Skip to content

My Nemeses

2026-08-18 · letter vlog · John · 4:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, timely hook, heavy topic

In three parts John describes his anxiety before Hollywood, Ending comes out and how he manages it, announces tour guests, and recounts his public spat with Indiana's lieutenant governor, concluding that his viral dunk amplified a professional provocateur and that he does not know how to respond to such people.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Part one: John's anxiety before Hollywood, Ending comes out, anxiety versus depression, and how he manages it

  • ★★ John says his new book Hollywood, Ending comes out in 35 days and that he has not published a novel in nine years. — 00:00:00 · Hollywood, Ending
  • ★★ John is very anxious because no one has read the book yet and he does not know whether it is good or will be well received; the endless worries keep him up at night. — 00:00:00 · Hollywood, Ending
  • ★★ John says that for him writing fiction is, paradoxically, more intimate and vulnerable than writing nonfiction. — 00:00:00

  • ★★★ John says depression, which he is not currently experiencing, feels to him like an absence, a void, while anxiety is a presence: a loud, constant, unwelcome companion that drowns out everything else. — 00:00:29

    “if depression is a void, for me anxiety is a presence”

  • ★★ John cites David Foster Wallace's description of depression as being deep down a hole until you start to feel you are the hole. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ Suppressing anxiety does not work for John because in the broadest sense it is not wrong: he does not know how the book will be received, death is coming for everyone he loves, and the world is scary. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Instead of denying his anxiety, John manages it with the tools he has, medicine being one: he has been trying hard to take it every day. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John's favorite tool from therapy is to give anxiety a set time: he lights a candle, sets a 15-minute timer, checks things like pre-sales, then blows out the candle and moves on; it does not always work but helps. — 00:01:27 · Hollywood, Ending

00:01:56 — Part two: special guests on the Hollywood, Ending tour; every ticket includes a signed book

  • ★★★ John announces special guests on the Hollywood, Ending tour: Lily King in Portland, Maine, Sarah Urist Green in Birmingham, Clint Smith in DC, Suleika Jaouad in New York, Hank in San Diego, Sharon McMahon and Brandon Sanderson. — 00:01:56 · Hollywood, Ending, Sarah Urist Green, New York City, Hank Green
  • ★ John admits he keeps forgetting to announce the tour's special guests, much to his publisher's consternation. (playful) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says every tour ticket comes with a signed copy of Hollywood, Ending, with more information in the description. — 00:01:56 · Hollywood, Ending, doobly-doo

00:02:28 — Part three: John's spat with the lieutenant governor of Indiana and how the social internet rewards professional provocateurs

  • ★★ John says one strange thing about a public life is that you sometimes talk to one audience and end up reaching an entirely different one. — 00:02:28
  • ★★★ Last week (week of 10 August 2026) John made an Instagram video praising the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles that also criticized Indiana's lieutenant governor. — 00:02:28 · Instagram, Indiana
  • ★★ John says the lieutenant governor recently came out as pro-hate, giving a sermon in which he said, as John quotes directly, that God is a God of hatred. — 00:02:28
  • ★★ John's hometown paper, the Indy Star, ran an article framed as John Green criticizing his nemesis, the lieutenant governor. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ John reports that the lieutenant governor's office responded that John was taking the quotes out of context. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ John denies taking the quotes out of context: no context makes it okay to say the cross teaches us how to hate. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ John says that by giving the lieutenant governor oxygen he only raised his stature among supporters and made him more famous than he needs to be. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ John says his video's real point, that Indiana BMV employees do hard jobs extremely well, was lost in the clickbait takeaway that he hates his nemesis. — 00:02:57 · Indiana
  • ★★ John says the lieutenant governor tried to remove John's books from the YA sections of public libraries in central Indiana. — 00:03:27 · Indiana
  • ★★ John says he does not hate the lieutenant governor, because his faith teaches him to love his neighbor even when that neighbor is a professional provocateur. — 00:03:27
  • ★★★ John asks Hank, not rhetorically, how to respond to professional provocateurs, saying he genuinely does not know even after all this time. (unsure) — 00:03:27 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ John says the landscape seems tailor-made for turning bad leaders into powerful ones: we have incentivized professional provocateurs while disincentivizing nuance and complexity. — 00:03:56 · attention economy
  • ★★★ John says the fault ultimately lies with him for making a video that went viral precisely because it dunked on someone so eminently dunkable. — 00:03:56
  • ★★ John says he should have made a video only about the BMV's excellence: fewer views, but it would have made BMV workers feel nice amid poor leadership from above. — 00:03:56
  • ★★★ By making the snarky video he was incentivized to make, John made his own life worse and Indiana's already poor political discourse a little worse. — 00:03:56 · Indiana
  • ★★ John says that even after 30 years in these waters he does not know how to use the social internet's tools or how to reduce the power of professional provocateurs, which adds to his anxiety. (unsure) — 00:04:25

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: anxiety disorder · Hollywood, Ending · Lieutenant governor of Indiana (unnamed)

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · Clint Smith · David Foster Wallace · Lily King · Sarah Urist Green · Sharon McMahon · Suleika Jaouad

Organizations: Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles · Instagram · The Indianapolis Star

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: attention economy · book censorship · Christianity · clickbait · depression · fiction · psychiatric medication · psychotherapy · quoting out of context

Places: Birmingham, Alabama · Indiana · New York City · Portland, Maine · San Diego · Washington, DC

Only in the description or credits: tuberculosis

Also centred on anxiety disorder: Brotherhood 2.0: March 7, 2007: Stress · My Hairy Ball of Anxious Anxiety · I'm Having a Lot of Feelings · Working Through a Crisis with My Brother · Hank's very messy post-cancer year of mistakes, meaning… · The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE

Later videos replying to this one