Vegan Gains: "Secret" Emails, Lies & Defamation.

richard burgess also known as vegan gains has told some lies about me i don't really know if those would be considered defamation in a court of law and i don't really care i'm a canadian citizen richard is a canadian citizen i have experience with defamation cases that drag on a court for many years i have no interest in suing richard whatsoever and i'm not even really interested in the hypothetical thought exercise of how the canadian system of law would judge this case if i were to make an issue of it but you know there's also this thing called the code of the streets and for one grown man to say that another grown man is a snitch is kind of a big deal richard for you to say that i called the cops on you for you to say that i doxed you that's kind of a big deal where i'm from and where i'm from is the same goddamn place you're from downtown toronto i don't think richard is lying i think richard is insane i think richard doesn't know the difference between fact and fantasy anymore and i am going to read you his emails the emails he sent to me that prove not only that this is a lie a fantasy this is completely utterly untrue but that it is actually a fantasy he made up in his head relatively recently it doesn't go back five years it doesn't even really go back three years we're gonna be able to see the etiology the step-by-step process whereby he started concocting this fiction his mind and based on what he said himself on his own youtube channel i would assume his wife has also been involved even if it is just that she's egging him on that she's just encouraging him to get deeper and deeper into the solution and and richard let me just ask you to use the golden rule here for one [ __ ] second how would you feel if our positions were reversed how would you feel if someone else were saying about you on the internet that you had doxxed them that you had called the cops on them and got their door kicked down got their house searched and got them involved with legal charges and questions that carried on for years and you had the emails to prove that this wasn't true that the person saying that about you really they were just kind of crazy and unhinged and not in touch with your life how would you feel richard if our positions were reversed or if it was just if it was someone else saying it about you you know what is morality morality is not about the remit of what can and can't be enforced in a court of law it's about what matters anyway what's important to us anyway once we get into arenas where no policeman and no lawyer is is ever gonna tread you know um i have to ask myself a lot about what is the moral thing to do in my relationship with my own mother with my own brothers and sisters right what's the right thing to do pulling together you know a totality of circumstances going back decades and then here you are at any given point you're only alive in one moment in time you know what's what's the right thing to do what's moral there's never going to be a court case you're not going to sue your brother or your cousin or your uncle or something you're not going to take your own parents and and bring them to court for being being jerks or whatever you know and you've got to examine your own feelings and your own sense of justice and injustice and your own defects of character your own pride and your own arrogance you know what i mean and i think you can neither apply a kind of legal framework to these things nor would i've just alluded to as the code of the straits you know morality concerns exactly these questions of what kind of personal integrity we're going to demonstrate when nobody is forcing us to right when there's no compulsion when there's no fear of of consequence when i look at richard you know he's not extraordinary i've known a lot of people who in the same way just make up stories in their own heads and after the passage of time they start believing those stories and it becomes very difficult to talk them out of it even when you can show them these days you can show them emails from five years ago or you can show the meals to 10 years ago or you can point out no when that happened i was in hong kong or i was in taiwan it's not possible that i was there at that time it's not possible that i did this that time when you can point that out i have had a lot of experience with people who are not considered legally insane who are not going to be put into uh lunatic asylum you know where they are in this more informal everyday use of the word where they are garden variety crazy you know and under other circumstances obviously years have gone by with this i would have no interest in proving to you or proving to richard or proving to the world that richard burgess really is crazy is aaron janus a good leader for the future of the vegan movement is freely the banana girl a good leader for the future the vegan movement is durianrider is james aspie a good leader for the future of the vegan movement in each one of these cases you're making a judgment that at least in part deals with the extent to which these people are sane or insane i have no hesitation in saying to you today richard burgess is a terrible leader for the vegan movement he's a terrible influence on veganism today and i only see his influence becoming worse over time i've had to talk with a lot of different people in my life friends relatives and you know i have people in my family who aren't really my blood relatives you know that is they were cousin of a cousin or something someone who's called your aunt but is really just a friend of the family want to talk about that network of kind of long-term friends family and acquaintances a lot of situations where people have talked to me and said like oh you know this person is having mental health problems now and oh they went and got help you know do you think they can get better do you think they can improve and you know every single time sorry and also you know i've been married and divorced so when you get married you kind of gain a whole other family in my case temporarily marriage lasts forever apparently so you gain other relatives through the marriage and stuff and every time there's been one of these situations what i've said to caution people is you know yeah some people get better but let me tell you something a lot of people a lot they get worse and worse and worse until the day that they die so a distant you know so-called relative in this sense i don't think i have any dna in common with this guy but i was recently reminded of him um not worked on the story why and um so he was someone who knew my father and he's he's very very elderly now and you know i remember seeing him at family functions when i was a little kid and i can remember then when i was i guess a teenager people started saying that he had gone insane and you know i've always been cursed with this this kind of sharp memory i was like no no no i can remember back when i was six years old he was already insane i know you guys may perceive it as if it's senility or as if it's just now and then you know some years after that i'm in my 20s and people are telling me he's he's gone further insane and then when i'm in my 30s i hear he's actually got in trouble with the police and there's talk about putting him into some kind of home you know whether this will be a voluntary old folks home or some kind of involuntary psychiatric care and so on you know and i just mentioned that was somebody i knew from childhood and it was like well i'm not really sure if it's the case that he went insane as opposed to he was insane all along and you guys were making excuses for him and you know and yeah i mean someone else i knew this kind of connection not a blood relation as it happens i remember um look it's hard to it's hard to anonymize these stories but yeah i've known a lot of examples of people where their friends and family around them were saying oh they can recover they can get better they can get back on the straight and narrow you know and yeah they can but will they and what are the odds that instead they're going to get worse and worse there are a whole lot of people who you know with the best of intentions people wanted richard to win people wanted richard to recover people perceived the redeeming qualities he had the positive things about the man and they wanted those to become the primary characteristics in his life and instead what they've seen in the passage of years are his negative characteristics his malignant characteristics however you want to put it we've seen those blossom and take over his character and that echo that shadow of some aspect of him that was in some way good we've seen that all but disappear right and we've seen him struggle with his so-called mental health struggle with his sanity struggle with different kinds of treatment and therapy including you know cures that he devised for himself cures he was briefly convinced had worked and he was a new man he was a changed man and so on and then we've seen him lose faith in each one of those miracle cures we've seen this come and go so guys you know let me just ask you where do you think henia mania is going to be five years from now where do you think james aspie is gonna be five years from now freely the banana girl dorian ryder aaron janice where is she going to be what you gonna do in five years now i've got to tell you something my only interest in any of these people and their lives was their potential to do something really positive for the vegan movement in the next five years that's why i cared about them that's why i talked about them that's also why i criticize them they're not if vegan gains is just a video game review channel you know if he just plays video games and uh talks about his expensive new motorcycle motorcycle and bodybuilding i'm not interested i have zero interest in expensive motorcycles zero interest in him playing video games on camera right zero interest in the bodybuilding no offense if i want advice on bodybuilding i'm not gonna listen are you kidding me you know right there was some level of interest for me in these people because of their potential to change the world have a positive effect lead the vegan movement right what's your expectation for any one of these people in the next five years and now let's take a step back and ask what do we think the the future of the vegan movement is in the next five years it's not aaron janus it's not vegan gains it's not gary yourofsky it's not gary francione okay guess what each and every one of these idols who were lifted up and put on a pedestal each and every one of them proved to be a false god and in terms of this non-scientific use of the word crazy each and every one of them prove to be crazy in a different way i think james aspie is a very different guy from vegan gains totally dif like you know what i mean i'm not saying they have a whole lot in common the sense in which you'd call james assby crazy is very different from what you say about richard um yeah so i mean shout out to everyone in the audience um [Music] yeah so someone was asking are you talking about a second cousin once removed [Laughter] my father got a lot of people pregnant okay [Laughter] so i mean i some one of my brothers was given up for adoption and like you know my uh my family tree is more like a bush you know but also some of those people there's some people my family who were just not related to there's one woman who was a friend of my mother during university she's like an aunt to me she's more of a not to me than my actual aunts but there's no no blood relation so that's that's the way family is sometimes uh but anyway joel asks quote where are we going to be in the next 10 years i i just i just don't understand why i'm the only person out here asking that question you know i don't understand this reckless commitment to living every day as if it's your last which it seems to be you know the default mode of life for my generation is partying like it's 1999 you know nobody is interested in having a five-year plan in a 10-year plan so on and so forth and i just tell you you know i don't it's it's unimaginable to me and you got to have it demonstrated to me again again again and you know what does richard have answered that question well you know what was richard's five-year plan five years ago five years ago where do you want to be today and i asked him that question when i had the interview with him oh and then what what is he going to say about his own situation today and where he's going to be five years from now start now okay guys i'm going to read you these i'm going to read you these emails uh when this video is done i'll take the email and i'll put it on my blog and i'll provide a link in the description i don't think that's interesting anyone but if for some reason you want to read verbatim exactly what god said here this the most important thing to note with these emails is the date so this is february 1st 2019 all right so if you think about when the police kicked down his door when his gun trouble started when he's as in his own words he had these problems with the court and getting an evaluation by a psychiatrist ordered by the court he dealt with this complex situation and the question of whether or not he'd have the legal right to bear arms right that's what i'm saying it's it's gun related right think about how many years this had already been going on for before richard sent me this email february of 2019 and the story he's telling today the lie the defamation he's directing towards me today it obviously hadn't been cooked up in his head yet or he's at the first stages of blaming me for his problems these mistakes in his life when this email was sent right okay quote so i'm now reading richard writing to me the the email is titled take down your slander videos okay quote you've made several videos making up lies about me and you should know some of these lies could get me into serious trouble with the law you claimed on camera at six minutes and 15 seconds and your video titled vegan gains is not cured he's not a new man that i own real firearms okay close quote now i pro i shouldn't have to tell you he's lying and misrepresenting things here i mean it's this is what richard is like you know and you'll get to hear my reply send the emails that that ensure for me the emails that ensue um if you've watched the video i uploaded immediately prior to this one you can see i just have him narrating over the footage of him taking weapons out of bags and parcels you know and now i say weapons for a reason yes as you're gonna hear that includes uh air guns includes these kinds of recreational toy guns but as is specified here it also includes real weapons swords uh knives etc you know there are other kinds of weapons here so as is the case in the video immediately prior to this you can see in passing i refer to this as a video in which he was taking weapons out of a bag it's not the case that i'm i'm not making the specific types of claims that he's uh he's uh alleging i make here but anyway so you can see that in the video immediately before this what i said and the way they say it you can also see how well-intentioned it was i mean you can see i'm raising questions of like look man where is your career going to be five years from now whether you want to have a career as a bodybuilding expert a career as a nutritional science expert as a leader in the vegan movement or if you want to have a career as a stand-up comedian or you want to have a career as a filmmaker there was a time i don't know if you remember this there was a time when he said he wanted to be an action star he wanted to be like a kung fu lead actor in movies there was a time when he said he wanted to go into politics and get elected and be prime minister of canada but my point was from any of these perspectives this video of him taking out weapons from her back and what he was saying during that video and indeed all the videos where he's talking about this legal situation and him getting a psychiatric evaluation for whether or not he can legally own a gun in canada whether he's seen enough i suppose to own a gun well you know what are the what are the implications i was asking that and saying that in a in a well-intentioned way in that video and raising questions all right i continue here quoting uh richard's email all right um quote you also claim that you came to this conclusion because you claim that i have never said i do not own real guns and because you claim i have an interest in firearms and plan to own firearms in the future close quote at this time there were numerous videos and live streams on youtube in which he talked about the specific guns he wanted to buy and own i'd seen them and heard them many of you will have seen them so the way he's wording this is