2022
“We aren’t heading toward a perfect world, we’re heading toward a better one.”
-Hank Green, P4A 2022
“I’ve got purple hair, a pink mustache, and a serious message to deliver.”
-John Green, P4A 2022
The 2022 Project for Awesome livestream began already having raised over $800,000 including matching funds (almost $200,000 on Tiltify, the total without matching funds). As has been the case for a few years, the money raised in the first half of the P4A (until noon Eastern on Saturday) was divided between Partners in Health and Save the Children. The money raised in the second half was divided among the top-voted charities. Voting was live during the livestream of the Project for Awesome (noon Friday-noon Sunday).
Despite starting the livestream a few minutes late and crashing Tiltify almost immediately, P4A 2022 was off to a roaring start. John appeared to still have the 2019 P4A balloons behind him.
John acknowledged that the vibes for this Project for Awesome were likely to be a little different than P4A’s of the past due to the recent death of Partners in Health cofounder (and friend of Nerdfighteria) Paul Farmer as well as Russia’s recent invasion of and war on Ukraine. As John said, “we are so excited to be able to spend the next 48 hours focusing on people who are really trying to do good in the world.”
Like the previous year, John was impressed by Hank’s ability to add memes and gifs to the stream. Hank had multiple camera angles and even wrote “projectforawesome.com/donate” on his computer monitor.
John and Hank then entertained the chat by trying to complete the Wordle together. Despite there being few options left, John took a while to correctly identify the word “vivid,” but this was at least partly because Hank kept saying there was an L in the final word, even though L had already been eliminated.
At 46 minutes into the livestream, we reached $1,000,000 raised overall, but Hank and John did not notice until we were well past that amount.
Their inability to notice is understandable when compared with how long it has taken to reach one million dollars in the past.
After setting off a very large confetti cannon in his office, Hank shared a P4A 2022 miracle: the ever-floating confetti. Nerdfighteria loved the confetti so much that people made fan art of it.
At the end of the first hour, John noticed an important donation message. Ellen was watching the livestream while on a bus and noticed a stranger doing the same. They donated to say hi to the other person on the bus also watching the livestream. John and Hank tasked Ellen with finding out who this person is, meeting them, and taking a selfie. John declared, “It’s not necessarily a romcom, we don’t want to put that kind of energy into it, but if it turns out to end in a wedding, that’s also fine.” For the rest of the P4A, there would be requests for “Ellen from the bus” updates.
After an hour of successful crowdfunding, Hank left and John took over hosting solo. He admitted to his secret goal: reaching $1.5 million before returning the stream to Hank in two hours.
John’s time hosting included meeting with Dr. Joia Mukherjee from Partners in Health and a visit from his son, Henry. Meanwhile, there was an Ellen from the bus update! Cambria emailed John to say they think they were the bus person but they needed a way to reach Ellen. John asked Ellen to email as well so he could connect them.
At two hours and 10 minutes into the livestream we raised $1.5 million! As a reward to everyone except John, Henry was allowed to punch John to celebrate this milestone. “It hurt. It didn’t hurt as bad as when your mom punched me, but it hurt,” John remarked. Henry assured us that he was not trying to hit as hard as he could. John then used the power of polls to have donors decide what color his daughter, Alice, would get to dye his hair later.
Chat asked John if he would get a Hanklerfish tattoo if we reached $2 million. Here is John’s full response, for reasons that will be important later:
“John, will you get a Hanklerfish tattoo at $2 million? No. [laughter] No, of course not! [laughter] I’m not, first, I’m not getting a tattoo of any kind. I got a tattoo once but it was made out of water instead of ink. So I had all the feeling of getting a tattoo and it said DFTBA and it looked pretty cool for a few days, actually. And then it disappeared because it was made out of water, not ink. And that was fun. I thought that was okay. I mean, I would be willing to do that but not for $2 million. Maybe for like, I don’t know, two and a half? Three? Whatever we won’t get to. [laughter] Whatever we won’t get to.”
The face of a man underestimating Nerdfighteria.
Through the magic of featured videos, John suddenly was without a beard and left only with a mustache! Hank returned to take over hosting the stream.
Hank had balloons with ideas of activities for him to complete. He popped one balloon every $50,000 raised (after two balloons, Hank changed the amount to every $25,000). The first balloon instructed Hank to sing “All Star” after it was translated from English to Aramaic and back to English.
