My Secret Emails with Durianrider + Jezebel (Gawker Media) Interview.
04 June 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
some of you will have heard me say in
interviews and livestreams in Q&A sessions that after the disastrous events in Chiang Mai during writer never made an effort to reconcile with me never made an effort to apologize to me or patch things up but what have you that was true at the time that I said it but as you can see from this email on screen just now recently he sent me some email with a more constructive or cordial tone and I was very much surprised that as you can see here he says that he has tried to delete his old videos that were denouncing me and he's here offering to go ahead and delete more videos now of course the damage has been done of drawing attention this recently that I still do deal with many thousands probably tens of thousands of people who have a negative impression of me to say the least because of his campaign of defamation against my character the allegations he made about me and if you don't already know that story you'll hear a little bit more about that the rest of this video as I'm including the interview I gave with Gawker Media but obviously this is a significant change in his behavior and I appreciate that circled in red on screen he asks how is Taiwan compared to Thailand and I did write back telling him that although Taiwan is probably the most successful country in the world for veganism the number of vegan restaurants even in small towns is amazing it's something of a hollow victory because we only see the success of veganism here as a diet not as a social and political movement the whole thing was just a set of inherently implausible allegations you know made in this over-the-top manner that he was gonna beat me up and take me to a police station and then if the police failed to be appropriately brutal they would brutalize me themselves so you know now again if we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis I think you wouldn't be writing this article if this was behavior from a group of neo-nazis you might just shrug and say well that's neo-nazis for you but these are vegans these are people who we preach that they would not hurt a snail I would say this is a place for drama or comedy to call people say something HIV or someone trying to [ __ ] keep then you know when that didn't sound dog's missing and lasting in Cambodia snorting cocaine this is funny random [ __ ] it's definitely slander that's just this is wrong well I mean you say that you say that but there's several instances you know of you slandering people I'm gonna find hard to forget that she tried to call me you want a pedophile or chasing 50 no girls well this is pretty hard to forget you know I'm pretty forgiving first I couldn't see myself again clearly but she's gonna have to do it she's basic on tequila night of the four enemies that she started not sure if I'm gonna court either you're not just you really think you'll got you you would if you had to you would take her to court for that it's Seward for damages ya mean she's gonna continue that myth that I'm grooming girls to six and I just obtained but I've never ever on my life of a mother's life ever had sex with an underage a reason matters claims to the audience which is a big audience the female audience that's pretty damaging my brain my reputations yeah what I mean what other choice do I have if I don't pay in a call it makes me look guilty he hasn't reached out to you since well no he's continued making Angry defamatory statements about me like on YouTube and other places so he has made statements to the public you know including me about what a terrible person I am that never stopped but no he's never spoken to me privately so that's a distinction but know that the defamation has not stopped you know he made a video that was allegedly apologizing to me and the whole thing from start to finish it's just one defamation after another so you know as again this is one of those things even if you only heard one side of the story you would know he was lying because of the highly improv is a torii way in which he lurches from one set of allegations to the next so you know as soon as he's done saying I'm a pedophile he's saying that I'm a wife beater and again even if you didn't hear my side of the story just the nature of the applications is not credible you know so that's that's what he's done he's gone from one set of allegations to the next he's I was sort of flipping through his ask durianrider forum and he attributed his making violent threats somebody asked him a question of saying like I'm so disappointed that you've been making all these violent threats and not referring specifically to you but he attributed it to roid rage and I was so I was wondering if he had reached out to you to say anything about that no I'm sorry he's a really despicable I mean it's one it's one set of excuses after another with him and you know he's done the same with the sex scandals and everything else but no I mean next week he'll make up a different I mean before his excuse was that he had been staying up until 2:00 a.m. and only sleeping for three hours or you know he's made different excuses but no there's never been any sincere apology there's never no no sorry sorry if that disappoints you but no no he's been true to character you know I mean yeah that it's not disappointing um so where did he I think you might have addressed this but where did he get the idea that you contacted teenage girls online he just made it up he made up all bunch of nonsense now I mean the other thing is even even in the screenshots of our conversation I pointed out to him then