very dishonest and manipulative like as as if i've made it up out of thin air that he has an interest in owning guns he'd stated it himself and he'd stated it also sometimes when talking about this legal situation was in that once he got the legal right to own guns in canada again that he would on guns and we don't know i mean correct me if i'm wrong today does anyone know you can tell me the comments do you know whether or not richard on guns gun sticks i've heard him talk about gun ownership a lot but anyway you'll hear what he said at this time in 2019 all right okay so at this time he says quote i do not own real firearms isil and currently i am not legally able to own firearms due to my probation and you accusing me of owning firearms could have serious little consequences for me if you do not take down this video i will do everything i can to take this video down and take down any other videos you've made accusing me of criminal activity i will first try to get these videos taken down through youtube's own policies against harassment and bullying i have already talked to my multi-channel network about this issue and if that does not work then i will pursue legal action against you to be absolutely clear i want you to take down any videos you've made accusing me of any criminal activity close quote and just let's just clarify a couple of things here one so at this time february of 2019 if he believed i was the person who would phone the cops why isn't that in this email obviously that's a delusion that's a fantasy that's a hallucination he made up at some later point right like if that he would be angry about that here in february of 2019 richard for some reason the thought hadn't even entered your mind that it was my fault that you had this legal problem with the cops in the first place so richard this is evidence that you and your wife concocted this myth about me this lie about me later than february 2019. there is no complaint here that i doxed him isn't that interesting if he blamed me for that if he had any reason she had any evidence to think that i had doxed him and his specific claim is that i doxed him at some point that caused this legal problem for him it would have to be before this it would have been years before this right it couldn't be at this moment and presumably he would be furious about it right now he would be complaining that i had dogs them etc so those are ideas he invented more recently than this and although february 2019 is a long time ago his legal process with going and speaking to a psychiatrist and getting this evaluation and dealing with the canadian court system i believe it had been going on for about two years already at this point again you guys can compare the exact dates um the exact time stamps in the video the first time i learned about this legal situation his legal troubles uh this problem with the police was when he told me in the interview i conducted with him and that that interview was still on my channel so you can that's when he first told me and to my knowledge he had never said that on the internet before it's possible he did somewhere that he'd already talked about that i hadn't seen but i was shocked i hadn't heard anything about that legal problem at that point so to my knowledge it wasn't widely known yet and he intended to go on to talk about the future and he did he later did talk about it openly and publicly this uh this legal problem okay so anyway um we have we have someone um commenting wolf pack says quote evidence doesn't matter to people that have a big ego with themselves so good comment i understand what you're saying but there are two dimensions of this one richard's own attitude and then to the attitude of the audience and the scariest thing of all is the extent to which people in the audience don't care about the truth people in the audience don't care what happens that really scares me and i've had to deal with that for so many years i've had to deal with that with dorian ryder if i deal with that with really small gossip channels making up things but even like reddit groups like people who don't even come on camera with their own face don't take any risk that people will just make things up on the internet that normally can be factually verified or challenging so you remember this thing with um foot soldier claiming that i've never studied chinese and never lived in china it's like dude there's so much evidence in the internet that i've lived in china and studying like just google my name like how could i have faked this stuff there's so much evidence people made up all these crazy theories and really believed them you know and then sooner or later they get back to me like someone like footsoldier talks to me directly and people will say like foot soldier said to me like oh well everyone says this what do you mean everyone like did five people in your discord group say this i don't care if five people in your discord group said it's flagrantly untrue it's obviously untrue you see a lot of that on the internet and you know i think someone with as loose a grip on reality as richard can also be taken in by these same attitudes you know richard will influence his audience but the audience will also influence richard right he's someone who can be influenced that way i can't be you guys can't start a bunch of lies that are going to drag me in and pull me along with you right i'm not susceptible that way you can't influence me but certainly someone like like richard cooper at some point he started believing these crazy lies made up about me and not surprisingly these lies are blaming me for his problems as opposed to taking responsibility for himself and let's just let's just note yeah i i feel you someone else saying they hate it when people appeal to the notion of everyone says or people are saying yeah it's like you know i don't when you say everyone says blank about my sex life are these people are these people who have slept with me that's just ridiculous look let's just clarify again richard has been honest in talking about his mental health problems and i've said for years that i gave him credit for that like there are a lot of things i can't give him credit for but i've said look i think it's really healthy to have people come on the internet and talk about what it's like to have hallucinations i've heard him talk about hallucinations he said paranoid hallucinations etc that's going to come up in this email correspondence where i raise with him i have a really good question for you if you knew someone who's admitted to the type of paranoid hallucinations vegan gains hats do you believe that person should have the right to bear arms do you believe that person should be carrying a handgun just based on the symptoms richard has admitted to and discussed in public richard has admitted really extreme symptoms of mental health problems extreme insanity to be blunt in plain english right but like richard you have to have some self-awareness if you know that about yourself then you must realize the extent to which you are capable of lying about me and about how our so-called friendship ended and how we became so-called enemies like you must realize that when you don't have detachment and clarity you can get pretty deep into lying to your audience and pretty deep and aligned yourself and i just want to say again you know obviously i have no you know the canadian legal system don't even get me started right but like you know dude just think about this in terms of the rules of the streets like i i i [Music] where i come from i grew up in downtown toronto i look look for real i don't know i don't know richard probably i had more black people going to my high school than you had going to yours like the percentage of african canadians in toronto is not that great but like you know i grew up on all races of man i grew up around italians greeks chileans uh actually all except hispanics there really weren't that many mexicans where i grew up very few mexicans to be honest anyway you know melissa's seen my neighborhood but i mean jamaican immigrants korean immigrants chinese immigrants uh no japanese where i grew up but anyway you know almost every uh of course within europe russians ukrainians you know we uh all kinds of racism but i've got to tell you something in that part of downtown toronto you know where those cultures came together sure there were real minimum standards of morality that got enforced across those cultural lines and yes saying that someone phoned the cops on you is a big deal saying that someone's snitching you saying that someone falsely phoned the cops that someone thought like lied to the cops about you is a big deal all right and and i can say where i'm from i'm from the same block you're from richard like as far as i know we're both from downtown toronto i don't think we grew up in such different circumstances and seeing that i doxed you anywhere on youtube anywhere on the internet i mean i don't care if you're from sweet valley high okay doxing someone's a big deal like the morality of doxing someone everyone understands i don't care if you're japanese any everyone understands doxxing is evil richard i've never toxed you and i don't even i don't even know anything to like just be real i don't know where he lives i don't know anything about it because i don't care i've never googled it like for real i don't know anything about this guy i could use nothing so because i've i've never even wondered about it i'm i don't know i'm not curious about people that way i'm just going to be honest like i'm curious about people politically philosophically morally like i want to know what kind of person you are politically that's what i'm you know what i mean like that's what i'm curious about but you know come on man you know the like the location of his apartment or wherever he goes to work i don't want no any of that i don't want to know that about anyone i don't know i pushed you so that kind of stuff i i don't have anything to dox anybody with all right um yeah and look i so said really briefly in my earlier video the video i made immediately prior to this one i i asked the question hypothetically okay my critique of richard of vegan gains why did it become harsher and harsher because the very thing i was criticizing became worse and worse his actual youtube content became worse than a few people you know uh reporting anyway look guys by the way i remember there was a really touching moment in a rap song by little b i used to shout out little b on my channel but anyway uh his recent recordings have declined in quality but you know little b had a rap song where he just stopped in the middle of this rap song he wasn't really rapping or singing he just stopped and he said to the audience he said look i want you to know that that bullying is serious if you are being bullied in school talk to your teacher talk to the professors talk to the cops it was just the realist moment in a [ __ ] rap song where it's like look there's all this boasting about being a tough guy and not going to the cops and solving your problems and you just stopped and said look like if you are dealing with this don't don't be a tough guy like you know because being bullied in school is horrible and it really matters and so look i'm not saying nobody should go to the cops there are all kinds of good reasons to go to the cops you know what i'm saying um so however yes for richard to falsely claim that i went to the cops and so on and then he seems to believe it he doesn't seem to think he's lying he's just crazy to touch the reality that's you know it's pretty creative okay so we got we got some questions from the audience uh here i'll stop answering everything cool babe do you wanna okay sir melissa's melissa's off camera good good if you want if you wanna sit in the floor with me if you wanna no okay all right thanks thanks for the support from charlie zander i'm gonna answer these these couple questions get back to reading this email i hope i remember where i'm at i think i do um charlie asks quote would you be willing to do a live chat with vegan gains uh to discuss this topic and is there any hope that you could both reconcile um so you asked the same question twice oh look i feel like i already addressed this i don't know if you guys remember the video i did where i commented that vegan gains had challenged me to a debate and then his wife didn't want me to have the debate with him so that's almost a year ago now or something um i can give you the link to that hold on i'll answer it substantively too the last time we went through this this is eight months ago yeah i remember it being the better part of a year ago here's the video it's very short video um the last time this happened about eight months ago my response was to say look i'm only interested in talking to richard if you would actually read a book do you want to grab the book for me babe do you know where it is oh well great melissa memorized and i just said look like richard i'm not going to this debate or discuss this with you if you don't know what you're talking about because from my perspective he speaks out of complete ignorance and also with a lot of malice and meaningless aggression i was like this is a really important book that really addresses the issues this is you know so if you actually want to read this book and i offered i haven't read the book melissa has you know i said i can prove that i'm putting in the hours i'll livestream myself reading the book i don't even know if that's gonna take me 10 hours 20 hours probably quite a few hours to read this book i can put in the time to read the book also so it's not just putting the imposition on him i can livestream myself reading the book and then we could discuss it i made that offer eight months ago i honestly i wouldn't make that offer today but my point is this like you know what youtube has become is this really perverse process of the blind leading the blind and i you know just you know what's what's the point of someone who is as ignorant as vegan gains discussing anything like i don't even think he can debate bodybuilding i'm sorry but richard hasn't coached a bodybuilding champion or something richard never studied nutrition and dietetics richard never got a university degree in kinesiology richard has never been a gym coach for even a little league team let alone an award-winning team you can go on youtube and you can get diet and exercise advice from olympic athletes and from coaches who have helped train a dozen successful olympic athletes and worked with teams you can also watch youtube videos from coaches who specialized in working with severely obese people you know what i mean people who are just trying to get a normal life back just trying to lose weight you know it's a different kind of coaching different experience whether they have background in nutrition or science but like you know the notion that richard is in this position to pass judgment on you know every province of science politics and history it's it's just ludicrous and you know i'd just be real with you i think that so someone in the audience says quote richard has a degree in tendonitis he has a degree in injuring himself that's right you know um anyway so look you know that that's the answer one part of your question i have to say that this question also just inspires me to reflect for a moment um you know when i first saw richard's content so what is it now like eight years ago guys i never thought it would get this bad like it never occurred to me that the young hopeful well-intentioned naive kid from toronto that he was would stink into this dark malevolent self-pitying pattern he's been in for so many years you know it absolutely never occurred to me that this was the direction his channel would take and that this is the man he would become you know and um [Music] you know look guys i mean have i ever done a live stream talking about the politics of jamaica you know i mean there are elections and political what we're just hearing political news from tunisia am i going to do a live stream talking about the politics of tunisia it's interesting to me i've heard about it on the news open you know i'm aware of the limits of my expertise i can't lecture on old topics i can't do a live q a on all topics you know what i mean so there are a lot of elements there are a lot of different ways in which richard is a really bad influence um on veganism as a movement and just on the world in general through youtube but i think one of the most negative elements of his influence at all is just just the idea that he's in a position to sit back and judge that he sits there like a king passing judgment and all these things he has never read one article about he has never read one book about let alone you know three or four books with contrasting perspectives