438: The 2014 Episode

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the least advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I once heard about two communists who were sitting on the beach at a nudist colony. Whoa. And one of them says to the other, have you read Marx? And the other said, yes, it's these dang wicker chairs. So, see, that's a good dad joke, Hank. That got me. So listen, Hank, are we actually going to do this thing? Are we actually going to put aside the entire, the entire shtick of this podcast to answer one question? What happened to John in 2014? I think, sure. Look, I forgot about this promise that we made and I'm glad that you remembered. I am not prepared, but I have been talking about it with my therapist. I was going to say, haven't you spent 12 years preparing? It's funny. I finally, after a long time of working with my therapist, I finally was like, there's probably something you should know. And it was a really weird conversation. Okay. So tell me, let's start there. Let's start with what was the conversation? How did you explain 2014 to your therapist? I mean, she doesn't know what Tumblr is. Neither do a lot of our listeners. And so we should, we should give the your therapist version. Yeah, yeah. Recently I said to my therapist, I bet you don't even know who Matt Walsh is. And she was like, I don't, but I will learn if you need me to. And I was like, that's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. I don't know who Matt Walsh is. That's great. That's great. Is he a good guy or am I on his team or am I not on his team? I don't think you're on his team. Okay, great. That's helpful feedback. Solid. 2014 Hank, take us back. What did you tell your therapist? Well, so for the, so there was this long period of time when it was all like kind of simple and sparkly. Yes. As being a vlog brother went. And it was just, it was a roller coaster that only went up. Right. And it felt like it really was. It felt like what could go wrong. It's just a bunch of people goofing around having a good time. Now that's not entirely true. There were hard times before 2014, but in general, Nerdfighteria itself grew a little bit every year. So things got like, it was a little bit bigger. It was a little bit better. It was a little bit more powerful. The stuff we were doing was a little bit cooler. And it grew very organically. So I think at the end of 2007, we had 9,000 YouTube subscribers, which was a huge, huge amount for us and also for YouTube. Like you're going to put us in the top 200 YouTube channels. And then by 2010, when we started VidCon, we probably had a few hundred thousand YouTube subscribers. And I remember actually we were in the top 100 most subscribed at that point. Right. So like happened right around. That happened at VidCon. And it was the only time that we quickly soon after dropped off. But there was that moment when we were in the top 100. We were a pretty big YouTube channel, but YouTube itself was really quite small and insular. Now, again, there were hard times. There were things that went wrong. There were mistakes that Hank and I made going into that. But in general, Nerdfighteria grew nonetheless. And in a healthy, what felt like a sustainable way. And I agree with you, Hank. It felt like, you know, we had really good jobs and our jobs just got better over time. It was so weird and fun. Nothing meant a lot. Like there was no like it wasn't a high status career. It wasn't a high paying career. And because of that, there was not a lot of expectations and people weren't very competitive. And it was just, I don't know, it was just chill. And you were also very forgiving when you made mistakes. Yeah, because it didn't matter that much. Right. You know, through this was like a weird member of this in weirder than me because like I was just a blogger, you know. But John, you had this like other part of your career that was very sort of mainstream legitimate even before the Fault in Our Stars. Yeah. I had a career before the Fault in Our Stars and I made a good living writing books before the Fault in Our Stars. But for context, the Fault in Our Stars came out January 10th, 2012. And in its first week, it sold more hard covers than all of my previous books combined. So there was this weird thing where you occupied a like culturally legitimate space of publishing as well as this like culturally important, but not yet recognized as important space of YouTube and social media. Right. And that gave me a certain amount of cachet in two different worlds, right? Like I'd won the Prince Award, but I was also a YouTuber. And when I joined websites like Tumblr or Twitter, but especially Tumblr, which I joined, I think in 2011, there was a different level of attention given to me than was given to Hank because I wasn't just a vlog brother. I was also that author of those books that were becoming kind of popular. Right. And then in 2012, when the Fault in Our Stars came out, that became much more the thing where it was like, this person is a legitimate cultural figure, especially among this group of people who are like very nerdy, ready type people and also tended to be young adults. And so like you were there and you weren't the only one. There were a couple of people like this. Yeah. And so people who were kind of famous-ish, they had status in more legitimate parts of society and were also on Tumblr in this rough and tumble, weirdo, cool, new social space. And that was very cool. People loved that. It was very cool. It was very exciting. It's like how Ashton Kutcher was on Twitter. Right. Yeah. It's like, no, you're from the TV. TV guys shouldn't be on Twitter? How can you be on Twitter when you're also a famous person? Like why would you risk all that fame for Twitter? I think was the general vibe. But then it was very exciting that Ashton Kutcher was on Twitter. I remember when he followed me, I was like, that's so cool. Ashton Kutcher follows me on Twitter. The next 10 times I tweeted, I was like, oh God, Ashton Kutcher is going to see this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it feels like suddenly you're in the room. You know, there's this weird thing where certain kinds of status feel like they are inaccessible. And then when the room makes them accessible, then that's really cool and exciting. But part of the excitement of that is the proximity to that power. And then what's the question? What do you do with the proximity to that power? Okay, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves though. Let's stay in 2012 just for one second. So 2012 was very exciting for me. It was also very stressful. Hank and I were on tour. Crash Course was launching in the early part of that year. And then the rest of that year, I remember we got off tour. And I'd been on tour before and we'd had big events before. We'd sold out all of our events before. It wasn't the first time that had happened because that happened with Paper Towns too because of Nerdfighteria. But then I got off the road and the book was selling better every week than it had sold while I was on the road. And I remember calling my agent, like we were on a family vacation to try to reunite the family after the stress of tour. And I