( you don’t have to post this, as it is not a story, just something I thought I should say) After posting on this blog my story, and reading all the other stories so far. I have noticed that people usually start off by saying “my turn now,..” or “my unimportant…not really interesting story…” something along those lines, and I just wanted to say something to the contrary. You are not unimportant, or uninteresting or anything else like that. You are a wonderful, unique person who is part of a wonderful, accepting community that loves you for you are. So no matter what your story, nerdfighteria still loves you, if you have no friends, we love you, if you’re different, weird, feel alone, unimportant, or not interesting…we still love you and will make you feel important. Never feel like you’re alone. Because you never are. DFTBA
So I guess it’s my turn.
In eighth grade I had friends. I liked them. We laughed, we took pictures in the mirror and had fun. We listened to pop music and whined over how crappy our parents were for not getting us this, that and the other thing.
When I’d get home, I’d turn on the Indie music and read books. Everyone in my friend group didn’t read, thought Indie music was terrible sounding and anything that educated in the slightest was boring.
I felt like I was lying to them. I’d watch History Channel and Discovery channel for fun. My friends told me to quit Science Olympiad so I could hang out with them more. I would tell them my mom is making me do it so I couldn’t. Truth is, I loved it there.
The feeling of being fake persisted.
One Christmas my mother got me “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” (It’s a really good book if you’re into grammar and such) my friends poked fun. They tossed out that book and gave me the Private Series (which isn’t actually that bad either, Kate Brian is actually a good author and I did enjoy the first few books).
I purposely let my grades start dropping so my friends wouldn’t think I was some sort of dork.
I didn’t do my homework. I stayed up all night with them instead on AIM while we talked about Taylor Swift, Myspace pictures and boys.
I still felt so fake. I felt like I was lying.
I began cutting myself and imagining my suicide.
(I should probably mention this is 9th grade-ish now)
Browsing youtube I happened upon the vlogbrothers.
I’d heard of them but I never really paid any mind to them.
All my friends watched Shane Dawson (who was pretty funny in his own sort of way).
I started watching them and I felt better. I realized there were people like me who liked to learn. These people were nothing like those people at my school (those know-it-alls who I had used to associate with nerds). These people were great, these people were funny and these people were just like me.
I still kept it a secret though, my friends would poke fun like they already did about my “nerdy” tendencies.
Eventually, I got the courage to start talking on NFoNY and I made a lot of new friends. Even though they live far away from me, they make me feel better about myself. They make me feel not as alone.
In addition, I have nerdy friends at school now. A few of them watch even watch Doctor Who and then we discuss it.
This is my Junior year of high school and even though I still don’t completely admit my nerdiness in public (baby steps), I’m a lot more comfortable with myself than I used to be. I have nerdfighteria to thank for that, I have NFoNY specifically to thank for it and I have John and Hank to thank for it.
(I know this story jumps around a lot but I really appreciate you taking the time to read it even if it doesn’t completely make sense..)
Nerdfighteria has not exactly been an easy world to be in. I’ll just start of with that.
I live in a tiny town (when I say tiny, I mean the population is at most 250 people, and most of them are old and crusty), so it’s hard enough to meet new people. My high school is about an hour away, and there can’t be more than 100 students. I had a lot of trouble fitting in there, simply because I wasn’t a sports-playing, weight-lifting, partying sort of jock. I tried the whole sports scene, but it never really worked for me; I just wasn’t that kind of person.
By the time I was in high school, I was seriously depressed. There were only two basic groups in my school, and when I decided sports wasn’t my thing, I ended up with the other group: the stoners. Needless to say, it didn’t end well.
After a mental breakdown and a 14 day stint in rehab, my parents decided to pull me out of school for a short period. That time seemed like eternity, but going back to school was even worse. I was trying to pull my life back together, and get back into music, so when I looked around, I realized I had no friends. None at all. Going through life like that was a horrible experience, and I soon turned to the internet.
I would spend hours alone in my room while my siblings were out practicing their sports. Before long, I discovered Nerdfighteria. I loved it right away. There were people just like me, Whovians, Potterheads, musicians, and people who truly loved to learn. By this time, it was the summer of 10th grade, and I spent it skipping my 11th grade(to get out of my hellhole of a small town) and watching Brotherhood 2.0. I even found Nerdfighters in yourpants who I went to the Harry Potter premiere with.