um and what generation x gamer says quote he hasn't been good for a while i enjoyed his skits close quote well you know exactly i mean like you know eight years ago that's what we're talking about maybe look at this guy and say well yeah sure he's kind of a no-nothing bum but he can do comedy like maybe he can go further in that direction or you know maybe you think he has some talent in filmmaking and he can go that direction you know you know what i'm saying you could see still something positive for do and years ago more than five years ago he seemed like he had a really sincere interest in helping animals animal welfare or however you want to put it you know what i'm saying he seemed to care about the suffering of animals i think it's been a long time since he showed any any sincere care or interest that way so look sorry there is actually more i can say about that because i feel that's i mean even if it's shallow that's really an area of critique that applies to many different channels in many different ways and i think it raises questions we all have to ask ourselves about our own lives you know most of you guys have a nine to five job where you do the same thing every day now i'll say this this is definitely part of my analysis of my own father also a lot of people have a nine to five job where they're humiliated and denigrated again and again and again every day so like while they're at work their ego is getting ground down like all day and then maybe when they leave work they feel they need to kind of recover their their ego their sense of self-esteem their sense of worth you know but some people have a job where they are being flattered where their ego is getting pumped up all day nine to five again again and again you know this was my this is part of my father's problem right like i wonder to what extent my father could have been a better person if he had been a construction worker if he had been hauling sacks of cement around a loading dock you know what i mean at the at a dockyard or something he just had a kind of normal job that kept him in check and you know anyway i just say that that question and who these people are whether it's vegan gains or someone else on camera or off camera then again blind leading the blind the consequences politically and so on and look guys sorry it's quite intentional in everything i've just said to you there was no mention of formal education like i didn't mention having a phd or a master's degree because trust me there are people with a phd who are just as ignorant as vegan kids there are people with a master's degree there are people with years of higher education who have nothing more to offer than vegans and who are just as ignorant and just as self-righteous and just as as malevolent but sure as skeptical as i was about richard shall we say eight years ago i never imagined it would be this bad as skeptical as it was about henia mania i never thought bonnie rebecca who the hell thought it would turn out this way with these people who thought it would be this bad james aspy a nice australian boy who you know took a vow of silence for a year like you know you could think the best about these people whether it's five years ago or eight years ago whatever well you know time has told you know um we've seen just what terrible people each each these examples is in a different way all right uh so answering your questions i'm gonna return to reading these these emails so a great question from charlie again charlie asks quote do you believe there is anyone who can be a leader in the vegan movement what hope do you have for veganism in the future are you aware that i've written a book on this topic and what was the book published about one month ago now right melissa says two months so look this book is listed on amazon in each country so charlie assume you're still here uh you can click on this link i mean i can give you the link to amazon.com but you know if you're in france it's amazon.fr if you're in japan it's amazon.jp but this is available everywhere and it's the minimum possible price so on do you want to grab me this book babe i think it's back there it looks great and buying it on paper is only four dollars so yeah i think it's right up top oh maybe i'm wrong yeah yeah up there no all right it doesn't matter forget about it it's okay they can click on the link and see what the book looks like oh let's go great question uh generation x gamer asks if i've got this as an audiobook no i have so many hours of podcasts and youtube videos already from over the years see the resemblance no i haven't i haven't aged a day um anyway so look it's not you can see it's not a real long book um but that's a lot of entertainment it's one dollar as a kindle document and it's four dollars on paper so for four dollars and this is it's a miracle that includes delivery to your door from amazon it's really an amazing sorry just credit to amazon i'm not giving credit to myself but you get this it's it is a real book on paper it's just as good quality as a book from any other publisher that amazon produces and they deliver it to you over four dollars but anyway so to answer your question though a little bit further charlie that is answering the question of what you can do with your life not just the abstract question in general of some idealized person what they could do um leading the vegan movement so yeah it's you know sure i mean there's a there's a chalkboard question in theory what could someone do what what should someone do and then there's what can we do what are we going to do and how is that going to fit into a meaningful life because you know i remember this was said about a certain scholar of buddhism i could tell you the whole story of this guy he was an early path-breaking scholar of buddhism who he walked from hungary to tibet over hand among his his accomplishments um it was said of him in this basically this obituary of him i read it said he was the epitome of a man who chose not to live but to know like the difference between living and knowing is a choice he chose not to live but to know and you know that's not the choice i want anyone to make i want you to live and know right i want you to uh you know i don't want you to choose between life and the revolution you're i want you to live the revolution i want your life to be the revolution and for you to be a part of the revolution while living a meaningful life while living a good life i don't want you to live in a cave you know there are a lot of ideological movements that are pretty much based on you living in a cave including what freely is doing now it's insane freely wants you to live in the middle of the jungle and grow your own fruits and vegetables it's not literally a cave but it's it's pretty close it's more restrictive than becoming a buddhist monk so oh okay totally reasonable question i'll just give a short answer and i'm going to continue reading this this email corresponds to me and richard um so william asks do these other people like freely the banana girl richard etc do they hold themselves up as leaders because they have more youtube subscribers i'm going to be honest with you i think the answer is different in every case i would not generalize about these these people and the answer very often makes no sense at all um [Music] you know i would point out before freely and durianrider started their festival in chiang mai there was a different couple that already had a vegan fruit festival in chiang mai do you remember their names babe the overlord connor and brittany connor brittany now connor brittany got famous on youtube connor and brittany have made a lot of money out of their social media platform and to my experience they're fairly honest about that they talk about how much money and they have slept with a lot of people which they talk about they talk about their sex life right so they've had fame sex money right vegan fruit festival in chiang mai talent but they never took the fateful step freely and durianrider took and that's why no offense most you've never heard of them or those of you who had heard of them right now are like oh yeah i remember those guys so like that's the point i know it may sound silly but freely and during writer could have had a life much more like conor and brittany right i could say it about vegan gains too you could say to another school so [Music] yeah that's it's not something generalized about science woo sorry another great question no i'm never gonna guys i appreciate it most of the time i have no questions worth answering here and i'm getting a lot of great questions today so charlie asks again quote can you give your opinion about gary yourofsky and his flaws why did he quit being a leader of the speaker movement now i would assume i have a playlist of videos at this point on gary yourofsky i have made several in-depth at length discussions about gary vayorovsky including one that harshly condemned him when he quote unquote retired so i mean now yourofsky has a name that's easy to google so yeah here we go here's here's a video with a self-explanatory title gary yourofsky colon bitter burnt bitter burnt out loser blames passivist vegans for his own decision to quit so that managed to get 8 400 views um oh yeah so here we go oh that's that's the real one i'm thinking of quote martyrs make lousy leaders beyond gary yourofsky yeah attacking this notion of martyrdom and so on so that's the link to that playlist um yes i have talked about gary yourof's game what's wrong with his approach at length and in depth um but look at sorry with all these people including vegan gains himself let's just say stupidity is real and look sorry whether two big concepts in our culture what is stupidity what is insanity right like mental health what does this really mean let's move past this right there were a lot of people who are stupid who could be intelligent right and there are some people who are stupid and they really have no no choice now you know sir i got i don't know if you're still in the audience here one of the very few examples of a youtuber who talks about his own low level of education and regrets in life is is generation x gamer here so i've heard generation x gamer say that you know when he looks back at his life he he said in a recent video he wonders if he had an education more like i do if he had experience traveling the world and things more like i do how his life would be different if he'd lived a life more like mine totally good question for real i asked myself if i'd had a life more like yours too i don't mean video games but if i'd stayed in toronto and worked a blue-collar job and you know one of the jobs i applied for this was right when i was packing up to leave toronto and moved to asia or when i thought i was long story but you know i remember i applied for and got a job on a wrecking crew so this is a demolition crew uh but specifically when they like blow up a building and then there are the pieces of burnt metal and well not even bent metal metal and bricks and you got a haul away you you know the demolition and clearing away phase of the construction industry and even that job in toronto relied on nepotism to get the job not literally but you know a friend of a friend recommends you and you make a phone call um even that was but it was like you know okay yeah i'm six foot three i do 200 push-ups at that time i did chin-ups too i don't do chin-ups at the moment like you know the the interview for that job was like you do push-ups you do chin-ups you're over six foot tall okay we're interested can you wake up at 5 30 in the morning it was something like that got to get up real early go work on this television and my father didn't let me take the job my father stopped it my father was like no i'm not letting you work in construction anyway sorry long story short there uh short story long um you know my point is this there are some people who are stupid and they don't have to be stupid they chose to live the life they're living they're making that choice every day again and again and again for example they are choosing to play video games for six hours a day every day or whatever it is they're choosing to do drugs every day they're choosing to drink alcohol every day whatever the choice is they're even some of my own brothers you know i've they're guys who have basically the same genetics i have but they chose to chase women drink alcohol do drugs live a dissolute life and they internet me but you know there are also people who don't have a choice and if you've really known people for years you know there are some people who are crazy and it's really compulsive it's really involuntary and they didn't have a choice to be saying it's not that they squandered their sanity with drugs and alcohol or something you know they they were really just dealt an unfortunate deck of cards whether we call that insanity or mental disability or a combination of two or mental retardation this term that nobody wants to use anymore but still really matters medically um you know no it's it's not it's not always a choice but sure you know this is my answer question about uh you know gary yourofsky and vegan gains you know guys stupidity is real the fundamental problem with gary yourofsky is stupidity and he has that in common with vegan gains and in many ways i think gary yourofsky and richard they're stupid in some of the same ways like they cope with their stupidity with extreme rage extreme statements about you know wanting to do violent things to people like you can see a lot of things they they have in common however you know gary yourofsky was a schoolteacher you know gary yourofsky held down a job as a uh supply teacher in the detroit public school system i don't think richard could do that ryofsky has accomplished some things in his life positively that i don't think richard ever could do but sure you know fundamentally the problem is stupidity then we have a question are we talking about you know voluntary stupidity the stupidity you choose or a kind of in involuntary compulsory even genetic predestined stupidity insanity etc and bottom line i don't know and i don't care like i'm not really interested in holding up your your soul in a set of scales and judging you know karyorovsky or richard or anyone else what i what i am interested in is what i am going to do with the next five years of my life and there was a time when i was coming back to canada from taiwan oh sorry i'm a misremember now i was coming back to canada from yunnan china right not even tabloid i was coming back from yunnan china to canada and i thought what i was going to do in the next five years involved vegan gains i thought vegan gains and aaron janus i had like a list of people i bought gifts for because i was going to meet them face to face we're going to be involved in vegan activism jokes on me not a single one of those people on that list ever met me i don't think i don't think of the people i bought gifts for i don't think a single one of them ever got the gift you know so every single one faked out on me or let me down or it didn't happen there wasn't a single person to collab with me okay that was season one on about seattle season two i'm playing a different game by different rules people but yeah ultimately i'm interested in what's gonna happen next five years and i want every single one of you to be interested in that too and guys it's no joke the polarized caps are melting it's no joke the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing year after year after year coronavirus didn't slow it down appreciably you can see on the charts by the way it is measurable it did slow it down infinitesimally it gets measured what a difference it made the reduction in airplane flights and so on during the chronic hours period but you know guess what the rising rate of carbon dioxide the atmosphere the acidification of the oceans the impending you know ecological you know disaster at least for animals on planet earth if not human beings we are facing a very finite timeline and even more finite than that is you are going to die and long before you die you might lose the physical strength vitality and mobility let's do these things i say that all the time sorry just to make it about me for a second sorry i very rarely speak about myself put on this occasion and melissa i don't know how you relate to this but like when i was finishing university my baa my first ba my honors ba university i said openly to the professors like look if i don't go to cambodia now if i don't risk stepping on a landmine in laos and cambodia now when is it going to be when i'm 45 when i'm 55 like you don't know sorry and you know you don't know what health problems you you can have irritable bowel syndrome look how many million people have irritable bowel syndrome you could like i don't by the way i