Chiang Mai and the Death of Veganism. #NotSatire

people use
economic political terminology without really stopping to think seriously about what these things mean i've seen another youtuber vegan foot soldier referring to what happened in chiang mai thailand as a kind of ponzi scheme or he reports that some of the viewers of his channel have said to him that he remembers what happened with freelee durianrider the short-lived vogue for vegan activism in northern thailand and chiang mai he remembers it with rose-colored glasses his audience complains and they suggest to him that instead the whole thing was something like a ponzi scheme i'd suggest here a very different economic concept the idea of a gold rush and a gold rush mentality a ponzi scheme is a scam if people are involved in a ponzi scheme they're selling something that isn't real they're selling coupons or tickets that have no real value they're offering you an investment in a gold mine that isn't actually producing gold or the gold mine doesn't even exist right a ponzi scheme is just moving around people's money to create the illusion of an investment opportunity when in fact there's no opportunity at all a gold rush is something very different right a gold rush means that some people are getting rich a few people are getting rich and that mass hysteria mass optimism is inspired by the success of those people however few they are in number so it's irrational and it normally leads to a disaster the gold rush mentality but it's nevertheless something real rather than something unreal maddie limberner bought herself an airplane ticket to chiang mai thailand she went to this festival this great meeting of the mines organized by durianrider and philly she met the great master she met durianrider and freely she got their blessing she got their training she got their advice and she never had to work a regular job again in her life maddie lindbergh not not a terribly good looking girl sorry if you took it look at any any photograph of her face it doesn't have perfect kind of lighting and makeup whatever i do not think that when maddie limberner was going through high school to my knowledge she never went to university but if she went to university i don't think anyone was raving about her and telling her that she could be a model that she could be a movie star you know she's a normal looking woman and there were a whole lot of young women who saw the success of maddie limbrenner and thought me too they thought that they also would like to never work a regular job again like they also would like to have this combination of money fame power respect sex that seemed so tantalizingly close and seems so attainable for someone who is in every conceivable way mediocre maddie limber not not a pretty face not a great athlete didn't compete at the olympics didn't train for any sport ever right and she had meteoric success after going to chain my town how many people never had that success how many people were failures we'll never know we'll never have the count this is the phenomenon of the gold rush mentality if it can happen to her why couldn't it happen to me too i could be next right if one person if two people if ten people can get rich off of this gold rush why not all of us why not a hundred people why not a thousand people this is the danger of irrepressible human optimism right when any detached observer can sit back and say look not every actor can get a stirring role in a disney movie it's not going to happen it's going to happen for one person it's going to happen for two people maybe 10 right we're never going to have a situation in which 100 people a thousand people everyone in which there's an opportunity for everyone to have the kind of money fame power respect sex of getting a lead role in a disney movie and there were other young women there were other young women who were better looking than maddie lynn burner there were other young women who were more talented more funny more intelligent more interesting more entertaining there were other young women who were more athletic who maybe actually had one some competitive sport at some point there were other young women who knew more about diet or weight loss or exercise something else to offer but they weren't successful right we all know just what kind of strange lottery fame is on the internet now vegan foot soldier is a very wealthy man he talks about this pretty openly on his youtube channel i've seen him openly refer to it on the internet innumerable times he doesn't like to specify what his business background is to what extent his money comes from the stock market or computer programming or something in between that involves them both he's a very wealthy man he doesn't worry about money he doesn't think about money and broadly speaking in british culture there's a tremendous taboo about and against really being honest about money give a little example of this where he and i had a perfectly friendly interaction he made a video many years ago about a particular woman uh who was here on youtube she was a youtuber who went crazy and got a gun and tried to kill people at youtube headquarters so she was an attempted mass murderer attempted mass shooter right some of you will remember that i don't remember her name because it was a very hard to spell hard to pronounce name uh but foot soldier made a video giving his analysis or his perspective on it and at about the same time i forget it was 24 hours later or 40 hours out later but quite quite soon after he made his video i made a video giving an analysis of the problem that was completely different and you know why money because i said you know