After a year’s worth of work, Hannah Lindgren gets to do her part in the effort to decrease Worldsuck, a term coined by the VlogBrothers as the amount of suck in the world.
Lindgren’s documentary about Nerdfighter culture, “A Film to Decrease Worldsuck,” premieres tonight. Nerdfighter is a term for superfans of the VlogBrothers duo: author John Green and his brother, musician and web series creator Hank Green. The documentary is not the story of the brothers, but rather the people inspired by them.
“I think it’s a good balance between telling people what Nerdfighteria is, while also being something that Nerdfighters enjoy,” Lindgren said.
The senior film and TV studies major created the film for her honors thesis. The idea came to be last March after running into John Green at an Indianapolis movie theater. She originally planned to write a paper about the VlogBrothers, but that soon changed.
“The idea of doing a film on them grew from a spark to a smolder to a full-blown fire that I couldn’t put out, and I just had to do it,” she said.
Lindgren got permission from the brothers to do the film, but they could not sit for interviews for it. This led to the idea about focusing her project on Nerdfighters instead. She formed a team and traveled to VidCon last summer, distributing information and gathering interviews.
“I think the most rewarding thing is that so many people got on board,” Lindgren said. “I’m happy with the final product because so many people were involved, and so many people supported it.”
Lindgren had a team of liaisons that helped her collect stories of Nerdfighters. They asked questions that, when pieced together, would tell the story of “Nerdfighteria,” she said. It progresses from VidCon coverage, to the history of Nerdfighteria, to the personal connections people have to Nerdfighteria.
“I was introduced to Nerdfighteria by other Nerdfighters, and so I have always loved the community,” said Dawn Schoonover, a freshman telecommunications major. “I love what we do, what what we stand for, that we’re more than just admirers. We actually take action and try to make a difference in the world. I think it’s something to be greatly admired, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
Schoonover said she’s excited that someone like Lindgren could accomplish this, which is one of the reasons she wants to support the project.
Although Lindgren has the support of the Nerdfighter community, she’s still nervous.
“Like any person who works on something for so long, and it’s like your baby, you’re scared to show it to people,” she said.
Lindgren said that half of the people there will be her family and friends, but an additional 50 people have RSVP’d “yes” on Facebook.
Lindgren wrote on the Facebook group that, “in the spirit of Nerdfighteria,” the admission to the event is at least one nonperishable food item, which will be donated to Second Harvest Food Bank.
Nerdfighters are not only known as superfans of the VlogBrothers, but they frequently participate in charity work, such as the annual Project for Awesome.
“I’m hoping that Nerdfighters just enjoy seeing all these people from all over the world who did participate in it,” Lindgren said. “I hope that people who didn’t know about Nerdfighters, that they’re inspired by them. They can appreciate them as a community.”
