The Ashton Kutcher Phenomenon
So Ashton Kutcher promised to give $100,000 to buy bednets through malarianomore if he got to one million twitter followers before CNN. (He did.)
So I thought it would be funny if I told my twitter followers that I would give a thousand bucks to malarianomore if they got Ashton Kutcher to follow me on twitter.
I logged on to twitter eight hours later to find Ashton Kutcher among my followers.
The lesson: Never underestimate nerdfighters.
posted by John Green @ Saturday, April 18, 2009
52 Comments
52 Comments:
The nerdfighters can do anything John, when will you learn?
Congratulations on being charitable :)
Bedododo!
You haver twitter *GASP*, how did I not know this?
Hahaha. :D That's great.
Oh god, haha, that is so funny.
I'll give you one dollar if you follow me on twitter hahahaha.
Badododo!
Ah. Nerdfighters badoodoodooing their way to the top.
FOR REALS!
Maybe we can work on Diddy or Oprah next.
Congrats! And yay for giving to Malaria No More!
Nice. GO NERDFIGHTERS!
hilarious.
So, on to my question:
Which of the love interests in your novels -- Alaska, Lindsay, Margo, and even Katherine #1 -- did you feel the most attracted to as you were creating them? I don't necessarily mean "which is your type." But rather, which girl intrigued you the most?
Well that's pretty boss, Ashton seems like a nice guy.
Bedododo!
I was one of the ones that told him to XD And it actually worked, amazing. Bedoodoodoodoodoo!
How do you feel about Ba do do do?
Ashton Kutcher wasn't already following you?!
Today's question:
Are young adults' literacy levels and vocabularies adversely limited by curricula that focus on young adult fiction?
On the one hand, I grant that we can just look to Green Eggs and Ham for proof that great books don't need big, hard words. They don't even need any second syllables - nor does my previous sentence.
On the other hand, weren't the books that were over our heads - the books about characters unlike us, set outside our spheres of experience, and full of words we didn't know - supposed to prod us to stretch a little? At least as far as the nearest dictionary?
Yeah, so, ok, when I slogged through Great Expecations the first time, the currents of unfairly distributed 19th century suffering and social mobility sailed over my little 8th grade head - so much so that re-reading it years later was like reading an entirely different book with only the vaguest whiff of likeness to whatever I thought I'd read the first time - and I've had similar experiences with The Grapes of Wrath, Heart of Darkness, Linux for Dummies, you name it. But 8th Grade Me did absorb and retain vocabulary and imagery: an epergne is a multi-armed centerpiece, so there!
And, ok, sure, themes of unfairly distributed 21st century suffering and social mobility seem more YA-friendly and YA-relatable and YA-identifiable in, um, certain books that 8th graders are lugging around these days. But on a high school-assigned vocabulary list that I found tucked in one of these books at the library recently (with quite the peculiar note on the back, but that's question-fuel for another day), the most challenging term is "avocado dip". What's up with that?
o wow! that's amazing.
I agree with Lysh. Next Oprah, and then THE WORLD.
I´d just like to know how many people asked him...because I did!
question: Which one of your books did you find easier to write? and why?
The power of the Nerdfighter! Hoo ha!
:)
Now would be an appropriate time to bring up the now long and probably forgotten Tour de Nerdfighting term...
N.D.T.A.
Never Doubt The Awesome (of Nerdfighters :P)
Ashton may have over a million followers, but you have Nerdfighters. If we can solve the thisisnottom.com riddles, then we can do just about anything. Let's end malaria!
HAHA! I'm sure he got bombarded with replies. I know I sent him one! and I'm so glad he followed you! I knew we could do it
Bedododo indeed! Gotta love the power of nerds to change the world.
(I also want to ditto Kirsten's question. Answer please :)
I might as well ask, what is your opinion on emotions?
Haha, well at least you didn't promise to sell your house and blogtv every day and write a book appraising Ayn Rand. You'd be so screwed if that were the case.
Nerdfighters to-do list
take over youtube...check
take over twitter...check
take over the world...
I think we're getting close.
It seems teh only thing we can't do is find Helen Hunt...
People: as an avid nerdfighter, and having watched all the vlogbrother videos, I have to ask: what the heck is "bedododo"? Is this a new nerdfighter thing? I hope it doesn't catch on, it sounds kind of... absolutely moronic. =/
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@Anonymous: It's the cheer of the Nerdfighters, as introduced by Alex Day/Nerimon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ach0r3R2bso
fosadifaosdifjsdfjsd
*OH YEAHHH*
NERD FIGHTERS!!!!
Never under estimate a nerd fighter with superior connections!!!
Today's Question:
I live in Canada and I am one of the maybe 10 people in the country who dosen't enjoy watching the Vancouver Canucks in the hockey play-offs. And I think it is ridiculous for men to grow play-off beards. Where can I go where no one cares about hockey?
I wish I was famous, so John would follow me. (shameless self-promotion ftw)
that is awesome!
Awesome anecdote. How did y'all get Ashton to follow him? Did you tell him it was Steven Spielberg in disguise, or tell him you'd found his car?
Yeah, that movie is pretty old huh.