what this woman went crazy you know why she wanted revenge on youtube you know what the conflict was money and here's why and i broke it down and presented the fact that was what she was upset about she had a number of very successful videos that she was only paid a few pennies for and it didn't make any sense she had hundreds of thousands of views and this is even before the current system of demonetization was really formalized but youtube's always been very opaque about that how is it some people get rich and some people get successful and some people if your video is successful you don't get a dime someone else gets paid very well for a video that has fewer views than you've got it was a conflict about money and i will give credit to foot soldier he sent me an email or a couple of emails saying you know you're right and he just said he didn't know why he didn't see it then why why didn't you think about he said really you're right the big issue was money and he felt that he had been blind to it okay foot soldier is a very strange guy i've known him for years i tried to talk to him constructively and positively for years even though he was incredibly abusive incredibly disrespectful incredibly defamatory incredibly damaging towards me for years publicly and privately this guy said hurtful and heartbreaking things to me and about me four years completely unprovoked i can give some examples just to spice up this video i'm not bent out of shape about it but i mean foot soldier he is one of the worst people i've ever had to deal with on the internet and i can say this honestly foot soldier from my perspective in my opinion you're worse than durianrider alright and i can tell you why today i can send an email to durianrider and he will give me a very respectful and appreciative reply today durianrider learned his lesson i was honest and on the level with durianrider for years i never lied to him i never manipulated him i proved to him that i was a person of substance and personal integrity and eventually terrain writer accepted that and he completely changed his attitude toward me and he now talks to me with real respect you know that's who dorian ryder is to me today i mean if there was some reason i do get reply to him whenever something comes up that i write to him about and if i asked him to take down a video off of his channel he would do it for me he's he's done it he's volunteered to do in the past he took down videos that were denouncing at a family okay so it was possible to get through to deering writer it was possible to earn his respect and get him to treat me with dignity and to recognize that i was a person of integrity and that i was being honest on the level okay with foot soldier it's impossible no matter how hard you try for how many years foot soldier would continue to say that i was someone who was delusional lying and manipulative no matter how honest i was being and no matter how thoroughly i could prove that i was being honest because most of the stuff i was allegedly lying about it's like dude here's the exact email or here's the exact screenshot or here's the video like the three minute mark here's where i said that no i could prove that i was being on level and foot soldier is someone who could never be on the level back so foot soldier you now are taking a moment to look back at the rise and fall of the chiang mai scene in the history of the vegan movement in the last five years and you are asking the question what went wrong or what was wrong with the vegan movement of chiang mai foot soldier the answer is you the answer is people like you foot soldier but you personally were the worst of the worst okay the problem with the scene in chiang mai was people with absolutely no moral integrity stabbing each other in the back over nothing for no reason with nothing to gain tearing each other down and you did that to me and joe best did that to me again and again and again when what i showed you in return and sometimes what i showed you first i talked to joe best for at least a year before he attacked me right when what i'd shown him before that happened and after and in your before and after right was really a lot of kindness was really a lot of consideration i really made an effort to treat you with respect and dignity and deal with your questions on the level all right man to man however you want to put it okay that's what was wrong with the chiang mai scene that's what was wrong with veganism in that epoch in that era okay i do not blame for one moment the people that you foot soldier are now referring to as as being to some extent in a ponzi scheme right i know it's your audience and you answered that you don't see it as a punishment but i do not see the money motive as being the problem in chiang mai whether you call that a ponzi scheme or a gold rush the idea that people were trying to make money okay i'm just gonna pause for a moment shout out to everyone in the audience we're doing this as a live stream if i'm not gonna edit it afterwards it's neither more nor less effort for me to do this as a live stream rather than a pre-recorded video i've done more than 2000 videos on youtube we have 22 people in the audience this was totally unannounced totally you know so it's nice 20 people have you online guys we only have four thumbs up we are talking about what went terribly wrong with veganism in the last five years and the unique locus of chiang mai thailand which involves durianrider freely and my old adversary vegan foot soldier and a number of other unforgettable personalities guys we've got 24 people in the audience uh if you don't want to give it a thumbs up if you want to wait