#nerdfightaria

So once upon a time in a year that was 2007, Hank and John Green (yeah, those internet-famous dudes) started a vlogging channel called vlogbrothers. In 2007, I discovered the community and truly found a place that felt like I belonged in it.

That era of the internet was a wild, amazing time, and I miss it.

Now, in 2023, Hank Green has cancer. And for the sake of nostalgia (and not because I think Hank is gonna die, because I don’t, because he has great doctors and a really good prognosis), I’ve started to rewatch those videos from the beginning.

And MAN does it feel like coming home.

So I didn’t have a super-great childhood. I was what we used to call a “latchkey kid” and what we now call “a child of emotionally neglectful parents”. It was a little worse than that in some ways, and in some ways, a little better. But at the time, I was a kid who spent most of their free time alone.

But I had the internet! And in 2007, the internet was a wild west of a place. I’m talking geocities and websites that literally anyone could make, but a with bunch of search engine sites that were fresh babies, you could get your silly fake website to the stop of a results page and lead an unsuspecting child to some wild misinformation.

Or, in my case, youtube videos about nerds. Fighting nerds.

As I go through these videos, I remember some of the in-jokes that still exist in the lexicon of John-and-Hank videos, and get to relive the birth of those moments, like the tiny chicken, or fishing boat proceeds, and of course, the most iconic, birth of the name and hand-symbol of Nerdfighters.

(This is where I would put a gif of the nerdfighter symbol IF I HAD ONE)

(Can I imbed a gif that tumblr doesn’t have? Can I--?)

...Link in the doobleydoo, if you’re a fellow Nerdfighter who gets it, but click and you get the Nerdfighter motion, it’s fine. It’s fine. 

ANYWAY 

Part of therapy is finding who you used to be, without getting too stuck on who you used to be. The part of you that dies when trauma happens doesn’t come back, but it doesn’t mean they are completely gone. It just means you will never be whole in the same way that you were before. But you can become whole again, just differently. 

Watching these two dudes in their late 20′s (I am OLDER than they were when they started WHAT) do silly things to create joy and decrease worldsuck, is incredible. And it’s also what I wanted to do with my life in the Great Before. I can get some of that back, if I remember what I loved about it in the first place. 

I hope so, anyway. Wish me luck, Void. 

And Don’t Forget To Be Awesome. 

April May from A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor