No textual communication

channel rule · in 79 videos (2007–2026)

Videos by year: 2007: 60 · 2008: 2 · 2009: 7 · 2010: 1 · 2012: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2026: 3

Threads

• Brotherhood 2.0: the 2007 year of daily video letters — project history, completed, 2007–2026
• Hank asks John to answer his annual friends-and-family survey (2007) — ask, reported back, 2007
• John: punishment for accidentally CC'ing Hank on an email (2007) — punishment, performed, 2007
• The brothers' accidental instant-message exchange that breaks the no-textual-communication rule (2007) — story, told 2×, 2007
• John: eat a blenderized Happy Meal, wax a leg and lick a cat, for a textual communication (2007) — punishment, performed, 2007
• John's Venn diagram jokes (2007) — running joke (last seen 2010), 2007–2010
• John asks Nerdfighters to suggest punishments for Hank (2007) — ask, reported back, 2007
• Brotherhood 2.0.0.9: the vlogbrothers' 2009 schedule and rules (2009) — project history, past edition (2009; looked back on in 2014), 2009–2014

Also named in the threads: Brotherhood 2.0 Book Club: each brother reads a book the other assigns (2007) · Paper Towns: writing, revision and publication (2007) · Hank's 2007 punishment voted by viewers (for textual communication) · Four-minute rule for vlogbrothers videos (2007) · John and Hank: develop the Evil Baby Orphanage into a story (2007) · John: do a half-naked dance in a golden bow tie as punishment (2007) · Hank: eat a blenderized Christmas meal or give a one-hour public concert, as voted by Nerdfighters (2007)

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Punishment (10) · Brotherhood 2.0 (6) · Brotherhood 2.0 forum (2) · Peeps (2) · Christmas (2) · in your pants (2) · Katherine Green (3) · Sarah Urist Green (2) · Project for Awesome (2) · YouTube (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

• 2007-01-01 · Brotherhood 2.0: January 1st — announcement: Hank tells John they will no longer communicate by any textual means: no instant messaging or email, only video blogs and possibly phone calls. — 00:00:13 · also in: Week 1 Condensed!
• 2007-01-11 · Brotherhood 2.0: January 11th — Hank proposes suggesting more punishments so the brothers can choose between them, and letting people suggest punishments too. (hedged) — 00:01:11
• 2007-01-19 · Brotherhood 2.0: January 19th — Hank says that every year around this time he sends a survey to all his friends and family, who answer it, and he then puts the answers online. — 00:00:34
• 2007-01-30 · Brotherhood 2.0: January 30, 2007 — John says he accidentally CC'd Hank on an email, which means he has to do a punishment, and asks Hank to be kind. (playful) — 00:02:02
• 2007-02-20 · Brotherhood 2.0: February 20th: Computer Trouble — Hank: The working computer is helping with Brotherhood 2.0 projects, chiefly their new MySpace page, which already has about 69 friends after John's SparksFlyUp post and Hank's bulletin. — 00:00:59
• 2007-05-31 · Brotherhood 2.0: May 31: Yogurt eating — John thinks Brotherhood 2.0 needs a forum because the comments are too many and too confused to follow, and challenges Hank to make one if viewers favour it. (hedged) — 00:01:45
• 2007-07-10 · July 10: Embarassing Photographs — Hank: Since the brothers broke the rule more or less simultaneously, Hank wants a simultaneous punishment in which each does a similar one. (hedged) — 00:00:11
• 2007-08-06 · August 6th: JK Rowling and I Will ... Be Punished — announcement: John reports the Yeti has vetoed the ex-girlfriend punishment, feeling he has tortured his exes enough with radio pieces 'and all of that stuff'. — 00:00:43
• 2007-08-09 · August 9th: Anagramming Guide to the 2008 Elections — Hank reports a count of 189 (by context, donors to Daniel Biss's campaign), 'not technically enough', but about 50 people also gave to the Foundation to decrease world suck. — 00:00:10
• 2007-08-16 · August 16th: Finding — and Licking — a Cat — John: Nerdfighters are the 'fourth circle': a Nerdfighter (name unclear) put John in touch with Indianapolis people who have a cat named Toby, to be licked that afternoon. (playful) — 00:02:08
• 2007-12-18 · Dec 18th: The Project for Awesome and Question Tuesday!!! — announcement: John: Answering whether there will be a punishment before year's end, John says yes: Hank communicated with him in the comments of Nalts's video, so Hank will be punished. (playful) — 00:00:39
• 2007-12-31 · Dec 31: Goodbye Brotherhood 2.0 — both: The chorus says goodbye to Brotherhood 2.0, telling viewers the brothers know they will be sad to see it go. — 00:00:40
• …and 131 statements more in 2007 — all statements of 2007

Also named in: October 22nd: The Anniversary of Young Earth Creationism

2008

• 2008-07-08 (said on 2008-07-07, implied) · Hank Tried to Kill Me With a Hammer — John says Brotherhood 2.0 was initially his idea; he has a crazy idea every 45 minutes and relies on Hank to reject them, but Hank said this one was not terrible. (playful) — 00:00:25
• 2008-08-21 · INTERNET SENSATION B$%CH — Hank corrects the report: the brothers did not merely stop texting a year earlier; they gave up all textual communication, which is different. — 00:01:20