to work 20 minutes in the video do so you can but if you give it a thumbs up now more people will see the live stream more people have the chance to join while it's still ongoing so it is kind of nice to get that uh inertia going in your favor where youtube sees oh there are 22 people in the audience we got 22 thumbs up so more people may be invited okay so guys i can reply to you know uh comments in the audience the fluffy child before asked the great question why do you disable your comments what a fascinating question do do you think this is a question of answer before do you think this is a question that i have answered in the description to like 1 000 of my videos where it says it says in the description i'll quote this for you directly why are comments disabled below my videos there i've said that you'll find that exact statement with that exact link minimum videos and that leads to a video that gives you the answer okay guys and i'll just say just to allude to the kind of the video this relates to what i'm saying about durianrider what i'm saying about vegan foot soldier what we could say about freelee and vegan cheetah and many of these other person asking okay guys it's not worthwhile for you to try to herd cats right to try to hurt something that cannot be heard to manage and read and respond to an anonymous comment section from hundreds of people it's really worthwhile and it's really meaningful to take the time to reach out to one person and say hey you're worth it i'm going to spend a couple hours talking to you you know you can spend many many hours managing conversations and guys veganfoot soldier is someone i put many hours into reaching out to and talking to you even though he is sub human garbage okay i utterly morally and intellectually despise this person and i can quote you my emails where i made a huge effort to be civil and friendly and constructive why yeah partly because i care about the future of the vegan movement and partly because it's not a test of his integrity it's not a test of his moral character it's a test of mine how good i can be to somebody even when they don't deserve that that's a test of my moral character okay and he's not the only one there are so many people there are so many people who are specifically white people in thailand let's be real they were specifically people linked to this toxic chiang mai scene where i put in the effort i can still speak the thai language i speak it with a heavy lotion accent i used to live in laos in thailand i knew a lot and i cared a lot about the politics in laos and thailand but including thailand especially chiang mai it's somewhere i lived somewhere i'd visit somewhere it's somewhere i still to this day talk about maybe i'm going to end up living there permanently it's a place i care about and have a connection to i wasn't just passing through as a tourist and when i was there by the way there might be some people in the audience now there are other vegans white european vegans who met me in thailand and saw me speaking thai saw me relating to those people and how i care about those people i have a connection to that place of my own that's different from and deeper than anything vegan foot soldier has going for him or durianrider i still care and you know i care about the future of thailand and their transition to democracy and their transition back and forth to military dictatorship and i was always raising those questions when we talked about this issue um what went wrong in chiang mai the past present and future of the vegan movement and how it is linked to thailand again and again again and let me just say briefly um why does thailand matter at one point i was talking to about five other vegan activists and trying to plan a conference a meet-up and we went through all these options they included like new york i think london was on the list no berlin london was not but we talked okay we could do this in new york we do this in berlin you know do it here could do it there and the only place that made sense was thailand it costs so much money for people to fly to new york city and stay in a hotel in new york even if you are from texas like whether you're flying from europe or just also the united states to try to have a conference in new york is so expensive that you are better off for the americans for the australians and for the europeans meeting in thailand so this may not make sense to you geographically but it makes sense economically if i want to have to invent still to this day 2021 if i want to organize an event and i want to invite a few people from europe a few people from the west coast of america a few people from east coast america a few people from australia and new zealand and we're all going to meet somewhere and have an event talk about veganism being politics actually thailand still to this day it's one of the only options we've got it's one of the places it's one of the only and it's one of the best and when you add it up dollar for dollar how much you're going to spend on the airplane how much you're going to spend on on hotels so on and so forth okay all right um okay so i said before in the main point i want to make this video is gold rush the gold rush mentality slightly different from a ponzi scheme something different from a scam something different from a swindle so lydia is here she's remembering 2016. so lydia as i recall in 2016 you were in university getting a degree in chemistry now i forget if that was your master's degree or your ba it did not occur to you lydia to drop out of university and fly to thailand to join this gold rush okay i met i spoke to and i even interviewed for my channel