Madison Kwiecinski – Editor-in-Chief 

Mvk5945@psu.edu

Personally, in the world in which we live today, I believe we have entirely too many people who could be considered celebrities. From movie stars to famous singers to those who simply have a few viral videos on TikTok, it is becoming hard to differentiate between actual celebrities and those who are experiencing their five minutes of fame. 

However, the extensive list of who could possibly be considered famous, accompanied with the added access the typical public gets to these people’s lives through short video clips, obviously leads to people having their favorites. How someone handles the fame they receive says a lot about the person, so I would like to take the remainder of this article to talk about two people who I think do this incredibly well, the Green brothers. 

John Green and Hank Green are some of the most incredible types of people to be famous, because they really remain on a humble level despite it. They are both strange and unique individuals yet it does not feel like it is in any way forced or even really influenced by the media attention they receive. 

For example, in October of last year Hank Green went viral for a very comical stitch response to a Tiktok video @howdyhowdyyall had posted where she posed the question ‘why do people not just eat grass,’ which, in all honesty, was a valid question. 

Hank Green is known on TikTok for often responding to ‘science-ish’ questions people have, especially because prior to his presence on the app he ran a Youtube channel with his brother called “Crash Course” where Hank broke down science based concepts for his streamers. 

Instead of taking the time to explain to Howdy the scientific reason people should not eat grass, he simply screamed into the camera, “Don’t eat grass!” four times. 

The two content creators then went back and forth a few times, with Hank continuing to post videos, trolling the internet for weeks and refusing to tell us why we cannot eat grass. To be fair, it has something to do with the cellulose content and that cows have bacteria and their stomachs, but the funniest part about it is the entire internet just wanted to hear that from Hank. 

John Green, who is perhaps best known for his numerous best selling novels including “The Fault in Our Stars,” “Looking for Alaska,” and “An Abundance of Katherines” has also accomplished many other incredible things, and remains a funny existential and down to earth person. On his blog, he talks about a period of time when he and his brother stepped away from print for a brief period and focused exclusively on their YouTube channel together. 

It reads, “The videos spawned a community of people called nerdfighters who fight for intellectualism and to decrease the overall worldwide level of suck.” It continues, “Decreasing suck takes many forms: Nerdfighters have raised millions of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world; they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.” 

John Green started a coffee brand called “Awesome Coffee Club,” with the general goal of it to really be all around awesome coffee, start to finish. The Awesome Coffee Club works with farmers to make sure everything is grown humanely and sustainably, and they ensure high quality products that are shipped in a way more sustainable to the environment. This makes the coffee a little more expensive, but that is kind of the point. The Awesome Coffee Club also donates 100 percent of profits to fighting maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone. 

There is also the Awesome Sock Club, which is a subscription service where they hire small artists to design pairs of socks which are then shipped to subscribers on a monthly basis. This is again all made sustainably, and 100 percent of profits are donated to combating maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone, helping to build the Maternal Center of Excellence there. 

John Green also just fits the down to earth, existential type of person you search for in the media. He regularly posts TikToks about going on his “stupid mental health walks,” in which he encourages others to take a daily walk. He says that the most annoying part of his stupid mental health walks is that they do, in fact, work. 

From watching Crash Course throughout high school and reading John’s books to finding them on TikTok and watching them start incredible and interesting charities, they have never been anything but entertaining and interesting. These two brothers have remained the kind of people I am happy to support and love to learn weird unique things from, such as why we should not eat grass.