Hi, hello! Hopefully I'm recording this successfully on landscape. The last time I did a community live show, I was criticized roundly for my use of vertical video. Which I do apologize for. This is not Snapchat. This is YouTube. 

So, anyway, hi. I'm here today to talk about why I vlog, for...because I want to also talk about this documentary called Vlogumentary, which I am in. It was made by Corey with some help from Shay Carl. Shay Carl, one of my favorite vloggers. I've known Shay for almost 10 years. I admire the work that he does so much, the community that he has, the person he is as a husband, as a father. And so, when I was asked to be part of this documentary, I was very excited to say yes. I have no idea how much I'm in it, but hopefully I'm in it some!

Anyway, uh, I want to be clear that no one has paid me, or in any— no one paid me to be in the movie, no one is paying me to make this video, no one has ever...we don't do any kind of sponsorship stuff on Vlogbrothers. Just because what I'm about to say might make it sound like I'm a paid shill, but I'm not, because we don't do paid— we don't do sponsorships.

By the way, there's my— there's my microscope that Henry and I use to explore the wonders of the universe inside of us. Anyway, there's this great— well, I haven't seen the documentary, so I can't speak to whether it's good—I hope it's good—called Vlogumentary, and it's available on YouTube Red. So if you're a YouTube Red subscriber, you can watch it for free. If you're not a YouTube Red subscriber, you can sign up for a free trial and watch it if you want.

Anyway, as part of the release of the movie, a bunch of YouTubers are talking about "why I vlog." Some people apparently have already seen the movie, which I haven't seen. So, I hope 

I'm good I'm good in it. Or hope— Actually, what I really hope is not that I'm good in it, but that I'm barely in it. That would be ideal. 

So anyway, a bunch of YouTubers are talking about, like, why they vlog, and what happened...what happened in their lives that made them vlog, and then how vlogging changed their lives. So I wanted to talk about that today. I will put in a brief— because I have no financial or otherwise interest in this at all, a brief honest plug for how amazing I think YouTube Red is. I guess I have a vague financial interest in it in the sense that YouTube Red is slightly better for creators than advertising, but that is not why I love YouTube Red. I just love it. It's so much better. Like, YouTube is such a pleasant place, um, when, with— with YouTube Red. I know there's no YouTube Red in lots of countries, and I feel bad saying how much I like it because it's not available in a lot of places, but boy is it great. 

Um, so, anyway, I want to talk about why I vlog, and why we started vlogging, and how, um, how it's changed our lives, because we're coming up now on the ten year anniversary of Vlogbrothers, Hank is...although he hasn't had a baby yet, is probably not— you know, probably— he's going on paternity leave soon. It's a big— and that's a big moment in our history because I think Hank hasn't missed a video since, like, VidCon 2011.

We started this out because we wanted to talk to each other, because we were not close as adults, my brother and I, and we wanted to be. We wanted to connect with each other. And...I remember when I uploaded my first video, my parents, at the time, had dial-up internet. Many of you won't even remember what dial-up internet is. Blessed, blessed are you.

But, it was extremely slow, it took forever to upload the video, and I remember going back and checking a couple hours later and seeing that the video had, like, 400 views. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, you know, that's...huge. Like, 400 people have watched our video. 

And I immediately felt better connected to my audience than I had in all of the years that I'd been writing text blogs on my website. I was an author before I was a YouTuber. And, uh, I was told to update my blog to try to sell books, basically. But I was so much more connected to the audience from the first moment of uploading that video than I had been in the whole time I'd been making text-based posts. 

And also, I was a member of viewing communities. I was a huge fan of Ze Frank's show back in 2006 and 2007, I was a big fan of LonelyGirl15, this early, fascinating online fictional video project. And I felt welcomed into what still seemed to me like a small community at the time. Like, I could be part of a community, um...where there was a lot of really constructive work happening, where there were a lot of passionate people, where it didn't feel like it was too sullied by money, or by big corporations being part of it, or any of that stuff, you know? It just felt like it was, um...it felt like it was me alone with my brother, having a conversation that people could participate in.

And it felt magical, it really did. I mean, I remember that first year, ah....even though it was a ton of work, because we made videos every week day, it never— it was frustrating sometimes dealing with... Back then, YouTube's upload didn't work very well.