many young women and young men who dropped out of university or dropped out of high school to go to chiang mai to pursue this opportunity okay it was for them a financial opportunity they were making sacrifices for this is something foot soldier is blind to it's not a scam it's not a ponzi scheme but it was a gold rush there were a small number of people who were successful people thought oh look at tess begg tess begg met up with durianrider and philly and got their blessing look at bonnie rebecca bonnie rebecca met up with philly dreamwork did a collab and did some videos together god there was now she now she never has to work a normal job again in her life right there was this gold rush i the idea that you could be the next test bag that you could be the next bunny rebecca now i'll digress here just for a moment to say what do you think tess begs financial situation is today i think it's a tragedy and i was already saying that at that time okay i said two tests beg and to the audience and and when we listening don't do this don't drop out of high school you will ruin the rest of your life even if you are cursed with short-term success that's exactly what abner so the last time i looked her channel she maybe got 7 000 views on a video and she only was putting up one video in three months so let me tell you something 7000 views pays nothing nothing now if you're uploading a video every single day that has 7000 views it adds up to a little bit this is still not something you can live on this is not a career at 7000 it's not but she's doing a video of how to take fried chickpeas and add them to a sweet potato it smells boring crap about oh yeah that's a great yeah it's a sweet potato with chickpeas and she's getting 7000 views she is stripping down and showing off 95 of her body on instagram for those 7 000 views right and this combination of chickpeas and sweet potatoes and tits and ass won't pay her rent and she can never go back she can never go back to high school she can never go back to college she can never become that person she might have been and you can never put this the genie back in the bottle you can never have your privacy back you can never have your dignity back you will always be the person who pursued a career of vegan recipes and soft core porn on the internet starting as a teenager that is going to be like a tattoo you wear emblazoned on your face for the rest of your life by the way guys another brilliant question here i am not saying that i'm perfect i made all kinds of decisions i regret in my life or all kinds of things i made and i have to wear them as a tattoo first when i show people my resume this is pathetic but it's true it's like oh you did humanitarian work in cambodia you're a bad person people really look at it that way people think oh oh there's some cambodia what what kind of person goes to do humanitarian work in cambodia like seriously i deal with it all the time all right but i'm not ashamed of what i do with my i'm not ashamed that i went to cambodia and did this humanitarian work and i pursued this i'm not ashamed of my successes and i'm not ashamed of my failures i can say this straight up test [ __ ] my failure is better than your success okay what you dropped at a high school to do was not worth doing compared to high school she didn't drop in high school to do humanitarian work she didn't you know there were wonderful things you could drop out of high school to do to quote myself you know one of the statements i made and talking about the ethics of this just short-term and long-term implications for your life is there is a difference between becoming a stripper to pay your way through college and dropping out of college to become a stripper now i've talked about gold rush mentality i've talked about people ruining their lives i'm like from test back from my perspective she's ruined her life okay i think everyone say this what if test bag were getting 70 000 views a month instead of 7 000. i would still say she's running her life okay because i think she's traded a meaningful life for a meaningless one i think there's a life worth living out there and it's going to start with someone like tess begg sitting down and hitting the books and really developing their intellectual acumen really working hard to become a person of substance right not a person who poses with her ass hanging out of her thong bikini bottoms and who presents you she hasn't even been to [ __ ] cuisine school i'm sorry but the food is also not worth cooking it's not worthy i'm sorry this is also not elite level cuisine sweet potato with chickpeas the only thing i can say in favor of her sweet potato with [ __ ] chickpeas is that it resembles a vagina that's what that's what it looks like okay has artistic merit on that level but doesn't really hold up as cuisine okay this is not cordon bleu go to court on blood learn learn to make food that really resembles a vagina okay [Laughter] um what if she were getting seventy thousand dollars instead of part of me what's your good way to put it what if she were getting seventy thousand views instead of seven thousand views it would still be the wrong decision it would still be the wrong decision for her but what is the cause and effect relationship between someone like her and durianrider someone like her and freely someone like her and what happened in chiang mai it's very direct okay i knew another guy and i've actually spoken to him on this youtube channel he's interviewed me on this youtube channel he was someone we like spoke to at length collaborated with for a couple years i knew another guy who was a moderately successful youtuber himself