for awesome”, or for good things that fight world suck levels. They started the annual You Tube “Project For Awesome” where hundreds of Nerdfighters would each make a YouTube video in support of a charity. The Nerdfighting community then got together and rated, favorited, and commented on all of the charity videos to get them onto the most rated, most favorited and most discussed page on YouTube thus gaining charity awareness. The Nerdfighters recently joined forces with the Harry Potter fan community in a project called “Helping Haiti Heal”. All sorts of prizes including autographed copies of John Green’s books, signed copies of Harry Potter books and other various Harry Potter/Nerdfighter related prizes were auctioned off by selling raffle tickets at various donation prices. The project gained over $123,000 and filled three cargo planes (named Harry, Ron, and Hermione) with supplies to send to Haiti.

A Nerdfighter is a good role model. The community values “quality over quantity” and promotes fortitude that parents couldn’t pay to have instilled into their children. Nerdfighters value education and being good students, doing their homework and trying their best to get good grades. Nerdfighters are polite to everyone and believe in equality and fairness. They also have a love of books and enjoy showcasing their literacy through their advanced vocabulary. Nerdfighters are very social and have many different ways of interacting with each other. Nerdfighters.com would be the first on the list in general communication between Nerdfighters. YouTube is next on the list where anyone can find Nerdfighters that make videos and interact with their various Nerdfighter viewers. Another website that is used to rally Nerdfighters together is blogtv.com. This site lets a host broadcast through a webcam to a chat room. Many friendships are sparked through these main sites. Once initial interaction begins, Nerdfighters keep in touch with each other through Facebook, Twitter, and Skype- a popular instant messenger that also allows video and voice chat.

Many people on YouTube come across John and Hank’s videos and use lots of bad grammar to insult them. Comments such as “your gay” and “ugh jeez get a life nerd” have led to haters being known as “giant squids of anger.” Giant squids of anger, who are rude and vacuous people, also referred to as “Decepticons,” would be the opposite of a Nerdfighter along with the assumed jocks, preps, and popular kids that are typically associated with the opposites of nerds. Moments involving these types of people are moments when Nerdfighters spring into action. A Nerdfighter would look at the comment “your gay” and explain to the commenter that “your” is used incorrectly, would explain to them why “gay” should not be used as an insult, and possibly fight back at them with a Shakespearean insult.

Nerdfighteria is an excellent place to get positive feedback for one’s creative ideas. Nerdfighters are encouraged to be creative and make good use of any talents they have and also to try new things. There is a strong music scene in Nerdfighteria which has led to the creation of DFTBA Records, co-founded by Hank Green. The label features a place for YouTube musicians to reach their audiences and distribute their music to their fans; including Hank Green who was one of DFTBA Records’ first artists and has released three albums of songs that he created for “Song Wednesdays” on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel.

Occasionally, Nerdfighters will get together at Nerdfighter Gatherings where everyone can meet up IRL (in real life). Most notably, John and Hank went on “The Great American Tour De Nerdfighting” in 2008 and visited over 30 cites and rallied Nerdfighters together to sign things, play music, discuss John’s books and have lots of fun. Nerdfighter gatherings bring the friendships off of the internet and into real life; and meeting Nerdfighters from the internet in real life is nowhere near the same as meeting some potential rapist in a chat room. Some Nerdfighters, because of their nerdy tendencies, are unable to achieve the social life they dream of; and Nerdfighters is a way for these kids to acquire the interaction they struggle for.

Nerdfighting goes far beyond the community, it is very active on an individual level and is an attitude and a lifestyle. Nerdfighters grow to accept themselves and become happy with who they are while fighting for what is good and right. The little project that John and Hank started over three years ago has inspired hundreds of thousands of young adults to be better people. It is challenging to describe Nerdfighters to an outsider because of how much content has been spawned in the past few years. Nerdfighters can be a life changing experience (it is for me) and it is a wonderful, positive lifestyle for young (nerd) adults to get involved in. I have met many amazing people through the Nerdfighting community (a few of whom helped me edit this essay to make sure all of the canon and terminology is correct) and have found closure in embracing my inner nerd and being proud of it. Being a Nerdfighter is a strong characteristic that I hope stays with me for the rest of my life.