was in New Orleans and I called my agent and I was like, when does this end? And she was like, I don't know. And that was the first time I glimpsed like, oh, my life is different now. On a functional level, it was different. Just in terms of financial security, I made more money in 2012 than I'd made between the ages of 22 and 36. And then it was also different in terms of me having a level of attention I'd never had before. Like, I remember Time Magazine named The Fault in Our Stars the best book of the year. And it was just a completely different level of attention than I'd ever had before. But it was overwhelming. I think the thing to emphasize is that it was overwhelmingly positive attention. I think the book had like 4.6 average rating on Goodreads after a million reviews. That's the level of, I don't know if you've ever been on Goodreads, but nothing has a 4.6, not even the great Gatsby. So the book was very popular, but it was also sort of beloved. Yeah. And this is kind of hard to remember in retrospect because now, like anything that's popular, there will be some amount of backlash to it. Now, what I'll say is that for most people, they probably haven't been exposed to that backlash. Like, there's an oncologist who goes to the same gym as me. And he's like, oh, I just found out that you're John Green's brother. Can you tell him that that's the book I recommend to cancer patients? And it is the best portrayal of the disease. And this is a guy who watches people, children and adults go through cancer all the time. And he's like, it's the best portrayal I've ever seen. So like, to lots of people, like, and this is like a weird thing about our experience of pop culture. It's so online. And like most people's experience of pop culture is much less sort of like woven through with these various, you know, blowbacks and controversies and dramas that kind of tend to happen if you spend a lot of time in online spaces. Yeah. Tended to happen a little less. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was, this was the other. Yeah. The thing I try and remember is that like we were patient zero of a lot of things. Yeah. Because we were so online so early. We were so online even in the 1990s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So also patient zero of like, you know, of the internet. Yeah. Being on CompuServe and having conversations we probably shouldn't be having with people who probably shouldn't be talking to us. Totally. Totally. Yeah. So it's 2013. They are making a movie of the fault in our stars, which like I sold the movie rights. I remember we were in a middle school auditorium, Hank, before we were going to perform somewhere. And I was like, should I sell the movie rights? And you were like, yeah, it's free money. That turned out to be an oversimplification. Yeah. I sold the movie. Usually it is because usually they don't make the movie. Usually they don't make the movie. I got money from my books movie rights. They're never making those. Free money, exactly. And with looking for Alaska and paper towns and an abundance of Catharines, it had been free money because they paid me an option fee and then they never made the thing. Now eventually they made some of those, but that was only because of the success of the fault in our stars. So I'd sold the movie rights and then like a script came and I was used to that part. But the difference was the script was really good. I remember reading the script and feeling like a sort of pit in my stomach thinking, oh my God, they might actually make this movie. And it was a mix of excitement and dread because I knew from experience that when they make a movie out of your book, there are wonderful things that happen. I knew not from my own experience, but from my author friend's experiences. There are wonderful things that happen. And then there are really difficult things that happen. And those things happen sort of regardless of whether the movie is a good experience. And I want to be clear, the movie was a great experience. I was included in every aspect of it. I certainly didn't have decision making power, but I was always welcome at the table. And the kids who were in it were very kind to me and I have especially good memories of the cancer survivors who played the kids in the cancer support group. And in general, it was just a really awesome experience. It was a huge gift to me. And so all the while the movie is being made, the book just keeps selling. Like it's number one on the New York Times bestseller list week after week after week for literally years. I mean, it eventually became, I think it's important to emphasize this, even though it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, because I think it's important to understand how much of my identity I let slide into this world. Why wouldn't you? Because it's so good. It was so intoxicating. The fame was intoxicating, the proximity to celebrity was intoxicating, the money was intoxicating. And then also there was this feeling that like, look, it's not like I was out there trying to sell something that I wasn't proud of. I was out there trying to sell something that your oncologist friend thought was really good portrayal of cancer. I was, you know, like you had read so many cancer books and you were like, these are all bad. So bad. There's so many bad cancer books. I grew up loving the cancer book genre, but also recognizing how destructive it was because it portrayed the lives of sick people primarily as a series of lessons that could be learned by the well. And I was trying really hard to write an unromanticized book that used the conventions of that genre, but that wasn't about healthy kids learning lessons. It was about sick kids having meaning in their lives. That was the goal of that book. And whether I achieved that goal is not up to me to decide. It's up to readers to decide. But like, I was proud of the book and I wasn't like selling widgets. I was selling something that I was close to my heart. And I want to say, I hope that you are still proud of the book because I am proud that you wrote the book. I think that it is a good thing in the world. I think that it has been a positive impact on the vast majority, like the 99% of the people who have read it. And most of the damage done by the book has been done by people who are like, well, this is a big enough thing that we should probably use it as like a tool with which to have a cultural discourse. And like, backlash is a way to gather attention. Yeah. No, I think most of the people listening to this podcast probably have no idea about the backlash at all. I mean, I have very complicated feelings about that book the same way that you would have very complicated feelings about a rocket ship that sent you into space. Like it was great to be in space, but it was also very weird. And if I could go back to space, I would do it differently. Right. Yeah. I have all kinds of things that I do differently with my books, but like, it doesn't bother me because they didn't become cultural institutions. I mean, I would write it differently now. I'd write all of my books differently now. That's the nature of growing as a person. Hopefully you continue to change and that's why you write