Even though I thought there were no nerdfighters at school, the idea that there could be people like me out there, somewhere gave me enough confidence that I actually started talking to people. Soon, I had a boyfriend, and found out that his sister was just starting to get into nerdfighteria.
It’s really been an amazing experience. The internet is a wonderful place. Even though being one of the two nerdfighters in my tiny little area can be lonely at times, it’s taught me to reach out to others. It’s helped me start to get a grip on my depression. Nerdfighters like Hank, Alex Day, Kristina Horner, and Luke Conard helped me get back into music. John helped me get back into reading again. Everyone in general taught me how to be myself.
And when I’m being myself, the whovian, the potterhead, the badly-dressed band geek, the awkwardly shy girl, is when I’m most happy.
How I became a nerdfighter is kind of a bland story really. I stumbled upon John and Hank on youtube and immediately subscribed when I saw how awesome they were. After I discovered that John was an author I made a point to begin reading all of his books.
The fun part about my story is when one day at school a friend and I started talking about different books. I told her about how I had preordered The Fault in Our Stars and we then proceeded to nerd out. It was one of the best moments ever. We had known each other for so long and only recently discovered that we both belonged to such an awesome community like nerdfighteria.
It’s funny how that one moment became so important to me. That was the first time I met another nerdfighter, and it was ridiculously awesome. I don’t know if by reading this you could understand, but so much joy was felt when we each found someone to talk to about all of this nerdy stuff. (:
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Nerdfighteria was always a thing hanging around in the background for me, through my bizarre, oddball and downright glorious journey through TARDIStacular-Chameleon Circuit-5AG-Charlie-Alex-All Caps-Alex Carpenter ETC ETC. I had seen a couple of videos, but only in the last six months or so I’ve actually been watching/even subscribing to the lovely Green brothers. Let’s just say I had some pretty effing stupid misconceptions in my head. And I love them. I do. I love their enthusiasm. I love John, and John’s books, and I love Hank.
But I worry. I worry that I think watching YouTube videos is some kind of intensive training for how I’m going to be, and how I’ll live my life, eventually, but it scares me beyond belief that I’m not going out there and doing the living, that I’m being exposed to this brilliant, creative, hysterical way of life from all these amazing vloggers and I can never achieve any of that and maybe I would have been happier plodding along without having the window through which I can peek out and see young twenty-somethings running around London, or not-so-young kids running around LA, and I’m sure some of it IS just an act, cos who doesn’t pretend that their life is better than it is? All I want to do is grow up, but I’m so scared it won’t be how I see it from these influences. I sit alone watching videos, and my mother comes in and says “I worry about you in here on your own.” But I HAVE TO. Or else I’ll be properly miserable, and know nothing else of the Great Perhaps, and I’ll be her.
See how “not entirely happy” this turned out to be? I’ll chuck in a bit of optimism here. I love that through introducing my friends to Alex, they’ve embraced their nerdfightastic awesome. I love that one of my closest friends loves literally everything I do as a complete coincidence, (I MEAN EVERYTHING) and we’ve just stumbled across each other from being in the same Drama class for years but she did the Starkid totally awesome sign and I nearly jumped on her. I love that Alex Day holds a tied place in my heart with Darren Criss as my two favourite everythings, and that Alex has made me realise it’s okay to be sarcastic and negative but you can still be lovely, and Alex’s Granger Danger cover was what finally pushed me to watch Starkid, which my friend had been sticking into my ear and bugging me to watch properly for months.
I owe a great deal of my limited, precious, rarely acknowledged confidence/happiness/acceptance of my outer nerd to the jumble of madness that is Nerdfighteria and everything that springs from it.
*Does ironic jumping and landing with a stupid facial expression and arms splayed into the nerdfighter sign*
..This is a wee bit pretentious of me. This is basically my NaNoWriMo substitution. Oh, the NaNoGuilt.
I distinctly remember that the first video I ever watched was Hankroll’d, seen while aimlessly browsing on Valentine’s Day of 2009. The fact that I subscribed to the channel after watching that should say enough. A lot of things have happened since then. I got my friends into Nerdfighteria, and we have about a million more inside jokes. I’ve discovered my favorite author, and a bit more about giraffe sex and anglerfish than I’d previously been aware of. John Green’s first live show inadvertently lead to my first kiss. My friend and I have become closer through a colab channel we use to talk to each other. So yeah, this community has changed me. For the better, I’d say.
