Good morning, John. I've been rereading your new book, Hollywood, Ending, as I have the ability to do, even though no one else has access to it yet. And first of all, this is embarrassing, but it took me this long to understand the comma. You have been very strict with me on the no spoilers front, but I think, I mean, I am the thick one here, I think. So I think it's safe for me to say: good comma.

This is a weird thing that we're doing. We've obviously been doing it, whatever this is, together for a very long time, and yet, it did not occur to me until literally you said it how early you were and, thus, defining you were to the author's relationship with the internet and thus with just sort of, like, a larger audience of being perceived in really specific ways. I mean, obviously, there were other folks who were out there defining it with us, but you were extremely online when The Fault in Our Stars happened, and you being online was part of TFIOS being such a phenomenon, and then TFIOS being such a phenomenon is a thing that drove you -- and, to a lesser extent, me -- to retreat to areas of the internet with a little higher barrier to entry.

Like here, on Vlogbrothers, with its decades-long history of tiny chickens and Projects for Awesome and bean Furbies and videos that, let's be honest, we're not expecting tons of people to watch. One of the secrets to our success, and I say this to YouTubers all the time -- never be afraid to intentionally shrink your audience when it suits you.

Thinking about that and rereading Hollywood, Ending has actually made me think a lot about how TFIOS itself was also- like, had elements of being about this. I've been thinking a lot about The Fault in Our Stars. So, my books, they got villains. They got villains. They've got straight, "you're supposed to hate this guy" villains.

The Fault in Our Stars is a book without a villain, unless you consider cancer a villain, which I don't, and the book also doesn't, really. The characters don't really consider cancer a villain. Of course, it is a menace that is rending the lives of the protagonists, but the book doesn't give cancer things that it doesn't have.

It doesn't give cancer maliciousness. It doesn't give it cunning. Like, you can talk about cancer as a cunning thing. Like, it is able to evade our attempts to control it, but not because it's smart or evil. It's just doing what you would expect it to do given the circumstances. It is, in its damage, to me, not different than a fire burning a home. Fire can't be evil, because it is just doing fire things.

Now, you might say that Peter Van Houten is the villain, and he certainly has a better claim to being a villain. He has the ability, with very little effort to make things not awful for these children who have already gone through too much, and he chooses to not do that. But again, the book is not asking us, and the characters do not end up seeing him really that way.

You know, they feel the injury. Sorry for spoiling The Fault in Our Stars. Am I? I don't know. They feel the injury, but they don't come away seeing him as a villain as much as an object of pity.

Now, that damage has been done, but again, it just sort of feels like he has been made immune or indifferent to the humanity of others by his own suffering. And that's bad, but it's not really villainy. It's not like he's, like, benefiting from any of his actions. He's miserable. He's not even successful.

I'm thinking a lot about that in the frame of Hollywood, Ending, which I can't talk about more than that. Just, you've been subtle with the villainy, John. You've done villainy again in a very interesting way. And even that feels like maybe a little too much to say, but I have lots more to say about it. Good news: you're my brother, and I can call you on the phone.

There's this weird thing that happens in my head where I have John Green, my brother, and I have John Green, the author of these books, and I'm, like, I am still a fan of John Green, the author, in a way that's complete- like, it's kind of separate from my relationship with John Green, my brother, which is so weird. But it does mean that I can call my brother and talk to John Green, the author. I feel like that's a little much to even let slip to you, John, let alone everybody else.

But anyway, I'm a fan. You're good at that job, and I'm glad that you're still doing it. I'm so glad that you wrote another novel. Yeah, I didn't know if it would ever happen, but here I am: Hank Green, fan of John Green, the novelist. And I get another John Green novel, everybody, and I get it before you do!

But, since I can't say any more about the book, here's what I'll say about the last 20 years. It is so weird to be a YouTuber when we were once YouTubers in 2007, when we were goofing off in a little creative scene with a bunch of weirdos with no cultural relevance, no status tied to it, no money, and now we are YouTubers nearly 20 years later, and being a YouTuber is a very high-status identity that can make you very rich.

And we've seen the distortions that can create in systems, in individuals, and in ourselves. And they are on a spectrum from, like, kind of fine to really bad, and there's not that many that are, like good. I don't know. Maybe I'm too nostalgic for the past, but, like, it just seems like the more status gets tied to it, the more you can kind of convince yourself it's okay to do.

It's making me think about the world in general and that, like, maybe one of the worst things about the world is that it's so interconnected now that status can just keep concentrating forever. And if status is that intense, if it requires that much drive and also that much sort of indifference to the dehumanization that it brings, then who will get it but the ones who want it most? And who will those people be but the broken?

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

Hilariously, I just finished editing this video, and I didn't say you can preorder the book right now, and if you do, I do not think you're going to regret it. Okay. (laughs) That was a little bit short for a Vlogbrothers video, so I guess I just wanna say thank you for the collaboration and for being a bit of a touch point for me, maybe springing me back from wherever I'm headed as I get too close to the sun.

And another weird collaboration: I made this game. It's like Connection. It's called 4x3. And when we went on vacation, a lot of people were playing it, and, potentially somewhat graciously, John, you started, you know, you indulged me and started talking about what kind of game would be a John Green game.

I'm a Connections boy. You're a Spelling Bee boy. So we made a Spelling Bee-like game that actually ends up being very different from Spelling Bee, because it plays much faster, and it rewards both casual and strategic play, because you only get to use each letter five times. So there are more letters. It's called Smush, and the boards are from John Green.

And, of the 28,000 people who tried it on the first day, 21,000 people came back to play it the next day, which is a crazy- that's crazy. Once again, we are goofing in a space that has no money or status tied to it, which I think is where we are at our best.