Good morning, John! And good morning to Mikey!

Yes, I did a little bit of research because I couldn't figure out how to pronounce your screen-name. Now, probably I should be using your screen-name because this video is about online communities, and that's how we identify ourselves often in online communities.

So here's a kind of sad, little fact... I'm jealous of you.

When I was in college, I was part of an IRC channel that nominally existed to, uh, fan-sub anime. By which I mean that we would translate anime, put subtitles on the anime, and then release the anime to the world because this was a period of time back in the past when, uh, there was a lot of anime that didn't get released in America.

Now that's not really the case anymore, and so there's not really that much fan-subbing going on anymore, but back then there was just a huge amount of unreleased anime that was in Japan, and we would translate it and put it out in America without any companies being involved, and it was a little bit illegal, but it was, you know, OK.

None of that is actually the point, though, because we kind of, rarely, actually spent time doing that. Mostly we spent time hanging out--talking about life, and work, and where we lived, and what we did, and who we were, and being a community together, defining our own little sub-culture on this corner of the internet that existed solely as white text on a black screen.

I miss that. I'm not really part of a community like that anymore. I'm part of other communities. I'm part of nerdfighteria, which is a very large community that I have a very weird, sort of unusual relationship with because it's grown up around the creations that John and I have made.

And I could just, you know, get a screen-name and join up with an online community now, but I would feel weird about it, and I also don't have a lot of time for that sort of thing, unfortunately.

I miss the purity of that. I've checked out your YouTube channel, I've been to your threads on "Our Pants," and yeah! I'm jealous! I think it's actually kind of important to the future of the planet and humanity that these kinds of culture exist, that exist without regard for physical space. That we share not just information, but we share ourselves, and we share our cultures, and we mutate our cultures, and we create new cultures that exist solely on the internet. It's a beautiful, and wonderful, and unique thing.

Now some people say that internet friendships aren't real friendships. Hilarious. Those people obviously can suck it. Some of my best friends are internet friends, and then I meet them in real life, and it turns out that in fact, they are who I expected them to be and are as great as I expected them to be.

I think there are limitations, of course, but there's limitations to every kind of social interaction. I mean, there are people who hide themselves on the internet, don't let their real selves out, but there are people who do that in the real world, too.

So, I have to say to all of The Last Ones, and I'm going to read your names off of the computer screen here:
To jurassicaaaa, to LeoN,  jedieasterbunny, ashsayshello, Kelli, essess, echo, Candinos, Butters, Berglind, and gnaist. Sorry, that's the hardest one. I have no idea how to pronounce that. I should have emailed you and asked, but I didn't.

Thank you for being part of something special on the internet.

And! Thank you for being such an amazing supporter of the Project for Awesome. I'm sorry that this video took so long to make. You are all great, and you will see me on Tuesday, if you're still watching. Hopefully you have forgiven me, and are still watching the videos.