like what is the meaning of the word contacted so like for example on and I said this I said this to him directly on our communication on my youtube channel I have an interview with an 18 year old University student about political activism and there's nothing inappropriate was nothing sexy and I give very good advice to that eighteen year old you know about school and yeah I either sound boring but when I talk to teenagers which I do I tell them to stay in school and stay out of jail and durianrider says the opposite he's telling teenagers to drop out of school and do a lot of things that can put you in jail so I mean I'm not ashamed of the communications I've had with teenagers again some of them on my youtube channel so this is having like an hour-long discussion with an 18 year old and she was asking me you know what's the best way to organize a political movement and how to agitate for social change so totally aboveboard so you know have I contacted teenagers what is the meaning of the word contacted you know this is this is a ridiculous allegation now beyond that durianrider himself contacts teenagers all the time he has a much younger following than I do I mean if you see my channel my stuff is not aimed at a teenage audience and a lot of his stuff is so he has a video up right now where he's talking to a 16 year old on camera I don't think there's anything inherently evil about you know an adult talking younger children unfortunate I do actually think during writers advice is is pretty terrible when he talks to younger people you can see that for yourself you can track your own conclusions but no I mean the the nature of the allegation to begin with was intentionally vague and a bus Kotori and evasive so you know what do you mean contacting teenagers I had I contacted any teenagers in Chiangmai no I'd only been in Chiangmai for two days or possibly three days when he made the allegations so the number of people had talked to was incredibly small but was just like the whole thing was just a set of inherently implausible allegations you know made in this over-the-top manner that he was gonna beat me up to take me to a police station and then if the police failed to be appropriately brutal they would brutalize me themselves so you know now again if we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis I think you wouldn't be writing this article if this was behavior from a group of neo-nazis you might just shrug and say well that's neo-nazis for you if this is from a group of communist extremists you might shrug your shoulders and say well that's par for the course but these are vegans these are people who literally preach that they would not hurt a snail right and this is the way he's conducting himself in this movement so if you've seen my videos I wax you know philosophical about this but yeah this is a you know egregiously damning and this is in many ways I think a turning point for the movement where people have to stop wake up and really think about what we've become and I saw that when I was there it's had a mat this had a much bigger emotional impact on other people that did on me because a lot of people had to look into the mirror and say is this who we are is this really what we've become because this is supposed to be veganism not supposed to be a bunch of neo-nazi thugs right what why were you in Chiangmai were you at the bike fest or were you just hot to just happen to be there like what what drew you there good question I have answered it before but I'm happy to answer it again so I've been in and attaching my for more than 10 years unlike everyone else in this equation I speak the language I speak Thai with a heavy lotion accent I lived in Thailand Laos Cambodia for years I was a real scholar a real specialist in that field I realised my CV is boring but you can read you know I sent you a copy of my resume you can look that over I studied those languages I study those histories I studied that political politics of that region both ancient and modern I did a ton of research at a humanitarian work NGO work whatever you want to say I have a meaningful connection to the history politics and languages of that region including the city of Chiang Mai itself and that is deeply threatening those people because they don't they're shallow hippie tourists doing self-indulgent nonsense so that is part of the tension of the situation I already knew the city of chiang mai had been there before why I arrived when I didn't left and I did which had nothing to do with the festival was that I had a job in China and couldn't Ming China where I am right now and I was signed up to start language classes that I'm taking right now and I needed to do paperwork and I needed to go to a hospital some of the paperwork is done at a hospital get my Chinese visa and order etc so there were really practically for me there were about two ways I could do that one would be going by a Chiang Mai the other would be going by a nan Chi and VN Chen I can get into details that are kind of meaningless but the reality was I had a list of practical reasons to be in Shanghai for just a couple of days Chiang Mai has a Chinese embassy as a good Hospital that I know where they both speak English and speak Thai I could speak enough Thai to get by at that Hospital where I could get all that stuff done and I could then get a direct flight from Chiang Mai to couldn't Ming which is exactly what I did above and beyond that I had fans in Chiang Mai durianrider isn't the only one with fans in Chiang Mai there were people in shame I wanted to meet me and so I went there that was another reason to be in Chiang Mai rather than taking a slightly different route going from Bangkok to