Dead-End Losers & the "Attainable Fantasy" of Youtube Fame.

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is this video about one conversation between two vegans and Shang mine which is about a broader and deeper question about ambition I got a lot of videos talking about ambition my whole ted car series is in some ways reflecting on the question of ambition and what it means in our lives I think ambition gets a bad name because people think ambition has to do with nothing but money an admission could be a puddle has things that's not you can have ambitions to be a great artist to be a great humanitarian worker to be a great medical doctor to be anything to be a great writer to be anything creative or destructive you can imagine to be a vegan activist to write children's storybooks to be a good parent whatever it is ambition to take on so many forms and directions it doesn't always have to be attached and money and some kind of nothing do with money and so on but I do through YouTube and through veganism I do keep meeting these young men who have absolutely no ambition and when you ask them about their own education or their own career past present future they have nothing to say for themselves and whether or not that's shocking to you you really should be shocked when I talked to this guy Kieran Kieran his name on YouTube is angry vegan that was really the most shocking and disturbing part of it was just sitting there and looking into his eyes and asking him like whoa you know what education do you have absolutely none does he have any plans to education the future absolutely none what jobs has you done in the past or was he doing ours again do in the future and I'm simplifying only slightly to say absolutely none he had he had done a little bit of what we call in American English in like Joe Jobs he was using Australian slang for this if he's you know he certainly pick up work but little little jobs here and there and you know for him the only real ray of hope in his life is YouTube is the possibility of making money at a YouTube is the possibility of reproducing the success at someone like during a murderous and and durianrider is in this way a really profound influence on his life and it's it's pathetic I'm just telling you straight up meeting something like that face-to-face and looking in their eyes is really pathetic now as a parallel experience which was not face to face but just by written messages back and forth in the Internet I had this interaction would ask yourself what we actually he's his first name of hitting okay Isaac thanks I'm for it so Isaac is at his channellings ask yourself as names Isaac was writing the Isaac you know early on in terms of trying to calm him down and build bridges eisah gave me my CV I said look I know you don't watch my channel this is who I am that's where I come from like you can get to know me I'm a human being we don't got to hate each other kind of thing and you know he was pretty fixated on hating me he did calm down eventually but you know when I was asking those same questions like well what what education do you have what if occasionally trying to gather you Despard have none zero what career have you had what are you trying to have zero and so for him I mean II I was not insulting him when I said that he's out here really hustling he really is pinning his hope for the future on donations from patreon and YouTube success so I'm sure I mean you know he is a hard-working guy he's obviously really pursuing that goal with gusto but it is still in a word pathetic to meet someone like that who doesn't have any other goals and life you know any other ambitions and you know try in terms of my own ambitions looking back past tense I wanted to study a language called pally pa Li and at that time it was not taught in any university in canada costa coast okay I wanted to study languages like Korean a Ghibli a few universities now claim maker initiative way creative these are languages that are not well documented or not well supported novel research in Western academia generally and specifically I'm you know I had ambitions to do things in terms of research humanitarian work for my own development and make the world a better place that have nothing do with money and have nothing to do with traditional milestones of success even within Western academia you know so you know ambition you take many forms but sure if my if ultimately if we look down our noses in addition when it's narrowly focused on money that I think we also have to look at our noses at it when it's narrowly focused on Fame and especially pathetic has got to be YouTube fame and then YouTube fame within the digital regions everyone this is really micro Fame this is Fame with infinite event but you know still I mean you know my really limited a little bit of Fame does make my life better there's no I meet interesting people you know we're going to fly to France we're going to post on YouTube hey this is when we'll be in France because I'm one with us I already wrote to one friend of mine who's in Germany and I said well look it's not that far isn't that close if you want to take a vacation but give me more for us sure it's wonderful it opens the door to a lot of really positive things in my life but again I'm a man who defines his life in terms of ambitions if anything look let's keep it all the way real the most miserable times of my life when I was the most acutely unhappy was exactly when I was cut off from my ambitions and I didn't have new ambitions to replace it with yet that for me is acute unhappiness so when I couldn't study Cree in a jib way anymore and