2009

• 2009-01-01 · Brotherhood 2.0.0.9 — Hank reads 'Auld Lang Syne' as asking whether Hank and John should make more videos in 2009, and answers yes. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:00
  • Hank restages his first Brotherhood 2.0 video from two years ago, including the camera glitch and the eye reflection, admitting he then did not know how to make videos. (playful) — 00:00:37
  • Restaging his first video, Hank reverses its no-textual-communication line: this time the brothers will be communicating through textual means. (playful) — 00:00:37
  • Every Sunday for the year, John will send Hank a video about a current news event he considers vitally important and Hank is probably ignorant of. — 00:01:19
  • Hank says John's news videos were one of the coolest things they did in Brotherhood 2.0: blissful ignorance is nothing compared to the crushing weight of the truth. (playful, hedged) — 00:01:19
  • Every other Wednesday Hank will perform an original song: Song Wednesdays are back. — 00:01:48
  • Every Tuesday one brother sends the other a video blog of any kind. — 00:01:48
• 2009-01-04 · Israel. Gaza. PUPPY! — John: Because the Israeli army invaded the Gaza Strip last night, John feels he has to discuss it on Newsday although it makes him miserable, and shows puppy footage to counter that. (hedged) — 00:00:02
• 2009-03-01 · Free Will Fetish — announcement: John reveals, whispering, that the vlogbrothers now have more subscribers than Google, the company that owns YouTube. (playful) — 00:02:12
• 2009-06-29 (said on 2009-06-28, implied) · GAY is NOT an INSULT — John notes that in their two-and-a-half-year conversation the brothers have uploaded more than 500 videos, watched many times thanks to Nerdfighters. — 00:00:10
• 2009-07-28 · Love and Romance Questions ANSWERED — John says guys who don't like girls smarter than them are exactly the guys you don't want to date. (playful) — 00:03:32
• 2009-08-10 (said on 2009-08-09, implied) · HipPOTATOmus — John announces that the channel has 100,000 subscribers. — 00:00:00
• …and 6 statements more in 2009 — all statements of 2009

2010

• 2010-05-17 · My YouTube Story is Short — Hank gives his own YouTube story: his brother convinced him to do something ridiculous they thought would be about two people, and it turned out to be about many more. — 00:01:55

2012

• 2012-01-02 · Changes to Vlogbrothers — John marks five years since he uploaded his first Vlogbrothers video, on January 2, 2007, with a deliberately terrible jump cut. — 00:00:00

2014

• 2014-07-18 · EVERY VLOGBROTHERS PUNISHMENT! — Hank says the brothers created the channel on January 1, 2007 with three rules: a video on your day, no video over four minutes, and no textual communication between them. — 00:00:21
  • That same month John CCed Hank on an email, counted as textual communication, and had to wax his chin. — 00:00:31
  • When Hank IMed John in July and John replied, both were punished and dressed up like their most embarrassing high-school pictures. — 00:00:53
  • In March John missed a video while hospitalised and replied to Hank on a forum, so he ate a blenderized Happy Meal, waxed his legs and licked a cat; Hank is unsure why three, possibly Daniel Biss donations. (hedged) — 00:01:03
  • After 2007 the brothers abolished the textual communication rule, changed the schedule, and exempted educational videos, montage videos and 4:01 videos (YouTube adds a second) from the time limit. — 00:01:32

2017

• 2017-07-14 · YouTube History Lesson: Vlogbrothers Through the Ages — Hank: In December 2007, having done the project for its planned year and with 11,000 subscribers, the brothers thought about stopping but decided to keep going, which turned out okay. — 00:03:06
• 2017-07-18 · Accio Decade Hallows — John: In July 2007 John was doing Brotherhood 2.0, a year-long project of weekday videos with Hank, watched by a few hundred people a day. — 00:02:12

2020

• 2020-12-08 · A Love Letter to My Brother, Basically — John says starting a collaborative video blog back in 2006 was his idea. — 00:00:00

2021

• 2021-09-14 · I do this every. single. tuesday. — John: In late 2006, after An Abundance of Katherines came out, John quit his day job to write full time, found himself still inconsistent and the empty days terrifying, and three months later invented an unpaid job, this channel. — 00:01:34

2026

• 2026-03-13 · Pain — Hank notes the brothers no longer require themselves never to miss a day, and no longer get punished for missing one. — 00:03:04
• 2026-09-29 · Pretend You Don't Know This — Hank recalls they decided to upload a video every weekday of 2007 and relive that for two weeks every year in Pizzamas, not near Christmas and loosely based on pizza. — 00:01:30
• 2026-09-30 · The Point of Life — John recalls that early on the brothers replaced text with video blogs for no reward but bit commitment: no money, and 200 videos before 200 subscribers. — 00:02:08