could Ming and I did meet up with them I never attended a single rato for events I never gatecrashed I never showed up at anything uninvited I created my own events where I met people who already knew me on the internet and wanted to meet with me it was it I never once showed up at any of Durham Ryder were free Leigh's events I never instigated anything in any way in that sense but simply the fact that I exist is a deep challenge to their authority I've mentioned some of the reasons for that already I mean you know if you dig around the other reasons have to do with the pseudoscience of their diet I'm one of the only people who came out strongly and said on the issue of Crohn's disease Crohn's disease is an incurable disease translation it is a disease for which there is no known cure and what durianrider has said about Crohn's disease is false and he he was deeply threatened by that and he made a video directly responding to me and denouncing me on that several months ago I'm sorry I forget how many months ago that is you can you can get the date if you need it by searching his YouTube channel just search for Crohn's disease and you'll you'll see the video easily enough where he again claims he credits so on that kind of issue like you know I also clarified they claim that garlic contains a neurotoxin that is false I don't know if you've ever eaten garlic garlic does not contain a neurotoxin so there were various hard issues of science as well as politics on which I've really been a very different voice within the vegan movement as I like to say I mean you know real people do real things so yeah the fact that I exist at all is in some way a threat to him and they responded accordingly but no I actually I actually wasn't there to instigate the kind of - Chris conflict that durianrider himself did instigate I know it so you mentioned that it's a kind of a small community in Chiang Mai from your experience can you sort of describe who you who you know of living there like what what that whole situation is as you know it in terms of vegans vegan expats living in Chiang Mai okay okay yeah look there are there are three types of people there okay there are people who are so young that this really is tragic and this really is a cult-like movement that's gonna devastate them for the rest of their lives okay and you can be as polite about that as you want to be but I talked to a young woman who dropped out of high school and moved to Chiang Mai to join this social circle shall we say now let's let's not use the word cult okay you know you tell me anyone who dropped out of high school and doesn't and you're in earnest of what this isn't gonna impact the rest of your life I know I know two examples I think both young females who dropped out of high school I think so maybe I'm mr. Minton but in one one for sure who I interviewed on my own channel so you can see that interview on my channel and we talked about it and she's very philosophical about it the one I interviewed my channel other people dropped out of college other people just decided not to go to college so there's some people at a young age where that's what impacts them and you tell me what future they really have I hope they wake up some of them do some of them turn their lives around and get a new perspective and take on a new direction others don't okay then there are middle-aged people who earned it you know like they had a normal job up to a point and for some reason they fell into this ideology and sacrificed everything join the social circle now there's an example there's a channel called Joe vegan so does Jo E space vegan and he and his wife talk honestly about the fact they're in our disillusion they're not true believers they used the word cult they say they're no longer called members but they just fell in love with this idea they quit their jobs they sold all their furniture they bought bicycles and they ran away to Chiangmai I think just one year ago I mean was last year's festival they were true believers in this and then they had a kind of disillusionment experience where they woke up and they themselves say like you know they makes videos talking about this what were we thinking like what what was our plan for the future but those are mature adults I I believe they're over 30 years old them I'm guessing their age these are aged people so even then it's kind of sad but the consequences are less serious and then finally there are people who are more of a retirement age who are making this choice and I guess for them the consequences are the least serious because you know I guess you know I guess for them going on permanent vacation maybe has no such repercussions however I've got to tell you something um I I thought my own grandmother was a bad person because when she retired she just decided to play tennis and basically not to give a damn about the real world or its problems I think that we all should do our part to make the world a better place and I think we should work damn hard to figure out what our part is that's one of the reasons why I'm vegan and even if you're not vegan I think you should feel positive motivated make the world a better place and what is so sick about the ego trip behind this permanent vacation cult is that they pretend they're saving the world they pretend they're making the world a better place when really they're living a life of total self-indulgence and that's the incongruous contradiction at the heart of this for all three age groups yeah so I want to actually take a step back for a second you said in your interview with the light twins that suing durianrider is not about your ego it's about veganism and what you were what you just said reminded me of that can you explain that a little bit yeah you got all day [Laughter] [Music]