don't have anything wrong with me but you don't know you could develop diabetes you could develop some kind of health problem you get human hpv human metabolism i think you could have all kinds of problems when you're 45 or 55 and you can't roll up your sleeves and and go out and get bitten by leeches in cambodia and laos no more but i was really aware and i remember talking about that with my professors i was like look if i don't do some of these things now then when am i going to do it and you know in the past i regretted that decision because i felt like i lost the only chance i had to get a master's degree and a phd and now i'm so happy i made that decision because i know how worthless the master's degree and phd are i know what's what's through that door i know what i'm missing out on and i i understand that why all the people who went through that door and got mma and phd why all of them envied me to me it was a mystery in the past what you envy me i'm out here sleeping under a mosquito net in laos you know i was doing something they'd always wanted to do and they never got the opportunity to okay okay shout out to melissa quote i so this is from charlie again quote i think you and melissa make a great couple we paid the price to be this nice we have certainly we have certainly put in the work uh quote i think you and melissa make a great couple melissa said on her channel how much she has grown as a person with you are you happy together now so like the one word answer is yes um you know this also relates to vegan gains frankly you know one thing i'm reluctant to talk about it because i don't want to give it as advice and and make it a model for other people to follow and i'll be real with you when i was younger i was influenced by that kind of thing i was influenced by people talking about their relationships and looking at things as a model but like this relationship was bad for like four years for me not for her for me it was bad for four years and you know i was very generous and positive and disciplined and supportive and kept working on it kept putting the time in and now i'm happy now it's it's asymmetrical and i think if you guys go back and look over the first four years that's obvious like sorry no offense but basically the relationship was great for melissa from day one and for me it was really bad for a really long time but you know [Laughter] um yeah i mean i just say i know it's a hacking phrase but you know yeah i know today the relationship is great and um you know i said this years ago on the channel most people have a job where you can't work twice as hard to make twice as much money you may have a job where you can work twice as hard to make five percent more money or you may have a job where working twice as hard doesn't change your outcomes at all right most people are in a job where they minimize how much they work because working hard won't really help them you know in your relationships especially your relationship with your wife with your husband that kind of relationship if you work twice as hard you get more than twice the results so yeah i worked really really hard through the first four years of this relationship and uh no i mean i would say approximately the last one year has been really great for me [Laughter] if you don't mind if i talk about myself for a minute here and yeah i mean just for melissa it's it's very different it's a very asymmetrical relationship we made tons of videos time within the past and i would just mention i i don't think you're going to get this kind of reflection from richard from vegans all right okay another great question but it's gonna have to be for another video another day quote what goals do you and melissa have together personally and professionally for the future how many hours did we talk about that this week so sure there will be a video coming out in the future but you're not uh you're not gonna not gonna get a uh not gonna get a further answer that now anyway sorry so at this moment i just don't wanna get into this but charlie's asked uh how can i support your work at this way buy the book man and you know we'll talk you can talk to me on patreon you can buy the book and do whatever we'll see what's possible um but you know basically my cooperation my collaboration other people depends on talent and you know talent is scarce but yeah for years i was looking for people i could work with and i work alone because talent is scarce okay returning to this set of messages my reply quote richard and this is a classic iso missouri email in that it has a numbered bullet point instead of okay so numbered list if any of you have had in-depth conversations by email you'll recognize the format so my reply richard one did it even occur to you to talk about this in a constructive way two local time here equals 11 23 pm so i am replying without going back and listening to the video however i'm willing to presume at this moment that you have a reasonable request that you're stating in an extremely unreasonable way i.e blackmail and threats three let me just speculate as to what the reasonable request might be that you could have made in a parallel universe quote hi isil i know that you're not aware that i'm currently living under probation but under the terms the court set for me i'm not actually able to own firearms in your video around 6 15 you suggest the possibility that i could own firearms it would really mean a lot to me if you could edit the video and re-upload a version clarifying that i have written to you letting you know that i do not in fact own any frail firearms close quote there were 10 different ways this could be worded that would not have been blackmail dude i don't know if you imagine that you know me but maybe you've heard me say about ten thousand times that i'm a man of principle and integrity and i do the right thing only and precisely because it is the right thing to do just saying this like guys if you ever deal with these things like you can try to motivate the other person what are you going to do bribe me threaten me like what about what about just the feeling we do the right thing goes through anything you know what i'm saying anyway um yeah it doesn't occur to him it's because it's alienated you know he assumes everyone else thinks and feels and operates the way he does which is that they'll only respond to threats of violence force compulsion is that stupid anyway um but i continue quoting this email you know i don't like dorian ryder he really harmed me i do not lie about durianrider if i'm wrong it's not because i'm lying so likewise i would not lie about you richard if i've said something in my video that is false or misleading due to either one my sincere ignorance or two imprecision or vagueness of wording i would be entirely eager to rectify that simply because it is the right thing to do this is apparently so incomprehensible to you that you open your very first email to me with blackmail and threats you give a lecture about morality and ethics for hours and hours on youtube your debates often evoke formal logic and refined academic concepts of ethical theory but this really shows how totally ethically illiterate you are and how you're totally incapable of understanding someone like myself this is deep [Laughter] point four the video does not state as a fact that you own real firearms you know exactly what it states it points out the peculiar vagueness of what you said and it contrasts that to your statements that you would like to own firearms that you plan to own firearms in future etc and it asks whether or not your vagueness was intentional because only the firearms shown on screen are fake here meaning air guns or bb guns so it is a type of gun but it's considered not a real gun however if that statement is incorrect misleading or if you were just personally concerned that it could be perceived as misleading by people in the audience who may not be listening carefully i would be happy to make an amendment or clarification the video i.e to edit that part of the video and re-upload it simply because it is the right thing to do five ending this email really question why you're blackmailing me you know nor vegan also used blackmail as this as the default mode of problem solving with both myself and vegan foot soldier and that's a real sign of dishonesty on this part end of the email okay so now we get richard's reply this is still on the same day uh in february of 2019 quote i didn't blackmail you i told you what i was going to do if you don't take down your slander videos it's great i didn't blackmail you i just told you what i'm going to do if you don't do what i'm asking you to do correct okay great clarification i didn't blackmail you i just told you i'm gonna do if you don't do what i'm trying to force you to do okay great close quote we continue quote you're making criminal accusations against me which are not true this point this puts both this is exactly the kind of thing he he hates on social justice warriors for too right quote you are making criminal accusations against me which are not true and this puts both me and my wife in danger yeah his life is in danger because of my youtube video right this goes against youtube community guidelines so i have contacted my multi-channel network and they will try to get your slander videos removed if you do not do it yourself just close quote just pause for a second you know it's not slander per se to make criminal allegations against somebody you can write a newspaper article saying in my opinion this person should be accused of this crime and should go to court that's that's part of freedom of speech people do it for example against politicians other people do that against johnny depp and amber hurt anyway make the fact that you allege a crime doesn't mean it's slammer slander doesn't mean it's defamation that in itself right like think about the meaning of the word allegation right i've made videos alleging uh donald trump who committed serious crimes it's free that is part of freedom speech now when does that become slander and defamation that's another another question great question from audience why is there daylight outside it has to do with the earth not being flat that is what it has to do with let me tell you it's a good question unfortunately it'd be a whole other video to get to the answer all right um [Music] okay we continue quote if youtube is unwilling to remove your videos slandering me then i will pursue legal action against you i don't care if you make videos criticizing me but when you make up false criminal accusations against me that's going too far i would okay just close quote has richard has vegan gains ever made criminal allegations against someone else have you ever heard richard claim that someone else was using an illegal drug like steroids that's criminal allegation that has a serious sense statute right like it's so dishonest and manipulative what he's doing here and again if you've just even seen my earlier video you'll get a sense of both what i said and the spirit in which i said it like that it really is kind of constructive criticism asking questions about his future whatever you know well we've seen richard in a very mean-spirited way make criminal allegations against a huge number of people i can't count no how many people has he made allegations of criminal activity against on the internet right and to some extent that is a use of his freedom of speech he is allowed to say that in his opinion he thinks this person is using illegal drugs i mean there are other channels that that type the fact that something is an allegation or something that is a criminal allegation that does not prove slander or defamation in and of itself right talk about the assassination of jfk making criminal allegations against all kinds of people what are you going to say um anyway these kinds of things this is not the criterion for definition of slander neither in canada nor in the united states and look i've never heard of anyone's life being ruined by the claim that they're using um uh performance dancing drugs steroids and so on the only person i can remember complaining about that was john venus john venus insisted that he didn't use steroids that it was a serious problem for him in his career to have someone on youtube say that he used steroids i don't know the truth of either side of that argument i have no idea but that's it's very rare for people to claim that it actually does impact them negatively um that other people claim they use steroids but that is a criminal allegation and that is i mean that is not the only criminal allocation you know you can say that i criticized richard harshly richard has criticized everyone harshly and sometimes unfairly all right anyway so we continue this is reading richard's second email to me in this sequence um if youtube is unwilling to remove your videos slandering me that i will pursue legal action against you i don't care if you make videos criticizing me but when you make up false criminal accusations against me that's going too far i would suggest you take those videos down there's only one video by the way he keeps saying in the plural but this only concerns one video uh those videos down he may not have even watched um [Music] to avoid getting community guidelines strikes in your channel which could result in your channel being terminated and to avoid any legal issues yeah this is not blackmail this is not a threat right i have no interest in getting your channel terminated or pursuing legal action against you this is not a threat i just want to make sure my wife and i are safe the reason i have contacted you is to avoid having this escalate any further and i have no interest in continuing an argument with you end of the end of the email yeah that's interesting richard now here you are on the internet years later and what are you saying about me so when you wrote this in 2019 did you have any inkling did you have any notion in your mind that i had called the cops on you that i had talks to you why is that absent from this email correspondent richard why did that notion that allegation that claimed why did that only creep into your head later so obviously as of february 2019 you hadn't made up this story in your head yet a story that is utterly false and they sort of can't even be true hey richard when that happened when the police kicked down your door when somebody called the police on you or somebody doxed you whatever the story i don't even know but according to you somebody docked you and somebody called the police where was i living geographically where was i what was i doing at that time like the whole timeline of this makes no sense and again he he told me that he had this problem with the police and he got to see and hear how shocked that was i if it wasn't skype it was another service like but i believe that was a skype call where he saw my face as well as heard my voice and yeah and also we had uh i believe facebook messages following up uh after that it could have been messages within skype but whatever same thing text messages i was really shocked to hear that he had this this problem with police so richard on i think somewhere you still have those memories buried under whatever [ __ ] you and your you and your uh wife made up okay so look i'm just gonna pause so next is another email from me to richard and i think there's maybe one more email after this and then it's wrapped up okay so look i've got a challenge here i am challenging a donor from the audience so this is the here is the art of biting the hand that feeds you charlie says quote i'll give one thousand dollars to have you and vegan gains talk live on youtube together okay charlie i want to publish an illustrated storybook for children you can hear some of the stories on my youtube channel right now there's a playlist for it okay i one of my stories i wrote in both chinese and english it was actually first written in chinese i also wrote the english version and it's been translated into like five other languages i forget maybe seven other languages all right why wouldn't you donate one thousand dollars to have that storybook illustrated and published like if you have one thousand dollars to donate i have something better to do with that for the future of the vegan movement for this youtube channel for everybody this is not the only example i have so sorry i can i can get that really quick on my channel um the story the first story i'm thinking of is called only earthworms want to see the sky now again i'm not saying this to insult you but okay i understand you would get some kind of thrill so yeah here's the playlist and this will also i think give you some of the translations of it into other languages right so i think i'll check if that play if that link works so there you go you don't have to listen to the