new books. But yeah. So anyway, all through 2013, the buzz was growing. And then it was really in 2013 that I started noticing I had to apologize a lot. So I would say something on Tumblr and somebody would be like, that's actually really hurtful and I would apologize. And then it became kind of a joke that like, oh, John's always apologizing. And I think we need a step before this, which is like how fun it is to like see a John Green because you're in your Tumblr name is Fishing Boat Proceeds. Yeah. I think there's a good way into this. So it's not like John Green's Tumblr is called Fishing Boat Proceeds because of an inside joke from a Vlogbrothers video. You don't even know that it's my Tumblr most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. But then like it's kind of a secret that it is. Like if you're in on that information, then you like see a funny joke that John Green made on Tumblr and it's like, you know, you're there in the room joking with this author of the biggest book of the year. And he sees your posts about him and he likes them. And when you tag him, he shows up and comments and that makes you happy. And it makes you happy too. It's like fun and weird. It makes me happy too. Yeah. But it's weird, right? It means that anybody can be in contact with me at any time. And you have, you're setting up that expectation. And so if something is happening and you are not responding, then everyone knows that you know about it but are not responding. Exactly. Yeah. And so you set the expectation that you reply to everything and then you actually have to reply to everything, which means you have to apologize a lot because like, look, you make a lot of missteps. The metaphor that I found most helpful that in the thick of it you shared with me was it's like you're in a giant robot suit. Like you are inside of a transformer costume and your Godzilla and everything you step on, you do way more damage than if you were just a human being stepping on the earth. And accidentally you can step on a house. So you gotta be real careful. You gotta be extra careful. And in fact, I would argue you cannot be careful enough and still have a life online. And so I thought that I could still have a life online if I was just careful. But in fact, like you cannot be careful enough because the giant robot suit gets too big and too powerful. And then you have to take a step back. I have to be, I can use this for good. And I can like show that I'm responsible and thoughtful and that I can show that you can respond to criticism with empathy and like do a good job of showing that you're growing as a person and doing better. And I think it is actually powerful and like those actions are good. Yes, I agree. And I think it's really important, but it's really, I'll just say like for me, it's actually you're better at it than I am. But like for me, it's really hard to be inside the Godzilla suit and step on things because I worry that no matter what I step on, I'm hurting things. And yes, like a lot of good was done in that time. A lot of money was raised for people living with cancer. A lot of money was raised through the project for awesome. Like a lot of good things happened in that time. And I tried my best. I genuinely tried to use my power well. I think that I had to understand that when you have that much power, you know, maybe Taylor Swift can use it well, but I can't. And like the amount of power that I can use well is like current nerdfighteria anti-tuberculosis efforts power, right? Yeah. I mean, I think you absolutely could do more. I think that the question is whether you want to or not. And the answer to that is no. And that's fine. The cost of doing more to me feels very high. On the world? No, like the cost of being famous again feels very high. Such that I'm confused by why you're doing it. Yeah. No, I totally get that, which is maybe a topic for another video. Yeah, we'll do that one next. Why does Hanks still want to be famous? I actually, yeah, I'm working on this as a Hanks channel video, of course. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank wanting to be famous. Hank wanting to be famous. No. It's astonishingly still a thing. This podcast is also brought to you by Laura Dern. Laura Dern, not quite Helen Hunt. No, but she's awesome. I mean, what a lovely person, really. I sound like I'm celebrity mooching or whatever, but I really like Laura Dern a lot. What a great actor and person. Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by The Fault in Our Stars. The Fault in Our Stars still in print, so like if you haven't read it, there's nothing saying you can't. And today's podcast is brought to you by editing the reposts of other Tumblr users, a feature that actually existed, which we're probably going to mention in the future of this podcast after the actual ads. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that feels so foreign or distressing that you just can't move on from it? Like suddenly wondering if your headache means you have a brain tumor and then googling symptoms for hours or having the inexplicable urge to swerve your car while driving, feeling horrified, and then spending hours trying to figure out why you had that thought? Well, that's what OCD is like. It's nothing like the stereotype about enjoying things being neat. Real OCD causes relentless, unwanted thoughts that make you question everything about yourself and the world around you. It is scary and exhausting and can really take over your life. I have OCD and it is highly treatable when you get the right care. I am living evidence of that. The thing is standard talk therapy, the kind you hear about a lot online, is not recommended for OCD and can even make it worse. OCD needs specialized treatment and that's why I want to tell you about NoCD, which is the largest provider of specialized OCD treatment, connecting people with licensed, highly trained therapists for convenient virtual sessions. The therapy is covered by insurance for over 155 million Americans and they provide support between sessions so you're never facing this alone. If any of this sounds familiar, go to nocd.com and book a free call to learn how they can help. That's nocd.com. This episode of Dear Hanging on is brought to you by Quints. I doubt you have noticed, but I do like to be somewhat intentional about what I wear on any given day. There's a lot of hoodies that get thrown in, you know? There's a lot of decisions that I'm not super proud of, but help has arrived in the form of Quints because I want to open the closet and have there be not a lot of work for me to do, but a lot of things that like work well with each other and look good and almost like maybe I'm doing a good job of being an adult. Quints can be a huge help here. You got 100% European linen shorts for $34. You got Pima cotton tees that feel the way a t-shirt's supposed to feel. You got pants that are relaxed enough to wear around the house, but put together enough that nobody's gonna polite you ask if you're doing okay. And the reason everything costs 50 to 80% less than what you would pay at comparable brands is that Quints works directly with the factories and skips the middleman layer. This is how you could do premium