I'm not a tough guy, but I'm tougher than these guys.
30 October 2021 [link youtube]
A story from back in the day when Durianrider said his followers were going to beat me up / kick my ass (the vegan equivalent of "the rumble in the jungle", in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2016). @durianrider @Freelee The BananaGirl #vegan #vegans #veganism
Youtube Automatic Transcription
this story would not be so surprising if
we were talking about a gang of communists it would not be so surprised we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis but we're here talking about a bunch of predominantly fruitarian hippies we're talking about a bunch of vegans who are supposedly going to save the planet for preaching compassion ecology and all the rest of it and here i am in an alleyway facing down two guys who have orders from their cult leader to kick my ass i think it would be reassuring to imagine that these eccentrics i was meeting in this alleyway in chiang mai that the whole gang of them the various uh cast and crew surrounding freely and durianrider at that time that they were somehow wildly eccentric that they were so different from you and i are ourselves but they're not they're dreadfully dismal normal people and that's what makes it really scary that's what makes it really haunting is recognizing that normal people become communists normal people become neo-nazis normal people become vegan yes but then they go on to disappoint you or even horrify you when they become ex-vegan become pro-carnivore become advocates for eating raw meat raw butter you name it what makes the story meaningful ultimately is that these aren't monsters they're dismally normal people [Music] what could be less interesting than a story about a fist fight in an alleyway in chiang mai thailand in 2016. how about a story about a fistfight in an alleyway that never quite happened a fistfight that could have happened but somehow the puzzle pieces didn't quite fit together was talking to this other youtuber ethie and he really insisted to me that i ought to tell this story that i want to make a youtube video about it at least so that he can take a clip of it and put it on his own channel i said what do you what do you really find so interesting about this he said that he thought it was kind of spooky and kind of haunting so here we are as we come up on uh halloween of 2021 and i suppose this is my my halloween story uh to share with you what what do i find interesting about this what do i find spooky or haunting about this story in looking back at the year 2016 and the ungodly events that took place in chiang mai you know the whole vegan movement came to a crossroads and made a series of faithful decisions the movement as such took on new directions and individual people within that movement made decisions and took on new directions that changed their lives forever you know who was there yeah i was there durianrider was there freely was there paul beshear was there right joey carbstrong was there get into the list and think about how their lives changed in the months immediately thereafter as my confrontation with durianrider and the divorce between durianrider and freelee brought on a new wave of skepticism and frankly recrimination within the movement durianrider had made it very clear on facebook on youtube on every form of social media he had at his disposal including sending out emails to his minions and followers he had made it very clear that i was to be hunted down and beaten up in the streets of chiang mai and he told me this directly he sent messages to me directly saying that there were roving gangs of his followers who knew my address who would find me and who would in the parlance of our times kick my ass that morning i woke up and looked out the window i had jet lag my sleep cycle was all screwed up so it was very very early in the morning and when i looked out the window of my apartment i had a window that looked into the hallway not at the outset but the hallway within the apartment standing right there at my door was a guy dressed head to toe in skin tight green long distance biking jersey material you know those zip up jackets cyclists wear those those funny shorts and you know i didn't feel scared i didn't feel angry i wake up you know you're still a little bit girl you're just a little bit asleep you look out you see this guy standing right in front of my door and you think oh so it wasn't just [ __ ] you know so okay so we're really gonna do this okay so they found where i live they they came to my door and you know there was a sense of relief like all this isn't for nothing it isn't just smoke without fire okay it's really going down and then you know there was that sound and the the elevator doors opened and this guy got in and went down and left it was that that was a complete coincidence the guy wasn't wasn't even vegan you know he was just wearing the kind of outfit that the vegan followers of dirty writer already happened to be in the hallway of my apartment building so it didn't happen at that time but i did have about four face-to-face confrontations with durianrider followers who are at varying degrees of expecting to attempt to kick my ass or for me to try to kick their ass in self-defense that they thought some kind of fist fight was was gonna eventuate each of those stories was very different one of those guys he he had been named by