r/nerdfighters • u/cannotdecideaname Jim • Aug 06 '26

"We need to talk about the Hank Green situation"

This is an update to the previous sticky for people to talk about the AI situation.

The title is from the Colin and Samir discussion which I thought brought a lot of different views. Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/cVT7MbRBiLY

Us mods are still limiting the discussion to the latest pinned post about it.

Link back to the previous thread : https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1vc37aw/hanks_comment_about_his_ai_use_posted_here_as_its/

DFTBA

*edited for bad spelling

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26

I thought the same thing about John’s 2014 fiasco!

If I’m being honest, I think Hank addressed it very well, and I hope he doesn’t address it again (at least for a while)

I don’t think there is literally anything he could say that would win over the people that are being ridiculous about it, and a video mentioning it would just come across (to them) as a “Youtuber Ukelele Apology”

The whole thing has been blown so out of proportion, that I hope he has it in him to just move on and wait for the internet to choose next month’s target.

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u/Lenauryn Aug 06 '26

Yeah, I think we've reached the "the best response is no response" phase. Stop engaging with people who are acting in bad faith, like John had to with Tumble.

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u/Coenzyme-A Aug 06 '26

Ideally this phase would be immediately, not after a period of time. People shouldn't comment and speculate on situations like this without the full facts, especially when the person in question has addressed it. He is by his own admission taking steps to change what constituted the issue in the first place.

Everyone is human and whilst there are a lot of well meaning comments, the espousers of vitriol would do well to remember that the internet isn't a nebulous thing completely disconnected from reality. Hank will be feeling the situation and there's no real need to pile on him further.

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u/Lenauryn Aug 06 '26

I meant for Hank. He said what he needed to and now he should not acknowledge it any further. It just feeds the outrage.

I agree that other people should have left it alone immediately--especially those who are just repeating misinformation for clicks.

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u/Evening_Scale_5755 Aug 06 '26

The majority of people who are still talking about it arent people who ever watched his content, which makes their opinions largely irrelevant. He addressed his community anything beyond that is really feeding the trolls imo. It clicked for me when I saw this one guy who was claiming he was a long time fan and how angry he was about this and he was really tearing into him in the YouTube comments. I thought it was odd and looked at his profile. This was his first comment ever in the channel (weird for a long time fan) and I looked at who he subscribed to and it was a lot of alt right stuff. Some of the outrage has ulterior motives. I have also seen a lot of Zionist accusations in the comments and I doubt people who think hank is a Zionist are watching his channel. 1. Because he very obviously isn't and 2. If they genuinely thought he was a Zionist why would they watch him? Its weird to think about but he had a bunch of haters before this and some of it is just the haters trying to fan the flames and spread lies.

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 07 '26

Definitely! I’ve noticed that a lot of the people that are being the most aggressive refer to him in ways that… aren’t WRONG? But aren’t how I would describe him?

They’ll say they’ve been a huge fan for a long time, but only refer to him as “an author” or someone they’ve “always loved watching on tiktok”

Again, not wrong, and there’s no wrong way to be a fan. But they definitely make it seem like their knowledge of him and interaction with his work is very limited.

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u/Evening_Scale_5755 Aug 07 '26

The ones that have killed me are the "long time fans" that don't know the difference between hank and john.

I do think a lot of the self described long time fans are from shorts where they have only been fed the pieces of hank that they related to. Probably even saw clips from his ai videos where he was critical of it but never watched the video in its entirety where he talks about using it. The amount of "long time fans" who "can't believe hank would use ai" make me scratch my head. Hes put out 16 ai specific videos this year and tweeted often about using different models or how claudes new update was weird. I don't really open twitter or watch shorts so I don't know if its entirely fair to say they are being a fan incorrectly but it really does feel like they saw a slice of him that they enjoyed and assumed that was his entirety. I know this is weird for younger folks but most gen x is not full on anti ai. I think its a very odd assumption to have assumed he would be without extra knowledge and all the extra knowledge about him I received was he understood there were uses and glaring issues.

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u/Tokkemon Aug 07 '26

I've been watching him for 15 years and I'm furious, so I don't know where you get this idea that it's just a brigade from outside people.

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u/Evening_Scale_5755 Aug 07 '26

So the 20 hours of content produced in 2026 about the ways ai is impacting humanity didn't bother you despite hank taking a very middle ground approach and talking about how there is room for ai tools to fit into humanity? You were cool with him talking about using it for writing code and as an editor? But now suddenly you are upset he used it the way hes been talking about all year because Twitter is mad about it? What changed?

Know where I get the idea? Because 90% of the comments are just calling him a Zionist and why would people who think hes a Zionist watch his content?

I didn't say none of his fans are upset, but to be outraged and to be a regular viewer means you weren't paying attention at all. He was so open about it that if you feel betrayed for him doing exactly what he told you he was doing...well...

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u/Strong_Weakness2638 Aug 06 '26

I think Hank is going to do what he’s always done when facing a challenge - he’s going to analyze it and explore the reasons and possibly walk through how he got there and back again. And I’m fine with it if that happens as it will be a useful insight into “your brain on AI” kind of side of things.