materials without the premium brand markup. Refresh your everyday. With luxury, you'll actually use. Head to quints.com slash Dear Hanging for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too, that's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Dear Hanging for free shipping and 365 day returns, quints.com slash Dear Hanging. Maybe we'll get to it, but I do want to say that it is the case that this instinct to find, to point out ways that a person with a lot of power is making missteps. It is a very natural and good instinct to be like, hey, you got to be more careful you're doing a wrong thing here. Yeah, good instinct. It is important to recognize that you can do that in a way that is actually more about gathering attention for yourself and feeling some amount of power than it is about actually trying to have the positive impact. Those things are in communication with each other and it's very difficult as a person with power to know which thing is happening and how much, how seriously you should be taking something and that is like one of the hardest parts of our job. Yeah, it's hard to understand what's good faith criticism and what's bad faith criticism because all criticism feels bad. All criticism makes you feel defensive and all criticism makes you feel like, especially if you've put all of your identity eggs into the single basket of the world loves the Fault in Our Stars and John Green, it's really hard when people are like, actually, I don't think we do. And so even good faith criticism can make you defensive. It's just that when you get good faith criticism, you need to be defensive and work through that and then listen. And like a really weird thing is that good faith criticism can come along with a bunch of bad faith criticism. So like teasing it all apart is really hard. Yeah, teasing it all apart can be really challenging and I wasn't good at it. Let's just say that. So there was some good faith criticism of my work and there always has been and I try to listen to it and learn from it. Some of that was about my Tumblr post, some of that was about the book itself, some of it was about previous books that I'd written, whatever. I tried to listen to all that good faith criticism. There was also in starting in about May of 2014, right around the time the Fault in Our Stars movie came out and the movie did very well. It was the number one movie in the world. It beat Tom Cruise at the box office. It was a huge phenomenon. It was one of the most profitable movies ever made. Yeah, it came out at the same time as Edge of Tomorrow, which was also called Live, Die, Repeat, which is like Groundhog's Day but with War. Really good movie, by the way. I watched it like several years later because at the time I was celebrating that you were beating Tom Cruise. That was the vibe. I was going to the movie theater and being like, here's John's poster and here's Tom Cruise's poster. Which of these two you think is going to be the bigger movie? It's actually my dumb brother. And then I watched Live, Die, Repeat and I was like, actually, this kicks ass. Pretty good movie. Both good movies. Emily Blunson, I think. Yeah, it's a good film. So anyway, it was a very successful movie. I went on a very stressful press tour. My face was everywhere. They made a set and a live sketch. I went to the premiere. Catherine and I got outfits. Yeah. We had to leave Catherine. You didn't wear a suit, but you did get an outfit, which I appreciate. It really did. I was wearing car hearts. The stars of the movie and I were on a crazy press junket where we were like touring around the country and we were, I mean, it was nuts. And the press junket itself was so stressful and overwhelming. And I didn't always do a good job answering questions. And sometimes sometimes I would answer a question in a way that I wasn't proud of. And then I'd try to fix it and then they wouldn't let me fix it because that's the nature of press junkets. Yeah. And so I had to apologize for a bunch of things I said on the press junket, which I did feel really bad about. And I even recognized it as I was saying them that I was like, miss speaking and not saying what I was trying to say. But but they published, of course, the. Yeah, they published the thing that's going to get them. Get clicks. So there was that going on. And then at the same time, people on Tumblr, a large percentage of people on Tumblr were like, actually, it feels like this guy doesn't belong here, which by the way, was correct. They didn't belong there anymore. And that's kind of like the reason why it was so cool. You were there until it was the reason why it was so uncool. You were there. Yeah. Someone posted a post that got a lot of attention that was like John Green is like the creepy uncle at a pool party who's gawking at all the girls or John Green's vibe feels like this. Yeah. Yeah. And the proper way to respond to that getting going viral would have been to just stop using Tumblr because I what they were trying to say was John Green, it feels like John Green shouldn't be at this pool party. And what I took it as is John Green is some kind of sex pest, some kind of predator. And for a variety of reasons that hit me very, very hard. I felt very defensive. I felt very angry. And I wrote a post expressing my anger instead of leaving Tumblr, which was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. I should have expressed my anger to you and to my wife. And I should have expressed my frustration to a lot of people who weren't 15-year-olds. Because it's like developmentally normal to not like the thing that you liked when it was popular. Like, I also wouldn't have liked The Fault in Our Stars if it was being carried around by my bullies in high school. Yeah. And like, you know, very often, and this is the thing that you and I have had to get used to very often how you feel about something is more an expression of your identity than how you actually feel about something or how good or bad it actually is. Like, I hated Dave Matthews Band when I was in high school, like a lot. And it had nothing to do with Dave Matthews' music. It had everything to do with the people who liked Dave Matthews Band at my high school, who did not like me. Right. So I did not like Dave Matthews Band in return. Yeah. There was a weird thing that was happening at Nerdfighteria at the time, which is that Nerdfighteria was becoming cool and all of our videos were getting like 500,000 views and they were getting views from lots of cool kids. They were like, I don't know about this term nerdfighters. Yeah. But it was also like a younger audience than had been our like, you know, like not like way younger, but like a few years younger than the average nerdfighter. Yeah. Like changing the vibe. People were watching because they liked the movie. They maybe hadn't even read the book. And they were like, this is a cultural thing that is happening. And it is happening sort of like in the like the mainstream part of culture. It's like not what we were ever about. Right. Mainstream culture was was never what Hank and I thought was cool, even when we were teenagers. No. And so having somebody make a sketch about your book on Saturday Night Live was weird as hell