Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, author and
YouTuber, John Green.
John: Hi.
Thank you, guys.
I love you, guys.
Specifically you all.
Also to a lesser extent, you all.
Thanks so much Google for that lovely introduction,
and my old friend Grace Helbig.
I'm so proud of her success and the fact that
now she gets to be both an independent content
creator and live her dream of having a television
show.
Anyway, I'm John Green.
I'm a novelist and YouTuber, and unlike the
other people on stage tonight, I'm not here
to entertain you, or to educate you, or to
kiss up to you.
I am here to scare you.
Most of the people who are here tonight are
going to tell you why you should advertise
on YouTube, but I'm going to do something
a little different.
I'm going to offer you a vision of what I
think will happen if you don't.
First a little bit of background, my first
novel, "Looking for Alaska" came out in 2005.
Thank you very much.
It was a one-month, almost exactly before
the first ever video was uploaded to YouTube.
You might have heard that it's YouTube's 10th
anniversary.
Have they mentioned that to you guys?
Jesus Christ, I've never seen anybody be so
excited about turning 10.
Hell, yeah, congratulations, YouTube.
You're a multi-billion dollar company owned
by the word's largest corporation that's done
something that only 4th graders can do.
Sorry, anyway, not relevant to my talk.
So my book came out, got great reviews, it
won a really big award, and it sold about
8,000 copies in its first year.
What you might call a "modest" success.
Ten years later, my novel, "The Fault on Our
Stars" has been on the New York Times bestseller
list, now for 161 consecutive weeks.
The film adaptation grossed $300 million at
the box office worldwide.
So two books and two very different results.
How does that happen?
Well, the success of "The Fault on Our Stars"
is complicated, but I can say this, there
is no way that it would have happened without
YouTube.
On January 1, 2007 my brother Hank and I started
a project called "Brotherhood 2.0" in which
we made YouTube videos back and forth to each
other each weekday.
And eight years later, we're still at it.
Through these videos we developed an incredible
community of fans who call themselves Nerdfighters,
because they celebrate intellectualism, and
fight for nerds, and this community does all
kinds of amazing things together.
They've loaned more than $4 million to mostly
female entrepreneurs in the developing world
through Kiva.
They run the Project for Awesome.
As you guys heard, the Project for Awesome
is this annual 48-hour fundraiser and event,
where thousands of YouTubers across the platform
make videos about their favorite charities
and raise money for organizations like Save
the Children and Partners in Health.
Last year in two days, we raised over $1.2
million from 21,000 different donors.
Thanks.
And with the support of this community, we've
been able to expand our online video projects
as well.
In 2012, we launched SciShow and Crash Course,
our educational channels.
SciShow is a celebration of scientific inquiry
and discovery, and Crash Course introduces
topics from chemistry to world history at
an AP level.
And it's now used in thousands of schools
around the world including, I would imagine,
some of your children's.
There is tremendous hunger for educational
and how-to content on the Internet.
People want context.
They want well-researched information that
can be presented to them accessibly.
And that's why Crash Course and SciShow both
have over 2.5 million subscribers.
Hank and I also own DFTBA Records, which is
this company that distributes music and merchandise
for YouTubers who build audiences online.
And each year, we pay out millions of dollars
to YouTube creators in royalties.
So we've had a lot of success because of YouTube.
But this is the part that should scare you
a little bit.
For the most part, we've done all of this
without advertising.
Crash Course and SciShow are funded mainly
by viewers who voluntarily donate to support
the shows through Patreon.
DFTBA Records provides more revenue from merch
than we've ever made from ads, not just for
us but for many YouTubers.
And today, Hank and I employ over 30 people
who help us to create these shows that are
both educational and fun to watch.
And even though our subscribers and views
have grown tenfold in the last three years,
less than 20% of our company's revenue comes
from advertising, and it decreases by 5% every
year.
Now of course, that isn't true for all online
video.
And I understand that and I want to be honest
about that.
Lots and lots of online content is well-supported
by advertising and it's geared toward advertising
models.
But many of the strongest communities, and
many of the ones I value the most in online
video, are dramatically undervalued by advertisers.
And that's forcing YouTubers to find other
paths.
