A lot of people probably don't know that I am addicted to watching youtube videos, especially Vlogbrothers videos. The Vlogbrothers are John and Hank Green (brothers who live across the country from each other) who started posting daily vlogs back and forth to each other in 2007. The challenge was that they would eliminate all kinds of 'textual' communication between each other and only communicate through the vlogs (or on the phone). If they did accidentally communicate through text, they would be punished by having to do something awful as voted for by their fans.
The year was a huge success and they gained so many fans that they decided to keep vlogging. John is an author and Hank is a musician who has released four albums, but youtube is their fulltime job now. These brothers don't just make silly videos back and forth though. Their videos are fun and informative. They are also hugely involved in charity.
From the beginning they have used the community (the nerdfighters) to raise money for various things. One of these things is the Uncultured Project. Their friend Shawn went to Bangladesh and John and Hank and the community raised funds for him to go and to help the people there. Shawn posted his own youtube videos to show the donors how their money was being used.
The Vlogbrothers also teamed up with the Harry Potter Alliance after the disaster in Haiti. These two groups, along with many others, managed to raised almost $125,000. This was enough money to send five fully loaded planes to Haiti to help the people there.
If those things weren't incredible enough, the Vlogbrothers did something even bigger. They started the Project for Awesome. The P4A started in their first year and was practically a hacking of youtube. The Vlogbrothers and their fans each made videos about their favourite charity and posted them to youtube at the same time on the same day. Each video had the same P4A thumbnail. The nerdfighters then spent the day all over youtube commenting, watching and favouriting other P4A videos. This made these videos all get to the top of the most watched list and all over the front page of youtube.
They have done the Project for Awesome every year since and it has just gotten bigger and bigger. This year they had huge support from youtube and did a fancy live show the whole day. They ran a raffle with a lot of awesome prizes from other youtubers. Some of the prizes included guitars from youtube musicians, signed copies of John's books, a copy of an original, never-to-be published book by John, having Hank's next able named after you, Dan Brown's crocs, tshirts signed by youtubers, Shay Carl's beard and so much more. Each different prize can be one by buying a ticket. Each ticket is bought by making a donation to the charity of that youtubers' choice. The raffle is not over yet and they have already raised $130,000.
I think it is so incredible. When youtube first started a couple of years ago, it was really just a place where people went to watch music videos or movie trailers or clips of kittens doing silly things. I think it's so awesome that these people are using their fame and this website to do something so awesome.
Anyone that reads this, I highly suggest you go to youtube and search for the Vlogbrothers!
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