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How Will the World End? Why Even Get Out of Bed? It's Question Tuesday.

2017-09-12 · Q&A · John · 3:39 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Nerdfighteria (also: Philosophy & meaning, Internet & YouTube, Books & writing) · mode: Q&A & conversation · tags: recurring series, self promotion, community lore

On Question Tuesday John answers viewer questions: next to the tuatara's 150 million years humanity's world may end long before the world, meaning is something we make together, the social internet's architecture makes its good pockets hard to stay in, three Turtles tour shows are sold out, and every made thing falls short of its imagined form yet can still shelter us.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Question Tuesday greeting

00:00:05 — How the world will end (tuatara, Eliot) and why get out of bed: meaning made together

  • ★★ John notes that tuatara have been on Earth over 150 million years while humans emerged maybe 300,000 years ago, at most 0.2% of tuatara history. (hedged) — 00:00:14 · Earth
  • ★★★ John suspects that humanity's world may end a long time before the world itself does. (hedged) — 00:00:28
  • ★★ On how the world will end, John sides with T. S. Eliot: not with a bang but with a whimper. — 00:00:34
  • ★★★ John thinks the point of getting out of bed is to seek a reason to get out of bed: fulfilment and meaning will not descend on us miraculously. (hedged) — 00:00:40
  • ★★★ John thinks meaning is something we make together, and that is what gets him out of bed. (hedged) — 00:00:52 · meaning of life

00:00:58 — Writing in bed, the internet making us feel worse, pennies

  • ★★ John says he wrote Turtles All the Way Down mostly in bed, so he does not follow his own advice. (playful) — 00:01:00 · Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★★ John thinks some pockets of the internet make us feel better, but the wiring of the human brain and the architecture of the social internet make it hard, for him at least, to stay in them. (hedged) — 00:01:07
  • ★★ John says he has the same problem with food: part of him seems to want not to feel good; he offers this as commiseration, not an answer. — 00:01:19
  • ★★ Asked if he is still mad that pennies exist, John says not mad so much as disappointed. (playful) — 00:01:32

00:01:35 — Looking forward to the tour; sold-out shows and tickets

  • ★★ John is very much looking forward to the book tour: being on tour with Hank brings him great joy (don't tell Hank). — 00:01:37 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ John says the Turtles tour shows in Bellingham, Chicago and Atlanta are sold out, sorry it happened so fast. — 00:01:47 · Chicago (city)
  • ★★ John says several other shows are nearly sold out, so now is a good time to get tickets at turtlesallthewaydownbook.com, linked in the doobly-doo. — 00:01:51 · doobly-doo

00:01:59 — Quick-fire: Hank, Vulcans and Klingons, coffee or tea, animals with no necks, Reykjavik hot dog, founding fathers, Spanish edition

  • ★ Asked Vulcans or Klingons, John picks both. (playful) — 00:02:05
  • ★ Asked coffee or tea, John again picks both. (playful) — 00:02:10
  • ★ John finds animals with no necks profoundly disturbing. (playful) — 00:02:13
  • ★★ John's best hot dog came from a stand in Reykjavik, Iceland, where hot dogs cost about a dollar: one of the two or three best meals he has ever eaten; he sometimes dreams of it. — 00:02:27
  • ★★ John says James Wilkinson was an actual secret agent working against the United States. — 00:02:43 · United States
  • ★★ Even so, John thinks Aaron Burr has a case as his least favourite American founding father. (hedged) — 00:02:43 · United States
  • ★★ John says Turtles All the Way Down will be translated into Spanish and other languages, and shows the Spanish cover. — 00:02:53 · Turtles All the Way Down

00:02:55 — Finished work never good enough: language and talent fall short, but buildings still give shelter

  • ★★ John feels that something he finished isn't good enough every Tuesday evening, and every three to six years when he publishes a book. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ John says writing aims to create an experience inside someone else's mind, and there will always be failures, from the limits of the writer's talent and of language itself. (hedged) — 00:03:02
  • ★★★ John compares this to building: wood and carpenter are always imperfect, so all buildings fall short of how they were imagined, yet they can still give us shelter. (hedged) — 00:03:17

00:03:30 — Congratulations on VidCon Australia; tour in 27 days; sign-off

  • ★★ John congratulates Hank on a great VidCon Australia. — 00:03:30 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says the brothers go on tour in just 27 days. — 00:03:31

Humor (significant)

  • Meaning made together gets John out of bed in the morning. — 00:00:56

    “Or at the latest, in the early afternoon.”

  • Having just said to seek a reason to get out of bed, John is asked where he wrote his novel. — 00:01:00

    “I’m not great at following my own advice.”

  • Asked if it's rude to come to the tour mostly to see Hank. — 00:02:02

    “No, why do you think I’m going?”

  • Asked what time he would live in besides this one. — 00:02:20

    “Probably just the time like right before I found out about the corner of the internet devoted to animals with no necks.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: meaning of life · tuatara

Also: People: Aaron Burr · James Wilkinson · Sigmund Freud · T. S. Eliot

Projects: VidCon Australia

Works: The Hollow Men · Turtles All the Way Down

Rituals: Question Tuesday

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: Internet

Places: Atlanta · Bellingham, Washington · Chicago (city) · Earth · Iceland · Reykjavík · United States

Characters: Klingon · Vulcan

Policies: Abolish the US penny

Only in the description or credits: existential crisis

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