so he had money coming in from youtube and he knew how little the money was like he knew when you have a video with only two thousand views when you have a video with twenty thousand views with two hundred thousand it's really a lot less money than people think of it he'd had some success on youtube and he had a girlfriend and sorry so i was friends with him i was never friends with his girlfriend his girlfriend was what you would call stumpy and plain looking she is just not someone for whom doors are gonna open if you show up at a an audition in los angeles to appear in a soap commercial or a shampoo commercial or to be the leading actress in the next hill park okay we all got problems in life okay we all got advantage of this man this girl was stumpy and plain he loves her she loves him that's great i'm all for it guys if you find a stumpy woman but she's a real intellectual substance make it work you know what i'm saying i am totally capable of being in love with and being married to a woman i consider ugly if she has those other things going for intellectually ethically morally okay but what we're talking about here is shallow because we're talking about money fame power respect sex so this guy like i say he's a vegan and he's a moderately successful youtuber and he was someone just to get just give a little bit more of the emotional context to this he was really close to durianrider and he went through the process of realizing how bad and evil and wrong what durianrider was doing and the extent to which germaine writer was lying to him to his face so he was talking to me saying like look man you know he's a friend of durianriders but he now realizes what the situation is and you know so you know copacetic you know it's well-intentioned but you know he didn't he wasn't someone who came out and publicly condemned durianrider but he wanted to talk to me and get on bait he was figuring out what was true what was a lie and you know he was kind of putting his he was putting his own conscience to rest he was trying to feel better about himself by talking to me because he knew he'd been involved in some of this more darkness so this guy meets durianrider face to face they've met many many times but he meets him with his girlfriend and durianrider is taking his girlfriend aside and saying to her passion and convict saying to her baby you're never gonna have to work another day in your life again as soon as you get on youtube and you follow these six easy steps the money's gonna be rolling in here's how you make it happen you know and he's saying hey i'm the man who made freely famous and i'm the man who made bonnie rebecca and all these high carb hannah i'm the man who made all these people into a start and if you work with me you're going to be there it's going to be great here's what you need to do one two three it's so easy then you're gonna have so much money and so much fame and you're never gonna have to work a job you have and it's and you know okay if i worked in stand-up comedy i would never talk to comedians this way i would never tell a comedian you're so funny that you can just go ahead and leave all your furniture behind and move to new york city and start doing comedy gigs stand-up comedy and that that's it you're never gonna have to work that's it it's a sure thing like even if i personally thought this person was hilarious i would never say that i would say look it's a terrible risk a large percentage of people it ruins their lives making taking that risk taking that gap okay people were moving to chiang mai with that same spirit with that same gold rush mentality that they would be a star that they would never have to work another day in their lives right and they were being told directly and passionately sure sometimes by email but often face to face by durianrider you are going to be a star you are never going to have to work another day in your life and here's here's how it works i'm going to tell you the secrets that changed my life that changed freely's life that changed maddie lindberner's life now known as mad fit to change these people's lives forever anybody can do it and it's going to happen to you because you're special so many young women want to hear that they're special so many you know wasn't a ponzi scheme it wasn't a scam but when someone like foot soldier went there he was blind to this because foot soldier is already a very wealthy man i am assuming based on what he has said publicly i assume he is a multi-millionaire he is never going to worry about money again he's never going to worry about working in and he is also someone who is obsessed with maintaining the secrecy of his face his name his identity he both doesn't want money and doesn't want fame and he is part of this british culture i've alluded to earlier of just not letting yourself think about money you know and that's why he was so wrong in his analysis of that video of the mass murderer the attempted mass murderer the youtube headquarters shooter and he just didn't think about the financial motive at all okay i've got to tell you something there was a lot of evil in chiang mai town there was a lot of evil in the whole vegan scene in those years 2015 16 17 18. you know i don't think that's evil i don't think it's evil to want to be adored i don't think it's evil to want to be famous you know what i mean i don't think that those people who made this investment most of these people this includes this includes maddie lindberner maddie limberger literally saved up her money from working as a waitress and working behind the the counter as a clerk in a store like she had that kind of job she saved up her money from