Do people get what they deserve, or do luck and privilege decide?
Since 2010 John has said life isn't fair, his success rests on luck and privilege, and deserving is the wrong frame. Hank calls himself very lucky and deserving of neither his advantages nor his illness, granting in 2020 that effort partly shapes outcomes; in 2026 he called his opportunity more given than worked for.
Axis: yes, outcomes track effort and merit ... no, luck and privilege decide
Concept: just-world hypothesis
Positions by date: 48 records in 47 videos. The position was refined (2014, 2018, 2020), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-01-13 | first on record | John says life isn't fair: bad people often escape what's coming to them, wealth and social standing help, and Pat Robertson's 'payback' explanation of the Haiti earthquake is stupid. | Froghoppin' with Gatsby 00:01:59 |
| 2011-06-29 | restate | Of Shakespeare's 'the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves', John says it is easy to say for a Shakespeare or a Roman nobleman, and he doesn't fully agree. | THE FAULT IN OUR STARS 00:00:00 |
| 2012-12-04 | restate | John says his success rests on privilege: race, gender and orientation, an elite small college, and money and internet access to start vlogging; many others lack such opportunities. | Time for AWESOME 00:00:29 |
| 2013-08-13 | restate | John: the just world fallacy makes advantaged people believe they deserve their advantages and others their lack of success; he urges remembering that the world isn't just. | Shailene's Hair, Unfair Monopoly, and the Just World Fallacy 00:03:36 |
| 2013-09-24 | restate | John says neither Franklin nor Drake started from the bottom, and that success narratives are almost always privileged narratives that never acknowledge that privilege. | Started from the Bottom: Benjamin Franklin and Drake Compared 00:02:26 |
| 2014-03-18 | restate | John: in the US, being born rich or poor decides outcomes more than elsewhere; the American belief that skill is rewarded is a dream that isn't real. | Is the American Dream Real? 00:02:15 |
| 2014-04-29 | restate | John says outcomes come from causes plus lots of luck (birth, genetics, circumstance), though our narrative minds erase it and assume meritocracy. | Influence, Airports, and the Nerdfighter Book Club 00:02:30 |
| 2014-05-20 | refine | John says his TFiOS success comes from luck and privilege, not from being good; we deserve neither the wonderful nor the terrible things, and 'deserving' is not the best frame. | Deserving 00:01:13 |
| 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) | restate | John says luck, not corruption, discrimination or ambition, is the greatest mover of the book's narrative and asks how to make sense of a world ruled so much by luck. | Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers 00:03:05 |
| 2014-12-02 | restate | John says only access to cheap Pedialyte separates his daughter's funny illness story from the fate of the 200,000 children norovirus kills each year; the world is profoundly unjust. | What You Eat Of Those You Love 00:01:50 |
| 2015-02-24 | restate | John says he was incredibly lucky as a poor student: he got hundreds of chances and teachers who believed in him without reason. | Who I Was in High School 00:02:10 |
| 2015-11-20 | restate | John argues people invent blameworthy causes for illness (weakness, diet, lack of exercise) because they need lives to be narratives; such explanations are inaccurate or oversimplified. | On Mental Illness (and the end of Pizzamas) 00:01:43 |
| 2016-04-05 | restate | John says the free market wrongly assigned most of Monopoly's value to Charles Darrow, who added very little, rather than to the community that made it. | What's Wrong with Monopoly? 00:03:16 |
| 2016-11-22 | restate | John says layers of luck and privilege, including access to excellent medical care, make his blockage an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. | On Not Seeing Hamilton 00:01:05 |
| 2018-05-01 | restate | John says there is so much luck in this world that no one should forget it, and we all depend on strangers' good judgment and help from friends, colleagues and teammates. | How to Win 00:02:58 |
| 2019-05-14 | restate | Fourth lesson: success did not come from working harder or being more talented than anyone; you were also fortunate (high-speed internet, editing software, luck), and luck and hard work don't nullify each other. | An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers 00:01:56 |
| 2019-08-13 | restate | Writing the paper, John came to understand that 'mailing it in' was itself a privilege: skipping class wasn't cool or clever but wasted opportunities many people are never given. | How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English 00:02:26 |
| 2019-09-17 | restate | Nobody deserves illness: deserving is the wrong frame, and illness is not a punishment from on high but a side effect of having a body. | 'end the stigma' 00:02:26 |
| 2021-09-21 | restate | John says the constraints of our lived reality are generally not our fault, even if social and economic structures sometimes say they are, so our choice of how to spend our days is often limited. | how we spend our days 00:00:58 |
| 2021-11-02 | restate | John says wealth and privilege insulate people from many kinds of precarity in profoundly unjust ways, which is important to acknowledge. | enough 00:01:15 |
| 2022-05-17 | restate | John says health disparities are driven not by personal choices or values but by inequity and injustice. | Reasons Not to Care 00:02:26 |
| 2022-06-21 | restate | John concludes that imagining disease as about human choice is justified, not because individuals are responsible for their illnesses but because our collective choices are. | On Disease 00:03:24 |
| 2023-02-28 | restate | John says we blame illness on people's heads, smoking or diet, but illness is not a moral narrative, and seeing it that way is another barrier to empathy. | Empathy and its Limits 00:02:47 |
