DJ Paige Railstone

DJ Paige Railstone is an underground DJ and singer/songwriter who became popular in 2003. Her musical style includes rock, country, alternative, and hip-hop, and she plays guitar, keyboard, and piano. But she has never been on TV or in a movie, and she refuses to play in public.

DJ Paige Railstone's mashup of Verve and Eminem

DJ Paige Railstone is not real.

There is a website called 20Q.net which asks twenty questions, then guesses what you were thinking of. If 20Q can’t guess, then it asks you what you were thinking of, and your answers are stored and used to enlarge the database. The Nerdfighters wondered if they could make up a person and have 20Q guess correctly.

So they invented DJ Paige Railstone. Paige is the Nerdfighter who came up with the idea to trick 20Q. Railstone anagrams to “is not real.” A list was made of everything about DJ Paige Railstone, and distributed online to all Nerdfighters. They played 20Q, and eventually, tricked the game.

 There is something inherently fun about tricking something, in figuring it out. The Nerdfighters collectively did this to the game 20Q. For them, the game was to trick the game. They didn’t play the game the way it was intended – they made their own game out of it. This is an example of how everything can be made into a game, depending on the view of the people playing.

I wonder if the makers of 20Q anticipated something like this when they built it.

VidCon

John and Hank Green sure are busy – but they’re professional bloggers, so this is what they do.

This year, they are creating a brand new conference for people who are big on YouTube. It’s called VidCon. It will be held in Los Angeles in January 2010. The conference costs $40 per night and runs for three nights. Lots of the top YouTubers are already confirmed on attendance.

New Media is about new things in the world that are influenced by new technology. Five years ago, a conference based on YouTube would have sounded crazy. But now that YouTube is as huge as it is, and since it has had huge effects on some peoples’ lives, a conference about it seems like a great idea. This is what frequently happens in New Media – things change so quickly that within just a few years, an idea can sound completely stupid and then completely brilliant. A conference about YouTube is one of those things.

Project For Awesome / Good vs. Bad of the Internet

On December Seventeenth, Youtubers are taking over YouTube... for charity.

Inspired by the Vlogbrothers, December Seventeenth is the day of the Project for Awesome. On this day, millions of YouTubers, most of whom are nerdfighters or who associate with nerdfighters, post videos about charities. They all use the same symbol in their descriptions. Then everyone involved rates everyone else's videos with five stars. This accomplishes two things: it breaks YouTube's algorithms, which is fun; and it makes people aware of many good charities.

One thing that always seems to be true about everything is that there is a bad side and a good side (this concept is similar to the idea of "looking on the bright side" except that I am more cynical and creating large groupings of events and ideas). In this example, The Project for Awesome is the good side of YouTube. The bad side of YouTube is the idiocracy and vulgarity of some of its content. Every time a new internet site is made, it can either be good (and useful) or bad (and stupid). Twitter is working itself out right now. Sometimes Twitter is a stupid means of hyper-individualism. But other times, Twitter is a great resource for instant communication. Twitter can be used well if people decide to do so. Everything can either be good or bad, and that identity is always changeable.

Nerdfighters

 Over two years, John and Hank Green have accumulated a fairly massive following of people. These people, mostly teenagers, are made up of fans of their vlogs and fans of John's books (and the two have, of course, influenced each other).

To manage this fan base and to stay connected with them better, they created the Nerdfighter Ning. This is a social networking website that is made for all fans of John and Hank Green who wish to consider themselves Nerdfighters (the term nerdfighter is the title of a videogame that Hank found one day).


This is all good, and is to be expected of a tech-savvy author and his brother. But what is amazing is how loyal this fan base is, and how powerful and broad it is. There are Nerdfighters in places all over the world and all over the internet. Many of them are YouTubers, posting vlogs and/or songs. And as a general rule, Nerdfighters are excited about other Nerdfighters and Nerdfighteria (stuff that relates to Nerdfighting and/or is "Awesome").

Because they are such a massive group of people, Nerdfighters can accomplish much, in the same way that the massive group collaborated to make "I've Got Nothing" (in fact, they may have been a part of it. Their YouTube followers merge a bit). John and Hank Green's Nerdfighters work to bring Awesome to the world.

They are great because they are a silly, young-at-heart, adventurous group. They see the world differently, and they are ambitious and passionate. They are the kind of people who make other generations proud of this generation of teenagers. I believe the Nerdfighters will change the world into a better place.

vlogbrothers/vlogging

"Are you from YouTube?" asks a boy.

"Are you wearing a disguise?" says the boy's little brother.

John Green is the author of three bestselling young adult novels: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. He lives in Indiana.

Hank Green is the founder of EcoGeek, a website about environmental technology; he is also a musician and the founder of DFTBA Records, which works with famous YouTube musicians. He lives in Montana.

John and Hank Green are brothers who needed some way to stay in contact with each other. So two years ago, they began a YouTube account and called it vlogbrothers. They created a challenge called Brotherhood 2.0: their challenge was to create a vlog every day for a year in response to each other and to keep it under four minutes. During that year, they were forbidden to communicate with each other textually. If one failed to post a vlog, then the other would choose a punishment for him. This is still the basic format they use, although they don't post every day anymore, and they have added a few extra elements. John does Question Tuesdays, and Hank does song Wednesdays.

first Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, in which Hank explains the rules:

last Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, in which John discusses siblinghood and nerdfighteria:

most recent vlog, in which Hank discusses what he is thankful for:

I think that vlogging is a great way to stay in contact with people. Now that we have the technology to communicate via video, and now that it is convenient, we should use it. Video, as a medium, goes so much farther than photography as a means of portraying information and memories. Vlogging back and forth is a great way to share those memories with someone you love.