Veganism vs. Bimbo-ism: MELISSA SPEAKS.

so I guess some of the things I said
were a bit controversial or led to some comments on the last video okay I haven't looked at the comments but you know most most of the comments you're alluding to have already been deleted so yes affarin are commercial well you know maybe just on my mind because we took this airplane ride and we watched a couple videos watch a couple movies actually one was about Jane Fonda know we were interested in this because of her political involvement with the Vietnam War and I wasn't interested because I didn't really know much about Jane Fonda at all I knew her I knew of her more of just like a bimbo basically I mean that's fine I mean she was an actress she was a beautiful actress and I knew there was something with her political involvement so we watched this and it got me thinking like how much how how intelligent do you have to be to do certain things in life and with Jane Fonda it seemed like her involvement both with acting and with being involved in politics was really because of who she was dating at the time and that's how that you know this this documentary was really like a vanity project for her and it seemed that even from her perspective she became the actress with reputation that she had because of the film director that she was dating her that she no married to and then she also had the involvement in politics that she did have because of then her next marriage was who she was married to next right so there's no there's no criticism of her in the movie this is on be clear it's an implicit point but like her career is made first by her father the father and then by her first husband good movie director and then by her second husband that other people are writing the script for yeah and I thought was kind of oddly a reflection of herself when she was talking about her father not being a good father and that he always needed a script to do anything in his personal life like he needed he needed somebody telling him what to do and she never had a good relationship with her father until they had this movie together where they lived out their issues with their relationship and then came to some kind of conclusion at the end of that so you know I wonder I wondered last night you know how much intelligence had to do with veganism because veganism is in my opinion inherently like political it's it's inherently like something that you have to be committed to or maybe I should say it's more of an inherent moral standpoint so like if you don't have this moral fortitude like moon and rock if you're not willing to deal with whatever health problems you have while staying vegan while maintaining this moral character then you're not gonna be able to do it so that's kind of what I was thinking like what is it about I know you had a clear focus with your video you know like this is your channel like I I want to be like helpful with your viewers I want like you know bring some some more discussion but I understand you had you had a clear like path that you were going down yes this is your other question ask you as once you just said so he's right inside now because I'm gonna stop right away I might forget my question but you know um okay how much latitude do we really have to accept someone as a medical doctor if they're stupid well you know like it's easy to say like oh well you don't need to be an intellectual to be a medical doctor or you don't need to be brilliant or you don't need to be a genius yeah isn't it really scary to be getting advice from a medical doctor where you're not confident at all in their intelligence where they seem vastly you don't need ya answer but one more example because I've been in this situation have you had to deal with in general how do you the audience had had to deal with a government employee at the unemployment office job training a career office places like that some you know they have a little bit of authority there or a bureaucrat but they get to decide things but your case isn't it really scary to be dealing with someone's that and they are actually too stupid to understand what's on your CV or what your situation is like it's not even that they're maybe they're evil - it's none of their evil okay it's one thing to say oh no you don't you don't need to be smart to be a social worker you don't need to be an intellectual to be a government bureaucrat you don't need to be intellectually a dietician or a medical doctor I think it's really really scary dealing with people in those positions yes they're stupid and I think that is invisibly parallel and related to and connected to these questions about how smart you have to be to be oh yeah right and I liked what you said yesterday in that video about the authority figures in in your life and I mean that to me is is really relevant to my own experience in life that I was somebody who you know was bowing to authority figures that wasn't inherently rebellious is it as a child and as a young adult so yeah I mean it is scary like that people are in charge if they're not at a certain level of intelligence or just know-how or knowing what they're doing so yeah I mean like I'm sorry if that's that came across as I don't know controversial or something but yeah how can it not be controversial to call somebody stupid yeah right it's just let's just anonymous I mean like look it's controversial to call George W Bush stupid yeah and I had face-to-face conversation people who were george w bush supporters and most of the times they were honest enough you know at some level they know with george w bush even if you supported him or you voted really really not right really not but nevertheless yes it's always going to be controversial to say george w bush is stupid or to say okay i own it that i'm not saying i'm sorry i'm saying I wasn't good but I do think that I I know like you said it kind of was derail on your point but I do think that it is sad that the content that's nothing online that's people on beaches and bikinis or you know making food or whatever that that gets so many views but like you said in in this newer video that you recorded right it's this is how it is that's what people are interested in and that's what