| 2023-08-08 | restate | John says the great risk of imagining he decides his notch situation is extrapolating that others decide theirs, which can lead to stigma and dehumanization. | TAKE IT UP A NOTCH 00:01:27 |
| 2025-04-15 | restate | John explains the title writes against Shakespeare's line that the fault is not in our stars: there is much fault in our stars, bad luck and structural injustice. | Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? 00:19:38 |
| 2025-10-07 | restate | John argues deserving is the wrong framework for life: he doesn't deserve his merch sales or his OCD; Hank didn't deserve cancer or the number one app. | Luck vs. Work vs. Skill vs. Privilege 00:05:16 |
| 2025-11-04 | restate | John says if the 20-year-old dies of TB or his siblings catch it, that will not be his fault but our shared fault. | The Real Question 00:04:23 |
| 2026-02-24 | restate | John says risk-taking is a privilege, luck only sometimes its byproduct, and the brothers have been exceptionally lucky. | Risk Is a Privilege 00:01:27 |
| 2026-03-03 | restate | John is thankful they started making YouTube videos in 2007, or they never would have made it: now you have to be so good, then you just had to be there. | The Best Fan Mail I Ever Received 00:04:56 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-06-20 | first on record | After an IM chat with John, Hank says the world isn't fair and that this favours him and most viewers, whose lives are likely far better than the average person's. | Neck Beards and Fitness Challenges 00:00:58 |
| 2012-09-28 | restate | Hank: luck alone decides whether a driver hits the deer or a murderer succeeds, yet only the unlucky driver feels bad and the successful murderer is punished more; that's not fair. | THE EYE OF LONDON: Thoughts from Northern Montana 00:01:27 |
| 2014-05-16 | restate | Hank says what separates great people he remembers from those everyone remembers is, he thinks, 100% circumstance. | The Myth of Greatness 00:01:57 |
| 2014-09-26 | restate | Hank says the brothers' position was granted by pure dumb luck and by viewers, and that nothing special about him means he deserves to be watched. | Gettin' Real with Hank 00:01:08 |
| 2016-07-08 | restate | Hank says we want illness to be something's fault because otherwise it is random chance — which chronic illness is: it happens to good and bad people, champion athletes and heavy drinkers. | Your Illness is Not Your Fault 00:01:54 |
| 2017-03-10 | restate | Hank thinks it took hard work but also a lot of help, which he got in spades through economic advantages, early diagnosis and great tutors: he has been very lucky. | Do I Have ADHD? 00:03:24 |
| 2017-10-27 | restate | Hank says he is extremely lucky: a key to productivity is financial, mental and social stability, and he simply lucked into all of it. | The Secret to my Productivity 00:00:18 |
| 2018-05-11 | restate | Hank knows next to nothing about getting popular on YouTube except that it's hard and rare, and happens not from a great idea, hard work, luck or resources alone but when all coincide. | Looking for Alaska Movie (BUT BETTER) and YouTuber Things 00:01:29 |
| 2018-11-01 | refine | Hank says he deserves neither his guilt nor his advantages, nor his ulcerative colitis or healthy child: deserving is the wrong frame; the question is what to do with what you have. | Should I Feel Guilty? 00:03:12 |
| 2019-08-16 | restate | Hank is grateful parents, mentors and teachers showed him he wasn't a clever kid good at getting away with stuff, but a person who had a lot, so people were wary of taking it. | ...Not My Proudest Moment 00:03:15 |
| 2020-11-13 | refine | The description says having no barriers doesn't guarantee success, but being born with enough money to avoid the student loans almost all his peers had is structural inequality, not luck. | How We Teach: Individualist Stories video description |
| 2020-11-13 | restate | Hank says individualist stories do serve people: we are to some extent responsible for our own fate, and outcomes partly depend on how hard, how much and how smart people work. | How We Teach: Individualist Stories 00:02:25 |
| 2021-02-12 | restate | First excuse: the thought that these people did something wrong; Hank doubts viewers believe it, saying such thoughts arise as brains try to explain an unexplainable world. | Doing Better 00:01:01 |
| 2022-06-03 | restate | Hank says ignoring this group misreads the student debt crisis: 40% of people whose debt is forgiven have no degree, students who did not fail but were failed. | What Everyone's Getting Wrong About Student Loans 00:02:55 |
| 2023-05-19 | restate | Hank is not a 'let's fight this together' guy: he thinks prognosis comes down to good science, health care, outlook, attitude and chance, much more to chance than we like to think. | So, I've got cancer 00:10:45 |
| 2023-10-06 | restate | Hank says he has received a wildly outsized amount of support and opportunity over the years and is really lucky, odd as that is to say months after getting cancer. | I Quit 00:06:21 |
| 2023-11-10 | restate | Hank says during treatment he was obsessed with being extremely lucky to live at a time and place where treatment for his disease was available, so he would probably be okay. | My Final Chemo Secret 00:02:05 |
| 2024-03-15 | restate | Hank says the only thing that helps is accepting that fairness is a human idea and the universe doesn't care about it. | The Worst Things About Not Having Cancer 00:03:27 |
| 2026-10-09 | restate | Hank says his opportunity was part given and part worked for, and he feels it was more given than worked for. | The Productivity Lie 00:11:38 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-11-19 | background | Hank holds that the social success he is congratulated on comes only from stumbling into luck, though it is presented as something everyone should strive for. (playful) | Is Success a Bad Idea? (Pizzamas Day 9 of 10) 00:01:15 |
| 2024-11-29 | background | Hank says he also won the 'got cancer' lottery, but only after winning the lottery of being born when and where chemo was available, so it balances. (playful) | I am Grateful for My Worry 00:00:00 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).