Vegans: INSTAGRAM IS TREASON.

is veganism more of a comedy than a
tragedy there are ways in which veganism is in 2018 tragicomic we have these enormous ambitions to save the planet to make this tremendous ecological difference to bring about this unbelievable cultural change really a change in epochs in human history move beyond having a society that's based on the crude exploitation of animal labor of animal skin of animal flesh to do away with something that's been part and parcel of Western civilization Eastern civilization every civilization basically since the Stone Age since the start of recorded history whenever you want to start the clock to make this fundamental change it's this enormous ambition in its intro incredibly inspirational incredibly aspirational and you have the contrast between the audacity of that ambition and the PUE ninis of the methods we actually employ you have James ASPI flying around the world and telling people deadpan serious you are the people who are saving the planet you are the people who are saving the lives of millions of animals how Instagram [Music] deadpan serious Instagram in fact he's taking time off and spending less time on YouTube and less time on lectures and less time talking to strangers on the streets because he believes so strongly in the difference that he can make through Instagram and what does he produce on Instagram he produces a kind of wallpaper that is in the background of people's lives I mean admittedly its type of wallpaper they kind of carry around with them in their purse or their wallet on a laptop computer on a cellular phone on a tablet what-have-you but he gets these numbers for how many people have seen his posts and his host is like him is sitting there smiling next to a bowl of hummus and you know yeah maybe there were a few sentences there about saving the planet or go vegan or whatever but I mean people yes thousands of people maybe sometimes millions of people for half a second scroll past this or it appears in the background of their lives like I say like wallpaper just as easily ignored as an advertisement you walk past in a subway station or any of the decorative flora and fauna that surround us in the 21st century digital jungle it passes in a split second in between other images of beautiful people eating other kinds of expensive food or swimming on other beaches or what have you and he really thinks he's making progress towards that goal he may thinks he's making progress towards that horizon veganism in the year 2018 is laughable its comedic because it's the image of a man a man covered with muscle like James ass be bent over with a terrible load on his back struggling like Atlas to hold up the world but when you actually look more closely he's not holding up a planet he's not holding up a boulder he's holding up a pebble he's holding up a stone the size of a pea and behaving as if he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders so yeah in 2018 what's going on with activists of this kind did usual activism the YouTube demi-monde the Instagram demi-monde the donor driven permanent vacation yeah it's more comedy than tragedy but as I warned in my earlier video for the people who are actually engaged in this form of activism I think it always ends badly whether that's five years from now seven years from now ten years would be a really good run but think about where this puts you in your career a few years from now when that short-term fame runs out when the money dries up so on and so forth but nevertheless veganism in principle is a tremendously inspiring movement and I even see this in the jealousy of other meat-eaters who want to get involved I mean I may sound ridiculous but I really have seen and interact with some of those people I've interacted on the internet with people who wish they were part of a movement that motivated them and rewarded their intellectual acumen and you know they want the things that veganism even in 2018 provides for passionate adherents and participants Davina's they want they want to be part of that kind of motivated community if you like maybe a community in quotation marks maybe you live somewhere where you really do feel like you're part of a community or a political movement um I have met and spoken to people who really want what what we've got and on the other hand of course I can look across the aisle to much more successful political organizations and social movements or even religious movements and I can say gee as a vegan I wish we had what you guys have got I wish we had that higher level of organization motivation effectiveness what have you but it's needless to say the criticism of James ASPI or the criticism of earthling ed does not apply to PCRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine there are there are examples of real vegans making a real difference all over the world both in organizations and as individual activists they just don't do it by taking off their shirt and showing off $50,000 worth of tattoos and swimming in the ocean and what-have-you it's just not the form of lifestyle activism James SB represents and it's also in my opinion not the kind of the kind of Street activism that James ASPI Earthling ad and Jolie carb strong all represent and i'ma I honestly think I'm a moderate critic of all of those methods you can hear discussed in this video can hear discussed in the podcast I just recorded last week I'm not of the position that those methods are of absolutely zero value but I'm pointing out look guys when we sit down and do the math when we look at what kind of difference we're trying to make what kind of impact were actually having we I think we need to rethink our assumptions in terms of input