Vegans, Alone in the Crowd: A Conversation With KiwiBanana.

when I say exactly what you say I say
like look a lot of us are here on the internet making the time to to to to really make friends the internet because we're so alone in real life and science people are offended like why are you saying that you're saying vegans are a bunch of shut-ins or something like no that's just you know my experience in life and most of the other activists you can say things like oh well everyone's really alone like everyone's living in a situation where they don't know any other vegans I said no I should know I've talked to some people who know like 12 or 15 other vegans in real life I say you know I talked to one woman from New Zealand's and she knows like 15 plus other bigots empirical world and they're always really shocked so let's let's start with that never in my life have I surrounding my stuff around so many idiots dead actually no they're idiots sign up on my patreon just for one dollar net one dollar would give me that sass me much business and you can continue to see how better i have everyone else in this vegan demi-monde great do I call you uh Kiwi or what do you want me to call you as a nickname for this purposes of this broadcast yeah Kiwis all good um so look I first met you maybe three years ago on scott on facebook I think back when my channel was brand new so you know in some ways I don't know you at all don't get me wrong but in some ways I feel like I've known you since forever yeah yeah yeah I think it it's probably I met me about two years ago we met via sorcerer marathas facebook group which you know back then source show was not famous I'm you know in a sense none of us are famous but yeah and my my youtube channel was was just starting up and so on um you know one of the things I remember about you I mentioned you without naming you in a few conversations soon as I talked to vegans who say things it's understandable if you can say things like oh well everyone's really alone like everyone's living in a situation where they don't know any other vegans as I know I should have talked to some people who know like 12 or 15 other vegan in real life I say you know I talked to one woman from New Zealand and she knows like 15 plus other baguettes interval world and they're always really shocked so let's let's start with that you actually know look I don't know 15 vegans how many bees you know in the real world I I'd to be honest I probably can put a number on it but I've I've meet at least 50 that live locally in my city yeah that's kind of amazing so I mean your city in New Zealand can't be that big because all of New Zealand isn't that big like the total population of New Zealand is not very high in the millions yeah no one's about 4 million people and the city i live in is christchurch and that's about close to 400,000 fifty four hundred thousand people Wow so I just ask you to be blunt do you think that's an illusion do you think it's an illusion that that New Zealand has a ton of vegans or do you think it's reality no no it is definitely illusion it's probably because I involved myself with a lot of other bitanem organizations and like a run a vegan club I just finished running a vegan club on my campus so I've just been a lot more I guess a bit more of like a socialite just sort of socializing with everybody okay look I'm happy for you mean the first thing is obviously I'm really happy for you to hear that um I thought you were closer to me an age did you just finish University or did you go back university as an older person like I don't know your age I'm just guessing um no I've just finished University i've spent about five years there wow so look I mean that that's kind of amazing but in your city you know 50 vegans I was at University recently and I both didn't know any vegans and couldn't get vegans to cooperate with me and there was a vegan club on the campus but the guy who organized it basically prevented me from cooperating with the group even though I was one of the signing founders of the group and you know I never found out why that was I basically I think he basically felt threatened by me like that guy has his own YouTube channel but he gets like 10 10 views per video so I think he had the feeling that I was a more charismatic or possibly more influential person or me he just hates me but he didn't he didn't let the dashi whenever we talk privately he and I when there was nobody else or he was actually really friendly with me when we were alone but when we were in a group like a political meeting typesetting I think he was really uncomfortable with the fact that I could like you know sway the crowd kind of thing you know if we were actually having a debate or something but anyway so my my experience that was negative I when I left Canada I she got a bunch of fan mail from vegans at my university who said oh I'm also vegan at University and we never met well it's a bit late now so I knew I knew one vegan in in Victoria it's a big city and you know think then Coover's right next door so I know it's shallow but I mean it's I think it's really we're talking about is knowing vegans in real life yeah like I I think that's probably were a lot of people sort of full shot or maybe fallout of veganism is because they don't have that support and I guess that's why a lot of people turn to the Internet to see if they can find other you know like-minded people and find other vegans that are like them because not all the vegans in you know in christchurch or get along and you know not all of them are into the same thing or come to vegans and from the same background on it yeah well I mean I totally feel the way but it's interesting cuz sometimes other vegans respond to that as if it's a criticism or as if I'm insulting vegans when I say exactly what you say I say like look a lot of us are here on the internet making the time Institute to to really make friends the internet because we're