Who we look up to (or don't) on the internet is an idea that has always fascinated me. Whose content we consume (or don't) isn't always a direct reflection of whether or not we want to be like the person creating the content. Should it be a content creator's responsibility to mind their audience -- or should it be up to the audience to decide for themselves whether or not a creator is so-called "role model" material?
These are the types of deep questions that often emerge during Vlogbrothers Rewatch! This is an ongoing series of articles in which I document my journey through the entire back catalog of the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel ... for fun? For science? Why not both? Using this playlist, I'm rewatching everything in chronological order starting from the very beginning. I haven't done a "full" watch-through since 2015, so I've mostly forgotten a lot of the early videos, and so far that's making the experience even better.
When I used to work full-time as an entertainment journalist, I spent a lot of time watching Kardashian vlogs. For work, not for fun or for science. The more I watched, the more I began to wonder why so many people were watching these videos. Clearly these were not the kinds of people you wanted to be -- right? The more comments I read, the more I understood.
A lot of people, it turned out, watched these videos because it showed them a kind of lifestyle they could aspire to achieve. Huge parties, more money than they knew what to do with, going wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. They weren't looking for role models for how to behave or think. They were seeking external motivation from a largely unattainable experience.
The Green brothers remain "role model" material to this day because they use the money they make and raise to better the world. John may not have thought, when making this video, that this was something he would ever achieve. But he did. And we're all much better off because of it.