John Green is wrong about a lot of things and the way he interacts with his fanbase sometimes bothers me (as well as a lot of other people), and these are legitimate things that he deserves criticism for
defacing a post he made to make it look like he admitted to liking dick, laughing about this as though it’s not homophobic as fuck, and responding to his displeasure with “fuck off and go cry into your big piles of money” is not a valid method of criticism, it just makes you look like a jealous callous asshole
A thing to understand about the Green Bros’ fanbase is that it’s massive. Overwhelmingly huge. Tons of them haven’t even read any of John’s books, but know them from their early (and continuing, and very genuinely valuable) YouTube work. Educational stuff like Crash Course and SciShow.
And… like, I don’t think John Green fully grasps how YOUNG that fanbase is. He’s been doing Internet stuff since at least 2007. Nearly nine years. Kids who were 12 when he started are old enough to drink now. So I think he didn’t realize that newer fans were so much younger.
And above all else, he didn’t think of himself as a threatening presence, because he never threatened anyone. People felt threatened by him. I only half-understand why.
And now he’s left social media (other than the Vlogbrothers channel) and people are still pulling this shit and being incredibly gross while doing it and it’s just
they’ve found a punching bag that won’t ever punch back.
John Green has said some stuff I find really dubious (the Anne Frank thing for example) but someone’s still gonna have to explain to me how the post-editing thing wasn’t sexual harassment