interviews and livestreams in Q&A sessions that after the disastrous events in Chiang Mai during writer never made an effort to reconcile with me never made an effort to apologize to me or patch things up but what have you that was true at the time that I said it but as you can see from this email on screen just now recently he sent me some email with a more constructive or cordial tone and I was very much surprised that as you can see here he says that he has tried to delete his old videos that were denouncing me and he's here offering to go ahead and delete more videos now of course the damage has been done of drawing attention this recently that I still do deal with many thousands probably tens of thousands of people who have a negative impression of me to say the least because of his campaign of defamation against my character the allegations he made about me and if you don't already know that story you'll hear a little bit more about that the rest of this video as I'm including the interview I gave with Gawker Media but obviously this is a significant change in his behavior and I appreciate that circled in red on screen he asks how is Taiwan compared to Thailand and I did write back telling him that although Taiwan is probably the most successful country in the world for veganism the number of vegan restaurants even in small towns is amazing it's something of a hollow victory because we only see the success of veganism here as a diet not as a social and political movement the whole thing was just a set of inherently implausible allegations you know made in this over-the-top manner that he was gonna beat me up and take me to a police station and then if the police failed to be appropriately brutal they would brutalize me themselves so you know now again if we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis I think you wouldn't be writing this article if this was behavior from a group of neo-nazis you might just shrug and say well that's neo-nazis for you but these are vegans these are people who we preach that they would not hurt a snail I would say this is a place for drama or comedy to call people say something HIV or someone trying to [ __ ] keep then you know when that didn't sound dog's missing and lasting in Cambodia snorting cocaine this is funny random [ __ ] it's definitely slander that's just this is wrong well I mean you say that you say that but there's several instances you know of you slandering people I'm gonna find hard to forget that she tried to call me you want a pedophile or chasing 50 no girls well this is pretty hard to forget you know I'm pretty forgiving first I couldn't see myself again clearly but she's gonna have to do it she's basic on tequila night of the four enemies that she started not sure if I'm gonna court either you're not just you really think you'll got you you would if you had to you would take her to court for that it's Seward for damages ya mean she's gonna continue that myth that I'm grooming girls to six and I just obtained but I've never ever on my life of a mother's life ever had sex with an underage a reason matters claims to the audience which is a big audience the female audience that's pretty damaging my brain my reputations yeah what I mean what other choice do I have if I don't pay in a call it makes me look guilty he hasn't reached out to you since well no he's continued making Angry defamatory statements about me like on YouTube and other places so he has made statements to the public you know including me about what a terrible person I am that never stopped but no he's never spoken to me privately so that's a distinction but know that the defamation has not stopped you know he made a video that was allegedly apologizing to me and the whole thing from start to finish it's just one defamation after another so you know as again this is one of those things even if you only heard one side of the story you would know he was lying because of the highly improv is a torii way in which he lurches from one set of allegations to the next so you know as soon as he's done saying I'm a pedophile he's saying that I'm a wife beater and again even if you didn't hear my side of the story just the nature of the applications is not credible you know so that's that's what he's done he's gone from one set of allegations to the next he's I was sort of flipping through his ask durianrider forum and he attributed his making violent threats somebody asked him a question of saying like I'm so disappointed that you've been making all these violent threats and not referring specifically to you but he attributed it to roid rage and I was so I was wondering if he had reached out to you to say anything about that no I'm sorry he's a really despicable I mean it's one it's one set of excuses after another with him and you know he's done the same with the sex scandals and everything else but no I mean next week he'll make up a different I mean before his excuse was that he had been staying up until 2:00 a.m. and only sleeping for three hours or you know he's made different excuses but no there's never been any sincere apology there's never no no sorry sorry if that disappoints you but no no he's been true to character you know I mean yeah that it's not disappointing um so where did he I think you might have addressed this but where did he get the idea that you contacted teenage girls online he just made it up he made up all bunch of nonsense now I mean the other thing is even even in the screenshots of our conversation I pointed out to him then like what is the meaning of the word contacted so like for example on and I said this