Project for Awesome

About four years ago, in late 2007 I was browsing YouTube and everywhere I looked each video had the same thumbnail image. 

I had absolutely no idea what a Nerdfighter was and what the Project for Awesome meant.  All I saw were over a hundred videos with the same thumbnail invading the most commented, most viewed, most popular, and highest rated sections of YouTube.  It was a virtual takeover of the website! I had never seen something so intriguing before.  The first video I clicked on led me to the vlogbrothers.  This video explains what the Project for Awesome is and what their goal is.  

In this video Hank Green from vlogbrothers explains how he and hundreds of other have planned to take over YouTube.  They would make a video, and the thumbnail for that video would be the same.  After making the video, they would go on other videos and comment, rate, favorite, share, and watch them as many times as possible.  This made hundreds of videos flood all the top sections of YouTube.  This was their takeover.  For this one day, on December 17, if you went on YouTube, you would find hundreds of Project for Awesome videos.  This unto itself is creative. They have utilized the system of top rated, top commented, most popular, most commented, and most watched to suite their needs.  They showed great creativity and ingenuity in utilizing the YouTube system to raise awareness for their cause.  It was the first time I had ever seen anything like this, I needed to know more about what they were doing. 

Their cause was not to become famous for a day, not to irritate YouTube users with their videos, but to raise money for a charity.  The vlogbrothers created the Project for Awesome to raise money for a charity that would "decrease world suck." This means that each video would be about a charity of the makers choosing. In every video a new cause was mentioned, and in each one, it urged people to donate, or make a video of their own to raise awareness.  The vlogbrothers and hundreds of others had infiltrated YouTube in order to promote charity.  It was a difficult project of which the people had to be very involved and determined.  Each video had to be commented on, each had to be rated, and watched.  If not, then this project would fail.  Yet it did not fail, and thousands of dollars were raised to a variety of charities. 

Each year, there is always a Project for Awesome, each more successful than the year before.  Each year charities are promoted and thousands of dollars are donated. In 2011, a website was released for the Project for Awesome, so far over $71,000 have been donated since it's creation. This is project is simply for the good of charities.  It was profoundly successful and extremely creative.  These two brothers of the vlogbrothers decided that there should be more good in the world, and to raise awareness they used YouTube.  They took over YouTube and made anyone who went to the website that day become aware of the Project for Awesome.