durianrider i had been told when during other people oh that this guy in particular was gonna hunt me down and kick my ass and beat me up many of his promises just vaguely alluded to him having gangs of followers he had so many devotees and followers in chiang mai who would find but this guy had been named in specific and i was actually in a shopping mall in chiang mai and i walked up on him completely self-confidently just walked around oh hey you know like you know i think the first thing i said was something like are you going to pretend you don't know who i am you're going to pretend you don't see me you know like hey like i know who you are you know who i am you know you gonna you're gonna make something happen or not and that guy i mean right away he was just like oh look look man i want you to know i mean durianrider said that stuff i'm not i'm not gonna try to beat you up i'm not gonna try to kick your ass and we had a very memorable conversation and you know like so many people who are mentioned or alluded to in this story within one year that guy's whole life had changed uh that guy even that guy he stayed in touch with me he sent me messages as he became more and more disillusioned with durianrider he found out the extent to which that whole movement was based on like a sand castle made out of lies and you know his life had to take on a new direction you know as he lost the sense of hope and motivation that came from this direction this commitment to this particular part of the vegan movement yeah it was uh it was much more his personal tragedy than it was mine my situation in this alleyway with walking up on two guys one of whom was the notorious jack green most of thailand and certainly the city of chiang mai itself is made up of narrow alleyways and this was an alleyway in broad daylight in the tropics so it's a very it's a brightly lit alleyway it's not dark or inherently dangerous but there just isn't that much space so i'm walking down this alleyway and i can see them a long way ahead of me on the side of the road at least one of them had his bike there you know they both have you know bicycles and bike helmets i think one of them the bike is chained one of them has the bike in front of them and they're standing there having a conversation that's why they don't see me coming for nearly as long as i see them so from their perspective all of a sudden whoa here's six foot three two hundred and twenty ten pound isil mazard right on top of us and look what's going through your mind at that point you know am i going to be friendly to these guys am i going to be nice to these guys am i going to walk up on them and say hey i know who you are you know who i am is this going down or what you don't want to instigate something if it's not going to happen anyway but if it is going to happen if it's not all smoke without fire if durianrider is being sincere and saying he has gangs of his followers trying to hunt me down and kick my ass these two particular guys they would be exactly the guys to do it because they were at that time 100 percent devoted during writer called flunkies and again this was a crossroads in their lives so soon thereafter everything changed both of these guys became completely disillusioned with durham writer became completely disillusioned with the movement they took on new directions not just in their youtube channels but in their lives and both of them stayed in touch with me both of them talked to me several times after the event uh again it turned out to be much more their personal tragedy than it was mine anyway i walk up to these two guys they had just been eating lunch with the followers of durianrider they had been going out to dinner with doreen ryder and freely and riding their bikes to the top of the mountain and attending the lecturers from durianrider and freely some of which were directly denouncing me they were absolutely in the hot house of followers who were receiving those facebook messages and watching those youtube videos as they came out there's absolutely no way they could have been unaware of the conflict that was boiling over between myself and theory writer which fundamentally was about the fact that i was a rival leader in the vegan movement that it was a challenge's authority and while i was there there were a whole lot of vegans who reached out to me as a kind of touchstone of authenticity as someone who both symbolized and actually was an alternative to the style and substance of vegan activism offered by dorian ryder and freely and all those people their lives changed so much you know that year or within a few months of that event i met one woman who became the lesbian girlfriend of henia yes henya mania they've now long since broken up but i forget they were together for a year or year and a half or something each of these people was following their own peculiar fate on a winding winding road leading off each one in a in a different direction but there were people there who were happy to see me and yeah there were people there who were aware that there were orders from doreen ryder to kick my ass and these two guys in this alleyway at that time i knew which one they were so look i'm not that big but i'm bigger than these guys there's two of them there's one of me i'm six foot three 220 pounds i'm doing push-ups and lifting weights every day i am prepared in every way mentally and physically for this conflict