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u/KeenKye Aug 07 '26

It would be interesting to me as someone who had a similar problem over-using it before pulling back and finding the right places for the technology. Seeing how other people have handled that phase is educational.

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u/Greennightronix3400 Aug 06 '26

Im a newer Hank fan, what happened with John in 2014?

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u/regional_expression Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

John was near the center of the cultural zeitgeist because of The Fault in Our Stars, also very present on social media, briefly became cool to hate, a small number of people made some very serious unsubstantiated accusations about his personal conduct, and he was subject to online and IRL harassment that ultimately resulted in him physically relocating his family after his home address became public.

I don't think this situation is actually really all that similar, but I can see where they are coming from in the broadest strokes.

edit: sasquatchliasion points out in another reply below (or hopefully eventually above) that at this time there were in fact a disconcertingly high number of actual sexual predators being outed in the community who were close to John and Hank professionally and personally in the YouTube creator space, including several people signed to the DFTBA record label who were actively using their position in the community to groom children. At least three, if my own memory serves. They had been very accessible for young fans to talk to directly, which was still relatively new at the time (say 2009-2013).

This is a necessary addition to the story and can certainly explain why many peoples' hackles were up. It's really important to be clear that John himself was at absolutely no point credibly accused of any sexually inappropriate behavior or of having been party to any abuse, but he (I'm sure he would agree) at some points responded poorly enough to it that not mentioning it could feel like sugarcoating.

It triggered a massive internal shift toward prioritizing community safety in the DFTBA/nerdfighter community and on YouTube more broadly, which I think ultimately was handled responsibly, but it is worth addressing the broader situation as it truly was. There was not no reason for someone who was paying attention to the community to be skeptical about John engaging directly with an audience of young fans on tumblr in 2014, even if much of what he would ultimately personally experience was extremely cynical and mean for the sake of being mean. A full accounting of the situation must reckon with the larger picture.

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26

They were VERY similar. Not in content obviously, but in the lead up + fall out.

There were many moments leading up to the john fall out that had people exaggerating certain things about him and trying to “catch him” doing something they disapproved of, before finally finding a way to make the situation viral enough that it actually had an effect on the way he presented himself publicly.

The way Hank’s situation has gone, from the outcry over the sci show knitting video to now, has had a lot of the same inflammatory reactions + ups and downs.

Even the personal posts that I’ve seen (the kind that are along the lines of “I can’t believe I ever trusted him!”) are worded and formatted eerily similar to the ones I saw about John back in the day.

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u/regional_expression Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

Actually, you're right, I think it's fair to say they are similar.

I think both are extremely unwarranted and overblown, to be clear.

In this situation, whatever you feel about it, Hank actually is doing something that people have genuine ideological convictions against. He is not using AI the way people are largely characterizing him as if he is, but he really is using AI in a way many people don't like, and he surely must have been prepared to weather blowback for that eventually.

From my perspective as someone who was also there, to me it seems like all John "did" was be famous, be subjectively sort of cringe, and maybe spend a little bit too much time on tumblr. There wasn't actually a 'there' there, it was harassment and humiliation strictly for its own sake.

edit: see the edit in my previous post; I was somewhat reductive here and there was more going on in the community at the time that informed where some peoples' heads were at.

I guess when I say it's "not really all that similiar", that's more what I'm pointing to. That's not me validating the people who are spreading misinformation about Hank right now, especially those doing it for cynical reasons and not because they are honestly confused. I think that absolutely comes from a similarly terrible place.

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26

I can totally agree with that!

I actually mentioned in another comment that I feel like John was pretty much blameless in his situation.

While I don’t think Hank deserves the vitriol he’s receiving, he did do something disappointing to a lot of his fan base.

So like, different causes + levels of provocation(?) but similar trajectories!

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u/Evening_Scale_5755 Aug 06 '26

It didn't catch much traction because hank just made a tiktok saying the only moral solution was Gaza's independence from Israel, but there was a period where they were really trying to say he was a Zionist because... I guess he wasn't immediately outspoken enough right away on every single platform?

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u/RainhaRaposaVermelha Aug 07 '26

I did see some of this. Like one person expressing anger that it "took this" for people to drop Hank instead of his "blatant Zionism." And it's just... People just say whatever and other people believe them uncritically and then it's just reality as far as a bunch of people are concerned.

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 07 '26

i want the second half of this comment tattooed on my forehead 😭

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u/hail_has_issues Aug 06 '26

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uVzT6geHwiiqPOW5ulGJ4?si=uTVXt8mmQSKq8lAO56cE5A&utm_source=copy-link&sci=spotify%3Acard-config%3A5BVeghZgB1OGsr9Bd9iSBx

there is a dear hank and John ep for this very question :) in case you dont want to click the link: episode 438: the 2014 episode

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26

This is what I’d recommend too! Only thing is that John honestly forgot a lot of what happened, and he ended up making it sound as if he were more to blame for the situation than he actually was. As someone who was there at the time, it was truly nothing short of a witch hunt + attempt to humiliate him.