The second balloon set us all on a course that we can never return from… it gives us Crank Green.
As Hank cleared a space in his office to be a crab, he kept repeating to himself, “pretend to be a crab, you have to do a good job,” putting the emphasis on different words each time.
As Hank finished being a crab, he was joined by Ettore Rossetti from Save the Children who explained some of their current projects including their work in Ukraine.
Hank was then joined by the crew at Thought Cafe where they played Gartic Phone, an online drawing game. During the game, Hank popped another balloon instructing him to pretend to die when a random timer went off. “I keep expecting to die and I haven’t yet,” Hank said just before the timer went off and he died.
During the game, this drawing of Hank being a crab inspired the name Crank Green.
Another balloon instructed Hank to write a haiku about whatever inside joke had happened on stream recently.
Hank’s Haiku:
I am not a tube cat
But I am Bob Roscoli
Crank Green: Corndog salesman
Hank was then joined by Arnie Niekamp, Gummy Bear, and Hank's son, Orin.
Orin instructed chat to donate but said he would not donate his toys. Orin then acted like a crab and did a GREAT job.
(Note: hosts children’s faces are not shown in this lore, so this is the best picture you will get of the AWESOME crab, but you can see how awesome it is from Arnie’s face.)
Hank set off another confetti cannon to celebrate reaching $600,000 on Tiltify, followed by another balloon which instructed him to blow up a balloon until it popped (Orin popped it with his elbow).
John then returned to take over the stream and informed us that Ellen and Cambria were connecting via email and THINGS ARE HAPPENING. John was joined by astronomer Phil Plait and then John’s family arrived to celebrate the 15th Project for Awesome.
At this point, all P4A’s combined had raised over $15 million!
Upon reaching $1.7 million in this P4A, John’s family dyed his hair… and mustache.
While John coped with this look, he and Sarah dyed their children’s hair as well. Do not worry, John found some joy in this new style after the initial shock wore off.
While John and Sarah discussed P4A, Sarah informed us that she would not say Beanie Sandfurbs is a friend of hers and that she prefers this look on John to peanut butter face (which he had a slight allergic reaction to).
John and Sarah passed the stream to Taylor, Miriam, and Darcy for discussions, bat art, and cronches.
During last year’s P4A, Taylor and Miriam had chat help them name the two containers of Gatorade they were mistakenly given in a Target order. While they had made it through P4Aterade, Detergent’nt was still with them for this P4A.
Upon reaching donation milestones, Darcy was given carrots to cronch, Taylor and Miriam drew bats on their faces, and Gatorade-related cocktails were consumed. Taylor also told us of the art pit in her school, leading to discussions of if chat’s schools had pits and if pit is legs (a poll determined that pit is not legs, but just barely).
Darcy, Taylor, and Miriam then passed the stream over to J Carlin who continued the tradition of playing trivia with chat (but this time the answer was not always red!). Since his brother, Ben, was at Disney instead of joining P4A, a poll was run on how to prank him when he returned. Donors decided Ben’s desk items should be taped down and covered in googly eyes.
J returned the stream to Hank who was joined by the Gregory brothers. Together they began writing a song about becoming a crab while Hank displayed the filter he made from some Crank Green fan art.
Meanwhile, Ellen informed us in chat that they and Cambria would be meeting up the next day.
We all celebrated reaching $777,777.77 on Tiltify and Hank popped another balloon telling him to eat Dr. Pepper baked beans.
Then Hank streamed alone for a bit and talked about why we are doing this. “We aren’t heading toward a perfect world, we’re heading toward a better one.”
As is the way with P4A, after that deep thought a balloon task told Hank to write “butt” on his head. “‘This is what the balloon told me to do!’ is what I will say to my wife later tonight,” declared Hank. We would later learn that Hank could not fully wash “BUTT” off his head before having a play date with Orin and had to explain this to other parents.
Hank then revealed one of his props for the evening: the Banana Loca, a machine created to take the core out of a banana and fill it with a semi-liquid of your choice. Hank then used the Banana Loca to try to put beans in a corndog. This method was not the most successful (mostly just bean liquid made it into the corndog) but there were plans on how to innovate and improve the process.
“I can feel it getting bigger” Hank remarked while filling the corndog.