I said this to him directly on our communication on my youtube channel I have an interview with an 18 year old University student about political activism and there's nothing inappropriate was nothing sexy and I give very good advice to that eighteen year old you know about school and yeah I either sound boring but when I talk to teenagers which I do I tell them to stay in school and stay out of jail and durianrider says the opposite he's telling teenagers to drop out of school and do a lot of things that can put you in jail so I mean I'm not ashamed of the communications I've had with teenagers again some of them on my youtube channel so this is having like an hour-long discussion with an 18 year old and she was asking me you know what's the best way to organize a political movement and how to agitate for social change so totally aboveboard so you know have I contacted teenagers what is the meaning of the word contacted you know this is this is a ridiculous allegation now beyond that durianrider himself contacts teenagers all the time he has a much younger following than I do I mean if you see my channel my stuff is not aimed at a teenage audience and a lot of his stuff is so he has a video up right now where he's talking to a 16 year old on camera I don't think there's anything inherently evil about you know an adult talking younger children unfortunate I do actually think during writers advice is is pretty terrible when he talks to younger people you can see that for yourself you can track your own conclusions but no I mean the the nature of the allegation to begin with was intentionally vague and a bus Kotori and evasive so you know what do you mean contacting teenagers I had I contacted any teenagers in Chiangmai no I'd only been in Chiangmai for two days or possibly three days when he made the allegations so the number of people had talked to was incredibly small but was just like the whole thing was just a set of inherently implausible allegations you know made in this over-the-top manner that he was gonna beat me up to take me to a police station and then if the police failed to be appropriately brutal they would brutalize me themselves so you know now again if we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis I think you wouldn't be writing this article if this was behavior from a group of neo-nazis you might just shrug and say well that's neo-nazis for you if this is from a group of communist extremists you might shrug your shoulders and say well that's par for the course but these are vegans these are people who literally preach that they would not hurt a snail right and this is the way he's conducting himself in this movement so if you've seen my videos I wax you know philosophical about this but yeah this is a you know egregiously damning and this is in many ways I think a turning point for the movement where people have to stop wake up and really think about what we've become and I saw that when I was there it's had a mat this had a much bigger emotional impact on other people that did on me because a lot of people had to look into the mirror and say is this who we are is this really what we've become because this is supposed to be veganism not supposed to be a bunch of neo-nazi thugs right what why were you in Chiangmai were you at the bike fest or were you just hot to just happen to be there like what what drew you there good question I have answered it before but I'm happy to answer it again so I've been in and attaching my for more than 10 years unlike everyone else in this equation I speak the language I speak Thai with a heavy lotion accent I lived in Thailand Laos Cambodia for years I was a real scholar a real specialist in that field I realised my CV is boring but you can read you know I sent you a copy of my resume you can look that over I studied those languages I study those histories I studied that political politics of that region both ancient and modern I did a ton of research at a humanitarian work NGO work whatever you want to say I have a meaningful connection to the history politics and languages of that region including the city of Chiang Mai itself and that is deeply threatening those people because they don't they're shallow hippie tourists doing self-indulgent nonsense so that is part of the tension of the situation I already knew the city of chiang mai had been there before why I arrived when I didn't left and I did which had nothing to do with the festival was that I had a job in China and couldn't Ming China where I am right now and I was signed up to start language classes that I'm taking right now and I needed to do paperwork and I needed to go to a hospital some of the paperwork is done at a hospital get my Chinese visa and order etc so there were really practically for me there were about two ways I could do that one would be going by a Chiang Mai the other would be going by a nan Chi and VN Chen I can get into details that are kind of meaningless but the reality was I had a list of practical reasons to be in Shanghai for just a couple of days Chiang Mai has a Chinese embassy as a good Hospital that I know where they both speak English and speak Thai I could speak enough Thai to get by at that Hospital where I could get all that stuff done and I could then get a direct flight from Chiang Mai to couldn't Ming which is exactly what I did above and beyond that I had fans in Chiang Mai durianrider isn't the only one with fans in Chiang Mai there were people in shame I wanted to meet me and so I went there that was another reason to be in Chiang Mai rather than taking a slightly different route going from Bangkok to could Ming and I did meet up with them I never attended a single rato for events I