Essena O'Neill is ugly now.

um the old free clothes like all my
jewelry was given to me like back then like all right so many times I was just on 0 when I was traveling and I was just praying to [ __ ] god the sponsorship would come in I am NOT gonna trivialize the importance of SN O'Neill I think she's really quite important in the history of veganism history of vegan activism I would go so far as to say that if I were gonna write a book about vegan activism in my lifetime vegan activism for my generation you could start chapter one with Sno Neil I mean that and you could talk about the turning point where look in the past we had these examples like peda people's the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the past we had people like Gary Francis aione and then you know something special happened around the time sno Niall came on YouTube where there was this concept of lifestyle activism there was this model of the permanent vacation of people flying around the world and going to the beach in bikinis and getting millions of views people like Essen O'Neil and freely started to change the game and they changed the game for the worse and then they burnt out and for personally and publicly broken and humiliated and wept on camera and then the game began to change again into what it is we have now Essen O'Neil is not a trivial person at least not on the Picayune scale by which we measure out the importance of things and vegan activist like you think I was rich like I was like oh like oh my jury was given to me like back then like alright so many times I was just on 0 when I was traveling and I was just praying to [ __ ] god the sponsorship would come in and I'd have $30 like through the next few days so this is an important misperception or misconception there were young women all over the world who dropped out of university there were young women who dropped out of high school in order to imitate Essen O'Neil and of course I talked to people who dropped out of university or dropped out of high school to imitate freely another early adopter of the permanent vacation lifestyle and of course all of them assumed that if they followed in these footsteps they'd be living in relative wealth and relative luxury and what she's saying to you here is no no she was living in a kind of poverty and desperation so the money question is obviously you accepted donations which we're supposed to go to your future content creation and then obviously you closed down the website and didn't go through with all of that so some people say that you basically stole money from people you're a scammer so can you explain what happened with the money that people donated why isn't closed at plant-based news following up on this story do you guys remember this closed made a completely fictitious story accusing me of doing what SN O'Neill actually did so this is an example of a real fundraising controversy in the vegan movement that we should all pay attention to when I learned from and there was a phony contrived fake fundraising controversy there were false allegations made against me and for some reason the Free Press such as it exists in the vegan movement they were on the wrong side of the controversy that involved me and it seemed like there was very little interest in holding SN O'Neill accountable when she walked away with $10,000 crying about body image crying about that leg it's shitty that I like was selling all these like hot clothes of my hot body and maybe that cycle isn't good for young people that that's kind of what I let's be clear being a leader in the vegan movement is a position of moral authority yes Esther O'Neill was someone who wore a bikini and her fame partly derived from that but the position she adopted was one that required her to be morally impeccable especially when asking for donations for a charitable purpose right there's an onus on her to demonstrate that she's not just using the donations to pay her rent that the donations are being used for some positive purpose such as she promised to reviewers I so the irony that everyone's like she's stealing all this money like I was like holy [ __ ] like I need I needed money for right like I needed I could not there's no way to say other than I didn't feel safe with where I lived where I was I didn't I had just came back from LA my family dynamics were insane it was a very alienating intense time to me my personal life so be that as it may the donors were supporting a charitable purpose and that's not what the money was spent on as she said just their passing she spent the money on her own rent yeah that's definitely how I felt as well so it was about 10 grand I got given which I thought was amazing and in saying I made that was a lot of money and that was amazing um but as soon as I felt like I couldn't create content and I just lost all trust and who I was and what I was doing and yeah maybe I'm just being emotional and scamming people maybe that's who I really am you know I think it's worthwhile to just pause and reflect on what she just said to her it's a joke I think for all of us reflecting in our own lives reflecting how we use social media whether as content creators or as viewers I think it's not a joke I think it's not a laughing matter let me say still right now I'm in a position to ask for the nation's but their various projects have proposed in the past but if I were to ask for donations I would then hold myself to a very high standard in pursuing those objectives and reporting to the public on where the money had gone something as simple as publishing a book once you take on that responsibility that you're not gambling with your own money through gambling with other people's money you have to hold yourself to a standard that is above reproach I just panicked I donated about half of it just random charities I'm sure you can hook them up it was out of panic what was that so she paid her rent and she donated about half of it to just random charities sorry sir sorry when people gave you $10,000 they weren't choosing to donate to random charities right if if right now if I ask my audience to donate some money so I can publish your book I have to take that money and give it to the printing press you know spend it on a list of things maybe I have to pay an illustrator to illustrate the cover give me a series of things really do publishing the book right it doesn't solve the problem morally or ethically if I say oh well you know I didn't publish the book but about half of the money went to random charities your audience can donate to random charities themselves this is holding yourself accountable by the wrong standard the right thing I wish I would have just figured out how to refund but I'm sorry I was just so [ __ ] dumb it was just yeah I just I just