Twelve Threads

I get the impression that you feel bad about turning off comments because people like to talk here, but I think they affect you the most by far, emotionally and potentially in time spent managing them — so I don't think you should feel bad if you'd prefer them off at any point. And since most of the nice comments you mentioned are talking to you about how much they enjoy your videos and thanking you, I'd guess that most of those commenters would agree.

The double ending was genius. Maybe the real ending was the symmetries we made along the way.

this is honestly a narrative masterpiece, the way everything tied back together, no gun left unchekhov'd

I just watched an unboxing video of the BTS “advent” calendar thing and if I translated everything to paper right, it looks like Vi made the BTS octahedron correctly!

This is such a brilliant video about how our engagement with online spaces work. It's one of the best re-creations of online experience and attention fracturing that I've ever encountered. -John

vi doesn't know i exist, but she's the reason i changed my perspective on math for the better <3

"living your life as your life and not as a results factory for someone else"
damn, that's a good quote

I found the pieces about comments and engagement really relevant; comments are such a mixed blessing - The good bits are really good; the bad bits are especially bad, and even when the bad bits are a tiny fraction of the whole, they still seem to taint the whole experience.

Your video "twelve tones" from 8 years ago completely shook up my point of view on music and music theory at a time in my life where everything seemed boring and by the book. Regardless whether or not you view yourself as an influencer, I do believe you've influenced me to think critically, creatively, and most importantly for myself, and for that, I cannot thank you enough.

Your discussion on comments and how they aren't a democracy due to thoughtfulness decreasing with frequency made me realize something: There's no way I can counter the flood of shorter thoughtless comments but I should at least take a bit more part in the system. Leave some of my own thoughts gathered up from over the years and try to push up other comments that deserve better than being buried.

I've been in your audience for over a decade now and while what you create isn't as dense as many of the other videos by education creators, by far you convey the enjoyment and wonder at it all far better and in ways that has shaped how I thought about music, math, and their intersection with all other parts of life. I'm under no illusion; our relation is as tenuous as strangers passing on a street, but I hope I can speak for others when I say that you've had a larger beneficial impact on people than your comments would indicate. I struggle to find the words to thank you properly for this, for making the world a larger place for all of us. Maybe I'll manage to leave another comment before another decade has passed with some better way of conveying all this.

"Sometimes, a precious free afternoon [...] is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence, and if I don't do it, no one will."
this resonates spiritually with me

THIS is what integrity looks like when it comes to content creation on the internet. It was a true pleasure to spend 36 minutes and 27 seconds together with you on a walk through a mindspace that all came together in the shape of an octahedron. And for what it is worth, of all the platonic solids, octahedra are my favorite. Hope all is well with you in your world.

When Vi said, it was good to see you, it resonated in my soul, I felt it like they were a friend I hadn't seen in a while.

It was good to see you too Vi.

I almost feel bad leaving a comment here, especially considering I usually don’t comment at all. Everything useful has already been said by other comments. I don’t even have a heartwarming story to tell or anything like that. I just want to thank you. Your videos have always brought joy to me. Your math doodle videos entertained me in high school. Your video on gender actually helped me understand myself just a little bit better. I wear your τ-shirt whenever I go into the vicinity of physicists. This video here successfully let me procrastinate on my master’s thesis (in math!) for almost 40 minutes without even feeling bad about it because “it’s a vihart video and you can’t delay watching that!”. So… thanks! :D

I love the 3d “path models” of how the dice count up- such an interesting way of viewing it- and the forms created are quite beautiful

After scouring the internet for this same BTS dice, it is with the utmost confidence that I conclude that Vihart predicted the order of the numbers on the other side of the dice correctly!!!

Wow, I remember watching this channel ten years ago amazed by hexaflexagrams and fractal snakes, and suddenly it pops up in my feed again. Makes a big difference to watch it at 22 instead of 12, but maybe that's just filtered memory. It's nice to know that this channel and the totally not an influencer at its helm have gotten older and wiser too. Keep on keeping it real!

I am so blown away at how you organized the video structure itself into the symmetry of the shape. Even the mysterious Dice 4 chapter --like, I was happy to accept that it was necessary for the symmetry of the shape but irrelevant to the chapter of the video, but then it turned out to actually be relevant to the video chapter as well. Somehow you have made the most cathartic video all without revealing the answer to the question being discussed the entire video <3

The way you said "aww it's just another octahedron from the mirror universe" was so perfectly nonchalant that I ended up cackling to myself and adding it to my list of favourite phrases

"Meaningless things are allowed to inspire genuine meaning within us." is a great quote! It reminded me of someone discussing how love languages (a popular trend now) have no scientific/psychological background, but give ways for people to have meaningful conversations with other people about how they communicate, conversations that otherwise wouldn't have happened.