They're doing events and they're publishing
books.
They're crowd-funding, and they're producing
albums, and they're getting grants from nonprofit
organizations.
In short, they are building a world where
they don't have to depend on advertising,
and they are thriving.
You may not see that success, but I promise,
it's happening.
Ask these kids.
And speaking of them, I'm sure that you're
familiar with the tired narrative about young
people these days, that they're only interested
in distraction and have no curiosity about
the world outside of themselves.
Oh, God.
I hate it so much.
Just think that's so stupid and lame.
Who's been clapping?
Who's been enthusiastic?
Who was dancing along with the dancers?
Not you, nerds.
While the world talks about the insularity
and solipsism of young people, young people
have created a fascinating and complex world
of deep engagement online.
A world in which they are not just watching
content but becoming part of it by being community
members whose comments and fanfiction and
artwork and passion have profound impacts
on our broader culture.
And one of those young people was my friend
Esther Earl, who you were introduced to in
the video and who inspired much of my novel
"The Fault in Our Stars."
Esther was one of the earliest Nerdfighters
and she was a key supporter of the Project
for Awesome, and throughout our friendship
she was also living with cancer.
I learned from Esther that people with disabilities
are not defined by their disabilities, that
their lives and loves are as important and
complex and meaningful as any others.
And that a short life – Esther died in 2010
when she was just 16 –  can also be a
good life and a rich life.
Without the YouTube community, I never would
have met Esther.
I never would have been inspired to write
my book.
And I may never have learned just how passionate,
committed and caring this new generation of
fans can be.
Meanwhile, we adults criticize this generation
for its apathy and narcissism, while watching
CSI Miami and The Blacklist and congratulating
ourselves on our astonishing intellectual
sophistication and connectedness.
Here's the truth.
Way down deep in what Robert Penn Warren once
called "the darkness which is you," there
is a great and terrible feeling that our life
and work is meaningless, this clawing fear
that everything we do will be for nothing.
And CSI Miami is incredibly good at distracting
us from that fear.
I'm not kidding, but I appreciate that you
laughed.
I also think that this is good.
I am in favor of distractions.
And I think the distraction business is a
good and noble business.
And because the number of eyeballs a distraction
attracts is a reasonably good way of judging
the effectiveness of the distraction as a
diversion, advertising is a very good model
for funding it.
But I and the most passionate YouTubers, we're
not in the distraction business.
We're in the community business, and number
of eyeballs is a terrible metric for my business.
Like I can say, "Our videos have been viewed
more than a billion times" and it sounds impressive,
I guess, but I don't actually care about that
number at all.
I don't care how many people watch or read
something I make.
I care how many people love something I make.
And 
that love is a lot tougher to measure.
I can happily watch 44 minutes of Deadliest
Catch and I might even tweet about it.
But it won't be nearly as important to me
as the three minutes I spend with Vi Hart
as she explains to me how we know that the
infinite set of real numbers is larger than
the infinite set of natural numbers.
Deadliest Catch is something I watch.
Original content on YouTube – whether it's
let's play or beauty tutorials or introductions
to Nigerian history – it's something I treasure.
Because it doesn't just distract me from the
way down deep darkness, whether it's funny
or silly or profound or smart, what it really
does is help me to grapple with and to consider
the problems and the questions way down deep
there in the darkness.
And finally I have to say that just matters
more to me than Deadliest Catch.
So if you want to stay in the eyeballs business,
I think that's cool.
I don't blame you.
It is a good business, albeit a shrinking
one.
But you risk losing relevance with an entire
generation of viewers that looks to video,
not just for distraction, but also for engagement
and connection.
And that's where there is a tremendous opportunity
for you in this room tonight, and one that
you frankly are not going to find on television
or anywhere offline.
If you support YouTubers through advertising,
we can build and foster better, more diverse
communities.
If we're able to rely on you for support,
we can build the type of engagement that's
good for us, good for the world, and finally
also, coincidentally, good for your brands.
We could bring more good and interesting stuff
into the world.
And if you help us do that, our viewers will
notice, and they will care, and you will win
over this next generation just as you have
won over generations in the past.
Thank you.