more views are going toward yeah yeah I guess I mean really sure were part of that though like I never felt sad that people don't read plate up so by the way I'm a critical Plato I'm not saying this because I like I'm a supporter of the philosophy of Plato but nevertheless under readers I don't feel sad that like the whole population of Canada doesn't read Plato what was heartbreaking and sad for me was that the people enrolled in the university in the Department of Philosophy in the 400 level philosophy of Plato course that they didn't replay them that was sad and that impacted me emotionally and in fact the professor the professor wants broke down crying and appoints argument that I just said to him these kids don't read the book and none of the other kids in the class I've read the book so 400 level specialized class you know and I remember saying this face-to-face through that guy's more or less wind than I am further left you know he's not quite a communist but out to that that end of the more extreme ends but I remember I was telling in the basic facts what happened in Cambodia with communism and why communism was a disaster there and that America supported time ISM and he was shocked that he started complaining but why doesn't everyone know this kinda like why isn't this on the front page of the newspaper so this was so shocking and some wise in this apartment and again what I said to him I'm really I remember exactly what I said but what I said I can hear a paraphrase that's like I'm not upset that every one of the majority of people don't read the history of Cambodia the politics of Cambodia what upsets me is I'm enrolled in a university department Asian Studies program or I'm at Oxford or Cambridge or University Viktor's onion-like specific you know academic conferences and classes when I'm in that room that's supposed to be the people were devoted that they don't read it and they don't know it yeah moving the professors that upset so just said my view does already presume you know a certain kind of inequality yeah yeah okay so going to this idea recent video about you said that you said that if you have positive aspirations you will attract followers and for me hearing that was was sad because I do think you have had so many positive aspirations with being involved in vegan conflict and you have attracted followers of course sure but as you say you would like to publish a children's story book and then still hasn't happened despite you know you you have had the story and you've had translators by the way translators volunteers who translate into Russian and German and others yes yes yeah so yeah so that's a little bit of a concern that even though you have positive aspirations it is kind of unclear where that's going to funnel or whether the followers that you have will lead to something down the road and just on this topic so I'm trying to make this like really makes sense but so I saw like again these just being on the airplane I saw last week tonight with John Oliver discussing NRA TV so this is a a channel on TV for the National Rifle Association and they have independent television shows that are basically propaganda for buying guns or supporting people owning guns in America yeah and I think some people think of vegan YouTube like youtubers as this is our form of vegan TV but we don't have that kind of organization yeah there is the group in Taiwan that does have the supreme master TV channel and if we could do something like that then we would really have this tool for propaganda for getting the message out there yeah um and I'm thinking of this too like I'm trying to piece all these things together I also watched a documentary about mr. Rogers and I saw so many parallels when I was like hearing about mr. Rogers view on children's entertainment that you and I both agree about that children's entertainment needs to be better you know we need to be teaching our children useful information moral values with the television that we produce with the entertainment that we produce for them and not just you know transformer is not Batman and Superman not shooting games and so on so I want there to be some kind of vegan community like vegan TV which you also discuss in this in this other video that these are parts of your aspirations that I I also I also want these are things that I I also would like to have and I think other people do in the vegan movement but it's it's not really happening and you can see it in the fact that mood and rock got 40,000 views on this video and that they have as many subscribers so like even though I may have seen petit for me to make that comment like you know that you are not getting as many views as them or whatever and I know as you say a lecture about Aristotle is not going to get as many views as somebody making smoothies and doing exercise routines on their other YouTube channels I know that I know that but these are a small subset of people vegans are a small subset of people that want to make the world a better place so why are you watching videos that are just about smoothies and exercise routines like can't you like even if you don't agree completely with eyes'll like why can't you you know listen to what he has to say and kind of incorporated into your life or your set of beliefs that you have so so that to me was what what was disappointing and I don't know if it's all vegans that watch their YouTube channel or I do wonder like based on the view counts that I see are people watching like vegan youtubers that aren't even vegan like are they just watching it for entertainment value because they think that we're crazy like I it's hard for me to put my put myself in that scenario like when I when I think about of the other demi-monde on YouTube like if there's an alt right dumb Iman on YouTube I don't go to just watch it for entertainment value like maybe you'll be watching a video that's controversial and I'll you know I'll see it or hear it or I'll click on something that's controversial that doesn't even have to do with veganism pekin ism at all and that's true but I'm not like getting involved in another Democrat I'm not like watching all the videos by people that only eat the carnivore diet and maintaining