doing that for however many years to go on long-term vacation in town that's what most of them did you know most of these were young women and young men who had you know many of them hadn't been to college yet or they were dropping out of college as pensions a huge factor of this right and they had saved up a few thousand dollars from some jojoba and they went to live in thailand for three months six months two years i met and spoke to people people have been there for years in pursuit of this dream and a lot of them were already slender attractive people male or female some of them some of them were fat and hoping that they would have the body transformation story to be part of this rise to fact it makes it all quite more better so guys it's great we have 42 people in the audience they're only 17 thumbs up if you can take the time worth half an hour into this now hit the thumbs up button because it'll help other people discover the video it'll help other people join in our audience while we're lower livestream here i see i i am paying attention to what you guys are commenting seems to me you're philosophizing about uh about issues related i'm i'm happy to see that i have to have you join me here uh it's fine if you're sitting on the fence you're not sure if it's going to be a good video you don't have to thumbs down you don't have to hit thumbs up but if you do hit thumbs up and you change your mind later you can you can click on thumbs down instead you can you can change your mind uh as it goes maybe some of you guys remember this one maybe so you don't there were two women from eastern canada one of whom ended up on the payroll of plant-based news she was an alcoholic by her own reckoning i remember she was trying to get sober she was already slim she had bad acne she was okay looking and there was another young woman from eastern canada who was really fat and really ugly and when she was preparing this just shows how much this really was an investment it's not a scam it's not a swindle right but this was an investment they were taking a chance taking a gamble this young woman had saved up her money from doing joe jobs she was fat she was ugly and she committed to spending i think it was a full year i think it was even more than total she was there for like more than one year in chiang mai thailand she saved up her money to this and what did she do first this shows how premeditated the fame is of course she started a youtube channel talking about veganism how this is going to transform her body and her parents right and you know she went to toronto and she interviewed vegan gains and that was when the interviews being games were hard to get he wasn't yet the gregarious social creature so this is this fat ugly woman and she goes and she's being gains and for her channel that's a relatively large number of views that's a relative that's a kick starts her fame so you know she's got stars in her eyes she goes to chiang mai thailand she never lost the weight she never got in shape because the fitness advice is terrible the whole i mean sorry i've made several videos about it was the blind leading the blind there were people who were already beautiful and in good physical shape before they showed up but the people who joined hoping to lose weight like joe best joe best was just as fat no to shape at the end as he was at the beginning and there were so many of these people and there were people who gained weight or people who became fat while they were there on this particularly ridiculous diet i think despite the tropical heat and being on a vegan diet in thailand you managed to stay fat or get fatter but of course it wasn't just about body image it was about money fame power respect sex that young woman i remember at the very end of her time when she was giving up on thailand and going back to canada she announced that you know she'd given up on various streams and her youtube channel remained in total obscurity whatever 200 views here and there's a channel a few people like me knew it existed and i remembered her i remembered her from that interview with indians and i talked about vengeance too i remember that and uh she's an awful person too i interact with all these people some extent um and you know when she was going back to canada she said okay she'd given up on well she didn't say that implicitly she was admitting she'd given up on the fitness and the vegan activism but she decided that what she really loves is acting and being an actor and she was going to go into comedy as if as if her youtube channel had ever shown any talent or capacity to do comedy whatsoever okay but my point is at every stage of that woman's story when she was saving up her money and packing her bags interviewing vegan gains and then going to thailand and renting a home in thailand for a year and then spending a whole year trying to get that magic to rub off on you trying to get that collaboration with freely and durianrider okay this was a gamble this was an investment people made all right and someone as stupid and delusional and self-serving as vegan foot soldier can show up and walk through the middle of it repeatedly he went back there he made several traps he can show up again and again and think that this is all just positivity and good will and love and cooperation right he thinks he just thinks it's wonderful and he can't see the desperation he can't see the struggle that these are people who took their life savings and put it on the line and they're just trying to make it and yes if durianrider whips out his camera and films through they're gonna smile and they're gonna laugh and they're gonna cheer and they're gonna