I’ve started Twittering (Tweeting?), although I have to admit I’m not sure what the sense of it is. Right along with Facebook, I can’t help but feel this is an outlet that will end up working against my productivity rather than with it. I’ve seen countless articles and newscasts with flashy titles like “How Twitter can make you a better writer!” and “Twitter starts paying the bills!”, but I’m not buying it for a second.

It seems to me that the main problem facing a company that’s built around the question of “What are you doing?” is that, barring a few exceptions, nobody much cares what you’re doing. There is something disingenuous about the service, and while all online networking is hollow at the core, Twitter–with it’s 140 characters–is even hollower.

At any rate, I’ll be trying it on for a while. There are a couple of people that I enjoy following. Notably, realjohngreen (one of the beloved vlogbrothers) and, a first-rate Twitter celebrity and founder of Digg.com, kevinrose.

As always, here is a youtube video that sums up my feelings better than I can (courtesy of Kevin Rose’s via Twitter).

This won’t be terribly long.

One of the wonderful things about this internet is discovering things for the first time that peaked in popularity years ago. I didn’t discover the Vlog Brothers recently, but I did discover them more recently than legions more of their devoted fans.

As you probably know, the Vlog Brothers began an experiment a few years ago in textless communication. No letters, no emails, no instant messages, no texts, presumably no carrier pigeons, etc. Instead, they began communicating twice per week via YouTube video and, miraculously, gained followers. A lot of them.

What started as a video message board for Hank and John Green turned into an internet phenomenon, surging in popularity in step with its video host. Hank and John began to campaign to decrease “worldsuck” and branded their followers as Nerdfighters.

I am a Nerdfighter. You should be a Nerdfighter, too. Want to become a Nerdfighter? Hank Green can tell you how.

As they became more popular, Hank and John began to tighten up their production, limiting videos to a strict four minutes of crisp (generally less than 10 seconds) cut scenes. Anything over the four minute limit is punishable by, well, punishment.

They’ve built themselves into the kind of celebrities the internet allows for. Both are immensely talented in their own rights, John making his living as a New York Times best-selling author of Young Adult novels, and Hank as a web programmer, freelance writer, and a budding comic song writer, using his YouTube platform to showcase a new song every Wednesday.

New videos posted at YouTube.com/VlogBrothers are one of the few respites I look forward to during the week.

If you have a minute, take time to browse a selection of their most popular videos. If you aren’t hooked by the time you get through them, I don’t know that you have what it takes to be a Nerdfighter.