Brotherhood 2.0

"Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday." These words have begun countless videos made by best-selling author John Green, author of popular young adult novels Paper Towns and The Fault in Our Stars. Green and his younger brother Hank have become internet celebrities, all thanks to their Youtube channel, vlogbrothers.

The conceit of the channel is that the vlogs (video logs) are conversations between the two brothers. In 2007, the two brothers, one living in New York and one living in Montana, decided to not contact each other for an entire year through any "textual" means. That meant no text messaging, no emails, no letters. Phone conversations, in-person meetings, and video blogs. These vlogs would be uploaded onto their channel daily. They did this for an entire year. After the close of 2007, they had managed to build an audience, whom they called "nerdfighters," or those who fight on behalf of nerd-dom. They decided to keep the vlog going, albeit on a looser schedule. They continue to upload videos on a weekly basis to this day, maintaining their internet presence.

But what does this have to do with local history? Everything! One of the things we have been talking about almost since the day we entered our program is the looming day that paper has become extinct and the entire world goes digital. Where historians have turned to letters and diaries in the past to learn about history, future historians will have to rely on digital traces left behind. Sources such as the vlogbrothers will one day become invaluable to these researchers. The structured format of their videos reveals more history than one might suppose at first glance.

Even in videos where there appears to be little substance reveal stories. Take the video embedded below for instance:

In this video John discusses the progress on writing his book, later to be called Paper Towns. The video shot during his song about nannies gives snapshots of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. These are small pieces of what at the time were boring events but even today, only 8 years later, is already history.