Is online video a new kind of medium, or old entertainment delivered a new way?
John says in 2015 that YouTube at its best is something you are part of, and in 2026 worries its lean-forward quality is fading.
Axis: a genuinely new medium (social, personal video) ... old entertainment through a new pipe
Positions by date: 12 records in 12 videos. The position did not change in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-10-27 | first on record | John says he doesn't want YouTube to become cable TV: at its best YouTube isn't something you watch but something you're part of. | Understanding YouTube Red: Paid Subscriptions and the Future of Online Video 00:03:21 |
| 2024-01-30 | restate | John thinks this year's (2024) attention to YouTuber retirements is basically good news: in a very new medium, people need to work out how to say goodbye, or goodbye for a while. | How Vlogbrothers Will End 00:00:45 |
| 2026-09-15 | restate | John says the brothers got into YouTube 20 years ago because, unlike television's lean-back watching, it was lean-forward, and he worries that is less and less the case. | YouTube Says This Video Has 683,183 Views, It Actually Has 312,584 00:03:24 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-03-03 | first on record | Hank: YouTube is not a new way of experiencing old things but a new kind of 'social video' about authenticity and connection. | VidCon Schedule Spectacular! 00:01:26 |
| 2014-06-20 | restate | Hank says early online video, above all The Show with Ze Frank, used the internet as a two-way, participatory medium and helped the internet become its own stand-alone legitimate culture. | Pre-History of Online Video 00:02:55 |
| 2014-09-26 | restate | Hank says the brothers work in a new medium that, whatever people working in it claim, no one understands or knows what to do with. | Gettin' Real with Hank 00:00:26 |
| 2015-10-16 | restate | Hank argues YouTube offered a genuinely new video format, shaped not by ad breaks or TV slot lengths but by what best tells a quick story. | Post-NerdCon Haze 00:03:08 |
| 2020-07-17 | restate | Today the medium is no longer television or radio but the platform, the algorithm, which deeply controls what content gets made and for whom. | So Much to See 00:01:11 |
| 2024-01-26 | restate | Hank says creative works used to be discrete units; the real unit of a YouTuber's body of work is the channel, and a decades-long unit of creation is historically weird. | On YouTuber Retirement 00:03:34 |
| 2025-06-06 | restate | Hank says the first thing that interested the brothers about online video in 2007, and a through line of their work, is that creation can be collaborative between audience and creator. | The Secret Inside my MIT Commencement Speech 00:01:27 |
| 2025-06-20 | restate | Hank says online video draws on writing, editing, performing and filming, but one big part is new: the creator is the distribution, responsible for getting eyes on the content. | 'Influencer' Must Die. 00:03:30 |
| 2026-10-01 | restate | Hank says the internet creates genres faster than legacy media created individual episodes; the categories fracture nearly infinitely and culture lacks the bandwidth to name them. | Are We Still YouTubers? 00:04:17 |