video now that'll just give you the list there's a story oh whoops okay if you click on that it actually starts playing the video that's not the perfect link to send um yes even earthworms want to uh want to see this guy so let me just see what happens when you click on that link um you know okay but that story to publish that in english and chinese to publish that in some combination of languages that could be so meaningful for so many people like not just me i have had people tell me they broke down weeping when they first read that story actually two of my chinese teachers two different chinese people said they broke down uh weeping when they read that story you know a lot of people have said it's really a tremendously moving tremendously meaningful story so there you go that link should work it'll give you and you can see i think there's a dutch translation there forget if we have a german translation uh so i think swedish i forget how many languages there are in there right um we had a japanese translation but it wasn't of good enough quality so i actually took it off the internet but there used to be a japanese translation this is only one example but like i've been on the internet for so long talking about really positive things we can do to change the world and dude it's been crickets all right now another another uh example was the storybook i wrote about socrates so here i think you've got this in at least two languages right now so this is on a this has been translated at least into i think german and french so this is one of the stories i made about the fables i wrote allegorical fables arguments there's a whole sequence of them fabulous book and not just for vegans i think the vegan message is in there in one of the fables i think so one out of seven stories or something deals with the veganism but this is a fantastic story and this was this was pop uh this [Laughter] this guy said crickets question mark you have a ton of laughs every time i tell a joke yeah not qrikets in that sense but anyway so look this is another storybook for children project and in this case it is partly about the vegan message but it's partly about challenging christmas and challenging kind of the indolence of our culture and really trying to offer something better so that a thousand dollars would be plenty i mean i'm just saying you can go on fiverr right now i don't know if you know this website but there are different websites where illustrators will work and probably a thousand dollars would pay for the illustration and then you could also probably pay for the the actual printing let's say have a number of hardcover like i don't know i know seven hundred dollars go to the illustrator and then be 300 left off to somehow you know promote and get the get the get the publishing rolling but anyway you could look into maybe maybe i'm wrong maybe all thousand dollars i have to go to the australian um you can look into it and it'd probably be different for the two books but sure just one thousand dollars could make a could make a big difference um in either those projects and those are not my only ideas so you know this is just this shows how much i've changed so there is a video i made about the decline here we go there's a video i made titled veganism declined by 50 in two years so this is a long video but if you go to the very end i would say approximately the final five minutes of this this video says and i was really appealing for donors and people in the audience tell me at the end of this video again approximately the last five minutes maybe it's the last seven minutes i don't know but anyway you can click around a little bit when you do it at the end of this video it says guys there are so many projects i want to do if i had a larger audience or if i had donor support to do them and it gives all these positive examples of things i'd love to do now i've changed you know some of those ideas today i wouldn't do for a thousand dollars and i wouldn't do for five thousand dollars and i wouldn't do for ten thousand dollars if it's a million dollars okay i'll think about it but you know for years i was talking about all these positive things we do and you guys know i talked about opening a vegan bakery and all these different things so dude yes i have been looking for support from donors as well as collaborators and so on for years but you know like a pissing contest with richard like you know getting into uh you know like i get it i told like look i'm not saying to say to you i totally see how you could get a thousand dollars worth of entertainment from me and richard vick totally all right and there was a time i offered to do boxing matches with richard i was in better shape than i am now i mean i really have to hit the gym but i remember was in pretty good shape and i said like richard you challenge everyone else to a fighting except me why don't we do a boxing match why don't we do you know whatever why don't we do this um i i will choose not to tell you what he said back what he said back was pretty dark actually but anyway there have been times when i offered to um in good humor you know do a boxing match for charity you know for the vegan movement it's not not to hurt somebody you know um there have been times when i when i did that and i like i see how that could be worth a thousand dollars to someone or ten thousand dollars someone you know what i mean but you know [Laughter] i am not jason blaha you know what can i tell you i have real aspirations to to change the world and you know sorry even just the video i uploaded the video i uploaded before this one i asked the question over and look i can ask this to melissa too like for melissa reflecting on her own life and for you in the audience but i asked richard like richard what do you want to do with the next 10 years of your life do you want to be a personal trainer do you want to be a nutritional science expert do you want to be a stand-up comedian do you want to be a filmmaker like i just say i'm not i'm not trying to force melissa to become a personal trainer [Laughter] but regardless of the career like we all have to ask ourselves that and like really i think you have there so also like if you if you want to be a creative person if you want to be a whatever it may be you might want to do comedy you might want to do filmmaking you might want to do documentary filmmaking you know this this kind of conflict for the sake of conflict with someone like richard um it's it's not the way to move forward and i just remind you so i think charlie you were here when i said it but eight months ago the last time this was proposed i was trying to get richard to raise up his own level of education by saying well richard how about if we're going to discuss this issue we both read a book first from cover to cover and then discuss what's in the book instead of this just being about you you know making an exhibition of your ego but anyway so charlie is saying uh he's willing to give a thousand dollars to publish the book so let's get some emojis let's get some applause emojis for charlie okay charlie has stepped up to give one thousand dollars for the publication of the book or the illustration of the book thank you charlie charlie uh out of the six million people or something you've seen my videos uh you are the first to offer to pay a thousand dollars so i've had a lot of offers a lot of people we've got about 6.2 million people have seen my videos you're the first person to offer to pay a thousand dollars to get the book else but i have i've got some let's get some applause emojis for charlie but yeah i i have i have had a lot of people telling me how much uh that those books both of them really moved them emotionally but a lot of people were writing and saying how much it meant to them and can they get illustrated and all this stuff um but yeah not that many people put their money where their mouth is and look people with money who are willing to use it charitably to change the world are scarce so charlie you're already part of a scarce but people with the talent to change the world that's even more scarce and yeah for years i was looking for a vegan illustrator who could do it so sure but you know a thousand dollars a long way and guys in case you don't know i mean i've still got this court case with durianrider that's all been paid for by donations in the audience and i'm still broke okay so continuing with reading these these emails um guys if you have a second hit the thumbs up button do it it'll help people find this find this relic yeah how you know i try to make videos that are still going to be meaningful if i come back and watch them five years later you know if you come back and watch this five years later think of the memories that's gonna gen x gamer five years from now you're gonna have great grandchildren you're gonna be sitting and watching this the second oh i remember those days anyway yeah i i try to produce all my content at a level that's meaningful enough that i could watch it again five years later and not feel that's a waste of my time or anyone's time and by the way on that heading all the videos i made criticizing richard i think all of them hold up i would go back and watch any of those videos again today and a lot of them shock me with how interesting like there are interesting things that come up in passing in those videos that like i've forgotten about like oh wow that's an interesting point so if i go back and watch my old content even something that's basically cussing out richard and look sorry you know generation x gamer he already has six grandchildren well you could have eight that's a joke anyway five years from now your grandchildren could be old enough to listen to me cussing out vegan gains on you [Laughter] i've never tried to calculate how many grandchildren my father has i i don't even want to know because my father had nine kids so i don't know i don't know how many how many grandchild grandchildren but i'm doing my part to contribute to the world's overpopulation as we go here all right anyway sorry this is a digression from uh from a digression um yeah i don't regret the videos i made criticizing richard and i i don't you know i don't think any of them were mean-spirited or bad their intentions i think they all they all hold up and if richard had the self-discipline to listen to any of them today um it could have changed his life in the past and it could still change his life now all right so here's my reply to richard in the sequence richard you have been inaccurate i'm choosing not to say dishonest but inaccurate in claiming that my video states circa 6 minutes and 15 seconds that you currently own guns do you want me to quote exactly what the video states just pause close quo i never understand these people whether it's vegan gains whether it's vegan foot soldier whether it's german so many people getting these things whether it's unnatural vegan swayze it's crazy to me the extent to which they just fabricate and hallucinate what i said in videos and it's like dude like is your memory this bad and distorted or like what because like you can just so when it's a youtube video you can click and english is your first language like there's nothing you could just go back and hear exactly what i said but yeah a lot of these people have dealt with i think they're it's not so much they're being dishonest with me it's that they're dishonest with themselves and they're a little bit crazy and they don't there for some reason they're not able to really hear what i'm saying and they don't really remember what i said and then in their own mind it gets distorted anyway obviously now as the years have gone by richard has distorted this whole episode in his memory and blamed me for all kinds of things all right so we continue here um but i asked him do you want me to quote exactly what the video says why are you lying to me about it and like what's the point of lying to me like you think i can't check you think i can't click on my own video and check what i said all right continuing quote i have not responded with hostility i responded by pointing out one that you were issuing threats and engaging in blackmail and two that this is really absurd because as you may know i am really genuinely willing to do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do just pause my point here is even if i don't like durianrider even if i don't like vegan gains i'm willing to do something just to help them out like just if someone writes to me and says hey look this is [ __ ] up my life i'm willing to help man like i'm willing to do the right thing just because the right thing to do like i just why try to blackmail me like as your first move why try to threaten me or bully me like it's just stupid anyway don't and in his case he'd known me for years already he'd seen so many he should know what kind of guy i am he should know that he can appeal to that side of my character instead of trying to manipulate me in this way and instead of lying to me it's really a bad move and now he's lined himself up question from charlie again he asks quote still broke question mark don't mean to plot don't mean to pry but how much do you make a month and what are your monthly expenses i would like to support you melissa financially so charlie you may not know this but i'm one of the few youtubers who has stated on the internet exactly how much money he makes uh we've been joking for some time that season three on this channel will begin when i become a wage slave again when i'm working at mcdonald's or when i'm working at 7-eleven but it is uh it is very much anticipated that this channel is going to return to being me having some kind of minimum wage job like this uh it is i i will foreshadow a little bit that's unlikely to be here in canada we assume we're gonna move permanently to the united states of america location undisclosed um and not for the sake of secrecy but we don't know exactly we're talking about exactly we're moving but yeah i know minimum wage employment is is very likely in my future and um sorry again a contrast to gen x gamer so gen x gamer has talked about this in the past he used to work a really physical minimum wage job but he moved up from being a laborer to being a foreman and then he moved up to two other forms of employment well guess what i'm overeducated and my transition is in the opposite direction okay guys i i've got a university degree and trust me i am better educated than most of the professors most people with phds the people i've met face to face like sorry sitting around it's depressing i mean i wish i wish there were professors i could look up to but there aren't um but yeah yeah i'm i'm overeducated informally more than formally and yeah my employment prospects um my employment prospects resemble those of a high school dropout so yeah and i think there were plenty of high school dropouts who are going to be earning more money than in the future so yeah uh and i'm not mostly about this i've stated on the internet exactly how much i make from youtube exactly how much i make from patreon and the only period in my life in which my earnings were enough to pay my rent was when i was living in in taiwan so that's now about three years ago and that's because my rent was so low so i'm sorry i forget what my rent was but like let's say my rent was 200 a month or something like with something like that so it was like my rent was 200 a month and let's say i was making 400 of youtube that was the only period in which that was true sorry but look in other ways my audience has been wonderful to me blah blah blah blah blah needless to say um and look you know sorry just just be able just say something nice about my audience melissa and i were talking about this the other day i know all kinds of people who've written books dude like the vast majority of books you might as well take your manuscript and dump it into the toilet the next time you take a dump you know what i'm saying like it's going it's going out with the sewage to you know have seagulls fly over it in circles over the deep blue sea man that's where your [ __ ] manuscript is going you know like if i had published this book the book i already have published and the next book i'm gonna publish if i had published it without having an audience on youtube right it would be a book by a chap about a thing i mean some guy wrote a book on some topic and you know not even not even your own friends and family read that [ __ ] so you know i i completely owe it to my audience you know developed here on youtube that that book will frankly be immortalized uh look guys i i'm not humble i think i've written a better book than gary yourofsky ever wrote or gary francione wrote or hey hey hey hey uh earthling ed yes i think i'm a better author than earthlinghead and um cosmic skeptic there's my