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What Should We Keep?

2017-05-30 · letter vlog · John · 3:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Personal life, Nerdfighteria, Everyday life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: community lore, civic or action cta

Prompted by his one photo of himself at 23 and an academic library's offer to preserve Brotherhood 2.0 and Nerdfighteria material, John argues that internet users create far more than they preserve, that not everything should be archived, and asks viewers what from Nerdfighteria should be kept.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — John's only photo of himself at 23: his year in Chicago

  • ★★ John has one photo of himself at 23, from his year in Chicago: an intense, loving but doomed relationship, starting and restarting the book that became Looking for Alaska, and the year when, in a borrowed Emily Dickinson line, a plank in Reason broke and he dropped down and down. — 00:00:05 · Chicago (city), Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★ John admits he is assigning feelings to the picture that aren't in it: he was quite happy when it was taken. — 00:00:22

00:00:29 — A better-photographed life; internet users create more than they preserve; the screen-worship theory of future archaeologists and its problems

  • ★★ John says his life is now much better photographed: hundreds of pictures of himself at 39, and over a thousand of the kids taken by him and Sarah this year (2017). — 00:00:34 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★★ John feels citizens of the internet are better at creating stuff than at preserving, curating and archiving it, and wonders how many of our pictures will survive 15 years. (hedged) — 00:00:41
  • ★★ John recounts the common idea that future archaeologists will see us turning to worship screens, knowing of Wikipedia only from printed books, and says he has problems with it. — 00:00:54 · Wikipedia
  • ★★ John's first objection: the idea assumes there will be people in the distant future. (playful) — 00:01:17
  • ★★ John's second objection: it ignores the many archivists working hard to preserve some slice of digital life for future historians. — 00:01:21

00:01:28 — An academic library's offer; why not archive everything; photos as conversation; lost Friendster photos

  • ★★★ John says an academic library recently contacted the brothers about preserving material from Brotherhood 2.0 and Nerdfighteria. — 00:01:30 · Brotherhood 2.0, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John says we don't want to archive everything forever: there is no forever, and he is grateful for one picture of his great-grandmother without needing thousands. — 00:01:39
  • ★★★ John warns that if life feels unreal until photographed, we risk undervaluing important but unphotogenic parts of life, like grief. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ John says he is not an old person who thinks young people's many photos are bad news: photographs are now also a way of conversing with yourself and others. — 00:02:00
  • ★★★ John's only concern is that in constantly creating new things we risk forgetting old things that might someday be useful. — 00:02:10
  • ★★ John says there were once more photos of him at 23 on Friendster, a now-defunct social network, but they died with it. — 00:02:18
  • ★★ John says Facebook and Instagram will likely be around for decades, if not centuries, and many people back up their work and photos to the cloud. (hedged) — 00:02:26 · Facebook, Instagram

00:02:34 — Holes in Nerdfighteria's history on the Internet Archive; ask for what to archive

  • ★★ Via the Internet Archive John sees the Vlogbrothers channel at the end of 2007 (237 videos, 9,000 subscribers) and in July 2009 (90,000 subscribers), but finds holes. — 00:02:40 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ John says much is already gone: the comment that started the Evil Baby Orphanage, lots of early Nerdfighter artwork; sites are shuttered and links dead. — 00:02:52 · Evil Baby Orphanage, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ John doesn't want Nerdfighteria to be backwards-facing, nor thinks it will matter to scholars, but says it is significant to him. — 00:02:59 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John asks longtime and new viewers what they think of when they think of Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria, what should be archived, and whether they have copies. — 00:03:13 · Vlogbrothers, Nerdfighteria

00:03:25 — Advice to take and print pictures of yourself; sign-off

  • ★★ John advises viewers, 23 or not, to take many pictures of themselves this year (2017), save them to the cloud and maybe print some, in case physical things last. (hedged) — 00:03:26

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: academic library (unnamed, archiving Nerdfighteria) · digital preservation

Also: People: Emily Dickinson · Sarah Urist Green

Projects: Brotherhood 2.0

Works: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain · Looking for Alaska (novel)

Organizations: Facebook · Friendster · Instagram · Internet Archive · Wikipedia

Terms: Evil Baby Orphanage

Concepts: grief

Places: Chicago (city)

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