so alone in real life and sighs people are offended like why are you saying that you're saying vegans are a bunch of shut-ins or something's like no that's just you know my experience in life and most of the other activists like you know one of them so just yes you said in some sense you've been involved with some animal rights group and that's part of the way you you met so many people can you say a little bit about that and what what kind of more rights group or what you know you don't I mean um so not all of them i would say like animal rights like one of them is like the christchurch vegetarian center which is mostly run by vegans and but that's sort of more of like an older crowd there's also a group cool site animals from exploitation which is like a new zealand's yeah they've got they've got animals is therefore front of their focus but I wouldn't say they're like animal rights or like fully animal rights or animal liberation but they definitely do push a few sort of vegan agendas and then there's a new zealand anti-vivisection society and there's a local one that's called kashi general right section so they do a lot more of that the protesting sort of stuff so you guys uh this is just my ignorance minus G on is Christchurch the capital of the whole country or only of your of your province what is the critical it's the biggest place in the South Island of New Zealand but the the capital was Wellington and the city of Auckland is the biggest city for population right so I just wasn't sure of Auckland was actually the capital or if it was just the most famous city Auckland's the main city foreigners know about so okay so that's interesting but really you have this activism going on in a city where you're not you know influencing government where it's really activism for the sake of influencing other people yea I'm guessing it that that's interesting it's way too so where I was Victoria is not the biggest or most powerful city in Canada but it is actually the wealthiest per cap we have almost no poor people we have a lot of rich people in Victoria and it's also one of the oldest with a lot of retired people of elderly people and it is a political capital so it's a it's the political capital for that province which is you know one of the most important problems so you really have all the read like all the ingredients there for Victoria to be an important place for vegan activism or animal rights activism of some kind but it's not a it's a it's a failure so you know that that was interesting for me to see although I just say like I don't know you can tell me about New Zealand this way but I mean that part of Canada British Columbia the west coast it really has a reputation for the kind of yoga culture like physical fitness culture as well as the kind of hippie aspects so again they're kind of a lot of the ingredients therefore you would think um you know you know what I mean you would think that veganism would have a pretty easy time there I mean how do you feel that I really again New Zealand to me is just a foreign country period I know I know nothing about New Zealand how do you feel that veganism fits into the culture at least in your town well I actually probably an interesting background like I had done a lot of non vegan jobs myself so that the area this is obviously before come to the philosophy but the New Zealand is based on like I think tourism's like the number one bringer of them of income and the next one might be like the financial market or something and then the third one is um agriculture so [ __ ] is really really big here and in the area that I live in there's a lot of dairy farms but I don't even yeah I don't can't even count probably how many millions of like cows and sheep and things that are killed here every year considering the small population that we have right well I just mentioned that's that's a really interesting thing about new zealand vs canada a long time ago i made a video talking with the economics of how the canadian government pumps money into our dairy industry the you know what they're taking taxpayers money and giving it to cattle farmers basically and in canada the whole contraption loses money like that part of the economy is a failure and a guy from New Zealand who was interesting the numbers and you know many British colonies are like that you know England itself the government generally puts money into cows and they're not the government is not turning a profit it's losing money on that but I got a guy from New Zealand God touched me and he gave me the numbers and he went through the numbers we kind of went through the numbers together and we figured out that new zealand is actually one of the exceptions to the rule in New Zealand your government does make money out of the dairy industry it's of it is a for-profit industry for both the government and for the farmers so that's rare like you know you can look at that as success you can look at it as failure but you guys are actually turning a profit partly because you sell your dairy products to Canada among other bizarre places so many people in the world many vegans are used to complaining the government wastes this money on unmeet agriculture dairy agriculture and it all loses money but actually in New Zealand you have a more difficult argument to make because that is part of your economic backbone yeah yes it does become quite hard when you're trying to discuss with people without you know what other financial ways can they make money if we got rid of animal agriculture and like that yeah because they always bring up that it's our number one export but it's not necessarily like a number one industry that makes the most money but it's definitely one of our number one exports well I assume also i mean New Zealand I seem that fishing and wool are part of your national identity I mean Caribbean Rob I assume fishing is huge part of the country's background and also wool aren't you also known for