Hank began to sing, “Upside, inside out, BEANS IN BANANA LOCA” because of a comment in the chat.
Hank was joined by Joe Hanson and they debated if the forehead is part of the face or if the eyebrows are the northern boundary. This began a new “is butt legs” style question but dictionary.com and a poll on Tiltify confirmed that, of course, the forehead is a part of the face.
A balloon then instructed Hank to put on lipstick blindfolded. Instead of a blindfold, Hank used a grocery bag. Joe “helped” Hank complete the task by insisting that it must be more challenging (Hank must use only his left pinky and ring fingers).
Hank was compared to Miranda Sings because of their similar makeup styles.
Hank visited with the folks of Nerdcrafteria, Nerdfighteria’s Minecraft server that Hank began but has not visited in a long time. They took us on a tour and then played games with Hank.
They were in the process of creating Crank Green and Ellen and Cambria on the bus!
Hank handed the stream over to Cakes by ChoppA (and his friends Mat and Zac). A poll decided that ChoppA should create a Crank cake (rather than a P4A logo cake). The cake was pink in honor of John’s pink mustache.
As ChoppA carved the cake, they were joined by Louie from Club Crochet.
ChoppA then handed the stream over to Rosianna who drew cats, made goals, and kept us going with kitty time and dog o’clock!
Rosianna also used polls on Tiltify to decide what genre of Pooh story she should write and how to dress up Pooh. Donors decided on a rain cloud with a rainbow umbrella.
Rosianna returned the stream to John, but his internet was struggling so Rosianna took over again to do a bookshelf tour while John drove to the office.
John took us on a tour of the office including the Chewie cardboard cutout, his Holden Caulfield people hunting hat, and a dinosaur balloon from P4A2019.
John was then joined by mentalist Mark Gibson who was successful in stunning John with his mentalism.
Then, Ian donated $6,000 which was the largest donation so far. While later there would be larger donations, chat would continue to measure how far we were from milestones in how many Ians away they were.
We reached $2 million in total donations during the first half, which had never happened before.
John celebrated with a Happy Dance and singing while slow dancing with Chewie.
“I’ve got purple hair, a pink mustache, and a serious message to deliver,” declared John.
He ran a poll asking Nerdfighteria if he could shave his mustache. The answer was yes.
John handed the stream to Taylor and Darcy once more for more art and cronch.
Taylor taught the chat about name grudges and that hers was Taylor Swift. This was P4A (Taylor’s Version). She then ate a carrot dipped in Gatorade and it was “absolutely cursed, do not recommend.”
John promised to match $3,000 if we reached $1 million on Tiltify in the first half and we did!
To celebrate, Taylor and Darcy dressed up as dinosaurs and danced to the Jurassic Park theme song, during which, Hallease joined the stream.
We returned to the high school pit conversation from the previous night while donors voted on which dinosaur was better: Taylor or Darcy. Darcy won, of course, but a later poll decided Taylor was a better crab than Hallease, so Taylor was not let down by chat in all polls.
At the end of her time hosting, Taylor ate another Gatorade dipped carrot and then gave the stream to Taha, Sabrina, and Melissa of Answer in Progress.
Last year they made choccy milk to make the pain go away. This year? The pain cometh. Taha built a sandwich using a wide variety of ingredients from his house. Each time $1,000 was donated he added another ingredient. Everyone involved begged him to raise the amount but he insisted.
In order, the final sandwich had: ketchup, Haribo steak (gummy bears that had melted together into a solid disk), “normal” cake, brownie, cereal, nutella, chili flakes, cream cheese, deli meat, yogurt and mint, salt, crackers, biscuit, raisins, olives, and banana. While this was being constructed, chat (and Hank) insisted that beans be included. Taha texted his mother who confirmed that they had beans, so he added them to the sandwich as well.
Taha described this eating experience as “speed running a meal” and promised to eat the rest, which he reported he did in chat.
Answer in Progress handed hosting to Craig Benzine aka WheezyWaiter who began by singing to chat while running a poll about what he should do if the Tiltify goal was reached during his hour.
He ran many more polls while teaching chat how to make a mocktail.
Despite not quite reaching the goal, Craig with a Wig still read a poem to chat.
Craig then gave the stream to Dr. Aaron Carroll and Dr. Tiffany Doherty from Healthcare Triage, who ran polls on if John should stop drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and if sneezing is normal.