competition better book than cosmic scale right and whether quickly or slowly with time in terms of that genre uh sure that book is going to be remembered as one of the most important books in that genre uh and i don't have a lot of competition i've already named my competition uh gary francione gary yourofsky etc well guys if it wasn't for you if it wasn't for this audience and each one of you who clicks the link on amazon each one of you who writes a review on amazon or it's a review on on goodreads you are creating the legacy of that book that's what's going to make that book rich reach people 10 years from now 20 years from now etc oh oh like a knife through the heart you vile noah harari did he get his name right i know you're talking about but oh but i don't know how to spell it oh oh like a knife oh sharper than a serpent's tooth jesus you compare me to you valeno harare i'm flattered and insulted at the same time all right let me continue with this email hey guys great things are showing up sometimes i do these live streams and people just sit there and stun stunned assignments i i appreciate that too some of the responsibilities is like whoa man this is heavy people but it's good we managed to we managed to really involve the audience in a positive way here in keeping scoring on vegan gains all right it's something we can all participate in all right so it was just saying look i am genuinely someone who's willing to do the right thing just because the right thing to do continue sometimes the right thing to do is to clarify something vague that could mislead people even if there was no intent to mislead them that's a great lesson in life you guys may but like you know sometimes you say something the internet that hurts someone's feelings you didn't mean to say what kind of what they hear or you said something and it never occurred to you the audience would interpret it or misinterpret it that way okay so is the right thing to do is to clarify something you said that was vague right all right next paragraph sometimes the right thing to do is say quote look i've explained my perspective on this however somebody may be hurt by the discussion for these reasons close quote all right sometimes the right thing to do is to explain quote when i made that video i was unaware of factors x y and z and now richard has written to me to inform me of x y and z close quote right these are constructive ways to solve the problem and you know editing a video only takes a few minutes eg to upload a different version of the video to reflect the correction okay now here's where it turned on have you ever done this richard i'm just going to pause okay so richard has said things that defame me richard has said things that slander me i can't make a list of all the people he's defamed and slander i can't make a list of all the people he's just insulted horribly but like here i am like spelling out from the methodology of being a good person on the internet basically right it's like well how about you richard and like the reality is no richard only does something when somebody threatens to shut down his youtube channel when they threaten to take him to court etc exactly the steps he's he said this is a kind of psychological projection where he's presuming the only way to negotiate with me is to bully him the way someone else would have to bully richard in turn in order to get these these results he's not willing to change what he has to say it says okay uh charlie again asks uh quote why not come to california the weather is great and there are still areas that are affordable oh so charlie i'm surprised i guess you haven't seen i made a sequence of videos from my perspective it's a really interesting sequence of videos maybe no one else thinks so that's okay but i made a series of videos talking about being a filmmaker and they they conclude with a video saying we're going to move to los angeles so over the last two years we have we have talked about that a lot off camera and on camera so it's it's a really long sequence of videos the last part is title i'm gonna give you the link here but this is believe it or not so this is 58 minutes long and it's not the whole it's not the whole story so you get 58 minutes here and as i recall that that concludes the sequence and the videos before it are kind of philosophizing about about youtube about making documentary films about being a creative intellectual this really relates to vegan gains too because it's what vegans could have and should have done with his life and didn't do whatever you want to say you know um well it's talking about the life of the mind and pursuing political change through um uh pursuing political change through the arts whether that's through stand-up comedy documentary filmmaking narrative fiction filmmaking so yeah i thought about that i don't don't get the books paid but i could hold up a stack of books i've bought on this about screenwriting and filmmaking and we talked to film schools in california too we talked to film schools in l.a so yes you know california it has been i would say it's still probably option b on the list but i think the greater la area is no longer an unchallenged option a but no it definitely still is on the list and yeah sorry but to answer the other part of the question yes what motivates you to come to us in general the positive side of it is exactly what you get in that video moving to los angeles to pursue filmmaking as a youtuber the positive side is and by the way so if you read my book it completely spells there if you read the future of an illusion it completely tells you why i want to move the united states the negative side of it isn't stated there the negative side of the critique of canada of what's wrong with canada shout out to jj mccullough so you know partly the question is what are you moving to and partly it's what are you moving away from you know like what are you escaping from and then what positively is is drawing you there and yeah i mean i have other options i could move to the south of france i could move to israel uh we considered moving to greece for some time but you know sure i could live in thailand i could live in taiwan i could live in communist china a lot of places but sure um the model of how to be a dissident intellectual the model of how to be an intellectual who tries to change the world set out in both of my books future of an illusion and no more manifestos i think if you read those books you will understand very well why i want to move to the united states of america and why i do not for example want to just kind of retire to thailand where i would have an easier life and a more pleasant life many ways why i'd rather be in the struggle of living in poverty in the united states of america rather than living in frankly relative affluence and wealth and needs in thailand that's that's what it's about for me um no matter where i live i'm going to be an intellectual but how can i live in a way where i'm an intellectual where i challenge the status quo and try to change the world and sure los angeles is it's one of the options on that list no doubt all right so we returned to reading this ho hard-hitting question when are you and melissa getting married oh oh [Laughter] soon uh i asked i will reveal this now i asked kevin smith to officiate our wedding and that [ __ ] never got back to me so if any of you in the audience i mean probably a thousand people will see this video if you have a connection to kevin smith you write to kevin smith and say look [ __ ] you're vegan now this dude is vegan this dude's a leader in the vegan community you have to officiate the wedding [ __ ] okay you're both atheist you're both vegan whatever we're both wannabe filmmakers yes i would count both myself and kevin smith has wannabes all right okay kevin smith and i'm certain kevin smith has seen a few videos on this channel i won't say why i i i strongly suspect kevin smith has seen at least one or two videos on this youtube channel over the years but you know kevin smith i asked him to officiate our wedding and it's a crying shame that he hasn't gotten back to me don't don't act like you've got signed a better to do kevin don't come on we know we know and kevin you officiate weddings all the time kevin smith will officiate a wedding for any loser who stands up in the audience and says he's a big fan of star wars i'm a big fan of star wars and you know i wanted to get married so could you officially every time he says oh yeah i'd be so happy to kevin smith okay and kevin it's gonna be a vegan wedding come on you're gonna get to eat the vegan donuts or whatever i don't know whatever it's gonna be a sober vegan wedding so there you go man anyway [Laughter] yeah and to be to be fair i was a very harsh critic of kevin smith back before he was vegan so he might remember that but hey now we're all vegan so it's all gravy you know what i'm saying all right um okay so i asked richard have you ever done this richard have you ever shown this much good will towards someone writing into you saying that you'd made a video that hurt them if someone wrote to you saying that your video had been unfair to them or misrepresented them in some way maybe maybe you have but if you have it's certainly remarkable to me that absolutely no method other than threats and blackmail occurred to you now by the way guys i can remember some videos that richard deleted from his channel you probably you can too i can remember some videos about allegations of a four-letter word that begins with an r and rhymes with cape oh i can remember some videos that richard deleted from his own channel maybe he got threats of this kind that he said maybe someone said hey that they were gonna sue him or take him to court you know i don't know um but richard has deleted some of it is i can't remember any time when he took a video and made these kinds of amendments i'm talking about where you censor it or add a clarification or say hey look like richard wrote into me after to say he doesn't own any real guns he only owns bb guns i forget the other kind of gun but as they say there were other weapons on screen things like swords and knives and crap so it's not the case that he was only showing toy guns that's really misleading and anyway what he said himself on camera is already damning enough it shows why the controversy exists i mean what can i say richard you're not controversial for no reason in any case we continue quote now from my perspective you are also lying but perhaps you're merely being inaccurate or vague and perhaps you're not intentionally deceiving me you've made one claim so far you find what i say around six minutes and 15 seconds of one video upsetting because you think some people may interpret or misunderstand it as meaning that you currently own real firearms well that is not what the video says i.e i do not make that claim and i can quote you exactly what i do say but i can still sympathize with the notion that you'd want to publicly clarify that you do not own real firearms and that i have already said that i would be pleased to upload an edited version of that video that clarifies this fact so eg for example quote richard wrote in to reassure me that he does not currently own any real firearms and that he is under terms of probation that do not allow him to do so close quote all right that would be a fix slash correction newspapers do that all the time so again whenever you're having trouble thinking about the ethics or morality of what we do here on youtube or what we do on twitter i think in comparison to you to newspaper editorial policy is often useful because newspapers do make mistakes right all right okay now instead of responded instead of responding positively to the cooperative spirit of that message you write back saying quote you're making clear quote you're making criminal accusations against me which are not true and this puts both me and my wife in danger close quote so that's him i'm quoting him back what he says to me uh i'm left to suppose that this is inaccurate in much the same way as your earlier claim whether that's because of dishonesty on your part or perhaps just because you're emotionally overwhelmed okay period again fast forward to 2022 he's now made up a story in his own mind that i called the cops on him that i snitched him that i had something to do with doxing him right he didn't even have that concept so yes the possibility that he is emotionally overwhelmed and letting his emo his imagination run away with him that was possible in 2019 it's still possible today but [Music] what he's saying can't possibly be true i mean it's also the case that he has no evidence to prove it and i have evidence of what happened at every single stage of this including the interview you gave to me richard like what am i supposed to say it's just ridiculous but of course he has a larger audience so probably the lies he's telling are going to become immortalized in the internet it's so it's so discouraging that they're going to be so many mean-spirited people and that's why defamation law exists right that's why you can go after someone for defamation in court because it's so damaging someone like him someone with a big audience makes up a story about you probably [ __ ] two years from now somebody's gonna walk up to me at a vegan restaurant and say hey bro that's not cool that you talk to the cops about vegan someone's gonna step to me about this [ __ ] that that kind of crap happens to me and yes it mostly happens over skype rather than face to face but it has it has happened people have stepped me face to face in real life um and as i like to say i'm not a nice guy i have handled threats of violence face to face in real life it went well for me [Laughter] i'm not a nice guy i'm just nicer than these guys and i'm not a tough guy but i'm tougher than these guys all right so we continue coming to the end of this email correspondence because you'll be surprised to see that richard has nothing to say in reply all right um however i've shown you already that i'm willing to make corrections and amendments to anything i've said that's incorrect why not respond positively constructively cooperatively and let me know what other quote unquote criminal accusations that are not true you'd want to see rectified because again before he was saying there were like multiple videos i've said something in and that like there were multiple things i've said that are not and no it's just one thing in one video at one moment that he's actually complaining so like what what else are you claiming i said and even then the one thing he complained about it's not remotely true he's grossly lying and misrepresenting what i said in that video all right so this email ends with me saying i honestly do not know of any there's a lot of criticism of your conduct in these videos but for example my commentary on the psychology of self-justification involved in your formation of your opinions on gun control policy dot dot dot nothing in that analysis has even the aura of criminal allegations so he did not reply after that point okay so one day later i wrote to him again uh boy how quickly can i read this so okay guys i'll answer your questions one second then i'll read you the final message in this which is me writing to him again and he doesn't reply he doesn't reply after that ever so he goes away and sulks even though i'm saying to him look i'll change the video for you all right just out of good will you don't have to threaten to sue me you don't have to whatever i'm happy to make the change because you wrote in to clarify you know that you wrote in to request this clarification just to help you out um but yeah i do think this final email raises the more interesting philosophical political question here all right guys what did i miss what is it we managed to do a whole we're going to do a whole broadcast without ods contributing alexa what's the time in zurich this is in zurich it's 6 50 am come on you should be up you should be on youtube come on i got some regular contributions it didn't uh didn't show up today oh tough question so this is this is really on topic too who's the better cook you or melissa have you ever caught each other great question different question have you ever caught each other in a lie whoops okay what is your biggest critique of each other okay so three very different very different questions so i'll just answer the cooking one first you know um melissa kind of missed out on the time of my life in which i cared about cooking i've got to say babe you want to turn that light on too sorry because it's now getting dark um yeah yeah yeah yeah that's good just add some more ambient light um some of my other girlfriends i really worked hard to cook with only one of my girlfriends has ever been asian by the way um but like i had an