Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I'm Maureen Johnson, filling in for John Green because once again he has contributed to the birth of a human child. This is really nerve-racking for me because I'm a writer like John but, like, I don't make videos all the time and, you know, I don't really think I'm good at it. So, you know, I got my camera, I got my watermelon...

Today's topic is the Internet. Yeah, the Internet! The whole thing! Some people don't like the Internet, and it can be for a number of reasons. For example, there are people like my mom who gets confused by the Internet and generally doesn't know how it works and is constantly afraid she's going to break it.

Maureen's mom, watching the Google home page fall apart: Maureen? Maureen? Maureen?

Maureen: The people that hate or dismiss the Internet often say things like, "Well, back when I was a kid, you know, we didn't just sit around and watch porn all the time and make animated giffies." Now yeah, that may be true, but you probably also didn't engage in a political discussion with a thousand people, so shut up. I'm not saying the level of discourse is always high. I mean, I filled in for John when he went on paternity leave the first time, and on my first video, 90% of the comments just said, "Oh my god! John has boobs!"

Sometimes we are going to get breaking news from the middle of a seed of government and sometimes we're going to have—

Maureen, hugging a pillow: I just really love cats and *sniffles* I want them to be on a rainbow.

Maureen: The last couple weeks have been pretty fraught. There's been a lot going on in the media and the world that it's kind of hard to talk about. It makes us both want to talk all the time and not know how to talk at all. There's a lot of split opinions. It's hard to know what to say to people who are of a different viewpoint than you without screaming or ripping out your hair or just going nuts and turning into some sort of crazy troll just going around the internet going "troll, troll, troll, I just want to watch the world burn." And that is not productive.

But it doesn't mean we can't talk about these things that are difficult, where our opinions differ wildly. In fact, we have to talk about these things. And I think in many ways the Internet is teaching us how to talk to each other in a big way, in a big way that we've never done before, and we are just learning the language of mass discussion. But it's easy to say we can use the Internet to talk about things, but we all know it's actually really difficult. That's why, you know, the one rule of the Internet is don't read the comments!

But okay, too late, you've read the comments, it's already done, what do you do now? Pause. Breathe. Look at some cats. And ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish? Do you want to further a good cause that you're already a part of, or do you want to punch a troll in the face? And you probably want to do both of those things, but you're probably only going to be able to accomplish one of them, and it probably shouldn't be 2, so focus on 1. Does it improve the situation of the cause, or whatever it is you're trying to promote or encourage or talk about to just punch a troll in the face? And the answer, unfortunately, is probably not. It doesn't make your side look good, it doesn't further the discussion, so therefore sadly a lot of times you're not going to be able to make that comment into a teachable mome... Oh, what am I even talking about? Just go for it! Just answer all the trolls. Just do it. Now! *shouting* Troll patrol starts now! Let's do this thing!

Honestly, start here. Start on this... start on this video. Start looking in the comments now and be like "ur dumb" "no ur dumb" "boobs"

No one knows how to Internet. If anybody tells you they know how to Internet, tell them to go eat some watermelon 'cause that's the only thing that makes sense in this mixed-up world of ours.

I don't know what you people want from me. Just follow me on Twitter or something, I don't know. [on screen: @maureenjohnson] I'm good at Twitter. I'm good at Twitter. I'm not... I'm not great at videos. I'm very, very good at Twitter, though. Go there.

Maureen, whimpering: I can't turn down my cat! I'm sorry!