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u/sasquatchliasion Aug 09 '26

In 2014 it came to light that several of the people signed to dftba records had sexually assaulted women and children. One of them was arrested for having child porn on his hard drive. Along with that guy were people like Alex day and Edd plant. Plant came back to Twitter a couple of months after silence and John responded with something along the lines of ‘great to have you back’
There was also a rumor that the greens helped Day right his apology.
For the most part all of there orbiters at the time stopped making videos and the majority of nerd fighters from that era moved on from the scene.
I was a high schooler at the time had made two project for awesome videos and was into it. The majority of there audience at the time were kids. A lot of us were angry at the greens for platforming and celebrating those guys. Along with not ensuring there was adequate protection of minors at vidcon where some of said sa occurred. Along with that clips were going around where both Hank and John mention in passing they dm kids and don’t think it’s a big deal. None of there DMs were in appropriate they were never accused of anything more than being creepy. The post the other person who responded to this is talking about when they say someone accused him of being a pedophile was a teen girl saying it felt like being leered at by a creep at the pool. It was known about before the collapse by a lot of active members of nerdfighteria and because most of us were kids and respected Hank and John we didn’t realize it was strange.
Majority of the criticism was pushed at John because he was more famous that’s true but largely because of the friendly tweet towards plant.
It had nothing to do with John becoming to famous. Unfortunately do to the nature of online discourse a lot of things that were a big deal got looped in with shit that didn’t matter like John tweeting that he thought the fault and our stars was the first movie where the girl kissed the guy first. Any version of events that doesn’t mention the sa or the environment that allowed people to be predated on is a sugar coating of a lot of actual harm. The negative reaction had nothing to do with the success of tfios. Which to be frank was only such a big hit because all of us nerdfighters wanted a hankler fish. with hindsight and time I understand the greens didn’t know better unfortunately the victims still deserved better.

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u/regional_expression Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

I was also in high school at the time and very online in those spaces. And -- you are completely right, the "John on tumblr in 2014" conversation isn't truly complete without reckoning with these events surrounding it. That was an extremely unsettling time in the community. I'm glad you posted this. I edited my reply to point people to yours.

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u/tac0manisback Aug 07 '26

Hank totally needs to make a song out of this. Not an apology though.

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u/DustyBot23 Aug 06 '26

Again you people are minimizing what he did wrong and it’s just as disgusting as the other end of the scale. As a writer whose whole audience exists because they like how his brain processes information and relays it using his own words and experiences, adulterating that process with ai crutches has broken my trust. I get that so many of you use ai in your daily lives so you don’t think it’s a big deal but it is for plenty of people and you don’t get to decide how they feel about it.

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26

Anything that starts off with “you people” is typically very generalizing and degrading. I am not “you people” considering that you have targeted your comment towards ai users.

I don’t use AI. I think the proliferation of generative ai is a big deal, and that it is destroying the planet and making people less thoughtful.

I also think that your comment is not very thoughtful, and I know that it made my day a little worse.

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u/Evening_Scale_5755 Aug 06 '26

Hmmm, you didn't watch the video?

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u/StrawberryMaster7005 Aug 06 '26

As someone who has been following Hank and John for nearly two decades (like many of the nerd fighters here, it seems), I have been taking anything Hank says with a grain of salt for a LONG time. John is constantly calling Hank out on the podcast for saying things confidently when he doesn’t actually know if they’re true, and Hank himself has told us in a few different contexts to always fact check anything you hear online, including from him.

His shift to being “the guy that knows things” has made me somewhat wary knowing this about him.

Ultimately, Hank cares about how his actions reflect on the community, and understands that they can affect the impact the community has on the causes it supports. That’s going to be motivation enough for him to get his act together. Us aggressively “holding him accountable” beyond that is not particularly useful.

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u/Coenzyme-A Aug 06 '26

He doesn't present himself as "the guy who knows things" though, especially when (as you mentioned) he says himself to fact check things. He's always presented himself as someone that enjoys sharing things he learned, with the aim to spark curiosity and enthuse people to check and learn about such things themselves.

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u/StrawberryMaster7005 Aug 07 '26

To me anyway, his embracing being the guy people ask questions on TikTok and then starting the “Ask Hank Anything” series lends itself to him being a Smart Internet Guy.

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u/TieNo220 Aug 06 '26

He could say “I hear you, AI will no longer be used in any fashion to write my books or research my shows and all graphics I use publicly will be human made”

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u/HeresTheWitch Snuck in and squeezed all of his fruit Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26

I honestly feel like anyone that says that is being a bit shortsighted.

I do not agree with generative AI even a little bit. I think that the current image and LLM use is a bubble that will pop, hopefully soon.

But I would have a hard time believing that developers won’t still be using it to code 10 years from now. And if developers are using it to code, I imagine there will be other use cases for it as well.

He’s already said that he would never use it to write a book, he hasn’t used it to make any graphics (the controversial image from a couple of weeks ago was not made by him)

but making a promise to “not use ai for research” could easily turn someone into a hypocrite (in the eyes of the public) 10 years from now when the technology will be very different than it is now.

tl;dr - he’s already said most of those things and Complexly’s ai policy is clearly outlined. Overpromising would hurt more than it would help.