show that they're so happy to ride their bicycle up that hill for the 300th time the same boring bike trail up the same boring hill on the outskirts of chiang mai they're going to show that they're so enthusiastic about eating the third food in the sub-basement of a shopping mall in the suburbs of chiang mai thailand i've been there i've tasted the food i've seen the shopping mall like oh this is the most wonderful thing we're all so jazzed we're all saving the planet dude it's about money these are people who've invested everything they had to invest they're giving everything they have to give and for them the audition never ends every day they upload to youtube every day they post on facebook and instagram every day they're trying to spend time around durianrider or freely or any social media influencer who can offer them a step up which included me when i was there these people treated me like i was famous because when they're looking at me they're looking at a meal ticket if they can get a hit video or a controversial video talking to me oh maybe this is the chance maybe this is the opportunity they are cloud chasing right you know why why do you think the energy was so different in chiang mai foot soldier why do you think it was so different from going to a real political animal rights conference from going to a conference where people are sitting down and really talking about how do we influence government policy how do we change the world how do we change people's diets you know what i mean like why do you think the energy is so different that's why okay it's about money and it's not just about making money right it's about recuperating your loss because these people already have invested so much they've given everything they had to give okay they have given it their all and almost every single one of them failed the failure rate is above 99 [Music] durianrider was mean to his ex-girlfriend in chiang mai he had a short chubby blonde ex-girlfriend who was also much much younger than him and he was mean to her to my knowledge he didn't commit a crime but he was coarse and vulgar and abusive to her and many other people in chiang mai saw it directly they were in the room or they were standing in front of the restaurant or on the sidewalk next to her people recorded it there were audio recordings there were some video recordings and he did unbelievably petty dishonest and mean things there was a conflict about a bike pump about a bike wheel you remember for some of you this is like a distant memory now he accused her of having stolen his computer and he went to the police it's like the level of mendacity and just pettiness right and you know she was she was shorter than his other girlfriends and she was chubbier than his other girlfriend hey durianrider you chose her you fell in love with her i mean you had sex with her bro but he was also very cruel to her about that that she was too fat to ever be famous the way his other girlfriends several of them not all of them but several other ones have become famous have gained a large audience you know that she was not beautiful enough that she was not slim enough uh to become famous okay it was really dark it was really dishonest it was really low it was really shameful all right that was at the stage when the only people in chiang mai the only people who are still supporting durianrider still supporting freely and still chasing this dream were people who had tolerated and witnessed so many lies so much backstabbing and so much of what could authentically and sincerely be called cancel culture coming from durianrider and freely themselves durianrider did not hesitate to lie to the police durianrider did not hesitate to threaten people with prison and say he was going to go to the place durianrider did not hesitate to threaten to have people beaten up stabbed dragged off to the police put in a prison cell durianrider did not hesitate to make allegations and accusations about people that really could plausibly ruin their lives forever make it impossible for them to have a job and people saw him do this again and again and again not just to me to boring people like brianna jack fruits and just stupid boring harmless people that he created conflict with out of nowhere and freely was just as bad and sometimes worse what is the situation now in 2021 still to this day foot soldier on his youtube channel is blaming me and holding up dorian ryder and freely as the heroes in this story he's claiming that durianrider and freely created a wonderful warm positive encouraging movement in chiang mai and that a small number of people including me but especially me let's face it i mean i really destroyed what freely in turn writer were doing at that time i had this really dramatic effect on everything going on in that movement it was impossible to ignore people like briana jack fruits and had a relatively trivial impact on it people like joe best had some impact with relatives the single greatest breaking point was my intervention in chiang mai and what came out of that um and wright are threatening me with violence with credible threats of violence and my responding by saying where you at let's let's make it happen you want to have a boxing match okay you want to go to the police station okay you want to go to court okay i'm down for it you want to have a debate you want to talk about venus and intellectual i'm down for that too but where i stood up for him when every other person before me had run away and backed down and been intimidated and i stood up for myself okay that was a huge turning point it was a huge breaking point foot soldier gives me no credit for that the