Hank Green: Fighting World Suck

Ever since he sang a silly (but actually super serious) song about the release of the final Harry Potter book, Hank Green has been an internet icon; a symbol of community, education, cultural advance, and amazing nerdiness.

Along with his brother John Green – whose other claim to fame is as a renowned author of Young-Adult novels – Hank is one of the defining names in the new digital media. Over nine years, the brothers have established themselves as the heads of what the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Time have called ‘an online multimedia empire’, filled with entertaining and educational content for a range of audiences.

It all started in 2007. Since John had left home for college, the Green brothers had found themselves talking less and less. After a year spent solely conversing through phone and e-mail, John decided they needed a more meaningful way of keeping in touch. So it was that he came up with the concept of Brotherhood 2.0. It was to be a year-long experiment that would see the brothers communicate solely through vlogs made publicly available via their Youtube channel, Vlogbrothers. Hank started on January 1st. John replied the next day. And so it went for 363 more days.

Initial viewership was low, until Hank performed a song called Accio Deathly Hallows to commemorate the release of the last novel in the Harry Potter franchise. The video went viral, thanks in no small part to his eerily correct predictions about how the story would end. Their newfound fan community was dubbed ‘Nerdfighters’, a term that sprung from a misread video game title, but would perfectly represent their attempts to “fight against world suck” through meaningful discourse and actions.

In 2013, Hank played Accio Deathly Hallows at LeakyCon for hundreds of excited Nerdfighters.

Brotherhood 2.0 was a success. Hank and John were talking more meaningfully than they ever had before. Though the project was officially put to rest at the end of 2007, the brothers agreed to continue vlogging.

At the same time, they announced the launch of Project for Awesome, a community-driven charity event hosted on Youtube by the Greens and supported by other users of the platform. It was a great success: in 2007, over 400 videos were posted over a 48-hour period. The project further raised attention by manipulating Youtube’s algorithm in order to make the website feature certain videos. Hank later explained to Mashable “it was sort of frowned upon to game the system, but we thought, ‘What if we gamed the system for good?'” The most recent Project for Awesome, held in December 2015, raised over $1.5 million for a range of charities.

In 2008, Hank launched Don’t Forget to be Awesome (DFTBA), a record label that promoted the content of musicians on Youtube. Artists include Dave Days, once the most popular musician on the site, and Rhett and Link. It was the first of several projects Hank would undertake independently. Another was EcoGeek, a blog that started as a school project back in 2005. The blog features technological advances that positively impact on the environment. Though Hank no longer writes for EcoGeek, it still sees occasional updates from other contributors.

Over the next few years, Hank and John would develop a range of channels that would become the basis of their online empire. From the interactive game show Truth or Fail to HankGames, in which Hank would commentate while playing video games, the variety of content saw the Nerdfighter ranks swell.

The brothers were always close to their supporters, and it was never more obvious than when Nerdfighter Esther Earl died of cancer at the age of 16. Learning of her death, Hank and John announced the Esther Day Celebration, an annual event held on Esther’s birthday designed to promote love and gratitude.

By 2010, the community was so large that the brothers launched VidCon, an online video conference designed to connect creators with their audience, and discuss the future of the medium. In 2015, 19, 500 people attended the three-day event, making it the largest of its kind. It featured content producers including Jenna Marbles, the team behind Smosh Games, and industry reps such as Baljeet Singh, product lead for television and video at Twitter.

2012 saw the launch of Crash Course, the first of the Green brother’s channels to focus entirely on educational content. Funded by Youtube’s ‘Original Channel’ funding initiative, Crash Course took a more TV-like delivery style, with Hank hosting ‘seasons’ on science, while John focused on the humanities. The channel struggled due to this style, but later partnered with PBS Digital Studios to continue making content. As of now, the channel has nearly 4 million subscribers, and features 18 courses detailing a range of topics targeted at various audiences.

Following Crash Course came Sci Show, produced using some of the money the brothers received from Youtube, The Brain Scoop, a channel dedicated to discussing the weird and wonderful collections held by the The Field Museum of Chicago, and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modernised web series adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The latter would go on to win an Emmy Award for Original Interactive Program in 2013.

The brothers launched Subbable in 2013 to support the production of Crash Course and Sci Show, both of which were produced through external funding. Subbable a crowdfunding system for online content producers. Users could subscribe to the channels of their choice, donating at regular periods, or by one-off payments. Donation was entirely voluntary; released content was exactly the same for those who financially supported the producers as for those who didn’t.

“We’re asking, and this is weird, for you to pay for content because you want to, not because you’re forced to. This is a weird cultural shift.”

The concept initially saw Hank labelled as too idealistic, but it marked a major change in the digital landscape.

In 2015, the platform was acquired by Patreon, a similar service that had been launched a mere three months before Subbable. In 2015, it was estimated that the service saw creators receive $25 million in funding for their projects.

Most recently, the brothers launched How to Adult, a channel dedicated to providing those entering adulthood with the kind of crucial knowledge that schools fail to teach.

Today, Hank and his brother oversee around 15 Youtube channels, while keeping up with other projects. Their fans include actor Benedict Cumberbatch and rapper Lupe Fiasco, who compares their content to cocaine.

While John is best known as a resonating voice in the youth audience, Hank is revered as a cultural influencer. His love for online media, and the opportunities it brings, has been an inspiration and source of support for many content creators, as well as his adoring audience. It’s a fact that you feel the brothers are proud of. As Hank himself says, “We need more completely sane people doing completely crazy things”.

Together, the Green brothers are a guiding light in the industry, proving that for all the advances that have come over the last decade, online video has a lot more potential just waiting to be released.

Come back tomorrow for a look at John Green’s work as a prestigious writer of Young-Adult fiction.