if it's gonna happen and they don't see me coming whereas i do see them in the distance so i come up to them and i basically say look [Laughter] and they respond by playing dumb they very nervously insisted that they had no idea what dorian ryder had been saying about me they hadn't seen any of those videos or gotten any of those facebook message they they behaved as if they were hearing it from me for the first time that durianrider had sent the word out for guys exactly like them to find me beat me up and possibly drag me away to durianrider's lair i suppose to be judged by him that there is this open order out for me to be to be beaten down now as i said in the only interview with a journalist i ever gave on this topic this story would not be so surprising if we were talking about a gang of communists it would not be so surprised we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis but we're here talking about a bunch of predominantly fruitarian hippies we're talking about a bunch of vegans who are supposedly going to save the planet who are preaching compassion ecology and all the rest of it and here i am in an alley way facing down two guys who have orders from their cult leader to kick my ass you know these guys these guys didn't say it the other guy i alluded to earlier who met me one-on-one in that shopping mall one of the first things he said to me was whoa you're a lot bigger than i was expecting [Laughter] thanks thanks for your cancer he also he also asked me uh uh when he was sitting he asked me how much i could bench press i remember it was part of the conversation and and in this conversation the conversation in the alleyway i didn't bring it up one of the two guys he's quite a small slender guy uh he decided to tell me that he was a kung fu enthusiast he's like you know i'm not really into long distance cycling i was like oh really he's like oh yeah yeah he's into he's into kung fu kung fu brazilian jiu jitsu mixed martial one of those are all of the above that he was a he was a martial arts guy well you missed your chance to show me rather than tell me homie the tragedy of this is of course that these people did have good intentions but they chose bad leaders jack green would go on to become an incredibly notorious figure he went from one extreme ideology the next he became a neo-nazi by the strictest definition imaginable making youtube videos directly quoting and praising adolf hitler a lot of these people you can trace the tortuous trail of the terrible decisions they made in their life through chiang mai thailand and for each and every one of them it was a major crossroads some of those people became devourers of raw meat became carnivores became ex-vegans who denounced the vegan movements others still just denounced the leadership of freely and durianrider but became vegan leaders in their own right but it's not just when you're away on holiday it's not just when you're attending a conference a party an event it's not just in these momentous occasions that are marked in advance on your calendar and it's not just when you're facing down the possibility of a fist fight in an alleyway you know that you're at an important moral crossroads in your life you get to choose ethically intellectually emotionally who you're going to be and what kind of person you're going to become the problem with the vegan movement then and the problem with the vegan movement now is not that we have too few vegans it's that we have too many people who are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons when you do the right thing for the wrong reasons it never can last people chose terrible leaders in the vegan movement because they had terrible motivations people were pursuing money fame power respect sex people were trying to get rich and famous on social media and in that moment in 2016 that possibility seemed more tantalizingly close than ever before it seemed as if you or you or you could be the next freely could be the next durian writer could be the next bonnie rebecca and nobody really stopped to think whether or not that would be a good thing for themselves or whether or not that'd be a good thing for the future of veganism for the fate of the movement as a whole you can see what happened to izzy davis you can see what happened to bonnie rebecca and i guess conversely you can see what happened to joey carbstrong how many of those people are still just doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do only the ones who in the first place did the right thing for the right reasons the people who didn't just become vegan as part of this endless pursuit of wealth fame and glory why do we tell stories about monsters is it to make us feel scared or is it to make us feel safe because ultimately none of us know any monsters none of us see any monsters and i think it would be reassuring to imagine that these eccentrics i was meeting in this alleyway in chiang mai that the whole gang of them the various uh cast and crew surrounding freely and durianrider at that time that they were somehow wildly eccentric that they were so different from you and i are ourselves but they're not they're dreadfully dismal normal people and that's what makes it really scary that's what makes it really haunting is recognizing that normal people become communists normal people become neo-nazis normal people become vegan yes but then they go on to disappoint you or even horrify you when they become ex-vegan become pro-carnivore become advocates for eating raw meat raw butter you name it what makes the story meaningful ultimately is that these aren't monsters they're dismally normal people
