John Green:

Nintendo’s announcement (and YouTube’s acquiescence) is a disaster. It hurts Nintendo, and it hurts the independent creators who through their Let’s Play videos create a unique and valuable experience of a game. 

I completely agree. Nintendo is being greedy, stupid, and shortsighted. Nintendo makes money by making great games and systems to play them. YouTube makes money by selling advertising and nurturing an environment where creators can share their creations.

Nintendo is, surprisingly, grabbing a small amount of money (relative to their earnings) and alienating countless customers.

YouTube is, unsurprisingly, being cowardly and not supporting the content creators who have made it worth billions. YouTube is, once again, on the wrong side of an issue with regard to its content creators.

saynotohorcruxes:

There’s a little bit of a story behind this. I have had this made for quite some time. I wanted to post these since before the 1,000th Vlogbrother video, but I hesitated and I hesitated some more because I didn’t they were good enough. But today I thought screw that, they’ve been sitting in my computer for months, so I thought I would be brave post them. Hope y’all like them.

effyeahnerdfighters:

The Project for Awesome is officially over! Thank you so much to those of you who made videos, voted on videos, commented on videos, and pledged your money and/or time to charity. The world is a better place because of you.

There is still time left to donate to get the perks on the IndieGoGo page, and you can still bid on the SourceFed-signed hoverboard and George Watsky super prize pack.

The past few days have been so fun, and we want to try to recap all of the greatness that went on. If you have posts of your favorite moments of the P4A, please submit them to us (preferably by linking to posts you’ve already made); we’re going to create a giant Project for Awesome retrospective post that highlights as much of the ridiculousness as we can.

Thanks again to all who helped put the “Awesome” in Project for Awesome—we love you all very much, and GET SOME SLEEP!

fishingboatproceeds:

I’m asked every day why Hank and I haven’t tried to create a TV show.

We’ve been approached many times to do TV shows, but while we’re happy to listen and discuss ideas with people, we’ve so far turned down these opportunities, even the very tempting and lucrative ones. Here’s why:

1. When you work with a cable channel or production company, you don’t own the show you make or control the manner in which it is distributed.

2. It’s easy—and only getting easier—to watch shows like CrashCourse and SciShow on your TV.

3. We really believe that what is strong and beautiful about nerdfighteria is that we create it—every day—together. All of us. And if we were on TV, I worry we’d lose that sense of connection, which Hank and I have enjoyed so much the last five and a half years. Like, the Sherlock fandom and the Doctor Who fandom are great communities, but they are about Sherlock and Doctor Who. Nerdfighteria isn’t, and never has been, primarily about Hank or me. It’s about celebrating nerdiness and decreasing worldsuck. We really value that and don’t want it to change.

4. On YouTube, we can make exactly the stuff we want for exactly the people we want. Sometimes that means getting lower ratings (for instance, Thoughts from Places videos are consistently our least viewed videos, but we still really like making them and we know that nerdfighteria really enjoys them, too). Television is driven by viewership, and all viewers are treated equally. So you can’t say to a TV network, “I know we get fewer viewers when we make this stuff, but we get BETTER viewers.” They do not understand that idea. That idea, however, is at the very core of our relationship with our community. As Hank has told me, “I don’t care how many views we get. I care how many made-of-awesome views we get.” 

If all we wanted to do was make stuff that lots of people watch, all our videos would be about animal sex. And on some level, if we had a TV show, the emphasis would be on maximizing the number of viewers, not the quality of the community, which is the exact opposite of what we want.

In one conversation with an anonymous cable network, an exec said to us, “Crash Course would be PERFECT if you were a little less nuanced and stuck to topics that interest people. Like, you know, Hitler and sex.” (Direct quote.)

I’ve read tens of thousands of Crash Course comments. No one—NO ONE—has ever asked us to be less nuanced, or to stick to Hitler and sex. That’s what I love about nerdfighteria. Our community is deeply intellectually engaged, even when that means grappling with complexity and ambiguity. 

The great joy of my life is that I get to talk with you on a near-daily basis about a huge variety of things that matter to me, and listen to you discuss what matters to you. Right now, that’s not possible on TV, which is (for better and worse) still a medium where people talk toyou, not with you.

godlessgeekblog:

This Week’s Brushes Doodle: Felicia Day as “Invisalingua”

So Felicia Day has a YouTube channel called, Geek and Sundry. On which, she has what is essentially a video blog called, The Flog. Last week, she made up a superhero for herself and encouraged viewers to draw said superhero, and submit their efforts on twitter. Where they are now being collected and placed on a Pintrest board (mines not there yet).

The superhero in question, “Invisalingua”- don’t look at me, Felicia named her- can speak all languages, turn invisible, and has a tiny male sidekick named Tiny Man. So since I’ve been trying to make myself draw something at least once a week anyway. I decided to make Felicia’s alter ego my art project for the week.

In case you’re curious: The “painting” itself, once again, was done using the Brushes app on my iPhone. Though this time around, I did have to employ a minor assist from Photoshop, for tiny man and the logo on her chest. Because, one of the downsides to illustrating something on a 3.5 inch touch screen, is the level of detail work you can do is kinda limited by pixel depth. Having giant man hands doesn’t help things much either. Seriously, the fingernails on her hands, for example, are literally 3-4 pixels wide. So, tiny man, perfect circles, and crisp lettering, just wasn’t happening.

-CAINE-

For.

The.

Win.