John Green at VidCon: 'Growth has not always been good news'

ANAHEIM, California -- Fault in Our Stars author John Green and his brother Hank found a huge following on YouTube with their channel Vlogbrothers. 

Now, at the seventh annual VidCon -- the biggest conference to date -- the two men seemed torn over what that growth has meant for their audience, and the Internet community as a whole.

“We’ve all heard the business maxim that if you aren’t growing, you’re dying,” John Green said in his keynote Thursday. “But for my career and with our audience, growth has not always been good news.”

It was an odd theme to hit on, considering the success of VidCon seemingly correlates with the growing popularity of digital influencers.

But the purpose of John Green's cautionary keynote was to remind VidCon attendees to not lose sight of why they joined YouTube and other video platforms in the first place.

"Online video is about hearing the voices we otherwise wouldn't hear," John Green said. 

The entire speech underscored that viral fame should not be the goal.

“In comments, our viewers are far more likely to refer to me as ‘John’ these days — whereas when we had fewer viewers, they almost referred to me as ‘you’ because they were talking to me instead of talking about me.”

However, just because the digital video industry has evolved, John Green said it should still be about impact rather than monetization.

“Creative projects do not exist to create revenue," he said. "Revenue exists to fund creative projects.”

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