I didn't have the next project or when I when I stopped studying poly and didn't fasten under project yet but that was really brief I mentioned some of those transitions were really quick but having be having goals goals for your own personal development goals but whether it's something as abstract as goals like the feature of the vegan movement whatever it is having goals that define you in your life and by contrast by the way so I met this guy Kiran using the mango Vienna I also met another guy called Dexter when I was in when I was in Shanghai now someone glasses you might think those two guys have a lot in common they're both vegans they're built on YouTube they will have small YouTube channels they both met me what was in Chiangmai but let me tell you right away one of the real differences with Dexter is that he's a man who has ambitions his ambitions in terms of career in terms of education he direction when you ask him those same questions which you more or less do I met all these people for the first time he's got focus he's got meaning in his life and he's doing things that are productively linked to the pursuit of those meetings in life I'm not going to say the meaning of life was to keep it plural those meaning is concise and that's that is ultimately a totally different kind of type of Gani and generally speaking I have totally different expectations from the future all right that's most of what I got to say about meeting and talking to angry vegan more generally I mean you know I look back at in this channel many times I've mentioned the really strange influence that a fictional character like that man had in my life when I was growing up and it's obvious that people like durianrider obviously they're not cultural icons in the same way that that man is but meeting and talking to these guys the last few diehard supporters for durianrider like angry vegan you get to see that the influence during writer has like it's truly iconic it's truly powerful and unlike that man you know Kiran has sit and as he sits down eats dinner but during writer he sometimes gone over in state aetherium hunters place there's a way in which durianrider is more than human and larger than life and as a you know at almost a fictional character on YouTube and there's also wait there's a sense of which he's very immediately and personally available for these fans of his and he has this really profound warping influence on their lives a guy like angry vegan he's now in that last die hard category the last handful of people who still support daring writer and to some extent I can sympathize because I understand that must he must have some sense of mission and moral purpose of still supporting his friend when everyone's turned against him like still supporting dinner even though all the rational people have lost his faith and durianrider in his lies but of course at the same time you know I have to regard it as as despicable and self-defeating and pointless and it was out of fear of durianrider that Kieran posted a very intentionally dishonest video describing the conversation we had together so very briefly Kieran described that conversation as if we bumped into each other in a mall and just talked for a couple of minutes he said that repeatedly in fact we met in the mall we sat down we talked for two hours it was an in-depth meaningful discussion and he asked me about my relationship with my mom was one of the first questions for whatever reason we talked about that at some length he talked about his own situation in terms of his love life and dating it was a real in depth at length personal conversation and one thing that was kind of touching quite quite close to the game conversation I asked him I said look you know I can answer any questions or any doubts that you have but you know I hope you realize pretty much everything during writers told you about Who I am in my personal life especially my sex life is a lie you know ain't none of that's true so look at Emma and one of the first things he said was he said to me there's absolutely no doubt in my mind I have no questions about any of that and in that context it was kind of moving because when I bumped into him durianrider had repeatedly made threats in the internet that somebody was going to stab me when I was in Chennai that's somebody or some group of men would beat me up when I was in Shanghai and he had also specifically said that Kiran if Kiran found me that Karen would beat me up and Kiran alluded to that and joked about it also these con streamer so to have a guy like that in those circumstances tell you that there's no doubt in his mind that I've been telling the truth and Turner's been Jerry Wright has been lying that's kind of touching and resting away and it by contrast something he said repeatedly he he one of the first things ed to me again he was just he said wow you look so much thinner in real life he said you don't look fat at all he said again maybe for different points in the conversation he commented that I was in better shape than he thought I would be and that I just I looked a lot less fat in person and it's quick you see of this kind of thing and I said to him oh like maybe the third time he said that I said I got at my fault my right my camera phone and I said well look you keep saying you want to do a collaboration because he repeatedly said he wanted to collaborate and do a YouTube video together I said why are you still me saying that and that'll be this video of you say hey you know you look you look Louis was fat in person and he do on on YouTube and you know he smiled but it wasn't really a joke and he