this like subscription or you know but it you know I do wonder like how much of how much of this could could be instead we're about vegan TV or like just an affair there are people who watch fitness videos just because they're dressed in Fitness I mean so there are people who now watch test bed because they're women who want to have a body like test bag and there are men who watch it as pornography same was true of freely before there were women who were not vegan and we're not addressing the moral purpose of veganism at all but he looked at freelee's videos because they want to have body literally and men who watched it because it was erotic for them so those are some big factors and I mean the same is true with most of the hit cooking shows I don't to me of you mind numbingly boring to watch vegan recipe videos week after week well I mean sometimes yes sometimes we have look there's a specific thing remember we were making vegan cinnamon rolls yes and it was like okay how else how are other people making cinnamon rolls who acted before a short period of time we're comparing different videos of a baking a specific thing there on a week they says week after week to watching these food channels is unbelievably boring to me and a lot of it is about the sex appeal of normally it's a woman who's the bait used sometimes it's a man who's the cook whatever yes so yeah those are other things that kind of intersect with with veganism um you know none of these things are mutually exclusive you can be interested in baking and weightlifting or bicycle riding and sex and also want to save the planet and care about ecology and getting politically organized and also be interested in the more philosophical and political aspects of what's going on in veganism and debating the future of the movement and how can we not holily how can we be indifferent to the rise and fall of the abolitionist paradigm in veganism which happened just in these couple of years you know what I mean like there was so there are these obvious questions in incredibly few channels commenting on how can we be indifferent to the fact that direct action everywhere started off with an inner pissed philosophy of having no leaders and transformed into being dominated by one leader so appointed dictator for life and canceled the elections and so on that's interesting there's something like you know I mean I don't know any other YouTube channel like literally like those those two issues they're huge issues abolitionism as a paradigm and and DXE the political transformation blue block maybe there is one other youtube channel that's talked about it but honestly honestly I think there were zero so yeah I mean those those are things where your perspective nava Sydney she's in love with me and she's also as a fan of the content I understand your perspective like why aren't more people watching this yeah and then the other the other question is why aren't more people getting inspired by this and wanting to do something do something positive but I mean but the answer is they aren't right so I put it on there yeah yeah yeah so I got to draw my conclusion to move on yeah I'm never gonna be 35 again people like do you think and again all this stuff a lot of things I came on here to say I was really about the first time I said them it meant a lot to me to come out and talk about dog castration and people feeding you know beef to their pet cats so we just had another controversy about that a cheetah reported on raw meat being fed to some some vegan activist dog it doesn't matter you know vegans who buy meat and feed it to their aunt when I first came on YouTube of course it was super passionate about engaging that issue and having that debate ok well now I've had it like I'm now 40 do you think I'm gonna keep doing that until I'm 60 I got it looking next 20 years of my life you think I'm gonna keep doing it alone yes and you know I have other people to make changes and do things that are positive yes yeah and even someone like Marvin is right in your videos you know still be out it's not like you're less content LBO and sure can see those debates can see when you were passionate about that never and when you know you were thinking about these things and influencing other people and also to be influenced yeah well I don't want to say it twice no one said ten times exactly yeah and I totally agree and like looking forward to what we're going to do that in the next 10 years you're I would really like what you say with your video on community and I know I just talked about this in another video of yours that you know you want to have a group of people that you can have some semblance of community with like common values that are shared and that's you know we've we've had better experiences with staying in touch with people and getting in touch with people who are actually of from China or yeah you've you've kept in touch with people that you only really know I met a couple you know can you talk them for like 5 or 10 years even yeah so anyway I feel hopeful more I feel more vocal about what the world of Chinese in our lifetime yeah sure right and I think it might be even possible because of how prominent veganism is in Taiwan that we would be able to form some kind of community or at least assure life you know you talk about just like having five to ten people with to get to do to do project to do projects like publishing a children's storybook or maybe it's taking the story and trying to get some kind of animation made for it or some kind of cookie maybe it's doing some other outreach projects there is that may be also like specifically I'd love to do an education and outreach campaign you know I mentioned on leather yeah you know be great to do an education outreach campaign on conditions of laborers you know in all these things are great but yeah I can't do it alone I mean it's also true financially you know in the email response that you were responding to you know he was asking about your making your own institution um that will be more organized that would be better politically and you know of course the number one thing is time having the time to get that involved and how that's going to be affected by what we are doing for