we were talking about a gang of communists it would not be so surprised we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis but we're here talking about a bunch of predominantly fruitarian hippies we're talking about a bunch of vegans who are supposedly going to save the planet for preaching compassion ecology and all the rest of it and here i am in an alleyway facing down two guys who have orders from their cult leader to kick my ass i think it would be reassuring to imagine that these eccentrics i was meeting in this alleyway in chiang mai that the whole gang of them the various uh cast and crew surrounding freely and durianrider at that time that they were somehow wildly eccentric that they were so different from you and i are ourselves but they're not they're dreadfully dismal normal people and that's what makes it really scary that's what makes it really haunting is recognizing that normal people become communists normal people become neo-nazis normal people become vegan yes but then they go on to disappoint you or even horrify you when they become ex-vegan become pro-carnivore become advocates for eating raw meat raw butter you name it what makes the story meaningful ultimately is that these aren't monsters they're dismally normal people [Music] what could be less interesting than a story about a fist fight in an alleyway in chiang mai thailand in 2016. how about a story about a fistfight in an alleyway that never quite happened a fistfight that could have happened but somehow the puzzle pieces didn't quite fit together was talking to this other youtuber ethie and he really insisted to me that i ought to tell this story that i want to make a youtube video about it at least so that he can take a clip of it and put it on his own channel i said what do you what do you really find so interesting about this he said that he thought it was kind of spooky and kind of haunting so here we are as we come up on uh halloween of 2021 and i suppose this is my my halloween story uh to share with you what what do i find interesting about this what do i find spooky or haunting about this story in looking back at the year 2016 and the ungodly events that took place in chiang mai you know the whole vegan movement came to a crossroads and made a series of faithful decisions the movement as such took on new directions and individual people within that movement made decisions and took on new directions that changed their lives forever you know who was there yeah i was there durianrider was there freely was there paul beshear was there right joey carbstrong was there get into the list and think about how their lives changed in the months immediately thereafter as my confrontation with durianrider and the divorce between durianrider and freelee brought on a new wave of skepticism and frankly recrimination within the movement durianrider had made it very clear on facebook on youtube on every form of social media he had at his disposal including sending out emails to his minions and followers he had made it very clear that i was to be hunted down and beaten up in the streets of chiang mai and he told me this directly he sent messages to me directly saying that there were roving gangs of his followers who knew my address who would find me and who would in the parlance of our times kick my ass that morning i woke up and looked out the window i had jet lag my sleep cycle was all screwed up so it was very very early in the morning and when i looked out the window of my apartment i had a window that looked into the hallway not at the outset but the hallway within the apartment standing right there at my door was a guy dressed head to toe in skin tight green long distance biking jersey material you know those zip up jackets cyclists wear those those funny shorts and you know i didn't feel scared i didn't feel angry i wake up you know you're still a little bit girl you're just a little bit asleep you look out you see this guy standing right in front of my door and you think oh so it wasn't just [ __ ] you know so okay so we're really gonna do this okay so they found where i live they they came to my door and you know there was a sense of relief like all this isn't for nothing it isn't just smoke without fire okay it's really going down and then you know there was that sound and the the elevator doors opened and this guy got in and went down and left it was that that was a complete coincidence the guy wasn't wasn't even vegan you know he was just wearing the kind of outfit that the vegan followers of dirty writer already happened to be in the hallway of my apartment building so it didn't happen at that time but i did have about four face-to-face confrontations with durianrider followers who are at varying degrees of expecting to attempt to kick my ass or for me to try to kick their ass in self-defense that they thought some kind of fist fight was was gonna eventuate each of those stories was very different one of those guys he he had been named by durianrider i had been told when during other people oh that this guy in particular was gonna hunt me down and kick my ass and beat me up many of his promises just vaguely alluded to him having gangs of followers he