Looking Back on the Project for Awesome 2010

Last week, the fourth ever Project for Awesome swept through Youtube. For those of you who don't know, the Project for Awesome is an event started and organized by John and Hank Green, also known as the Vlogbrothers, which takes place every December 17th and is constituted by a flood of Youtube videos featuring charitable organizations. These videos are all sought out, liked, and commented on (in order to be easily identified, all of these videos have "Project for Awesome" in their name) in order to ensure that they are acknowledged by Youtube as the most popular videos of the day.

This was my first year participating (in the few ways I could) in the Project for Awesome and I was simply blown away by what I found. over the course of the day thousands of videos were uploaded and many of the most prominent members of the Youtube community contributed videos featuring their favorite videos. In addition to raising awareness through such videos, the Project for Awesome also raised over one-hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars through a raffle that featured various prizes from said youtubers which, the tickets for which could be bought with donations to certain charities (each prize had a specific charity and a specific cost for its ticket) including Partners in Health, the Open University, and World Vision. The celebration and fundraising continued onto the next day, at the end of which there was a Youtube-sponsored live show that various charity representatives and youtubers took part in.

Obviously this yearly event is remarkable in the way it supports those in need but if you are looking for a central theme or importance that isn't it. No doubt, this is a great boon to those in need through both the raffle and the immeasurable (and I mean that word in it's most literal sense) donations it inspired viewers to make whether they decided to make a one-time contribution or make monthly donations. To be sure, even a single changed life is something to rejoice at. However, it is equally obvious that the major news outlets did not announce a shocking decrease in suffering across the world. The truth of the matter is that the effects of the Project for Awesome are not nearly as remarkable as what it reveals about Youtube and human nature itself.

The Internet is easily one of the greatest technological landmarks in recent history and it has led to great harm and great good. It's anonymity has allowed many people to indulge their darker sides and created a culture in which anything that defies common decency is considered hilarious and good fun. It has created destructive addictions and laid waste to the lives of many. It has shortened attention spans, puffed up the egos of countless mini-demagogues and overall imbeciles, and even helped some of the sickest of criminals. It has also facilitated the creation Nerdfighteria.

Through the Internet in general and Youtube in particular, many of those who have traditionally been picked on or ignored have been able to gather together and create their own incredible subculture. Go to any highschool talent show and you will realize that for every one of our "stars" there are at least a thousand other people with just as much talent but not the same luck, opportunities, or sometimes even interest. Now, those people are online. To put it simply, Youtube has produced a community of talented, intelligent, normal people who do not report to sponsors, put on airs, or experience any but the most basic barriers between themselves and their audiences.

The Vlogbrothers (I don't recall which of them) once commented that the great thing about Youtube is that it is just filled with people who do awesome things with no motivation besides the simple fact that awesome things are worth doing. More than anything else, it is this disinterested pursuit of goodness on a large scale by a community of people who get togethether just to do awesome things that makes the Project for Awesome so incredible. It is a new outlet of all that is best in us and with it we can expect much more. In this way, the Project for Awesome may be a saving grace not just for the impoverished, but even more for the character of the average, middle class American.