Good morning, John. Famously, once upon a time, I had a Wikipedia page and then I didn't anymore. And I was like, "What's that about?" So, I went to the talk page where the editors were talking about my page and one of them said, "Having a notable brother does not convey notoriety."

It's very weird to hear people talking about you when they don't know you're listening. That very effect was actually the cause of the most mortifying moment of my life. Which, okay, side note, I'll tell you that story.

I had applied for a job at the same place where Katherine worked and I was visiting her and I was hanging out in the office kitchen area and there were two guys in there and one of them was telling the other guy about the worst job application he had ever received. And it was very very obvious that it was mine.

So I got some you know unfiltered feedback, at least. That was way worse than anything the Wikipedia editors could have ever said. And, of course, having a notable brother does not convey notoriety. That is true.

It is very difficult to say what does bestow notoriety upon a person, and that's one of the hard jobs that Wikipedia editors have. Because, of course, many people who don't have Wikipedia pages would like to have Wikipedia pages and then they create those Wikipedia pages and then the editors have to decide whether they should exist. It's tricky. Thank you to Wikipedia editors.

My point here is, though, that yesterday I went to our Wikipedia page. Our Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia page for the Green Brothers. Because I think that you were right in your video. There's a lot of new people, uh, here and I don't think they, like, know all the stuff, so, I was like, "Okay, I don't really know all this stuff for sure. I'll go look. I'll look it up."

And I literally didn't know that, like, "the Green Brothers" have their own Wikipedia page. Like, you have one and I have one, but also this YouTube channel has one, but also the people who watch this YouTube channel have a Wikipedia page. Like, Nerdfighteria is now notable enough on its own to have a Wikipedia page.

We maybe went from having not enough Wikipedia pages to having too many. Like I didn't even mention that, like, Crash Course and SciShow and all of your books also all have their own Wikipedia pages.

How the hell is anybody supposed to get caught up with what we're doing here when our Wikipedia presence stretches from tuberculosis activism to nerd punk to VidCon? From a whole section on symbols and terminology to a whole section on existentialism and human complexity.

So I left behind this project of reading our Wikipedia pages thinking "What the hell are we doing here? And who the hell are we even?"

So here it is. I read our Wikipedia page and then also in addition to that lived all that stuff with my actual life and thus I think I am uniquely qualified to give a full and complete history of the vlogbrothers.

On January 1st, 2007, I uploaded a YouTube video to the vlogbrothers YouTube channel and then yesterday you uploaded the most recent video to the vlogbrothers channel.

From that beginning part and then the whole time since right now, the most interesting thing about this project was watching community construct itself.

There's a lot of things along the way, but they all fit into this basic structure. Like, the community constructing itself means weird inside jokes. It also means shared projects, like donating the money from Pizzamas shirts to help build and fund a hospital in Sierra Leone.

Because one of the things this community realized early on was that like the internet was really good at responding to sudden and immediate disasters, but not good at recognizing the many ongoing constant disasters. Like, for example, the very high rate of maternal mortality in parts of Sierra Leone.

Now, possibly the coolest thing about the projects angle of this is that it's self-reinforcing. If you have a community of people who can support weird, useful, beautiful, or interesting ideas or even ideas that are several of those things at once, things that are otherwise impossible exist when they otherwise couldn't.

And there's a lot of things like that here. Like there's VidCon and the Lizzie Bennett Diaries and Crash Course and SciShow and all of Complexly and DFTBA.com which sells merch for many of your favorite internet creators.

There's Good.Store that sells cool stuff and donates its profit to charity. Also, there are things that we are no longer associated with, like VidCon, but also the work of Emily Grassley and Chelsea Vegan.

Also, a crowdfunding platform that was acquired by Patreon because it was very hard to run that company. And then also like a third tier English soccer team and activism that has forced companies to lower the prices of tuberculosis tests and medication.

So, a bunch of like very different stuff, but like, the actual history here is all those things at the root are kind of the same idea. All of those are projects that grew out of and would not exist without the foundation of this community here, which we call Nerdfighteria.

Because look, this is the other part of the, the sort of cycle here. This is a complex and messy world and it can feel impossible for one person to have any kind of positive impact.

But lo and behold, if a bunch of people do work together, they can make good ideas succeed that might otherwise fail. And even better, ideas built from this foundation only count as good if they're actually good, not just profitable.

I think part of why this community has had, like, a lot more staying power than your average YouTube channel is that the videos are fun and interesting and neither of us have ever shied away from making a video that we think are going to get a lot of views. But part of it is that the people who have been around this community for more than a decade know that they collectively are the reason a lot of good and cool things exist in the world.

Like without this then not Crash Course, then not a hospital in Sierra Leone, then not like AFC Wimbledon doing surprisingly well this season.

John, I think you and I imagine ourselves as like stewards of this energy to try to direct it into things that can, like, get bigger and do more than like this community could on its own. To, like, be appreciated by and impact people who have no idea who Hank and John even are.

So like, building things that can like go out into the world and and, like, operate independently and be doing good. We're planting trees over here and this community is like the greenhouse. It gives those ideas the time they need to grow and succeed.

Which is why you and I like kind of quietly don't take profit distributions from DFTBA or Complexly. Also, we give away all the revenue from this channel. A lot of the revenue from this channel goes to small educational creators through grants that has supported some channels that have gone on to be way bigger than vlogbrothers. One of them is bigger than Crash Course.

But also, like, very importantly to me, this is all built on a foundation of like happy dances and and giving Peeps away and drinking blenderized Happy Meals. So like it's about big and good, but it's also about goofing and fun. When I lose sight of the goofing and the fun, this is not going to surprise you, um, I start liking it less. I start having less fun.

Which is why I think it's important that I recognize that there's been a little bit of music playing for a while now. I don't really know what that's about. What's happening? Is that, uh oh. Well, okay.

[Singing starts]

Lyrics: 
"Sometimes I see nothing in people. Here is the church and here is the steeple. You're sending me an invite to a networking event. I'm in your building and I'm crawling through the vents. I am a product of time in motion. I know the best spot for beer in Brooklyn. I'm in the garden and I'm eating all the dirt.

I get hurt.

There's a guy in the subway on the saxophone. He's got nothing waiting for him back at home. He sees a big green bean star blocking the sky. I got my foot in the door. He's got his foot in the door. I got a barbecue Bible southern charm. I've got skin in the game but not on my arm. I'm at the funeral home trying not to flirt.

I get hurt.

[Instrumental]

Thank you to Victor Jones for letting me use that song. Thank you to all the amazing Pizzamas designers for all of this year's amazing Pizzamas shirts. They're only available for the next two weeks and then never again. Because if you're going to do good and you're going to goof, then you might as well goof for good. That's- that's my motto.

Also, if you download the Pizzamas app, I will, during Pizzamas, send you a pizza-related dad joke every day. And this is the fourth- fifth year I've been doing this. So, I am scraping the bottle of the barrel of pizza dad jokes, but I did it. It was not easy, but I did it.

There is an infinite number and I will find them all. So, download that app. It's on iPhone and Android, but you can also get all this stuff at pizzamas.com. There's a link in the description.

John, I will see you tomorrow.