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The Most Dangerous Thing We've Ever Done on Stage

2022-01-28 · story · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Nerdfighteria, Pop culture) · mode: Personal essay · tags: civic or action cta

Hank recalls asking 2017 tour audiences to stay silent through the crowd chant in Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, which worked about 75% of the time, and draws two lessons: give everyone the power to ruin something and someone will, and our brains read 499 silent people as a totally different experience from 500.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The American crowd tradition of chanting along to Sweet Caroline

  • ★★ Hank says Neil Diamond released Sweet Caroline in 1969 and that it became an American classic. — 00:00:00 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says it has become an American tradition for crowds to add improvised chants to Sweet Caroline, which are nearly certain to be heard when it plays in public. — 00:00:00 · United States

00:00:27 — The 2017 tour plan: audiences stay silent through the chant; how often it worked and failed

  • ★★★ On their 2017 tour, Hank and John had Hank play Sweet Caroline on guitar and asked the audience to stay perfectly silent where the crowd chant normally goes. — 00:00:27 · John Green

  • ★★ Hank calls the plan treacherous, since everyone has the power to stop it; because people expect the chant, its absence is a presence, a uniquely loud silence, so success felt wonderful. — 00:00:57

    “the absence is a presence”

  • ★★ It worked about 75% of the time; otherwise someone chanted, sometimes by honest mistake (they retried) and sometimes again on the retry (then they stopped). — 00:01:26

  • ★★ After the first failure the brothers discussed dropping the bit, but kept it because success felt so good and failure was instructive. — 00:01:26 · John Green

00:01:55 — Two lessons: someone will ruin it, and 499 silent people feel unlike 500; ask for viewers' takes

  • ★★★ Hank's first lesson: we are humans, and if you give everyone the power to ruin something, someone will; a bummer, but true. — 00:01:55

    “if you give everyone the power to ruin something, someone will”

  • ★★★ Hank's second lesson: rooms where 500 or 499 people stayed silent had mathematically the same experience, yet people came away with entirely different interpretations. — 00:02:18

  • ★★ Hank says the 499 did do something together; feeling otherwise is evidence that his brain can't interpret reality correctly. — 00:02:57
  • ★ Hank says other lessons are possible and asks viewers for their takes in the comments. — 00:03:26

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says a friend once got everyone at a hot spring to agree to 30 seconds of silence, but 15 seconds in a guy said it was boring. — video description
  • ★★ The description says humanity is not a binary of good or bad, but our brains imagine things as binary because it is cognitively easier, called binary bias. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Sweet Caroline

Also: Neil Diamond · United States

Only in the description or credits: binary bias

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