YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=grO7og83Ozo
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Duration:08:10
Uploaded:2016-07-15
Last sync:2024-02-12 22:15
Vlogbrothers Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKj6PxBCdpM&feature=youtu.be

Sorry if it seems like I don't have my usual energy!

Vlogbrothers is a very weird project and I'm never entirely sure what we're even doing. I actually like it that way...in my ideal world I get to do whatever sounds most interesting to me. But the pressure to engage with politics or tragedy or the news cycle is /not/ something that is helping me psychologically or creatively. So we're going to stop doing it, I think.
Let's try this.  So today's video is about--on vlogbrothers--is about race and racism and police and the criminal justice system and about me some, too.  We're getting to a point where, when we make a video about anything that's happening in the world, especially a tragedy, we will later get people who are mad at us for not making a video about a different tragedy.  Vlogbrothers isn't a news network, and there's been a lot of news this year, there's been a lot of bad news this year.  We're probably gonna have to stop doing things that have anything to do with what happened recently.  Obviously, today's video on vlogbrothers is not about what happened in Nice.  I mean, I don't even know--I'm making this Thursday night, midnight, I don't know very much about what happened in Nice.  I have basic information, tragic events, attack, terrorism, yeah.  Um, like, analysis of like, what it means, nobody knows.  Nobody knows what it means.  We use it as an opportunity to talk about, like, the thing that we already wanna talk about, whatever that is, right?  That's what news is now, that's what breaking news is now.  We're like, okay, a thing happened, here's the you know, 30 seconds that it takes for you to know exactly what happened, everything anybody knows, and then let's now do the full time 24 hour a day analysis that is much more informed by the, you know, politics, and uh, whatever, whatever cultural discussion we're having in whatever country we're in, than it is by the reality of the world.  It's the kind of thing that like, keeps you hanging on, keeps you looking, keeps you watching, keeps you refreshing Facebook and Twitter, keeps the eyeballs on the place where they want your eyeballs so they can advertise to you.

That's not what I want out of my media.  What we have tried to do in the past on vlogbrothers is give people a chance to reflect, to process, to grieve, at a certain point, though, like, when you hear, you've talked about this tragedy, why not that tragedy?  It becomes pretty clear that one, the conversation that we're having is the same conversation every time, it's that, you know, take care of yourself, think about yourself, support, you know, make sure that everyone in your life is okay, but as far as like, the context, like, the important, like, the reality of these things go, they do change us, they change the world, they affect policy, they affect politics, but nobody knows how, nobody knows what is actually going to change, whether it's just like, you know, on the ground, different strategies of policing or it's geopolitical global relations stuff.  No one knows.  No one knows.  And everybody that says that they know is wrong.  They have opinions, and it's really easy to say stuff because of everybody's gonna forget what anybody said within 24 hours, because we're sayin' more stuff tomorrow.

I don't mean to sound like I'm--I mean, obviously, like, it's a bad day, but I think, John and I talked about this earlier today, we're gonna stop doing stuff that's news stuff.  We're probably going to make a--well, we're probably gonna mention that on vlogbrothers, not just here on hankschannel, but you know, when we talk about international, like, Brazil or Syria, we are usually talking about stuff that isn't being talked about in the news, and if it is, it's in a very just, surface way that does not at all get into any of the details, but we are still, when we're talking about those things, giving a very surface overview.  If you were in Syria or you were in Brazil, you'd say, that was a good summary of everything that I already know.  I know that.  It would be like if I wanted to make a video, like that style video, about a--about something in America, like say, gun violence, it would be so surface level that you would watch it and you would say why did you even do that?  Like, yeah, I knew all that stuff.  And so that's why we don't make those videos about pol--like, actual things happening in America, because we all know about those issues deeply, and we have our opinions already, but when, you know, when I want to talk about Brazil, that's because there's this big important thing happening and it affects a lot of people in our community, and I feel like people don't know about it at all, and so if we give like a little bit of information, people will be able to have context to the news stories that they read, they'll be able to care about and empathize with the people--people in Brazil, nerdfighters in Brazil, and the citizens there, and maybe keep up to date on that.

And like, I'm not saying that we're not gonna talk about interesting stuff that's happening in the world, yes, sure, but if it happened in the news today, if it happened in the news this week, if it's in the news right now, that's not what this channel is for.  We make a video, I make a video sometimes two or three days in advance, I can't be--I can't have that pressure to feel like I need to remake a video if something dramatic happens and I like, I mean, in the worst case scenario, yeah, probably not gonna upload a video super silly humping stuff video if there's been a huge global tragedy, but um, we just can't--we just can't have that be what this channel is.  

We need to focus more on the community.  We need to focus more on like, considering the world and having a good time doing weird stuff.  We haven't done weird stuff in a really long time.  John's last video, I know that it was like super pontificate-y and you know, philosophical and I loved it of course, but it also had that element of like, what the heck is this guy doing?  It's just a picture of a sunset and like, he's reviewing the capacity of humans to wonder or whatever it was, I just think that's funny.  I like, that kind of stuff, like, what's wrong with Monopoly, let's do that!  

I feel--I feel--I felt this pressure to talk about Nice in my video, and I had already been making this video about tragedies that had happened, you know, over the week before, two weeks before, I--yeah, I just don't think that's what this channel can be.  And I know that like, people here probably are gonna be really supportive of that, and when we express it on vlogbrothers, it will be in a much more concise and thoughtful way than this, which has just been me, blahblahblahblahblah.  But yeah.  I think that, and I don't think it's a bad thing, I don't think it's like, it's not like--I mean, it's not super stressing me out, it's just something that I have thought about a lot today, kind of--which was a crazy day and yeah.  That's all.  Thanks for being here.  Thanks for listening and uh, yeah, DFTBA.