the next ten years even the next five years so if you're getting an MA and PhD that takes a lot of time that's just you know takes a lot of time out of your life and also a lot of money out of your life and what are you going to be doing to earn money at that time is this you know the organization is this gonna be earning money or whatever okay that that was just something that I was thinking about that as we can as we go forward right on you know what I don't know like what what role would this have if you were going to continue making a channel where you repeat the same thing that's like about feeding raw meat to your dog or even just like talking about having dogs like yeah I mean we complain to each other all the time we can't just go for a walk in Victoria without seeing people picking up poo from their dogs and stuff you know we're we're able to you know we we limit that illusory we're not good if you decided that you couldn't keep making videos just repeating the same things you'd probably still get viewers but um yeah um I was just gonna say in that in that email response or just see we're getting comments people were asking you have you ever been involved with cube of truth have you been right through approach have you done - have you been to Verizon I don't mind the question I hate it that people use the question as an insult like you know ask equated y'all get asked it as a question don't insult me presuming you already know the answer but yeah right right yeah and this kind of rose into like the issue of it being a meritocracy and what what a meritocracy like of what like what are you white merit or what merit yes I remember when I first saw your channel I think I've been vegan for like I don't know I would say nine months or something like that so it was at this point where I had you know gotten a diet down I had gotten you know my beliefs down like this was something that I really cared about and and what I saw on social media with veganism was telling me that to be more vegan to be like the best vegan I could or you know to really do something about this was to go out and join protests Street protests positions in history for this so it was at that time that I actually like you know I was looking at the vegan subreddit every day training you know I'm just I don't know trying to talk with other people but even then I was getting tired of what I was seeing on right I was like I really want to see people's like meals that they cooked up I don't really want to see most of what is shown on the vegan reddit but then I saw the first video that I ever saw of yours was was posted there by somebody and it was protest won't change the world or something like that yeah yeah so I just wanted to say use my critique of street protests as a method of activism in contrast to other forms of education organization yeah briefly yeah yes yeah no no I just mentioned what it was about getting out there and being a protester on the street and just how does that play into being vegan for me at the time like uh when I was thinking like I had joined groups that there wasn't a lot going on in the Detroit area but there were four protests and I was like oh maybe I should go to a fir protester I should do something Toronto is close enough I could have gone to the Toronto Pig save or you know got involved with with some organization like that but basically listening to that I was like I don't even know if that would be the best use of my time and effort to go to a street protest and what what can I do and when I saw your videos I mean I was like that was kind of blown away I was like you know um you know what Gary Asti had been quite an influence on me and and my ex-boyfriend like that was really what what convinced my ex-boyfriend to go vegan having this this guy basically yell at him that you're a piece of [ __ ] unless you're being so like seeing your your response to that was was was definitely changed my mind about how I should proceed was with having veganism as a moral character but part of my moral character so yeah like it is a question what are what are people's what what are what is their idea of you having merit as a vegan leader and I think some people do think that James ASPI has more more more merit for being a more a leader in the vegan community because he has done so many lectures that he's you know been to all these events like you say you write nation rising and he gets paid I mean say he is you know I we don't really know where his money comes from he seems to van wealthy his whole life I'm not criticizing him but if you just listen to his life story there was a lot of money for him to spend and go skiing and to do cocaine while skiing so but if you actually listened to Doug was life story that he was snorting cocaine while skiing in British Columbia and he's traveling all around the world his whole life stories he's have a lot of money and drugs and these kinds of pastime so I assumed he was basically born had other source of wealth but nevertheless this is also I mean he is paid to go around the world and give the same lecture and again and attendees right attend these events as it is yeah right and he's a celebrity for what seriously yeah no I mean I know your videos are more interesting for sure like when you are talking with someone who you disagree with like that you know I mean this is all to say like I I agree with you but I'd like other things that I also wanted to like talk about so yeah no no I mean like I have already basically talked about it but I I think there is some hope and you continuing to make children's stories like I I think that's that's something that long-term could be something that you do because you have such a natural talent for curating let me contrast that to another one of the criticisms that's been written in to me explicitly some people said so again maybe this is one like three people but still several people said that I'm overreacting by Cameron about the leaders in veganism who happened to be on the Internet right so that's not just James asked me but also people like Gary Francis a owner who do publish books then I'm just saying they don't exist out there that somehow there's a real world of veganism separate from and