asian girlfriend and i remember i cooked for her mother and stuff there were some girlfriends where i really felt pressure on me to cook at a high level but in this relationship and by this stage in my life i'd really settled into this you know model of a meaningful life and being an intellectual or you know i talk a lot about not wanting to waste time and so we like we had a period where i used to make pancakes for melissa every morning and we had a period where i made pasta for melissa pretty much either for lunch or dinner every day i made it very frequently it's not not seven days a week but still five we've had periods where i did a lot of the cooking but you know really for most of the time we've been together it's been about not wasting time partly so that i have time to do things like this with you lovely people sir just to give a really brief example i was listening to a podcast today this was while i was at the gym lifting weights i'm listening to a podcast it's a podcast about politics but these guys digress into mentioning like oh did you watch the hockey game and oh how about this sports they're mentioning like three different sports teams and i'm sitting there thinking how can anyone have the time to watch sports on tv you know so you know the time i have right now to do this broadcast it it comes at a cost and no i do not like currently i do not put effort into making lavish meals for melissa and i'm just being honest with you some of my other ex-girlfriends and ex-wives i did put a lot of effort into cooking [Laughter] i remember at a certain point with my ex-wife where she complained she was like look you know you used to put in so many hours and they're cooking for me every day and now you stop i remember like saying to her like do you have any idea what's going on in my life do you have any idea what i'm doing every day not the worst fight we had or something but know some of my other relationships there's putting a lot of work in and then the other thing is you remember we went to baking school together so look i just say i do not i do not put pressure on militia melissa to cook lavish meals for me and she does not put pressure on me to cook lavish meals we very much you know we do not live to eat we eat to live we eat in a very efficient way i sometimes joke that we're like astronauts on a spacecraft where it's just putting in the minimum you know we get our protein get our vitamin pill get back to work whatever that's mostly but you know once in a while melissa has made some lovely birthday cakes for me you've made cakes for me on other occasions too so once in a while melissa bakes a cake for me um you know once in a while you know one of the other of us puts in the effort to make some special but most of the time and guys sorry the other factor is the quality of ingredients here in canada is horrible so like we've we've cooked together in france we've cooked together in greece we've cooked together in china we've put together in taiwan and it's so depressing cuisine in canada is so depressing like i feel like no matter how much effort you put into cooking in canada the results are going to be mediocre at best it's really bad so sorry i don't know if that was too long or too short and answer your question um but yeah in terms of this relationship and so on it feels like it's wrong so uh have you ever caught each other in a lie so look i mean it depends on what you mean by a lie you know i i have certainly caught melissa in wishful thinking that was false you know what i mean where melissa had kind of let herself think the best about something but uh you know a lie and like the answer might be no about a lie like you know we're very honest with each other but like you know the way people normally use the word lie but when i say wishful thinking it'd be more something like oh it'll be fine it's not going to be fine um yes that kind of wishful thinking evading a problem not dealing with a problem uh which also is partly just laziness like let's be real again like dishonesty is one thing but lazy though i'm just gonna not deal with this problem and imagine it'll go away or measure that kind of thing which we don't in english isn't normally it's not quite a lie yes i've had problems in most of the way and i'm whatever i'm 14 years older than melissa it's an asymmetrical relationship you know no no offense but i don't think uh i don't i don't think i've ever lied to you about anything big or small not even about rap music or something you know and i don't i also don't think there's ever a problem with me being evasive or wishful things i don't think that anything like that's happened so yeah and you know there have been definitely there have been things that have been hard to talk about there have been things where it's it's put us where it's hard to tell the truth because you don't want to hurt the other person but i tell the truth that's the way i've played it and long term it's been the best for this relationship but again sir i'm kind of reluctant to set this as a model for other people some of [Laughter] some of you can't live by the rules i live by what can i what can i say you know um oh that's funny so when i when i talk to our robot friend someone else who owns alexa their alexa robot answered the same question alexa what's two plus two two plus two i was wondering did you have to try more than once to get my attention alexa stop all right just catching up with your questions then we're going to wrap up this correspondence from myself ben gaines so wolfpack says quote the best thing about having an ex-wife is that the in-laws are included in the divorce no no wolfpack the best thing about being a youtuber who gets a divorce is that your in-laws are on youtube denouncing you that's [Laughter] my ex-wife's father has come on youtube i think it's a matter of time before my ex-wife wife's mother coming we'll see if my ex-wife herself comes to youtube or her new husband you know the dude any of them can come on and say what a terrible human being on and any of them can come on youtube and say what a terrible human being i am and in the parlance of our times i'm here for it yeah so here's someone who says he both coaches and plays minor league baseball in mexico but he doesn't have time to watch baseball yeah yeah that's right so wolfpack if you don't know this i just made a post on my um on my blog about who my father really was because there are people who kind of make up myths about my father i would not describe my father as famous but maybe it runs in the family he had a certain degree of micro fame like he was famous within a small field famous in the world of museums and art galleries you know and um one of the things i've said to people with my father just in trying to challenge the myths that grew up around him was to say look i knew who my father really was i remember the guy who would fall asleep on the couch watching baseball that's that's who my father really was you know and i remember my father this guy was supposedly so cultured and refined being eager and in a hurry to buy an american newspaper uh like when he's in europe or when he's in asia so that he could check the baseball scores you know that's that's who he was so yeah my father was not a real intellectual he really wasn't um many people assume that i have this in common with my father but no we're very much a contrast and he was exactly the kind of guy who didn't he didn't read a book in five years but he was taking that time and he didn't talk to his own kids he didn't actually parent his own sons and daughters no no no but he was taking that time and putting it into watching baseball so great question i mean melissa i know you deal with this if you and megan gaines became friends again what would your advice to him be if okay so this continues do you want an apology from him what message do you have for him now close quote so look charlie it's a totally great question but this is now 2022. years ago i came on camera and said everything i had to say to the guy all right and some of you will remember this right away some of you could probably give the link to the video in which this happened but i made a video in which i talked about the fact like look richard you could have built on the positive things you had going on and taking it in a positive direction instead of a negative direction i gave a whole bunch of examples but one of them and one of them that i know pissed him off because he wrote to me about i could read you that email now too um i said to him look richard you were a critic of islam most of his videos about islam have been deleted right so some of you remember that and you can see it on other websites you can google around he made some videos really harshly criticizing the muslim faith really uh really harshly criticizing islam it's like well richard you know like there's been a civil war going on in syria you could have gone to syria you could have done humanitarian work in syria you could have studied the language a little bit you could have gotten to know the history and like i'm not suggesting he would gain a positive appreciation for islam but he would have developed a more nuanced critique of islam he would you know become a more profound and you would have done the humanitarian work and he would have matured this person but it's like dude instead of sitting on your couch playing video games like you could have done something positive and you could do that completely cynically as a filmmaker too right like you could do that just to make your youtube channel more popular like most people would like it would be virtue say hey here i am taking selfies with syrian refugees here i am on the syrian border like but i'm not suggesting you do it cynically i'm saying sincerely like richard instead of just sitting on your couch and passing judgment on muslims you could go and see the human reality the political reality the historical reality as it unfolds and maybe you wouldn't help anyone but you would become a better man now i'm sorry from memory i gave some other examples i think one of the other examples i used was talking about the border wall with mexico like you know you can actually go to the mexican border i remember saying that i think in relation to jacqueline glenn and some people too i think that's an example i use more than one so i apologize that's not in that specific video like you know instead of just sitting here and criticizing donald trump you can go there and see the reality and talk to those people and cross into mexico and see the reality of the drug trafficking and the criminal gangs and the both the wealth and the poverty and what's going on you could like you know you can do it on a humanitarian basis in vegan gains case he could set up a vegan pancake you can give away free vegan pancakes to all the [ __ ] refugees on the mexican border or whatever you could speak vegan pancakes and you could cook the pancakes then you could put them through the wall you know i don't know if you've seen that but the wall has gaps the wall was a it's really a fence you could fry up vegan pancakes hey i'm you could say in spanish i'm promoting veganism you could give them the pancake through the through the fence it's all kinds of creative things you can do to deal with political reality right so i'm sorry i definitely gave the example of syria i remember that i forget if i mentioned mexico or some examples my point is it's not just syria it's not just cambodia like the opportunities are everywhere like you can do humanitarian work and you can combine that with documentary filmmaking and you can grow as a person you can learn and you can challenge your own ignorance to challenge yourself so that was the advice i had for him and he wrote back to me insulting my penis size that was his response i can get the email for you now and read it verbatim i've already put it on the internet it was unbelievably stupid his response was to claim that i was lying about my penis size and that i should put naked photos of myself in the internet to prove it and then he said oh sorry or are you too busy helping refugees in syria doing humanitarian work for the syrian civil war he sent me this really nasty stupid message that's his response to that so that shows what richard is capable of and guys why do i do this i don't think richard can take that advice and use it positively someone in the audience can like maybe 1 000 people are gonna see this video share the link please share the probably some of you have grandchildren and nieces and nephews who would benefit from hearing the discussion somebody can take that advice and think about it and change their [ __ ] lives and including other youtubers someone out there with a youtube channel is going to say wow that's a great idea why don't you now today times have changed today it could be you go to the ukrainian border could you go to ukraine it could be you do all kinds of things i said there are all kinds of pl you can go to hong kong you can go to myanmar i personally care a lot about myanmar i think of broken down weeping talking about politics and myanmar not too long ago you know like i really care about politics in different parts of the world but you could you could go somewhere where you don't care about the politics at all hit the books learn the language learn the history learn the politics challenge yourself to grow and even if it proves to be impossible for you to make a positive difference in the world if it proves to be impossible for you to do something humanitarian or for you to make a political difference you can still make youtube videos that are about the impossibility of accomplishing that and that address the aspiration that address the ambition and the the tragedy of your failure to accomplish that you can do all that all that and more so sure i've i've told vegan gains everything i had to say and what he wrote back to me was a boast claiming that he has a nicer penis than i do and bro this is now 2022. we've all seen your penis because you put it on the internet and bro i am not intimidated okay in the penis olympics all right bro you may bench press more than me but but even then how much does he bench these days his bench press isn't even but like bro okay you know i mean if this is a pissing contest but yeah it was incredibly stupid it was incredibly mean spirit was incredibly in bad taste and it showed him utterly refusing to get the point of what i was saying refusing to hear the advice and refusing to take it in the spirit with which it was intended you know and sorry so in that context to reduce it to a question of penis size it was unbelievably stupid and mean-spirited um yeah but yeah he you know he's been a hypocrite on all these things i can remember him insulting others for doing porn and he went on to do porn i'm sorry but i can remember him very i remember this very distinctly maybe some of you will remember this video too he was attacking a male bodybuilder for just putting up erotic images of himself on the internet and they were the same as like any sexy instagram model you know what i mean i remember him really viciously attacking this other guy i thought like you know like to me it just seemed like jealousy remember thinking like what like are you morally opposed to bodybuilding like like if you're attacking this guy for this like like 80 of male bodybuilders or something put up sexy pictures themselves like this you know whether it's for a gay audience or for a straight audience or so they meet women or just to make money as a bodybuilder so i've really seen him in a mean-spirited way attacking other people for this stuff and he went on to do porn himself you know anyway um so yeah look that's that's the answer to that question um and look i think it's a topic for another video and i think i have talked about it in a few different videos but what does the word apology mean to you i think if you haven't really examined it it's very much a kind of figment of the christian imagination i think it's a kind of relic or a kind of fossil left over from christianity and when you denude it of that christian cultural context when you rend it away from christianity the meaning of the word apology and what what it means to you personally and pragmatically and in your relationship with your own father your own family your own work colleagues like what does an apology really mean uh i think that's something important for each of us to challenge and examine and come to our own conclusions um i've already done that you know but i've got to tell you something just even living in a culture like thailand laos cambodia a lot of these concepts they don't mean the same thing as there that they mean to it like apology even telling a lie and telling a truth like even though it may be subtle the fact that those are non-christian cultures