story he is telling today is the same story he's been telling since 2016 which is that durianrider and freely were the heroes and that i am a lying manipulative dishonest actor who somehow killed the vibe of what was this wonderful and uplifting movement [Music] i have said before i'm going to say again i do not create youtube videos for the stupidest 40 of people in my audience and i do not create youtube videos for the stupidest 80 of like the potential worldwide audience okay i cannot and i will not make videos that are for people like veganfoot i am not able to come out here and reach out to people who want to be deluded and try to entice them with the carrot of the truth i cannot take a carrot and stick approach to motivating you into rejecting this [ __ ] that you are so committed to believing in and propounding i can only come out here and be a person of integrity myself i can't ask anyone else to have integrity for me i can't ask them to have integrity for their own sake i can't ask you to care about the truth about the difference between the truth and a lie i can't ask you to care about the real world consequences and outcomes of the evil that men do right i can't do that i can just show you i can just demonstrate what it is to be an intellectual in this movement what it is to be a person of integrity to what it is to be someone who refuses to lie even when it would be convenient for me and then i get to see how other people react i get to see who's the most intelligent 20 who's the most principled 20 who's with me okay and you know what it might not be 20 it might be 2 it might be that i'm addressing my videos to a minority within a minority within a minority that's absolutely tiny and i will take my failure over other people's success i think that my failure is worth more than tess begs success i think that my failure is worth more than maddie lindberner's success and i think that not just the future of the vegan movement but the future of democracy the future of politics is going to be shaped by that tiny minority of people who really have integrity who really have the right motivations who really care and who are not just trying to get rich by posting pictures of their ass and trying to sell you a cookbook so that you too can stuff chickpeas into a baked potato okay um that's the principal decision that i made many years ago and coming on here on youtube and you know what the tragedy is you know what the strangest irony of all is you know who ultimately responded to this was durianrider himself not you foot soldier you never figured it out you never turn around not vegan eva not so many people who still hate me this day not paul beshear like not the leader of direct action everywhere not wayne syong not the leader of an honest for the voiceless publisher all those people are scumbags but the guy i criticized most harshly and most directly and the guy whose life i destroyed like let's be real the impact i had on durianrider's life was devastating okay and i've even made videos in the past saying that i felt bad about it i've made videos saying look i am going to be sad if this guy ends up in jail he wouldn't be in jail for the rest of his life but he could be joe for five years i would feel bad about that like i'm trying to do the right thing for the vegan movement but it's sad for me to see how this whole guy's life's been ruined i had a huge impact on that guy's life but you know what there were false rape allegations made against him there were several false rumors made up against him and even though it might be convenient for me if i were just motivated by drama and fame for me to jump on that bandwagon for me to join in the lie and defame it announced them i didn't i did the right thing because it was the right thing to do with those specific rape allegations i had direct knowledge that they were a lie i knew the people involved they had talked to me they have been videos talking to the whole timeline it might be convenient for me to just jump on blackening his character and of course i got a lot of backlash but i have to say no i know about some bad things durianrider has done i've analyzed and discussed them i know about some bad health advice i know about all kinds of bad things but you know what i happen to know that these allegations made up against him are false and badly motivated here's what i here's what i have to say in effect in his defense and he saw that and he cracked he realized he admitted to himself that i had been telling the truth about everything all along not just when it was convenient to me not when it just suited my short-term self-interest okay and that's what i have to ask of you and you and you and i can ask it a foot soldier but i'm never going to get it from because he's a person of zero integrity all right each of us has to examine the ledger of our own moral conscience and come to a conclusion am i going to be a person of integrity or not am i going to tell the truth when it matters am i going to do the right thing just because the right thing to do or else what what alternative have you really got what is it that's been promised to you if you give up your integrity so i gotta tell you something you can sell out and the odds are you'll never even get the little pittance of money and fame that people like test beg managed to get out of this movement you'll never get the little pittance of money and fame that people like vegan cheetah and joe best and foot soldier himself did one of the reasons to be a person of integrity and do the right thing is just because the alternatives although they may seem enticing in the short term they will leave you with nothing