Skip to content

A Sacrifice of Individuality and the Internets

2015-03-20 · letter vlog · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Internet & YouTube, History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion

Hank argues that the internet's distributed crowds make us forget crowds are made of individuals, and that, as he learned at concerts, briefly sacrificing individuality to a crowd can be wonderful because crowds can be kind.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Concert crowds say good morning; Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers' West Coast shows; East Coast tour coming

  • ★★ Hank says the opening good-morning came from crowds at Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers' last West Coast tour shows, and that they are going on tour again on the East Coast. — 00:00:04

00:00:15 — Collective nouns for animals and for humans; 'crowd' is the most general

  • ★ Hank lists animal collective nouns: a school of fish, gaggle of geese, pod of whales, herd of cows, business of ferrets, murder of crows, crash of rhinoceros and romp of otters. (playful) — 00:00:15
  • ★★ Hank says humans name groups by size and activity (crew, congregation, army, mob), and the most general term is a crowd. (hedged) — 00:00:31

00:00:49 — The internet's new crowd tied by interests: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, wisdom of the crowd; alone in a crowd; forgetting the individuals

  • ★★★ Hank thinks the internet has made society obsessed with a new kind of crowd, tied together not by place but by common values, goals or interests. (hedged) — 00:00:49
  • ★★ Hank says the internet enabled crowdfunding (Patreon, Indiegogo, Kickstarter), crowdsourcing that built Wikipedia, and the wisdom of the crowd: upvotes on Reddit and choices on YouTube and Facebook that help curate content. — 00:01:01 · Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook
  • ★★★ Hank says for the first time in history we are literally alone in a crowd, and he thinks we are forgetting the crowd is made of individual people, which makes him uncomfortable. (hedged) — 00:01:21

00:01:33 — Thanks to Patreon patrons of SciShow and Crash Course: almost two-thirds of pre-Patreon funding

  • ★★ Hank thanks Patreon patrons funding SciShow and Crash Course; they are almost two-thirds of the way to pre-Patreon-switch funding levels. — 00:01:33 · SciShow, Crash Course

00:01:46 — Crash Course's $18,000 a month is individuals, under one percent of viewers, not 'the crowd'

  • ★★ Hank says Crash Course raises over $18,000 a month to fund free educational video, which our brains attribute to 'the crowd'. — 00:01:46 · Crash Course
  • ★★★ Hank says it isn't the crowd or the culture but individuals: a few people, less than one percent of the shows' viewers, with the ability and enthusiasm to give money they don't have to. — 00:01:59 · SciShow, Crash Course

00:02:15 — Concerts: the crowd seen from the stage and from the audience; sacrificing individuality for giving or a concert

  • ★ Hank says about 200,000 people will watch this video, an audience many would call 'the crowd'. — 00:02:15 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank says his understanding of crowds comes from meeting real people, which is why he keeps playing concerts: from the stage a crowd is literally people come together over a shared interest. — 00:02:22
  • ★★★ Hank says from the stage he sees both a human herd jumping in unison and individuals deciding; in an audience or crowdfunding campaign he feels his actions matter only in combination with many others. — 00:02:38 · collective action
  • ★★★ Hank loves being his individual self but finds something really wonderful in sacrificing that individuality for a moment of giving or a few hours at a concert. — 00:03:05

00:03:13 — Scary shows at grimy venues growing up taught him crowds are kind; dropping the barrier of individuality

  • ★★ Hank says that growing up he went to many shows at grimy little venues full of strangers and found them scary pretty much every time. — 00:03:13
  • ★★★ Hank says those shows taught him not that crowds are wise or powerful, but that crowds are kind, at least in the right situations; letting his individuality drop, he gained more than he lost. (hedged) — 00:03:23

00:03:48 — Sign-off; see Nerdfighters on tour in April; closing song snippet

  • ★ Hank tells Nerdfighters in the tour areas he hopes to see them in April. (hedged) — 00:03:48 · Nerdfighteria

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Hank writes that sacrificing your individuality, as we all do to some extent when we become part of something, is quite different from having it taken from you because it makes the internet easier to understand. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Projects: Crash Course · SciShow

Organizations: Facebook · Indiegogo · Kickstarter · Patreon · Reddit · Wikipedia · YouTube

Groups: Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers

Concepts: collective action · collective noun · crowdfunding · crowdsourcing · wisdom of the crowd

Places: East Coast of the United States · West Coast of the United States

Only in the description or credits: Tour Because Awesome

Later videos replying to this one