Mitchell: You had a pretty unique perspective on, like, promotion and being yourself and like, how do you get out there versus how do you still stay authentic and how do you feel about that?

Vi: Did you just say, "versus how do you stay authentic"? In my perspective of that it's not a versus at all. You be yourself and you do what you do, and you will connect with more people by being a human than you will by being some sort of imaginary person who you imagine people will connect with.

Hank: As long as you're a particularly interesting human, with like, different socks on each arm!

Vi: You know, people on YouTube don't know that I wear different-

Hank: I think that- I think that the socks on your arm indicative of a deeper eccentricity that comes across directly in your videos. And your voice. 

Vi: Maybe I'm eccentric. You might be correct.

Hank: I might be correct that Vi Hart might be eccentric. 

Vi: I think everyone's a little bit eccentric and they might be afraid to express that, and I just learned early that I get to do whatever I want. Damn, I don't care about anything else. 

Hank: I think there is something to that. Just, like, being extraordinarily free. Like, you know how you feel if you're on the dance floor and no one else is dancing, and like, how could you possibly dance in that situation? How could one be the first person to dance?

Vi: I could. I mean, I think people-

Hank: Of course you could, you're Vi Hart! 

Cam Holder: Vi, were you the first person on the dance floor in sixth grade? Or did it take you a bit of time to build that confidence to get out there on the dance floor? 

Vi: I would invent a dance floor. 

Cam Holder: Really?

Vi: So people think of things all the time, like, "I could do this, I could do that", all these ideas and people don't follow them through often. People think, like, "I could wear weird stuff on my arm or my head".

Cam Holder: Feather? 

Vi: Or do whatever- whatever crazy idea they have, and people don't follow through because they're weird and they're crazy. They are weird crazy ideas, and it is scary to do something weird and crazy when nobody else is doing it. This is a truth. 

Cam Holder: When did you guys, like, embrace your individuality? Because, like, that's a big deal! A transition is a big deal! I think we all agree.

Hank: I was in summer camp, and uh, I went to summer camp a lot, and I was like maybe 9 or 10, and it was this like, maybe 13 or 14 year old kid. So he looked like an- like a grown- like a much more mature person than me. And he was nerdy and gangly like I was nerdy and gangly, and he was on the dance floor and he was like, just all out, you know? And I thought he looked like the biggest spaz of all time, and I was like just sort of staring, and then like, a cute 13 year old girl came up to me and was like, "Isn't he an awesome dancer?" and I was like "Aw, dang... are you serious?" And so then I like- I looked at him again, and I realized he was an awesome dancer.

Cam Holder: Yeah?  

Hank: And I was just like, feeling embarrassed for him because he was trying something- like he was doing something that I would be embarrassed to do. It wasn't that he was doing something embrarassing, it was that I had projected that onto him. And actually, he was an amazing dancer. So then I went home from summer camp, and I watched a lot of MTV's 'The Grind', and I learnt how to dance. 

Mitchell: Isn't everything just a projection onto everyone?

Vi: I think there's a lot of sense, when people get to middle school and high school,  that something is wrong- you see other people doing things that are normal or expected and you have the sense that something is wrong, "I don't want to be like that", but you're still not sure how, like, what you want to be. And you have these crazy ideas. Maybe I want to try this, dress up like this, I wanna follow these ideas, I wanna learn this thing, I wanna be passionate about this and express that, cause you know that the normal thing, seeing what other people do, is just not right for you.

And I guess the difference is saying, "Okay, I'm gonna actually follow this, this feeling, and maybe try the thing that I do feel is right, except it is different so in that sense it's gonna feel weird. So it's kind of this balancing of knowing that the thing you're seeing people do is not right, and yet you're trying something uncomfortable that's also weird, and so you get caught sometimes. 

Hank: That time of like, development, like that's the time we are establishing culture within ourselves and within our groups, and so, like that pressure to be a part of like, the standard culture is really strong. It's not like an imagined thing, that's a evolutionary thing. Like, that's our organizational tie.

Vi: Yeah, it says what is crazy. 

Hank: At the same time, like there's so much power we're unable to break up out of it. Like, cause so few people can do it. 

Vi: Yeah, but I didn't know I had more power. I started doing my armwear thing in high school.

Cam Holder: Wait so, how did this start? Tell us about that?

Vi: I'm a musician, I have degrees in music, I wanted to be a composer when I few up and I am a composer. And my wrists were cold, I was playing piano, and I thought, like, the rest of me isn't as cold as my wrists I'm gonna put on some weird things. So I'm just gonna cut the feet off some socks and put them on my arms, and that's like a crazy thing and that's what you do to practice- and it's not a fashion statement at all, you're not gonna keep doing it, until you're also dissatisfied.

You're in high school, you're like- something is wrong, you don't know how to make it right. So then you start- you extend it. And suddenly these little wrist warmers for playing piano get longer, and it's weird at first - you're like, "Ooooh!". When I go out in my arm warmers I feel different from the world, and the more you do it, the more it becomes you instead of something that separates you.