While initially not understanding “sneezing is never normal” as a joke from Dear Hank and John, the team was very passionate about normalizing sneezing.
After answering chat’s health questions and a Dr. Carroll bookshelf tour, they handed hosting over to Blake and Kallie of PBS Eons who painted dinosaurs.
Kallie even used a cast of Montana’s Rex’s arm to paint and showed a model of a T-Rex brain.
Blake and Kallie passed the stream to Hannah Hart for an hour of art, songs, and cats.
Upon reaching a goal, Hannah ran a poll on if she should end her hour with one minute of sustained eye contact with chat.
Voters said yes, so her last minute of hosting before giving the stream back to John was intense eye contact.
John asked chat for highlights from the stream and admitted that he saw the “corndog incident” from the night before. He then read parts of a story he and Sarah were working on before being joined by Danielle Bainbridge.
While Sarah and the kids prepared an activity for John, John was joined by Vanessa Zolton who gave him the “What Pride and Prejudice Character Are You” quiz. John was hoping to be, and was, Mr. Darcy.
We then passed P4A 2021’s total of $2,367,704.42; making this the biggest P4A ever! There were confetti poppers and celebrations!
As John prepared for his family activity, there was an Ellen from the bus update! Ellen and Cambria met and rode the bus together.
Then John was blindfolded and given a variety of foods to taste test and identify. Meanwhile, a poll was happening to determine if he would eat the full container of kippers or sardines.
An anonymous donor gave $20,000 to ensure John would eat all of the sardines. Chat believed this donor was Ryan Reynolds, but there was no evidence of that. John ate the sardines while continuing to read the story he and Sarah were writing, before handing over hosting responsibilities to Jessi from Animal Wonders and Nicole Sweeney.
They ran a poll for which animal would get to try painting for the first time while showing us around to meet the animals.
Nicole and Jessi then delivered the stream to Destin and Dino Space Program Mission Control. For the 2022 P4A, Destin and his team were writing names on the Awesome People Board, animal magnets, and dinosaurs being sent to the Moon, Mars, or the James Webb Space Telescope. As always, it was two hours of chaos, joy, and fundraising.
Despite having made many dinosaurs, more needed to be made mid-shift. Destin encouraged his team by saying “every dino you glue could potentially be $1000 for charity, so no big deal.” To complete all the needed launches, some dinos were even tripled up to travel to the moon! Unfortunately, we learned that triple-dino technology does not always work.
During the chaos, a donation came in from Andrea, which included a marriage proposal to Steve.
As Destin said, “we can’t pressure people. This is personal, I don’t know what to do!” While we did not get an answer as to the outcome of this proposal, Andrea and Steve’s dinos were sent to the Moon.
Additionally, John, Hank, and Katherine all went to the James Webb Space Telescope.
Hank began his next hosting segment by showing off many of the memes that had been made so far and eating maggot flavored potato chips (because a balloon told him to). Hank then decided that because the McElroy’s livestream was trending on Twitter, P4A also needed to be trending on Twitter, even though Hank is known for hating trending topics.
Another balloon told Hank to put as many Awesome Socks on his hands as possible, which he did until he was joined by Mercury Stardust.
They discussed home repair and how Hank could do a Science Boy-lesque show (Hank seemed to be against this idea). Hank started a poll about if people could beat 6 pelicans in a fight. Hank then popped a balloon and he and Mercury spent one minute ever-increasing their smiles.
After the joy of smiles, Hank was joined by Lindsay Ellis and Kirsten Banks to discuss science fiction, aliens, and why we don’t have tails.
Hank then popped the balloon he was hoping for: the beanana.
Having learned from the previous night’s attempt, Hank had adjusted his method to ensure full beans made it into the banana. This took time, so he had prepared the beanana in advance (which means he had a bean-filled banana sitting in his office for a while). As he unwrapped the beanana, Hank reflected on his choices and how lucky he was.
While eating the beanana, Brennan Lee Mulligan joined Hank. As Hank explained what had just occurred, Brennan described the Banana Loca as “a menacing contraption.” They explored the Banana Loca website and looked through the suggested recipes (both with and without alcohol).
Hank then presented Brennan with an offer he could not refuse.
