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Introducing: The Format

2023-01-10 · letter vlog · John · 3:35 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Personal life, Internet & YouTube, Books & writing, Health) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: timely hook, recurring series

Formerly titled I CAN ALSO BE WEIRD.

In a loose, chaotic vlog he says he took from Hank, John marks The Fault in Our Stars' 11th anniversary, wonders what we cannot yet know as people once could not see inside the body, mock-rants that everything is an island, and shows clay 'secret keepers' he whispers worries into.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Off-brand Bo Burnham opening, number-suffixed usernames, TFIOS turns 11, a monkey wearing a jacket

  • ★ John says he keeps being astonished that people who behave like a 'first name plus numbers' account on Twitter or Reddit really do have such usernames. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Twitter, Reddit
  • ★★ John notes The Fault in Our Stars came out 11 years ago today (10 January 2012) and calls it a strange 11 years. — 00:00:00 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★ When stressed, John reminds himself he is not a computer but a monkey wearing a jacket trying to make a YouTube video, so no wonder he is anxious. (playful) — 00:00:00 · YouTube

00:00:40 — TFIOS still finding readers as a story; Doritos Locos Taco foreshadowing gag

  • ★★ John is happy that people still find The Fault in Our Stars and read it as a story rather than as part of a larger cultural phenomenon with Saturday Night Live skits; it is lovely it is still in print. — 00:00:40 · The Fault in Our Stars

00:01:10 — Not knowing the inside of the body: the swallowed-pin paper; what don't we know now?

  • ★★ John says most people in history had no idea what happened inside the body; a few hundred years ago a doctor published a paper unsure where a swallowed pin would come out. (playful) — 00:01:10
  • ★★ John wonders what we do not know now that would be very obvious if only we had a way to know it. (unsure) — 00:01:10

00:01:38 — Mock stand-up on prepositions (everything is an island), the 14-and-deep subreddit, his writing chair

  • ★★ In a mock stand-up bit, John objects that we live 'in' countries but 'on' islands, since countries are human constructs and everything, even Earth in space, is an island. (playful) — 00:01:38 · social construction, Earth
  • ★★ John says that sometimes, reading the "I'm 14 and this is deep" subreddit, he thinks the posts actually are kind of deep and its users are just jaded. (playful) — 00:02:08 · Reddit
  • ★ John shows the chair where he writes all day, usually looked from rather than at, facing his favorite painting, which carries him away. — 00:02:08

00:02:37 — Beginner pottery: secret keepers for worries; sign-off thanking Hank for 16 years

  • ★★★ John, a pottery beginner, has lately been making small wobbly hollow closed clay forms, shown drying and then glazed and fired. — 00:02:37
  • ★★★ John calls the forms secret keepers: you whisper difficult, worrisome or traumatic things into the holes so the worry lives in the form, not your head. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ John says the secret keepers probably do not work, but he likes them conceptually. (hedged) — 00:03:06
  • ★★ After whispering a secret into a finished secret keeper, John likes holding it and thinking that he survived it. — 00:03:06
  • ★ John thanks Hank for keeping Vlogbrothers fresh for 16 years and counting. — 00:03:06 · Hank Green, Vlogbrothers

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank is not alone in his ability to make a weird Vlogbrothers video: John now makes one too. — video description · Hank Green, Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ John's comment says he and Hank have created a playlist called The Format, so it might become something. (hedged) — creator comment · Hank Green
  • ★★ In a comment, John says all his favorite art makes him feel things intensely without knowing why, and that is the magic; making viewers feel that way was his big hope. — creator comment

Humor (significant)

  • John opens the video in a new loose style — 00:00:00

    “We're just like off-brand Bo Burnham now.”

  • After saying TFIOS has been around almost as long as the Doritos Locos Taco, John cuts away — 00:00:40

    “Hey, so this is a literary device called foreshadowing.”

  • John voices a centuries-old doctor's paper on where a swallowed pin ends up — 00:01:10

    “It might come out of the tummy. It might come out of the leg. It might come out in the pee. It's a magic.”

  • In a mock stand-up set about prepositions, John argues everything, even Earth, is an island — 00:02:08

    “I demand an end to the tyranny of on-ness.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: pottery · The Fault in Our Stars

Also: People: Bo Burnham

Works: Saturday Night Live

Organizations: Reddit · Twitter · YouTube

Concepts: island · preposition and postposition · primate · psychological stress · social construction · unknown unknowns

Places: Earth · North America

Products: Doritos Locos Tacos

Also centred on pottery: Maybe Art Only Needs to Be

Later videos replying to this one

Part of an exchange of 5 videos, 2023-01-10 – 2023-01-24.