Nerds unite on net to fight against 'world suck'

There have always been, and always will be, outcasts. If I had been born 50 years ago, along with a thousand others, I would be lonely.
However, given that today close to 2 billion people have internet access, outcasts can nearly always find like-minded people. They can not only find a place where they are valued, but these unified outcasts have the means to enrich the world.

We can now connect to people who have the same things close to their heart as we do, not just those who are geographically close to us.
In 2007 two brothers, John Green, a teenage novelist, and Hank Green, an environmental blogger, decided they would correspond primarily through vlogs uploaded to YouTube.

Though they have since resumed normal communication, the videos continue and a community has sprung up around these videos.

That community is Nerdfighteria.

According to Nerdfighter lore, Nerdfighters are not made of blood or cells or tissue, they are made entirely out of awesome. An important clarification: they fight for nerds, not against them.

They come from all different countries, religions, age groups, sexualities and political beliefs. John Green best sums up what it means to be a Nerdfighter. "Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than vapid, that you believe there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan'. Why is that?"

In this community, nerds, traditionally ostracised and teased, particularly in high school, can feel like they're a part of something. And something that's meaningful.

Nerdfighters fight against "world suck". World suck encompasses everything that keeps you up at night: from your cat's surgery to the lack of clean water in Haiti. Nerdfighters planted thousands of trees around the world on Hank's 30th birthday. In the Nerdfigher forum, the thread for Palestinians and the thread for Israelis collaborated and became one thread.

There's the annual Project for Awesome: for one day a year, YouTube is not about kittens falling off couches, but about charity. Last year, the Project for Awesome made 3000 awareness-raising videos, and raised over US$130,000, the majority in small donations from ordinary people.
Another Nerdfighter project is DFTBA Records. It stands for Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

Hank Green and Alan Lastufka co-founded DFTBA Records, an independent music label that produces and distributes the work of talented You Tubers. Rest assured, Rebecca Black does not feature in their catalogue. In 2009, DFTBA was awarded "Best Online Music Label" by Mashable.

They don't subscribe to the constraints of mass-produced music, so the songs grow from inspiration, not from detailed analysis of your target demographic's buying habits.

This label gives musicians a chance to make a career out of their passion.

Adults sometimes think of the internet as a threatening place.
They read about daughters being seduced by perverts and sons' brains being melted by violence and conclude that the internet is bad for their kids.

In a world where we don't know our neighbours' names, where we are increasingly secluded in our own bubbles, the internet is bringing back community.

Community has two meanings - those who live near you, and those whose interests you share. We have been given a medium to make meaningful communities, based on common ground that can change not just the lives around them, but lives as far flung as Haiti, New Zealand, Bangladesh and the US.

Lucy Diver, Year 13, St Cuthbert's College