had so many devotees and followers in chiang mai who would find but this guy had been named in specific and i was actually in a shopping mall in chiang mai and i walked up on him completely self-confidently just walked around oh hey you know like you know i think the first thing i said was something like are you going to pretend you don't know who i am you're going to pretend you don't see me you know like hey like i know who you are you know who i am you know you gonna you're gonna make something happen or not and that guy i mean right away he was just like oh look look man i want you to know i mean durianrider said that stuff i'm not i'm not gonna try to beat you up i'm not gonna try to kick your ass and we had a very memorable conversation and you know like so many people who are mentioned or alluded to in this story within one year that guy's whole life had changed uh that guy even that guy he stayed in touch with me he sent me messages as he became more and more disillusioned with durianrider he found out the extent to which that whole movement was based on like a sand castle made out of lies and you know his life had to take on a new direction you know as he lost the sense of hope and motivation that came from this direction this commitment to this particular part of the vegan movement yeah it was uh it was much more his personal tragedy than it was mine my situation in this alleyway with walking up on two guys one of whom was the notorious jack green most of thailand and certainly the city of chiang mai itself is made up of narrow alleyways and this was an alleyway in broad daylight in the tropics so it's a very it's a brightly lit alleyway it's not dark or inherently dangerous but there just isn't that much space so i'm walking down this alleyway and i can see them a long way ahead of me on the side of the road at least one of them had his bike there you know they both have you know bicycles and bike helmets i think one of them the bike is chained one of them has the bike in front of them and they're standing there having a conversation that's why they don't see me coming for nearly as long as i see them so from their perspective all of a sudden whoa here's six foot three two hundred and twenty ten pound isil mazard right on top of us and look what's going through your mind at that point you know am i going to be friendly to these guys am i going to be nice to these guys am i going to walk up on them and say hey i know who you are you know who i am is this going down or what you don't want to instigate something if it's not going to happen anyway but if it is going to happen if it's not all smoke without fire if durianrider is being sincere and saying he has gangs of his followers trying to hunt me down and kick my ass these two particular guys they would be exactly the guys to do it because they were at that time 100 percent devoted during writer called flunkies and again this was a crossroads in their lives so soon thereafter everything changed both of these guys became completely disillusioned with durham writer became completely disillusioned with the movement they took on new directions not just in their youtube channels but in their lives and both of them stayed in touch with me both of them talked to me several times after the event uh again it turned out to be much more their personal tragedy than it was mine anyway i walk up to these two guys they had just been eating lunch with the followers of durianrider they had been going out to dinner with doreen ryder and freely and riding their bikes to the top of the mountain and attending the lecturers from durianrider and freely some of which were directly denouncing me they were absolutely in the hot house of followers who were receiving those facebook messages and watching those youtube videos as they came out there's absolutely no way they could have been unaware of the conflict that was boiling over between myself and theory writer which fundamentally was about the fact that i was a rival leader in the vegan movement that it was a challenge's authority and while i was there there were a whole lot of vegans who reached out to me as a kind of touchstone of authenticity as someone who both symbolized and actually was an alternative to the style and substance of vegan activism offered by dorian ryder and freely and all those people their lives changed so much you know that year or within a few months of that event i met one woman who became the lesbian girlfriend of henia yes henya mania they've now long since broken up but i forget they were together for a year or year and a half or something each of these people was following their own peculiar fate on a winding winding road leading off each one in a in a different direction but there were people there who were happy to see me and yeah there were people there who were aware that there were orders from doreen ryder to kick my ass and these two guys in this alleyway at that time i knew which one they were so look i'm not that big but i'm bigger than these guys there's two of them there's one of me i'm six foot three 220 pounds i'm doing push-ups and lifting weights every day i am prepared in every way mentally and physically for this conflict if it's gonna happen and they don't see me coming whereas i do see them in the distance so i come up to them and i basically say look [Laughter] and they respond by playing dumb they very nervously insisted