wanted it to be about that's I think I just panicked and I was just like okay donate and then because I currently do a certain amount a day I end up seeing a therapist and I was talking to her about it and she was like look like you know like that's just like you're just giving you money with charities like maybe you could just throw away the three weeks like get you clear your head so then I volunteered in Cambodia so many sleepless nights where I've just been I'm never gonna be out of painted people back running away from your problems but doing volunteer work in Cambodia paycheck to paycheck that's why I'm really passionate about ubi and special services because they think it could be easy up everyone were you ever tempted to come back to social media and what did you miss most after you left besides from the insane pleasure of earning money like that yeah number one money of all things of course I'm nerdy it's working minimum wage and then getting paid to promote like a cute vegan product it's different why there was something so special about what I had online and I just wanted again it sucked because oh sorry I know it's uncomfortable to talk about but I feel like the people in my life then they had a certain point of view and my point of view was different and I felt so alone and alienated and like I was crazy and a few people did um say that to me and I think that taught me a lot and that was my silencing like after I thought someone was like you're not okay you need serious help um and I wasn't okay so I think that was ultimately clear um that hurt I don't know that really hurt me and that just made me feel so shameful that I'd embarrassed my family you guys yeah that just make it full of myself that I just shared that stuff should have been saved for therapy you know and it's been for years and I can I can I'm thankful I had happened I can't I can't regret things but everything with the money and just it was just it was a mess I was just trying to have a little blog and not just once of ships and what a blow up to was just it was just all too much for me and yeah I've been doing this thing on YouTube for more than five years talking about history politics sometimes about veganism I don't recommend other people do it some people are cut out for this and some are not and people sometimes talk to me and say they're uncomfortable with their own body they have issues related to anorexia and weight loss they were uncomfortable with their own face they're uncomfortable with the sound of their own voice when they record videos and here at back they can't stand it this ain't for you and you know Essen O'Neill and her rise to fame had a lot to do with her being very lean and wearing a bikini there wasn't a whole lot in the bikini but really showing off her midriff showing off how thin she was all the time and during when she broke down when it all fell apart for her she did have reflections about this obsession with weight loss not quite anorexia but having a roll life of over on this this was one of the sources of stress and sorrow and of you know struggling to be as beautiful as you can be or maybe more beautiful than you can be for the sake of the lens look guys what I'm doing right now is not motivated by money and it's not motivated by the number of viewers right I'm coming on camera and talking about things that I really think are meaningful as an end in itself if I've got something to say about politics of Vietnam politics of Afghanistan or the politics of some internet personality if I think that what I'm saying is meaningful and I want to share it on the record then that isn't in itself so I don't suffer from these other things but essen O'Neill there's another real cautionary fable here and she thought the money would never end she thought her looks would never fade and now here we are just a few years later partly looking back at the train wreck of a career of SN O'Neill and partly looking back at the train wreck of the vegan movement and partly looking back and looking forward at social media and what it means for people like me and what it means for people like her who decide to sacrifice our privacy putting things in the internet that can very simply prevent you from getting even the humblest of jobs what I do on YouTube could prevent me from getting a job at Starbucks and ice cream a handful of times it was delicious each time versus I was drunk I'm saying that just to say that I used to be a real perfectionist online I think that's something I really could take a lot now is kind of like I realize I always had something to always just had this like image to like uphold to Oh like there was just it was always like this person in my head telling me like what was right and wrong all the time and who laid up I reckon that's just boring I can probably people ought fun to hang around I studied on English Lit and political science just for a year which I loved I won so much fell in love with Cal mogs alienation I'm terrified of being set but I yeah I think I'm a lot more like I'm a lot more sure of like who I like who I trust and I think that makes your personality more than just like other thing editor that sounds really bad way explaining your looks don't last asana O'Neill her career was based on her appearance her so-called beauty and her looks didn't last in general with human beings of any gender and any age we can say your looks don't last if you're an exception to the rule still looking ahead to the future that's not something you should count on what you should count on is building your career building your reputation whether on social media or otherwise on something meaningful on something durable being a person of character being a person of substance being a person of real moral integrity Essen O'Neil the internet did hand you an opportunity to earn a lot of money by wearing a bikini handed you an opportunity to travel all around the world on permanent vacation and live the very peculiar life that you did but it also had you an opportunity to be a leader in the vegan movement for a little while you were and you could have taken that opportunity to develop yourself intellectually you could have taken that opportunity to really hold yourself to a very high standard morally as a person of integrity as a person who was a leader of sorts in a political movement of sorts and you didn't do that you got instead on the road to self-indulgence and self eduation and you're still living in that self-centered way when your looks and your fame are gone and can never be recovered the life of the mind doesn't last forever but I'll tell you something I look forward to being 70 years old because I look forward to what I'm gonna be able to do with my mind as an author and an intellectual when I'm in my 70s [Music]