So, I’ve never really been good at much. I didn’t have many friends, couldn’t play sports, and pretty much all I’d ever do was read books and play video games. People didn’t start labeling me a nerd until I confessed my love for chemistry and physics in middle school. Most people knew I had obsessions with things like Harry Potter and Doctor Who and stuff. People would always place such high expectations on my that I could never meet. Eventually, I got extremely frustrated with life, or, more specifically, my existence. I don’t know what exactly tempted me to do so, but I can remember that day in July where I was sitting in front of the air conditioner and typed in the term “Vlogbrothers” into the YouTube search box- I knew of the existence of Nerdfightaria, but never noticed the awesome until that day. I just spent the whole Saturday watching the hundreds of videos they made and simply fell in love. (I realize how corny that sounds.) I’m not sure what I fell in love with- the community? The awesome? The obscure references that Hank made to various episodes of Star Trek? At first I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I wasn’t the only person on the planet who obsessed over quantum mechanics and looked to Captain Picard for advice and read books like “The Catcher in the Rye” over and over again because I knew that there would only be more to analyze. I think what Hank and John really did was give me hope for society- kind of crack my shell, in a way. Most people I know are snotty, selfish, obnoxious brats who watch Jersey Shore and cannot tell the difference between Mercury and Mars. Ever since I became a Nerdfighter, the amount of awesome in my life has only been going up, where it had only been going down previously. I gained amazing friends, who don’t impressed when I quote Yoda, but recite the line that Luke says afterwards. I found myself doing happy dances more and more often, I downloaded all of Hank’s albums and bought all of John’s books (which are all amazing,)and I even somehow managed to fall into Nerdfighterlike, which I didn’t think was possible. And John’s playing FIFA even inspired me to join the local soccer club! I didn’t even know I was good at soccer! (I also insisted on being number nine.) French the llama, I don’t even know how I lived without Nerdfightaria. We just never forget to be awesome.
Nerdfighteria helped me find the love of my life, and that’s something that will forever connect me to the community. I became a Nerdfighter man years ago when I got involved in the YouTube scene. I love the vlogbrother videos, they are amazing. After awhile I decided to start vlogging on my own, I was less than successful. Haha. Around that time I started browsing the Ning and YourPants. I noted a Ning post about a collab looking for members, I applied. I did not get the spot.
But the story doesn’t end there. I continued to watch this collab, even after being rejected. They were popular, or anything special, but I really enjoyed watching them. The group fit nicely together. Then one member, Josh, posted a video about his favorite place. This place happens to be the town in which my college is located. I, naturally, also love this place. So I left a quick, and awkward, comment on the video.
He tells me later that he only responded in the way he did because he thought I was cute. But it brought us together, didn’t it? Well the point is, he commented back and then proceeded to follow me on Twitter. A month or so later, he @ replied me on Twitter, and a conversation began. We tweeted back and forth constantly for a few months before we exchanged numbers. Then we texted constantly. Eventually, we admitted our feelings for one another, and a bit after that, we got together.
Since then, we have met in person. He doesn’t live too far from where I live in college, so we spend quite a bit of time together. I love him. I have never met a guy more perfect for me than him. He understands my nerdiness, and everything that comes with it. And he’s a Nerdfighter! What’s not to love?
So yeah, that’s one of my many Nerdfighter stories. Probably my favorite. Nerdfighteria brought us together, and it will always keep us together as well. <3 (Sorry for the cheese, it needed to be done. Haha.)
i became a nerdfighter when i saw my best friend and her english teacher flailing excitedly about hank’s upcoming show in our city. unfortunately, i (stupidly) decided not to go, but I immediately fell in love with everything about nerdfighteria and went out and bought all of john’s books. this is where nerdfighteria really changed my life. i’ve loved books since i was really young, but for some reason, i sort of stopped reading for a while. i had several “reasons” to justify this: not enough time, no good books, etc, etc. but i still don’t really know why it happened. all that matters is that from the second i opened an abundance of katherines, i fell in love with reading again and was so captivated by the book that i finished it that day and started looking for alaska right after. there aren’t enough words to describe how much those books affected me, but the easiest way to say it is that they helped me remember why i loved to read in the first place and they proved to me that there are always, always good books to read: you just have to keep looking until you find them.
DFTBA :)