opposed to what you see here on YouTube and I disagree with that so I'm just saying this is not a relevant to what you're saying if you talk about getting organized and doing children's storybooks getting organized with who getting support from whom to do what these are my contemporaries this is the movement this is the talent pool we have to work with and you know I think I've exhausted the English language audience like I've reached everyone I could possibly reach in Australia english-speaking Europe Canada the United States but it's really false we'll be able to say to me as they wrote it they did and seven people wrote in saying like no no you're just getting disappointed because the people who happen to be on the internet like and stuff yeah well through my critique of durianrider and James ass Viet Gary Yourofsky and Gary Francia and so on I've reached that audience and it's for that reason that I'm right or have some justification to be pessimistic about well Who am I gonna work with on that storybook project or to make that happen I don't have people I don't have a team of people who can take that forward out of ten people who can lobby the school board with me or any of these other projects I want to do I don't have one person you know so I just say the pessimism about that is real and it's not an abstraction it's not a stereotype it's based on real individual people in their hundreds and in their thousands and that is the generation that is the talent pool I have to work with so yeah the in a sense this is the exception that proves the rule the storybook project is good only in as much as I can do it totally myself I don't do it I'm anyone else so in that I could agree with you yeah I got faith in me working alone right but it also it's like the exception that proves the rule it's like right that's the kind of thing I'm moving towards because I don't even have five other people I can I can do a project I don't even want to clap on a video with or anything you know yeah yeah and a couple people that were friendly to me you know shout-out to foot soldier foot soldier invited me to do a collab recently foot soldier can't cooperate with me in any of these kinds of projects not hitting him he does his little limited thing he's not going to take on lobbying City Hall or the school boards or leather or do an education project labor labor rights and they immediately or a third party so do you see the couple people I know who are still positive you know sure that to them I don't think like I appreciate that but but a lot of this you work within because yeah like he said even if it is yea conceivable that he would do lobbying in where he lives you don't live in the UK so it's like yeah he lives in Spain actually right yeah yeah oh yeah he's British real lives me okay I'm not dealing I'm just saying you know okay okay I was just saying like that is the one positive route that I can see where like I still think you could write children's literature then it's basically like propaganda the video right because that's get somebody involved that could do animation to animate this might be something more like nobody's room like I loved I loved the idea of Mister Rogers and I love that show when I was a kid growing up and I like having something like something as simple as that but with like puppets but talked about veganism talking about and you you could do music but the save you the background of music medicine talk but look um you could be an author alone you can't you can't do politics alone you can't that's the difference right however would you rather be an author alone would you rather be an author with the support of a couple thousand people on the internet makes a huge difference right so yeah I mean that's another sense in which this engagement in the last five years has really been a failure and I gotta look at it negatively to say something slightly positive you know in the earlier video I said well my life would be better now if I'd put the five years into Cree or a chip way or Navajo or you know something like that indigenous peoples languages and yeah and education of politics I free I think I all say well Cambodia is an example you know one of the reasons why I did put all this time into veganism was the type of person I wanted to be colleagues with and it's people like you Melissa but I wouldn't have met you through doing Korean a jib way I wouldn't have met you through doing Cambodia and I know I know what Needham I have enough experience with those examples you know and I wouldn't met you through Brit ISM so you know that's that's a factor however coming back to a point you made earlier what kind of people do you meet through learning Chinese as a language or doing Chinese and language Gatien Chinese and politics of Asia and you were just saying earlier you think we'll meet better people hold you up she has experienced this now too the quality of people the type of people you meet through Chinese Chinese politics Chinese language education so in reality there's another judgment then people that we meet in Canada who happened to be from China the hope was definitely that I wouldn't just meet you that I'd have a bunch of people in my life yeah you know because I really felt and sometimes things remind me back when veganism wasn't the main thing in my life I was still so passionate about it and when I happened to meet people who were vegetarian or vegan you know within the field I was working in within whatever it was but as a more Asian Studies or politics whatever I'd be so eager to try to meet them because I felt extremely alienated ethically from the people who were not vegetarian or not vegan and I've always felt that that sense of moral purpose is so fundamental to life and should motivate us to work together and accomplish great things that I was really optimistic with the type of people I meet met and what would come out of meeting them okay guys that's it the good and the bad if you want more videos where Melissa does the majority of the talking gives that give this a thumbs up and give this a positive comment because it hangs in the balance what percentage of a Bala CL is Melissa on the microphone thanks babe things coming on Michael again yeah