I'm crying because its not fair. We finally get cool writers who make educational videos for fun and who make honest efforts to connect with fans and jealous little people want to ruin it.i don't understand and I hate the people on this site.

This is going to be long…

First, I’ll say that this isn’t a “we can’t have nice things” moment. John and I will continue making stuff for the internet and communicating through whichever platforms we find most interesting and enjoyable. Tumblr remains high on that list. Tumblr, for all it’s faults, is a wonderful place with lots of very cool people doing lots of very cool things. I follow some really smart communist thinkers on Tumblr that I disagree with constantly, for example, because I want the goodness of their ideas to affect my conception of what capitalism should and maybe even could be. 

It’s also one of the funniest social media platforms I’ve ever spent time on. The Tumblr aesthetic of humor is REALLY up my alley. And none of that is even to mention that Tumblr has been extremely effective at pushing forward the cultural conversation on feminism and trans rights. Tumblr really did do that, and it’s amazing.

But moving on to the rest of your ask…

Whenever I say “I can’t understand why someone would…” I try to recognize that as my failing, not theirs. Yes, maybe the thing that they think is awful, but the inability to understand it is my problem, not theirs. So I do spend a lot of time trying to understand them, and trying not to be frustrated by the fact that, in my search, I see posts from people who are legitimately confused about whether my brother is a child abuser. 

The thing to understand is that we humans always seek out safe spaces in which to try ourselves out. We dive into places and try to define ourself and our community. And the easiest and most common way to define a community is in opposition to something else. Often communities start this way and then grow into big, beautiful, inclusive things, but it is really common for them to start out defining through opposition.

But throughout almost all of human history, that conversation happened among friends and it wasn’t possible for the entire world to drop in and check them out. That is how those conversations should happen and, indeed, when people listen in on them it can feel like a tremendous violation. But on Tumblr those conversations are public and, weirdly enough, the very person you’re hating on can drop in and say “hey, btw, I’m listening and you’re wrong.”

I never thought, until this week, about how upsetting that might be to a person or a community. It’s weird to say that the person being attacked is attacking simply by responding, but that’s how it feels to people. That doesn’t make those feelings right, but they are understandable.

When people say that John is “creepy” what they mean is that they feel like he’s spending time in a place where he doesn’t belong. That’s, of course, silly because John has been on Tumblr since 2011, but if it’s how they feel, then it’s worth wondering why they feel that way. Well, first, they don’t say /I’m/ creepy, so it’s something that’s different between me and John. It definitely doesn’t have to do with being problematic because I have said just as many, if not more, problematic things than John and my tags are full of funny GIFs and people saying “Thanks for Crash Course Bio!”. But John is /much more/ famous than me, a fact which is, to be clear, wonderful and I am very pleased to not be more famous because look at what it gets you. But he’s not just famous, he’s also famously active on Tumblr. At first this was universally enjoyed…there were whole memes about it. 

But when new people with different worldviews started to join Tumblr, John was a really great inflection point they could use to differentiate themselves. Firkkin /everybody/ saw TFiOS, so everyone was able to have an opinion. And since John has said problematic things in the past (a shitty joke in early Vlogbrothers video, a kissing scene in the Anne Frank House (that, to be clear, the Anne Frank House approved), etc) and because his writing isn’t for everybody, John Green, icon of Tumblr, became John Green, the site of a schism. 

Some people were on one side differentiating themselves /necessarily in public/, so others occasionally saw it and argued with them. Then each group went back into their less public areas to talk up how truly awful the other side is. Some people (a very very small number) get so convinced by this echo chamber that John is evil incarnate that they start doing truly gross things like making up accusations and publishing text posts that John didn’t write but making it look like he did. And, to be clear, those people probably had no conception that John exists as a real human being with real feelings. Partially because they haven’t flexed their empathy muscles enough and partially because fame is a weird thing that dehumanizes people, people think that threatening or impersonating a famous person is just good fun.

So, yeah, that’s basically the history of John Green hate on Tumblr. It isn’t any fun, but it’s also not the kind of thing that seems impossible.