it's very different you know what that means but the concept of an apology the concept of making amends you know um as an utterly non-christian person myself that's something i've had to not just philosophize about but it's something i've had to think about and apply you know in my in my own life and so on you know um i would point this out too so this is a little riddle within the english language suppose someone said to you after you've been waiting for a long time um under whatever circumstances they asked you to wait and then you had to wait for an hour outside a changing room while they were trying on clothes and then they came out and thanked you and said look i really want to thank you you've been incredibly patient if you said back to them i haven't been patient i was only pretending someone who pretends to be patient is patient you can't be inwardly impatient and outwardly patient right like the outward reality of being patient is what it is to be patient you know some things are like this what if someone asked you when did you forgive your father like when did you guys reconcile with but they said when did you when did you accept your father's apology and when did you forgive him so getting at this concept of a boy what if you said back when you were asked this question i didn't forgive him i just pretended to i didn't accept his apology i just pretended in the same way there isn't actually a distinction there because we're just talking about something on that surface level of of behavior right we think of forgiveness as something profound we think of an apology as something profound and it's not we think of patience as something profound and it's not also that's also very christian patience is itself dripping with medieval christian you know all the cultural assumptions left over from the dark ages uh patience is a virtue a very very christian thing okay there are some more great questions here but this will become a three-hour podcast or something if i answer them all um [Music] yeah so look sir two of these questions are related so so charlie asks also quote if money was not an object what would you be doing in your life right now so i think i have many videos talking about that and the links have already sent you charlie talks about that too you know but look let's relate this to vegan gains so money is not an object for him what the [ __ ] is he doing with his life i wish i could do exactly the things i talked about i wish i could fly to syria i talked to melissa okay i'll give you a couple examples right now one i wish i could go to syria whatever five years ago now or something when syria was really popping sure i wish i could go to some of these war zones i've said to melissa very recently i wish i could go to ukraine of course i do find the money of course i would i would have gone to ukraine the day it's before it started i'm just saying honestly because i knew it was coming if you were paying attention to politics of course i wish i could go to ukraine or right on the ukrainian border so yeah probably i could go at least to levi or something you know uh you know whatever sure i wish i could go to ukraine i wish i could go to syria but there were places that we should go within the united states when the the riots started in um uh i'm always gonna get the show in minneapolis i always think minnesota instead of minneapolis to just get them confused because the words i i wanted to go to minneapolis when the george floyd riots were happening i had no money i still have no money you know and you know i don't have a big enough audience i couldn't turn to my audience and say hey guys could you donate say two thousand dollars so i can buy an airplane ticket and go to the minneapolis and stay in a hotel or whatever you know i'm sorry i'm saying two thousand dollars off the top of my head i don't i don't know maybe one thousand dollars would be enough for that actually um but anyway no there are there are things i really want to do politically and there were events i've wanted to attend that are normally in um washington d.c political events they might be in london england or you know one of the other political centers of the world but washington dc most often but you know sometimes in brussels in in one of the political capitals of europe there are trials going on at the hague in the netherlands i'd love to attend and you know in terms of languages i can do politics in asia i absolutely wish i could do those things and that's sorry then implicit criteria there i'm just talking about what i would do alone if i could put together a show more like the young turks sorry in one respect with the interest meaning a circle of people group working together there are many many ways in which i do not want to be like the young horrible tv show but i'm just saying like when that started what was it four people working together maybe eight people working together like if i had a team of seven other people working with me and i had the money for that of course i would love to to do that i've talked about that for eight years or something on youtube you know of course talent is scarce money is scarce but sure there are tons of really palpable examples of what i would have done if i had the money but including so i i don't know if i mentioned this before i think i never have but i knew one person who was in minneapolis and her apartment was close enough to the riots she was just saying this to me as text messages but she said she could hear gunshots and she could see the flames out of her window like kind of just out at the edge of her window she was close enough to the riots and she was saying this to me as she was saying she was packing up to get out of town i forget she went to stay in some friends apartment in another part of town or some of that but she was she was there and you know again that just made me think you know oh wow could i buy an airplane ticket could i go even if again even if it's just to talk about it on youtube with you guys you know of course so if i had the money again that's not that much money i mean you can tell me how much that would have cost any of these examples um but look guys there are elections in cambodia right now now i wish i wish i could say there were a lot of people who would make a more meaningful youtube video about the politics of cambodia i don't believe it i really wish i could be there covering and talking about the politics of cambodia absolutely now guys today i can speak this much cambodian oh my god so cambodian is a really hard language it's much easier for me to speak lotion than but much easier for me to speak chinese too but sure i wish i could be covering cambodia i wish i could be covering myanmar there are a lot of things i'd love to do if i had more money and guys sorry the other thing that we we don't even mention here is what difference could more money make in terms of my situation with my daughter and my endlessly ongoing divorce or my my first wife my honest answer to that is not much i don't really think it could make that much of a difference but sure be nice to think if i had more money that somehow um circumstances could get better for me i'm just being real with you at this point i've learned a lot about how the french legal system works probably it's just hopeless you know there's some problems or even if you spend a million dollars on them it's not going to get any better uh the lawyer i have right now i think is really good actually my lawyer in france um but she's honest with me and i'm but yeah sure that's another question is to what extent could my daughter be a part of my life and my daughter could be here with me on youtube at this point why not you know sure so yeah now look guys sorry i just wasn't repeating myself but charlie i wanted to publish several books and money has been a huge problem and it relates to my daughter it relates to vegan activist revised changing world i wanted to illustrate and publish children's story books and i can't do that because one i don't have the money to i don't have other people that work with me who are talented so sure i'm sorry but i already talked about that earlier in the video so i won't talk about it further but there were publishing projects there are conference projects i talked as melissa i would talk with melissa about this just a couple days ago i would host like scholarly conferences i can't say academic conferences i would invite other people to write papers about politics including vegan politics and meet and have conferences and then publish the collected papers on amazon you know as books and come here on youtube and present the edited footage of what we said and what we debated at these conferences would love to do that but one money is scarce two talent is scarce you know and for years back when i had a little bit of money in the bank you know i proposed that i proposed paying for it completely out of my pocket but you know yeah sure so one category is things i would do totally alone and other categories things i would do working with other people sure what can i tell you man i have all kinds of uh frustrated ambitions and part of the philosophy i'm setting out in my current books both future of an illusion and no more manifesto two different books pardon me no no more manifesto is plural you know is how you can live your life how you can be a distant intellectual pursue uh political change in the absence of of all those things so yeah shout out to generation xgamer we've uh we've kept him up past his bedtime you can watch the rest of the video uh tomorrow when it's uh when it's a better time and your time zone okay great camera's going to focus here all right guys i'm gonna try to wrap this up um reading the uh oh [Music] so we have a comment from the audience that this person has literally seen all of the porn that ever existed and has exhaustive knowledge of every porn star well were you winding up to telling us your evaluation of vegan gains and his performance and so on or no i mean i just seems like it's setting something up let's see that seems like that comment was leading somewhere but all right great um [Music] all right so one more question here that i'm going to return wolfpack asks about advice on learning languages so i have a whole separate youtube video about that sorry i hold separate youtube channel about that which you may not know so my name is eisel mazzard i have a channel called eyes on mozart it's it's not popular but you know i recommend you watch those videos and you know um [Music] i'm i i'm very careful about giving advice to strangers i would never casually say to a stranger that they should learn chinese or learn lotion or learn javanese or or learn korea or ojibwe i am very very careful in giving that kind of advice for people but people i know or people where i talk to them sorry actually i just i just made a post on my blog about that too so this is someone who'd written me several times was asking for advice on becoming a scholar of buddhism and um learning a specific language or a number of languages in relation to that so you might want to check out both those links one of those like youtube channel my response to that person where i said to him look probably you should not be studying these languages but yeah it's um when you think about what decisions people make that are really going to change every day of every week of every year for the rest of their lives learning a language changes you learning a language changes who you are it changes the whole rest of your life even if you quote up forget it you know oh all right so i'm going to continue with this this is the final email in the sequence because vegan gains does not reply again richard okay so we'll make a video proceeding with your statement that one you currently do not own real firearms because the police do not allow you to under the terms of your probation two correct me if i'm wrong but you have lied and continue to lie in claiming that you do not own any real weapons you claim that all of your weapons are fake and toys because the knives assault batons swords etc are indeed real weapons these were shown on camera right the word weapon is not the same as the word gun sorry and it's the concept of a real gun as opposed to a bb gun probably not worth debating okay point three you still want to own guns in the future comma as soon as you were allowed to do so legally is this correct do you want to clarify what your position on firearms or firearms ownership is new paragraph do you believe that someone who has hallucinations of the kind you describe yourself including auditory hallucinations hearing voices that are not there having paranoid and aggressive reactions to strangers with the specific delusion that these people are trying to kill you when they just say hello to you or when they just shake hands with you etc do you think that sort of person should be allowed to own use and carry firearms if i describe that person to you as someone other than yourself would you agree with the statement quote the government is justified in doubting their responsibility to safely use firearms do you think that the military would be willing to recruit or employ someone with this list of symptoms and to trust them to use guns responsibly in a high pressure situation would you not agree that someone who had your checklist of symptoms might be disqualified from owning or carrying firearms in at least some democratic countries richard when people write into me saying quote he should be on psychiatric medication close quote i write back saying no he should just take a vow that he's not going to do any of these things again close quote you say that you're a changed man what you're showing me is that you haven't changed you presented yourself as a victim of censorship you then become a hypocrite the moment it suits you quote you're putting me and my wife in danger close quote as if this were any more true of you than for example a bodybuilder claiming that his life is in danger if his apartment is searched for illegal drugs because you have accused him of using illegal drugs on your youtube channel richard you have just been morally grandstanding about the right of free speech critique and satire and then the moment it's convenient for you you do everything in your power to oppress someone else while continuing to play the victim card you know that i could make a telephone call to the toronto police today with no difficulty and simply express my concerns about you and that would more likely entail problems for you and your parole officer i didn't do that i engaged in exactly the kind of rational philosophical discussion about ethics on youtube that you claim to support and defend but not when it questions your own most sacred value namely wasting time playing video games newspapers make criminal allegations all the time it is part of journalism if a newspaper says the alleged bank robber that's an allegation it is reporting an allegation the etymology of the two words is clear in canada telling the truth is always a defense against defamation i have been telling the truth you have completely failed to provide even one example of me lying or making a criminal allegation against you however yes for example you have openly talked about using illegal drugs for example hallucinogenic mushrooms on your own youtube channel so if i report that you've used illegal drugs then i am making a criminal allegation in the same sense that a newspaper is in reporting the facts that doesn't mean i'm doing anything wrong talking about criminal allegations is one of the most important parts of protected freedom of speech there are legal consequences for making reckless and irresponsible criminal allegations but that's not what i've done in my videos you are the one who has made irresponsible criminal allegations accusing gerain writer of rape for example although this is certainly not the only example and you have been callous and cruel towards others when doing so richard you've been a complete hypocrite here you've become everything you always said you despised you are one playing the victim and two at the same time you're really engaging in bullying and harassment yourself claiming quote i'll shut down your channel and quote i'll sue you in response to legitimate criticism and satire really think with some detachment and objectivity about the contrast between the criticism criticism and satire of directed towards you and the criticism and satire you have directed at so many other people even think about the difference between the criticism of directed you and your replies to me just insulting me basically for example saying things about the size of my penis the golden rule would be pretty easy for you for you to apply here richard why can't you act toward me in the way you'd want others to act toward you