Hank Green Explores the Dark Side of Internet Fame, With Robots

The first novel by YouTube star Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, is about a young woman named April who becomes an internet celebrity after posting video of a mysterious alien robot. She quickly discovers that being famous has a lot of downsides--something Green and his friends have learned the hard way. "I started to have notoriety in my late 20s or early 30s--like the first time someone recognized me in public was probably when I was 29 years old," Green says in Episode 328 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "Whereas for a lot of my friends, this happened in their teens or early 20s, and it was sort of their first job, being a famous person, without any of the infrastructure of normal famous-person life, because this was all so new, and that was difficult." April soon draws the ire of Peter Petrawicki, a professional troll who accuses her of being in league with the alien invaders.