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MORTIFICATION

2014-09-02 · letter vlog · John · 3:37 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self correction

John, mortified at saying 'hectacre' throughout his agriculture video, argues that self-inflicted mortification can usefully test our self-image, but being mortified by others is harmful because everyone needs a private self.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Filming outside like Hank; mortified at saying 'hectacre' instead of hectare in the agriculture video

  • ★★★ John says he was truly mortified last week (26 August 2014) to have said 'hectacre' (he jokes 'like 135 times') in his video about agriculture in Ethiopia. (playful) — 00:00:07
  • ★★★ John corrects himself: he meant hectare, which is 100 ares, an are being a unit of 100 square meters. — 00:00:20
  • ★ John says land-area units are not his expertise, but he was trying to share what he learned about making more food available to hungry people. (playful) — 00:00:31

00:00:42 — Past mortifications: a two-person first Looking for Alaska signing and an open fly at a high-school talk

  • ★★ John recalls his first book signing after Looking for Alaska came out drew two people, and he read them a line about parties attended by two deeply uninteresting people. (playful) — 00:00:42 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ John recalls giving a 45-minute talk to several hundred high-school students who, at question time, asked whether he knew his fly was open. (playful) — 00:01:10
  • ★ John wonders whether he has already told that story in a vlogbrothers video, admitting he does not know what has been in his own videos. (playful, unsure) — 00:01:42 · Vlogbrothers

00:01:48 — Sarah says few outside Nerdfighteria will see it; within a day Bill Gates, the WFP head and Ethiopia's foreign minister had

  • ★★★ Sarah reassured John that nerdfighters are forgiving and few outside Nerdfighteria would see an agriculture video; within a day Bill Gates, the WFP head and Ethiopia's foreign minister had seen it. (playful) — 00:01:49 · Sarah Urist Green, Nerdfighteria

00:02:22 — Self-inflicted mortification can be useful; others mortifying you is not; everyone needs a private self different from the public one

  • ★★★ John argues self-inflicted mortification can be useful: it is one's ideas about oneself being challenged by the reality of oneself. (hedged) — 00:02:22

    “mortification can be your ideas about yourself being challenged by the reality of yourself”

  • ★★★ John says being mortified by others, through cruel words, reading your diary or sharing private pictures, is very different: nothing is gained and a lot is lost. (hedged) — 00:02:39

  • ★★★ John argues nobody can always be their public self in private without going mad; everyone needs a real private self different from the selves projected in public. (hedged) — 00:02:52
  • ★ John says people act differently in private than at school, work or on Tumblr, and he would not want to be on Tumblr all the time, joking his kids don't have Tumblrs yet. (playful) — 00:03:11 · Tumblr

00:03:23 — How to say hectare: rhymes and slant rhymes; sign-off

Humor (significant)

  • At his two-person first signing John reads a line about parties attended by two deeply uninteresting people. — 00:01:05

    “thereby managing to insult the only two people nice enough to come to my signing.”

  • Told his fly is open, John zips up in front of several hundred students and asks for more questions. — 00:01:36

    “and I was like, "Are there any other questions?" Silence.”

  • Looking foolish in front of Nerdfighteria versus in front of Bill Gates. — 00:02:15

    “they've come to expect it, but Bill Gates? Mortifying.”

  • John teaches Hank that hectare rhymes with nectar 'almost' and with lecture 'not really'. — 00:03:31

    “Those, by the way, are called slant rhymes, he said confidently, feeling a whisper of doubt.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: embarrassment · hectare · privacy

Also: Bill Gates · Ethiopia · Indiana · Looking for Alaska (novel) · Sarah Urist Green · Tumblr · World Food Programme

Also centred on embarrassment: How to Never Feel Embarrassed Again · The Most Important 10 Words a Stranger Ever Said to Me

Also centred on privacy: Getting Personal about Getting Personal · The Instagramification of Human Experience

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