that they had no idea what dorian ryder had been saying about me they hadn't seen any of those videos or gotten any of those facebook message they they behaved as if they were hearing it from me for the first time that durianrider had sent the word out for guys exactly like them to find me beat me up and possibly drag me away to durianrider's lair i suppose to be judged by him that there is this open order out for me to be to be beaten down now as i said in the only interview with a journalist i ever gave on this topic this story would not be so surprising if we were talking about a gang of communists it would not be so surprised we were talking about a gang of neo-nazis but we're here talking about a bunch of predominantly fruitarian hippies we're talking about a bunch of vegans who are supposedly going to save the planet who are preaching compassion ecology and all the rest of it and here i am in an alley way facing down two guys who have orders from their cult leader to kick my ass you know these guys these guys didn't say it the other guy i alluded to earlier who met me one-on-one in that shopping mall one of the first things he said to me was whoa you're a lot bigger than i was expecting [Laughter] thanks thanks for your cancer he also he also asked me uh uh when he was sitting he asked me how much i could bench press i remember it was part of the conversation and and in this conversation the conversation in the alleyway i didn't bring it up one of the two guys he's quite a small slender guy uh he decided to tell me that he was a kung fu enthusiast he's like you know i'm not really into long distance cycling i was like oh really he's like oh yeah yeah he's into he's into kung fu kung fu brazilian jiu jitsu mixed martial one of those are all of the above that he was a he was a martial arts guy well you missed your chance to show me rather than tell me homie the tragedy of this is of course that these people did have good intentions but they chose bad leaders jack green would go on to become an incredibly notorious figure he went from one extreme ideology the next he became a neo-nazi by the strictest definition imaginable making youtube videos directly quoting and praising adolf hitler a lot of these people you can trace the tortuous trail of the terrible decisions they made in their life through chiang mai thailand and for each and every one of them it was a major crossroads some of those people became devourers of raw meat became carnivores became ex-vegans who denounced the vegan movements others still just denounced the leadership of freely and durianrider but became vegan leaders in their own right but it's not just when you're away on holiday it's not just when you're attending a conference a party an event it's not just in these momentous occasions that are marked in advance on your calendar and it's not just when you're facing down the possibility of a fist fight in an alleyway you know that you're at an important moral crossroads in your life you get to choose ethically intellectually emotionally who you're going to be and what kind of person you're going to become the problem with the vegan movement then and the problem with the vegan movement now is not that we have too few vegans it's that we have too many people who are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons when you do the right thing for the wrong reasons it never can last people chose terrible leaders in the vegan movement because they had terrible motivations people were pursuing money fame power respect sex people were trying to get rich and famous on social media and in that moment in 2016 that possibility seemed more tantalizingly close than ever before it seemed as if you or you or you could be the next freely could be the next durian writer could be the next bonnie rebecca and nobody really stopped to think whether or not that would be a good thing for themselves or whether or not that'd be a good thing for the future of veganism for the fate of the movement as a whole you can see what happened to izzy davis you can see what happened to bonnie rebecca and i guess conversely you can see what happened to joey carbstrong how many of those people are still just doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do only the ones who in the first place did the right thing for the right reasons the people who didn't just become vegan as part of this endless pursuit of wealth fame and glory why do we tell stories about monsters is it to make us feel scared or is it to make us feel safe because ultimately none of us know any monsters none of us see any monsters and i think it would be reassuring to imagine that these eccentrics i was meeting in this alleyway in chiang mai that the whole gang of them the various uh cast and crew surrounding freely and durianrider at that time that they were somehow wildly eccentric that they were so different from you and i are ourselves but they're not they're dreadfully dismal normal people and that's what makes it really scary that's what makes it really haunting is recognizing that normal people become communists normal people become neo-nazis normal people become vegan yes but then they go on to disappoint you or even horrify you when they become ex-vegan become pro-carnivore become advocates for eating raw meat raw butter you name it what makes the story meaningful ultimately is that these aren't monsters they're dismally normal people