sheep and wool yes he's um although I wall has taken a little bit of a backdrop in the last sort of probably 15 years since dairies come up but I don't know it may have increased again since we had a few fools in the market with the dairy and the last neurosci what it is one of those funny things when Canada also is just this kind of you know dismal British colony where it's like well if we're not famous for the fur industry what are we famous for its like that was really our history our whole national identity was made out of fishing and fur fur trapping so you know III feel it I can you know I grew up in that culture too I can imagine what it's like being on the other side of those conversations but it's like yes everything like things that were literally on the flag for this country things that were in the emblem you are part of the British Empire um yeah we're challenging all of that we feel all of that is a horrible error uh yeah anyway but New Zealand that so just given that you have that overall positive situation you're well connected coming out of university you're well connected to a pretty big community of activists and so on what we looking for when you went to Thailand you went to Thailand almost one year ago now yeah and he hooked up with the the vegan subcultures area uh I didn't I don't really meet that many the vegans in Thailand like I wasn't necessarily going mia just for that but I've always been that like coming from New Zealand you always kind of Asia's probably one of the closest sort of cheapest places to travel yeah so I guess that's what really attracted attracted media and I will admit I do like eating fruit and and the variety here is not not very great it's kind of weird because for me especially you know a place like Thailand could evil easily Thailand has been a huge part of my life for more than 10 years so I said a long time ago would be really convenient for me if there was a positive vegan seen in Chiang Mai or anywhere in Thailand for me to keep in touch with and go back to do you feel like there's something there for you to go back to you saying you wanna go back to possibly I don't know though how because I'm looking at hitting into the legal industry and I don't really know how I be able to work in live and summary like Thailand you know like thinking like five ten years down the track so I don't know how you know that would work as a long-term but I would definitely like to go back to the short term you're looking at something like law school I taketh on yeah yeah yeah why I've finished my bachelor promise and accounting and Taxation and i finished my better of laws and I just started my professional study that you have to do before I get invited to the High Court as a lawyer I think that's the downfall of laws that it's a lot harder to transfer to other countries because every you know the jurisdiction is different within within Canada you can't even transfer between cities that's part of what makes the bruhs if you become a lawyer you are stuck on that spot you better love the city you you build up your your credentials in and within the US it can be like that from one state to the next like you know if you want to move from California so no at several as you might have guessed about me because I studied political science I considered the option of becoming a lawyer at several different points and every time I considered it the final answer was nope but yeah in some in some ways I envy you but believe me because I did the research I really understand where once you're into that then you're very much tied to place but I think for that reason like a place like Thailand and you as you know I'm a critic of the whole permanent vacation thing everyone knows that about me but nevertheless I think it would be really meaningful if there was somewhere in the world anywhere in the world that vegans went on vacation as a vacation not as a permanent vacation as a temporary vacation where they were they met other vegans and had that kind of positive experience you know so in a sense sad if chiang mai can't play that but I mean for me it wouldn't matter I mean it could be you know it could be Jamaica it could be Taiwan I mean Taiwan has a very strong vegan culture but it's not a very nice place to go on vacation you know it could be anywhere in Asia from my perspective it's not that im a pro type person particularly but it's funny because I think so many people like right now we have Christmas and New Year's coming up and there are a lot of vegans who don't want to spend Christmas and New Year's in Boston or in Australia or wherever they're from they want to go somewhere you know that a vacation so what somebody in the comments section Curtis is just laughing about a vegan festival in Jamaica but don't forget Jamaica was a real trailblazer for vegetarianism not veganism but Jamaica has strong roots with promoting a vegetarian lifestyle at least so the sign to be said for that when i was talking to jason fazzino months ago about us organizing her own event me and Pizzi know and back then it was vegan cheetah and the light twins and vegan lasted okay let's have her event meet up we went through such a brainstorming process that did not begin with Thailand like in some ways Thailand was like the last place in the list but then when you really thought it through and did all the planning it was like you know what actually the best place to hold this event would be talent even though yeah well i mean if if you ask people to spend a ton of money coming to New York City for an event like that like everything in New York is expensive including the hotel do you really feel that their holiday or their budget is justified I mean with Thailand you know there's a certain level of just the quality of the vacation quality of life that they're going to have where you don't you don't feel you have to apologize if you're inviting people to go to an event in Thailand yeah I bonus yen