never gatecrashed I never showed up at anything uninvited I created my own events where I met people who already knew me on the internet and wanted to meet with me it was it I never once showed up at any of Durham Ryder were free Leigh's events I never instigated anything in any way in that sense but simply the fact that I exist is a deep challenge to their authority I've mentioned some of the reasons for that already I mean you know if you dig around the other reasons have to do with the pseudoscience of their diet I'm one of the only people who came out strongly and said on the issue of Crohn's disease Crohn's disease is an incurable disease translation it is a disease for which there is no known cure and what durianrider has said about Crohn's disease is false and he he was deeply threatened by that and he made a video directly responding to me and denouncing me on that several months ago I'm sorry I forget how many months ago that is you can you can get the date if you need it by searching his YouTube channel just search for Crohn's disease and you'll you'll see the video easily enough where he again claims he credits so on that kind of issue like you know I also clarified they claim that garlic contains a neurotoxin that is false I don't know if you've ever eaten garlic garlic does not contain a neurotoxin so there were various hard issues of science as well as politics on which I've really been a very different voice within the vegan movement as I like to say I mean you know real people do real things so yeah the fact that I exist at all is in some way a threat to him and they responded accordingly but no I actually I actually wasn't there to instigate the kind of - Chris conflict that durianrider himself did instigate I know it so you mentioned that it's a kind of a small community in Chiang Mai from your experience can you sort of describe who you who you know of living there like what what that whole situation is as you know it in terms of vegans vegan expats living in Chiang Mai okay okay yeah look there are there are three types of people there okay there are people who are so young that this really is tragic and this really is a cult-like movement that's gonna devastate them for the rest of their lives okay and you can be as polite about that as you want to be but I talked to a young woman who dropped out of high school and moved to Chiang Mai to join this social circle shall we say now let's let's not use the word cult okay you know you tell me anyone who dropped out of high school and doesn't and you're in earnest of what this isn't gonna impact the rest of your life I know I know two examples I think both young females who dropped out of high school I think so maybe I'm mr. Minton but in one one for sure who I interviewed on my own channel so you can see that interview on my channel and we talked about it and she's very philosophical about it the one I interviewed my channel other people dropped out of college other people just decided not to go to college so there's some people at a young age where that's what impacts them and you tell me what future they really have I hope they wake up some of them do some of them turn their lives around and get a new perspective and take on a new direction others don't okay then there are middle-aged people who earned it you know like they had a normal job up to a point and for some reason they fell into this ideology and sacrificed everything join the social circle now there's an example there's a channel called Joe vegan so does Jo E space vegan and he and his wife talk honestly about the fact they're in our disillusion they're not true believers they used the word cult they say they're no longer called members but they just fell in love with this idea they quit their jobs they sold all their furniture they bought bicycles and they ran away to Chiangmai I think just one year ago I mean was last year's festival they were true believers in this and then they had a kind of disillusionment experience where they woke up and they themselves say like you know they makes videos talking about this what were we thinking like what what was our plan for the future but those are mature adults I I believe they're over 30 years old them I'm guessing their age these are aged people so even then it's kind of sad but the consequences are less serious and then finally there are people who are more of a retirement age who are making this choice and I guess for them the consequences are the least serious because you know I guess you know I guess for them going on permanent vacation maybe has no such repercussions however I've got to tell you something um I I thought my own grandmother was a bad person because when she retired she just decided to play tennis and basically not to give a damn about the real world or its problems I think that we all should do our part to make the world a better place and I think we should work damn hard to figure out what our part is that's one of the reasons why I'm vegan and even if you're not vegan I think you should feel positive motivated make the world a better place and what is so sick about the ego trip behind this permanent vacation cult is that they pretend they're saving the world they pretend they're making the world a better place when really they're living a life of total self-indulgence and that's the incongruous contradiction at the heart of this for all three age groups yeah so I want to actually take a step back for a second you said in your interview with the light twins that suing durianrider is not about your ego it's about veganism and what you were what you just said reminded me of that can you explain that a little bit yeah you got all day [Laughter] [Music]