Good morning John and good morning Nerdfighters. Just so you know, we're a tribe, and not only are we a tribe but we are a very advanced tribe. John, on average we're probably about a level four tribe, and there is a really good chance that you have no idea what I'm talking about. So I'm going to ask you to go spend ten minutes watching Dan Brown's new video while I sit... very... still. There's a link somewhere on here; you should click on it. Oh my God, I am so bad at sitting still!

So, to summarize the video that you obviously just watched (don't tell me that you didn't go see it), here is the basic idea: we are all members of tribes! But individuals inside of a tribe can operate on a lot of different levels. They can operate on the assumption that life sucks, they can operate on the assumption that their life sucks, or they can operate on the assumption that they're great and you're not. Now those are the first three levels of tribes. I think, John, that Nerdfighteria is a level four tribe - and that means more than we're just awesome. It means that we operate on the assumption that we are great. And because we recognize that, we can do really awesome things. Like happy dance projects and yearly gatherings on YouTube to promote charities.

Another really interesting thing that I just realized is that when you want to do cool stuff, it does not matter what you can do. It matters what you think you can do. During the peak of Renaissance culture in Florence, Italy, which was like the peak of the Renaissance at the peak of the Renaissance, there were about sixty thousand people there. That is fewer people than are subscribed to the Vlogbrothers YouTube videos. And among those sixty thousand people you have Michelangelo, da Vinci, Machiavelli, Raphael, dozens more of these absolute geniuses doing absolutely beautiful and amazing things. So I think that what I'm about to say is quite obvious. If there are sixty thousand people watching this, then there is a Michelangelo, a da Vinci, a Machiavelli and a Raphael, all watching this right now. What you can do is about what you think you can do. And it's about the community in which you're doing it.

So in Dan Brown's video he asks us to do a few things. First, he wants us to suggest projects that we as a community can pull off together. Then, he wants us to do a dance and then he wants us to leave that video as a video response to his video. I am now going to do... all of those things.

So here is my idea for a really awesome project that I am really excited about that I want Nerdfighters to participate in. I have a friend who is going to the Democratic Republic of Congo and she is going there for real to teach digital journalism to Congolese students. She's gonna give them cameras and video-editing software and she is going to teach them how to make awesome videos about their lives in the Congo. This to me represents an opportunity to really shrink the boundaries of the world. You know when I watch people's YouTube videos, I find myself caring about them. But interestingly, there aren't a lot of Congolese people making YouTube videos. So it could be sometimes a little bit harder to understand those people complexly and to really care about their lives. Anne is going there to make that not be an issue anymore. Unfortunately as you might imagine, there aren't a lot of cameras or camcorders in the Congo, so when I found out about this problem, I was like: the Nerdfighters can help with that problem! So I'm asking all of you to reach into your desk drawers and deep into your heart. They need cameras that are above six megapixels and anything that can capture video and export it either through FireWire or USB. They actually have computers, they just don't have the cameras. She's also hoping to get any digital audio recorders and any headphones, any headphones at all that are like better than ear buds. In return, Anne's gonna go to the Congo and as soon as her students start producing videos we'll be featuring them on nerdfighters.com and possibly right here on the Vlogbrothers! There of course is an address to send all those things to in the doobly-doo. And now you know one more way that YouTube and the Nerdfighters are gonna be making awesome things happen. Thank you all so much in advance for donating your equipment and now it is time for me to do my dance.

[Music]

John, you'll see me tomorrow.