because like that's not what we wanted to have happen to like that wasn't our dream. That wasn't what was cool to us. Yeah. You'll notice that John and I never tried to like leverage YouTube success into like being on TV because being on TV was cool. It's not cool. It's just it's not because like we're above it. We just don't think it's like we're actually below it. I was what I was on set for this Clash of Clans thing. So like we made this like mini film for a Clash of Clans ad. I got paid good money for it. It was very fun. More money than I got paid for the Fault in Our Stars movie. Well, you've made more money off the Fault in Our Stars movie and book sales. But in book sales. Yes. I'm doing I'm I'm fine. I'm just a little resentful. So I so I did this thing and they were like, is this like, isn't it cool to like be doing like a movie to like see how it's all made? And I was like, I'm going to be honest with you. Like none of this is appealing to me at all. This isn't my thing. I don't want to be on a set with 60 people. Yeah. Yeah. Like I am I am interested in the technical aspects of what we are doing, but I am not interested in the like stardom that I am experiencing. Like please stop treating me like I'm different from any of the rest of you. I am just another member of the crew. That great Clash of Clans celebrity that we're all after. No, it was like they really wanted me to feel like I was this like the celebrity on set and like they wanted me to have all of the thing. And I was like, please stop. Just give me the normal food that everyone else is eating. There's an author. I won't name them who insists when movies are being made of his book. He insists on having an Eames Lounge. Instead of a casting chair like everyone else sits in. And so he sits in his Eames Lounge and appraises the film. Just like, oh God, please give me a regular chair. Don't put my name on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we were talking about 2014. I think that we are being a little easy on me. I know. Well, you're being a little hard on you and I'm being a little easy on you. And I think that that's the appropriate thing. Let me give one example. I agree that you handled that that criticism badly. I don't know what the exact right thing to do is. I think that it's a very hard situation because you aren't just like, there's one thing where you're hurt by it. And but there's another thing where like true harm is being done to a lot of different things. And in particular, that harm is being done to the people who love what you do. There's harm being done to the community that's really important to us. So you can't really do nothing with that. Like if it's viral, if a lot of people are seeing it, if they're questioning, they're like, oh my God, is the thing that I love actually bad? Is this going to like, because one of the things that we, I know that we are both terrified of, is making ourselves into the villain after being something that's like good in people's lives. Because we've seen people do this. We've seen people go from being beloved to like doing villainous things. And it doesn't just, it's not just bad for that person. It's also bad for the people who loved this stuff. It's so bad. And we just don't want that to be the thing that happens here. That's like one of the huge things we are fighting for. It's one of the biggest pieces of stress in our lives is to like not be like, I had a panic attack about this last year because people were really mad about something I did. And I didn't know how to respond to it for a variety of complicated reasons. And I could feel that people were kind of like, oh, is this thing that, not a lot of people, but some portion of people were like, oh, is this thing that I liked actually bad? And I just don't, I want people to have things that they can have faith in not being bad. And that doesn't mean I'm perfect, but like I'm at least, but like trying, there's like, you know, like it's better to have people who are trying than people whose brand is being assholes. And so you're not surprised when they're an asshole, which is, you know, at least they're not hypocrites. And I'm just like, it's so easy to tell a story. And I've seen this happen with a bunch of different like good natured creators, like the Macaroys have had this happen to them. Yeah. Where people like, like decide that like, oh, are the Macaroys bad actually? You know, baby, like baby no money is like a rapper who like is like generally like a positive guy and like feel like has good vibes and like he's neutral. I feel like I'm about baby no money. Yeah. But like he's had like a big blow up big, but like if he was like a professionally a dick, yeah, no, yes, weirdly. I haven't paid attention to that. That's a shame. Yeah. So like, I think that's, it's, it's, of course, there's an element of like, I would like to preserve my reputation because all my identity eggs at that point in my life were in that basket. But there's also an element of like, I want to preserve the people who love the fault in our stars and let them love the fault in our stars without thinking actually this guy is a terrible person. So I think that it was right to leave Tumblr. Like that would have been the right call would be to leave Tumblr. Well, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't have to be clear. So that would have been the right call. Yeah. But I did. Yes. When you said that, yeah. But I think that the, the like best case is like to recognize the harm being done. Yeah. Like there is a piece of this harm that's being done that is, it's just perception. But like the fact that it's just perception, like there's a way to communicate the exit that, that hopefully mitigates the harm being done to people. Maybe. I don't know. It was really hard and I didn't handle it well. And, and again, your patient zero of this, like, right, was so strange, like the network effects we didn't understand that so much of what works on social media is getting pissed off and like loving being pissed off and loving feeling superior to other people. So what happened basically, just to summarize is that Tumblr especially, but to a lesser extent Twitter and the rest of the internet, went from really, really liking me and thinking that I was the bee's knees to actively disliking me. And a huge percentage of people were like, actually, this guy sucks. Yeah. And here are some of the reasons why he sucks. And by the way, some of those reasons were correct. So I'll give an example that's of this. When the movie came out, I was like, I was at the peak of like feeling myself is the other thing you're about to say. Yeah. So I was like really feeling myself and like feeling that I was like a positive force in the world and everything, which is always dangerous. So I remember I posted on Tumblr like, I can't believe that it because they actually changed this for the movie, that in the movie, the girl kisses the boy. And isn't that great? And isn't that like progressive? And have you ever seen that before in a YA movie? Or something like that? Something terrible? That was really stupid. Like, of course you've seen that before in a YA movie. There's dozens of examples. And so people were like, can you