Wow! Can building a time machine be so far behind?
bedoodoodoo! awesome, i was following him too, but i never realised that it was ashton kutcher... XD
Question:
okay so my question is just a simple little question, not at all as sophisticated and clever as all the rest. but oh well....
so you mentioned before in your vlog, when you went to amsterdam that your dutch sucks and you said something like "how can i ever imigrate to amsterdam" (i probably quoted that completely wrong, but it was something along the line) so my question is, do you ever really think about leaving america and moving to an european country?
and if you do, please consider moving to germany, haha i'm just joking...
dftba
Copied from an earlier comment of mine:
Are you surprised regarding the quality and/or quantity of the questions you have been receiving?
Why do you think it is so many young adults in general have little to no interest in reading for Pleasure and instead only read for their education (and not even for that sometimes)? Is there a way to try and change this?
Thanks for your time!
~Wynn
Two and a half years later and still underestimating the nerdfighters. *hangs head in shame*
Thanks.
I didn't know about you or your books until I heard you speak in Hattiesburg, MS. And it was quite serendipitous for me. I just read Paper Towns today and am glad that neither you nor Tobin Anderson nor Sean died in any abandoned buildings while you did research. (I answered one of my previous questions by reading your acknowledgements.)
My latest question is about authors and their works. Do you think Harper Lee or JD Salinger would have been able to live the lives they’ve chosen if their books had been published today - in Web 2.0 world with book signing tours and media appearances? I can like an author's work without ever having met them or watching them wax their chin hair. Do you ever feel this is the Age of Over-information? Do you feel overexposed even though a large part is your own creation? Are you creating your autobiography or your own legend? That's actually more than one question so I hope you answer any of them.
But again, thanks, especially for this quote, "I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is."
CalculatedPlans, I was talking about this very issue with my friends today. I realized that my grammar ultimately sucks because I wasn't taught any grammar from my ninth grade year to my junior year in high school. And I'm an English major in college now, so I have a slight disadvantage compared to my peers who had grammar drilled into them all throughout high school.
While my friends in our rival school were learning what adverbs and prepositions are I was discussing literature until my teachers couldn't squeeze any more philosophy and life-lessons out of "A Separate Peace", "Julius Caesar" and Ayn Rand's "Anthem".
This doesn't really have to do with your question, but it's got my head whirling about the problems in our youth's education.
How many times do we have to learn this lesson, John?
Though the caveat seems to be access to Helen Hunt. Nerdfighters have not been able to succeed in that respect.
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I must admit I don't quite know how twitter works, but I clicked the Ashton Kucher link and you are not among the followed... What's up with that?
In an earlier Q/A post you mentioned that nerdfighters still have a ways to go in terms of environmental friendliness because you only sold two ebook copies of Paper Towns. Do you have stats on how many copies sold for each media? How popular are audiobooks? I'm curious because my public library has a downloadable audiobook collection, no paper involved. In fact, I listened to all three of your books, before reading them in print.
LET THE POWER OF NERDS COMPEL YOU!
I challenge you to make a video with your Favourite section of your home library as background, and to put link tags (the squarey thing that you can click on) to all of the visible books, the links must lead you to the Amazon page of the book (or the book page, if it has one).
I think it's a good way of recomending books.
That is amazing. It feels me with so much joy to see the nerdfighter cheer. BEdoodoodoo or something like that.
what is this "bedododo" thing?????
and what is you favorite color?
Yay Nerdfighters!!!!
I have a question. I might not be remembering this correctly and I took all my books home because I am moving out of my dorm room next week, but in Looking for Alaska, the Colonel drinks milk and vodka and calls it Ambrosia.
Isn't his Ambrosia basically a White Russian?
This has been frustrating me since I read it.
bedodoodoo
A white russian needs kahlua, and ideally cream, not milk. Also more vodka than cream (5 parts to 3, I seem to recall), or at least equal parts. Wasn't "Ambrosia" something like 8 parts milk?
Can I ask what "bedoodoodoodoo" is? I see it all the time in the comments. I like to fancy myself a dedicated Nerdfighter but I seemed to have missed this one!
Oh, John. The last time you underestimated Nerdfighters, you ended up eating/drinking a blendarized Happy Meal. We can do anything!
(I didn't realize that I have pretty much the exact same comment as an Anonymous up there. .my bad!)
Exciting news!
A while back you mentioned a desire to teach a high school literature class, and I was just wondering what your ideal syllabus would include. We all know that Catcher in the Rye would be there, but what else? Let's say you could do about six units, and each unit could consist of a novel, play, or series of shorter works (stories, poetry, essays, etc.).
The school where I teach is pretty backwards about what we're aloud to teach (ex: Catcher in the Rye, The Things They Carried, and [every single scene from] Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet have all been forbidden), but I have a bunch of ideas about what I'd teach in an ideal world, and want to hear yours too. Thanks!
For Bedoodoodoo explanation, see this URL:
http://tiny.cc/bedodo
And I DID end up finding Johns name among Ashton's 'followed', so there you go. Oops.
I was forced to read this post out loud to my husband (who's also read Katherines).
I was unduly charmed, although I was more charmed once I actually figured out what bednetting was (go on, try to read that post again while imagining that bednetting is that stuff that pre-teen girls hang over the top of their beds to make pretty canopies).
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