said I don't think I could guarantee my own safety if I did that and it's a witty line it's a funny thing to say but that's really kind of sad me reflect on it that he is reflecting that he would be and he was afraid of during write over the time and all of his actions since then it's been very obvious that he is afraid of some kind of reprisal from dirty mind so yeah I was disappointed with czernin I was disappointed with his video that really I felt intentionally lied about misrepresenting the conversation that we had in many ways he chose to lie there and suggest that I bragged the hem about how good I was at picking up chicks it's just that I just bragged out of the blue about how much I can benchpress Emily pushes what I can do that's really untrue in context he was repeatedly saying that I was in better shape but then he was expecting and then I it also came up we're talking about during writers various lives about me and I said yeah you know one of the first things I think the first thing during mother said about me was back when he claimed that I was taking steroids so in that context I was saying look I do pushups i benchpress this amount but I'm really not in that great shape so it's ridiculous it's ridiculous in the one hand form to be always saying that I'm really fat out of shape it's all so ridiculous to him to be saying I'm on steroids you know it's my personal physique is neither in one category the other so it was in talking about that that I told him how much fat Benish president saw him so he's really misrepresenting that and in a defamatory way you know trying to make me look like a bad guys if I just walked up to a stranger in the mall and in the context of a two-minute conversation told best reader how much i benchpress which would be a little eccentric whatever but in fact this is a two-hour conversation that said started with him asking about my relationship with my mother this is the first thing we talked about to us I'm leaving he talked about his own personal life as I mentioned his own career or lack thereof his education or lack thereof and his ambition and lack thereof and he did talk about his love life and it was in that context that I said look you know all these lies during writers dying about me you can tell just in this conversation I don't have trouble meeting women on a child pity of women you've seen how Kaufman I was walking up to a complete stranger namely you and starting this conversation and really having a meaningful conversation where you got to know me right off the bat I was in a context of threats of violence and all this nonsense that was still totally so confident he wasn't he was he was trembling like a leaf I mean especially early on he was literally trembling and shaking when he was talking to me and you know he eventually calm down but he was worried and he was worried for a reason a reason wasn't me I wasn't a threat to him her safety but I think he was really worried about the consequences of just talking to me like human being and that's why he lied about it when he made his own video describing it in such such different terms but um you know he he told me things were quite honest I appreciated honesty that he wasn't happy about what was going on is romance life and you know he's trying to meet women and meeting women through YouTube and meeting women in Thailand and so on and so you know what I told him about myself I mean the reality of my love life in one interview that was really in that context it was well intentioned and was appropriate and frankly I think I was giving him advice that he could use anyway look man whether we're talking about Nina and Ronda or talking about angry vegan I mean I in some ways I feel especially sorry for the people who are successful enough on YouTube that it justifies their delusion it justifies their fantasy we were looking at that girl Catelyn shoemaker Caitlyn shoemaker last Machinery she's vegan she just dropped at a university to do YouTube hope she disrupted he there's University so that in her own words she could do two videos a week instead of one video a week on YouTube and she was honest enough to admit she's doing that with debt with student death from one year of graduate school she was getting a master's degree right and she's dropped out of that to do YouTube and she does I mean she gets 30,000 viewers here are there more than 10,000 viewers per video and from my perspective those people are the most deluded oh you know it's like so you're sacrificing real career ambitions real you're sacrificing something real for a fantasy and otherwise though at the at the low end a guy like a guy like angry vegan he's lucky to get 1,000 viewers on a video so there's nothing there to justify the fantasy but it's his own sense of desperation aimlessness lack of ambition and lack of direction in life and again ambition does not need to be about money education does not need to be about money people equal keep it straight but it's out of a terrible sense of emptiness that I think he reaches out and clings to YouTube as the only ray of hope in his life and for channels big or small I don't know Matt a lie becomes dangerous not because it's different from the truth but because it resembles the truth and a fantasy like being famous on YouTube it destroys people's lives not because of its impossibility but because it seems so possible because it seems so attainable it's exactly the attainable fantasies that'll lead you to drop out of college or just give you an excuse well years are slipping by without any plans for career or college it's the attainable fantasies I can destroy your life