believe this jackass saying that his movie is so inspirational and radical because the girl kisses the boy. And then I immediately deleted the post when I saw the backlash and I apologized for it. And everybody was like, this is how you apologize. And he did a good job apologizing. But then later I did a worse job apologizing. And then the sort of culmination of this, this is not actually why I left Tumblr. There's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of there is this is we're going to send the record straight or send the record straight. Back then you could you could change it to make it look like someone had said something they hadn't said. Yeah, and it would appear just like any other repost. But but in fact, it was not it was you just like edit the post. Yeah. And so somebody changed something I actually wrote to say that was very earnest, which is which was my brand, which had increasingly was like not coming from friendly. Yeah, I also want to say that this is a platform effect. This is a thing that happens on every platform I've ever been on. And it happened first on Tumblr. Like that was my first experience of it, where like it goes from being like fun and sparkly and community based and everybody's sort of like riffing on each other and building on each other's creativity to over time. It just like there's something slowly sours and like trying to figure out exactly what this is about is is an interest of mine. But it does tend to be that it goes from being like platforms go from being very open, very creatively collaborative into having strains, not like necessarily all of the platform, but having these strains of social policing over what is and isn't cringe, you know, people feeling like they're not sure how to and it like it like shuts down creativity. Like at the moment it shows up, it can shut down a lot of creativity. And I watched this happen on TikTok and I watched it up on Twitter and I, you know, YouTube has been sort of, you know, like that happened kind of early on on YouTube and that but like it kind of just turned it to like a more of a business environment, which I think is on the way that these things can go kind of healthier. But but it really does. And I think that it is in part about it feeling like there is social status tied to success on the platform. And that means that people will do things to get attention that they wouldn't otherwise do because that that attention feels better because there's more status tied to it. And they also become less collaborative because that kind of sharing feels less good. Well, the great irony of all this, Hank, is that Tumblr is once again an extremely creative, creatively productive place. Yeah, precisely because it blew up. And then in the ashes, something was rebuilt. Yeah. That there's no social status tied to being a Tumblr person. There is no social status tied to being a Tumblr person. As you would call them a Tumblrino or whatever you called them. I believe I called them Tumbly poos, but now they call themselves Tumblrinas. Okay, yes. So one of the cringe things that John did on Tumblr is he would, as a way of expressing that you were an outsider in this space, you would, you like created this cringe word for people on Tumblr. It was supposed to be cringe. Of course, I was aware that it was cringe. Anyway, we have to get to the reblogging. A post goes viral, which appears to be written by me because of this editing feature. And the post is extremely sexually explicit. We don't have to get into exactly what it said, but it was extremely sexually explicit. And when I say it went viral, I mean, it was shared hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of times. And I am often still confronted with this post one way or another, people putting it in my inbox, people saying it out loud to me on the street, which happened recently, which was unpleasant. And I don't know how to read this post except as a joke about my sexuality. And so it is hard for me to read. It is hard for me to experience it because it feels to me like a joke about my sexuality. And I'm not comfortable with that joke. And I'm not comfortable with, I don't talk about my sexuality online. And like, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable is the summary of it. To try and understand this sociologically. Yeah. You were a guy who was trying to be very authentic and what was the word you used? Ernest. Yes. That's a great word for it. Trying to be earnest on this space that was becoming increasingly ironic and more cynical and like growing up and these like people were growing up and they were becoming teenagers who were like having more critical thoughts about their world, which is totally and all very understandable. And I think that what this post was about was like doing a transgression, like finding a way of doing a transgression that was like, nobody's going to think that John Green actually posted this. And that's the whole point. Like it has to be something John Green would never post. Right. It was not meant to fool. It was meant to be a transgressive, haha, look, like there's this high status guy who's from the world of the legitimate, but we are in the world of the scrappy and illegitimate and ironic and cynical. And so here is like a manifestation of that tension and of that rebellion. And you were just the lens through which it occurred. But like you were brand got wrapped into that and it was like one of the biggest social moments of the platform. Yes. And like if anybody remembers anything about Tumblr, this is off the top 10 list. Yeah. Just to be clear, like I understand that it's probably not a joke about my sexuality. I'm just saying that like internally inside my experience, that's what it feels like. And what it does do is it puts an idea into people's heads of the of a sexualized John Green, which I don't like. No, you just don't like that period. Like it's very bad. I don't care if it's bad or good, but like I just don't like it. And I feel like that's something that I should have control over. Right. And that's one of the transgressive things that it was about was like, let's take this very non sexual thing and sexualize it. In person. Yes. Right. Yeah. So anyway, that happened. And a lot of people, the narrative that emerged out of this years later is that copypasta bullied John Green off Tumblr, which is a great narrative. And I wish to God it worked. Right. It's the most it's the most like salient. Like it is the thing that makes sense. So the two things that emerged from that were, well, now we can no longer edit reblogs because John Green told Tumblr to change the feature, which is hilarious. Like first off, I would never I never spoke to anyone at Tumblr about their features. I would have no control over their features. Yeah. They changed it because what a bad system. They probably knew before that happened that it was pretty bad. And then when it happened, maybe they were like, actually, we should probably fix that. One of the only times that somebody did reach out to me from Tumblr was at the end of 2014. And they were like, you were the most talked about author on the platform this year. Would you like to make a video celebrating your fans? And I was