“Do you want to join the Banana Loca community with me in a very special way?” Hank asked.
“Boy howdy. Yeah. I do,” replied Brennan. And Hank unwrapped a chili cheese corndog. Hank cored the corndog and demonstrated how to prepare the Banana Loca to fill a food with beans.
He then filled the chili cheese corndog with Dr. Pepper baked beans, to which Brennan replied, “It’s really upsetting. The whole proboscis situation. Truly alarming.”
This brought us to another balloon, which instructed them to do the Macarena very slowly. Hank began a poll on who should be the Taskmaster: Brennan or Hank, and they both discussed how disappointed they were in the previous poll. Far too few people believed they could take on 6 pelicans. Brennan wished more people believed in themselves and Hank agreed. Brennan assured chat that the AC of a pelican is only 10.
More fun conversations were had, including Hank’s admission to Brennan that he enjoyed drinking Baileys with ice and called it Icy Milk.
“You call it that? Just to yourself?” questioned Brennan. Hank claimed he had never been roasted so hard.
Hank stepped away for a moment and Brennan was joined by Butfartman and Patrick Rothfuss. Brennan was very impressed with Butfartman’s moves and needed America to know that THIS was content.
Hank returned and Pat said that he does drink Baileys with ice, but he does not drink Icy Milks.
All three then discussed different theories of comedy and the science of humor, sometimes using P4A memes as examples, until Hank and Brennan realized their time was up and left the stream in Pat’s capable hands.
Pat entertained chat while running a poll about if he should read or sing and then passed the stream to Rosianna, who was ready to celebrate the P4A Quinceañera!
Rosianna showed the kitty drawings she made the day before and ran a poll on if she should draw a Quinceañera Bunny or Quinceañera Pooh.
Again, Rosianna motivated chat with goals and ran a poll to decide how to paint her face. She became Princess Pizza John!
Art time with Rosianna continued as we passed the most money ever raised on Tiltify and kept moving.
Rosianna also dyed her hair and promised to remain Princess Pizza John when her pizza was delivered if certain goals were met.
John took over the stream before the pizza was delivered, but Rosianna jumped back on to keep her promise and tweeted a picture of Princess Pizza John eating pizza, which inspired many drawings.
As John hosted, he reflected on how Project for Awesome has grown. “I recommend getting old,” he said, “it’s super weird.” John ran a poll about who would win in a fight: Crank Green or Beanie Sandfurbs. Crank Green won by a significant margin. Then, with encouragement from chat and reminders of his off-hand comment from the beginning of P4A, John agreed to get a water tattoo if we reached $3 million before the stream ended.
Henry was very excited about this idea and found more things in their house that could be perks to help raise the funds. He set off many confetti poppers as the total went higher and higher. As John reviewed some of the highlights of the stream, Henry questioned that there were tears.
“Yes there have been tears. We’re raising money for charity, man” was John’s response.
Hank rejoined the stream for the last hour and was entertained by John’s underestimation of Nerdfighteria. Hank was certain we would reach $3 million before the stream ended. A poll was set up asking if we would reach $3 million. The possible answers were “YES” and “DFTBA.”
A balloon was popped and it instructed Hank to CRONCH, so Hank grabbed another banana and cronched away to Orin and Henry’s disgust and delight.
The funds were coming in fast, as they often do at the end of the stream. Another balloon was popped and Hank ate blowfish flavored chips.
Chat was measuring the money needed for a water tattoo in Ians as we inched closer to our goal. Orin very excitedly checked the total and informed us all that “we’re over $100!” and “it turns out a hundred dollars isn’t really that much,” which delighted John and Hank (and Hank explained to Orin that it depends on the situation).
Unsurprisingly, we reached $3,000,000. “I might have miscalculated by a little bit. Never underestimate Nerdfighteria,” remarked John.
Gummy Bear joined the celebrations as John reflected on the wide range of emotions that come from the Project for Awesome.
In the final minutes of the livestream, Hank and John were joined by their families. As the cousins made faces at each other, everyone celebrated the shenanigans of the weekend and the amazing amount of world suck that was decreased by Nerdfighteria working together.
In the end, there were 82,765 votes cast to decide how the money raised in the second half of the 2022 Project for Awesome would be spent. $2,023,579.42 was raised on Tiltify bringing the grand total to $3,236,501.42!