like, just smart enough to be like, nah, I think I'm going to pass on that one. So anyway, I the narrative should have been the true story should have been that was enough for John. He got off Tumblr. What actually happened is that that wasn't enough for John and he stayed on Tumblr. And then eventually I got off Tumblr because I mean, this is very dark, but it's true. Somebody posted a picture of my house and my Google Google Street view of my house with a circle around the window where they were going to break in and kill me. And it was my kids. I don't live there anymore. But that's part of the reason I moved actually. It was my kids. It was Henry's window. And I was like, all right, that's enough. I think I had enough Tumblr. I don't need to be carrying that around. Yeah, because it's probably, I mean, obviously, for somebody's probably not going to do that. And I still had anonymous asks turned on so people can send me anonymous messages because I was an idiot. And so it was an anonymous message. And like, of course, nobody, you know, probably nothing's going to happen. But like, it freaked me out. And I was like, and I was just like, why am I still here? I'm still here because I'm trying to prove a point to my haters. I'm not still here because like, there's a lot of people who like me and who like benefit from my work here. I'm trying. And at that point, you just got to, it's long past. It was long past time to leave when I finally left. And now I'm back. Now I'm back on Tumblr under a different username. And I'm really enjoying myself ironically. Is there like a contingent of people who are mad that you're back? Yes. Yes. I don't care. I don't care. They're like, we got a blue John Green off Tumblr again. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. I'm broken on the inside now. I remember when I like went back and I made some Tumblr posts a few years ago, you were like mad at me. You were like, this feels like a betrayal. I'll be honest with you. I feel like a betrayal. And now I'm back. Now I'm the one who's back. Oh, God, life is long if you're lucky. I will sometimes like run across, you know, people. And it's so clearly illustrative for me because I'll run across people who are like bragging that they once bullied John Green off Tumblr. Yeah. And I'm like, it's been 10 years. Find a better enemy. When you say, you know, part of the cool thing that's going on right now is this proximity to this power. Yeah. That people can respond to that by saying, all right, well, like, what's the, what's the most powerful thing I could do right now? And the most powerful thing you can do is always that you can make somebody's life miserable and like make a and harm a productive community. Right? Like that's what basically what the biggest professional trolls on the internet do all day. Yeah. And some of them are in positions of tremendous power in the United States. We did hire a bunch of them. To run a country. Yeah. We have hired a bunch of them. So that's really weird. But it makes sense because it is like an effective way to wield power. Yeah. And it probably feels to some of those people like it was a good way to wield power because it helped Tumblr get weird again and not have Tumblr be this like sort of platform where famous people could become more famous. And maybe there's something to that. I'm not here. Like something did have to happen to Tumblr for Tumblr to get cool again. And it happened because Tumblr is cool again. But I think the biggest thing that had to happen is that Tumblr needed to to your point, Hank, not be a place with a ton of social capital. Like Twitter is still a place with a ton of social capital. So much. I think honestly, why is because social capital is so tied to political and financial capital? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like I guess for me, we've talked a lot about the challenges that came out of 2014. We haven't talked a lot about the gifts that came out of 2014. And there were two big gifts. One was that the success of The Fault in Our Stars allowed me to focus on Crash Course, more or less nonstop for two years, which I think has had a big impact on the way that people learn. And I think has been a cool thing in the world that I'm really proud of. And the other is that it built like half a hospital in Sierra Leone. Like with the money that came from that, I have financial security, which is an incredible rare gift and something that I try really hard not to take for granted or take advantage of. But also, I've been able to do stuff with that, deploy that capital to use a Hank Green businessman phrase in a way that I think is good. And so a lot of good stuff has come out of it. And there's the fact that that book reached 50 million people. Almost everyone hasn't read it. Both things are true at the same time. But it reached 50 million people in the last 14 years since it came out. And what a gift that is. It's easy to lose track of that because inevitably, you pay attention to the one negative outcome instead of the 10 positive outcomes. But the positive outcomes from that book so outweigh the negative outcomes. It's because of that book that Esther's actual memoir, This Star Won't Go Out, was able to be published. It's because of that book that I was able to write turtles all the way down eventually. It's because of that book that so many people have written me to tell me that the story made them feel less alone or it made them feel seen or consoled or encouraged them. And so much good came out of that time as well that I tend to forget about. Well, yeah, I mean, and also, I don't think anybody would have been likely to read everything as tuberculosis. Lupin did not come from the author of The Fault in Our Stars. Probably wouldn't have been a number one New York Times fan. And the interesting thing about that influx of people that we had, suddenly getting, it was the most views we ever got on Vaub Brothers was that period of time. Is that like, some people stuck around and they were the ones, they were like the right ones. And we've always been a little bit conscious of that. We don't want the biggest audience, we want the audience we want. Having a big audience in 2013 and 2014 taught us that we don't want the biggest audience we can get, we want the best audience that we can get. And we want the audience that's right for our content. And part of that, you shape by the stuff you make. My God, John, I cannot believe that we've finally done this. We did a whole episode about 2014. I'm going to post it on Tumblr. SizzlingSandwichPerfection-Blog.Tumblr.com. Our big podcast that's way bigger than we thought it was. Once we get those Tumblr listeners, we're really going to blow up. That period was a huge part of how I wrote my books because it was like, oh, I could understand the terror of this. And how you get sucked into fighting these stupid fights and becoming a symbol in people's heads rather than an actual person. And the thing that I'm always reminded when I see the people who are on, somebody saying on Twitter, reveling and having bullied John off Tumblr is that those people weren't nerd fighters. They were never the people who liked us. I almost think of it like, this is what I sometimes think, is there is a group of dedicated John Green haters and a smaller group of dedicated Hank and John haters. I will say, I think that you still have more of this than I do for I cannot figure out why reasons. Yeah, but it'll change if you get more famous. Don't worry. I think that might be a part of this, that you still have been closer to the center of culture than me. And what I think of it is, okay, so the haters, if there's a fire, the haters are going to pour gasoline on it, but that doesn't mean that the only thing that's burning is the gasoline. And so it's really upsetting to watch people who are just there because they want to do the damage, actually spreading the fire to people who I think are being damaged. Where it's like, I feel like sometimes the right thing to do is to take a step back because it's hurting a community of people or it's hurting people's ability to continue to have faith in things in their world. Because I think that nihilism is so dangerous. And it is one of the main things that you and I believe together and are trying to do is saying, okay, but if you believe in the hopeful world, that actually does increase the chances that the hopeful world will arrive. Right. Like a society without trust doesn't exist. And people who trust each other accomplish far more than people who do not. People who don't trust each other accomplish nothing. But I think that your metaphor is very apt because there's so much gasoline on the fire, sometimes it's hard to tell where the fire is, but there is a fire. There was something inherently impossible. So like two things are true at once. There was something inherently impossible about being as famous as I was in 2014 on the internet. Not being as famous as I was, but being as famous as I was and being on the internet were impossible. And yet at the same time, there were many legitimate criticisms of the way that I was being famous and using my platform. Now, there were also very bad faith criticisms. There was also a lot of pouring gasoline on the fire, but there was something there. And I did have to learn. And I still, I'm going to have to learn again. I'm not done learning about this. So I think that they're, I think both those things are true at the same time. Okay. Last question. And maybe the only question I've actually asked you. Now I'm interviewing you, John. Great. Okay. But do you think that the fault in our stars would have gotten big if you hadn't been online, like super online? Like if you, like, was that part of the energy? And being on, like Vlogbrothers, one thing, but like the energy of this sort of like cultural moment and like John being involved in it. I think that it was a huge part of the success of both the book and the movie. And I think that the book probably would have been successful anyway. It was just one of those books that hits at the right time and has the right words in the right order to appeal to a lot of people, but it wouldn't have been as successful as it was. Right? Like I look at a book like We Were Liars by E. Lockhart or The Book Thief by Marcus Susak, two books I absolutely love that were really successful, you know, like really bestselling books and both had adaptations made, although We Were Liars was just made last year and were really, really successful and still are successful, by the way. The only reason The Fault in Our Stars is in a different world from those books, which are both better in my opinion than The Fault in Our Stars. The only reason that The Fault in Our Stars is in a different world is because there was so much energy around it and a lot of that energy came from online spaces. And so how can I not be grateful to those spaces? The point that I want to make there is like, you know, you couldn't be that online and that famous, but like that's true in both ways. Well, it wouldn't have happened at all. Yeah. But also like once it happened, it wasn't sustainable. Right. That's exactly it. And I mean, everything is tuberculosis has been a phenomenal book in my life, unlike anything I've ever experienced before. And there's no way that happens. There's no way I get to go on that journey of spending five years learning about tuberculosis or three years writing a memoir if The Fault in Our Stars doesn't happen. And so it has given me tremendous creative freedom. And also with a large percentage of my readers, they have a lot of faith in me now. Like they'll follow me anywhere. They'll follow. You know, imagine in 2012, you were like, hey, this guy's going to write a history of tuberculosis and it's going to do pretty well. Yeah. Like that would not have been possible. All right, Hank, we need to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, AFC Wimbledon and Wast. What's the news from Mars? Oh, boy, they do keep, they do. So the news from Mars is not from Mars this week. John, I don't know if you know this. Yeah. But we're going back to the moon. Oh, yeah. And I feel like nobody's aware. But like the moves. I just feel like there are so many empty promises right now and like empty threats, but there are also threats that do happen. And like it's very hard to, are we actually going to the moon? So in a mere couple, actually, I don't know when this episode's coming out, but when is it? I think it's like February 10th. The Artemis mission is launching and they're not going to land on the moon, but astronauts are going to fly around the moon, going to go out to it and come back as a test to see how this goes. Let me make sure I have my numbers right. The current schedule has less than a month from now. Artemis to astronaut launch and then they will go around the moon on a 10 day mission. Wow. And that has already sent an uncrewed capsule to the moon into orbit in 2022. And then Artemis 3 will be landing astronauts on the surface of the moon and then eventually maybe from there on to Mars. So that is actually like occurring. Wow. It is as much as it doesn't seem like news at all. I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah. I've learned to trust my eyes, Hank, not the predictions of experts. Well, yeah, I don't know. Apparently, NASA schedules can change and there isn't a set launch date yet. So we'll see. All right. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I hope that we make it to the moon. That would be awesome. Thank you for listening to this therapy session. We appreciate it. Now, whenever somebody is like, hey, what was that thing about 2014 instead of being like, oh, Tumblr did this and then there was this and then John got bullied, but no, instead you can send them to this episode. We were there. Yeah. I mean, our memories might not be perfect to be fair. Perfect. They're perfect. And I will stand and say it in a court of law. Yeah. There's a million different versions of that story and they're all legitimate in their own ways. But this is our version. Thank you for listening to it. If you want more episodes like this, too bad. Usually, we just answer your questions. This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tune-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brook Shotwell. It's produced by Rosyana Haas for O'Hawson, Hanna West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.