output and and real outcomes so I'm just gonna read now off my of my cellular phone here I'm gonna read an email that I sent to one of my fellow vegan youtubers I wrote as follows this may not be meaningful to you but I'm saying it to you anyway so it opens with a tone of a bit of a warning I really think the principle difference between myself and James ASPI is that I'm not deluded about how little I have to offer I know that I don't have much to give I know that my mere words don't make any kind of an impact beyond a normal conversation in a coffee shop I will return to reading this this email I sent to one of my colleagues here hello guys I don't think I'm over selling it or under selling it when I say that it's possible to meet someone and have a conversation in a coffee shop that impacts you profoundly and changes you for the rest of your life I think I've had that kind of conversation with people in coffee shops at the office my job you know when I was a university professor or when I worked in a humanitarian work sure I think a number of times I've had conversations that really made people question things in their lives they've never questioned before and so on sure that happens in your life and if you have these conversations if you're putting in many many hours with strangers on the street or you putting in many many hours here on YouTube for sure you can have those kinds of conversations also however it's it's really important to keep it in perspective and I've seen these different fads rise and fall on YouTube of course it's really you know digital vegan activism within YouTube that I'm interested in that I'm following but nevertheless I've seen them come and go across the board um I recently saw one of my own videos from the past from a couple of years ago just YouTube itself recommended I see this video you know popped up and I clicked on it cuz I couldn't remember what I'd said in a particular video and when I clicked on that video it was an example of a video that hasn't aged well at all many of my videos say this in the intro I often say look I'm gonna talk about this issue in a way that's still gonna be meaningful still gonna make sense five years from now but I clicked on this particular video and it was really motivated by and agitated by the obsession at that time with lifestyle activism it was really a reaction against the fact that the main criticism I received from my audience at that time was that I was not good-looking enough to be a vegan activist I'm not joking and those criticisms were not a joke at that time just a couple of years ago the dominant notion of vegan activism was so-called lifestyle activism revolving around weight loss athleticism like weight lifting swimming at the beach showing off your body showing how much you were enjoying a vegan diet that paradigm was so dominant that I was having to respond to criticism that I'm not good-looking enough to do this vegan activist thing now some of you watching this video have been in the game long enough that you also have faced that kind of criticism but already here we are a couple years later and you can look back and laugh at how ridiculous that wasn't and I was really having to respond by saying look you know what the future of this movement involves old ugly and fat people and some of them are going to make the most important differences in the movement and you know somebody like Gary France ioneiy his contribution to this movement for better and for worse I'm a critic but he's made some positive contributions and some negative contributions his contribution has nothing to do with how good he looks in a bathing suit it has nothing to do with this with his body just recently I was seeing that that vegan diet advice dr. McDougall dr. John McDougall and was the he his wife were not active enough no I don't know if that was referring to them being not muscular enough or not thin enough we're just just not a tribe just the face like they didn't they weren't aging well or something but they look too elderly they are elderly they look elderly because they are totally that's you know guess what guys you know I know you want to leave a good-looking corpse like you know sooner or later he's gonna die of old age you know tell you the gifts heart of aren't immune from this growing old and dying stuff but you know some of that some of that is still going on but my point is here there's a contrast at that time the romanticized view of vegan activism was entirely hung up on lifestyle diet weight loss bikini personal beauty sir and today today the number one complaint I get the number ones have a hostile comment or question I get is that I'm not spending enough time in the streets to call myself a vegan activist and I've already responded to this to me the street is not a special wonderful place I can have the same conversation in a coffee shop in a theater in a museum I can have the same conversation anywhere that I can have on the street and in many ways the street is an especially disadvantageous place on the street you have the disadvantage that like maximum 15 minutes of conversation certain level of hostility and discomfort it's it's actually in my opinion the street if anything that's a lot of disadvantages but that's that's become in in many vegans Minds that's the current fad the current fashion and guess what guys this too will pass you guys are gonna get bored of wearing a mask and standing in silence for four hours at a time on the street I'm not saying it's completely meaningless I'm not saying it as zero efficacy but guess what well you guys are wasting four hours on the street wearing the mask what are they doing down at PCRM okay other people are really building the future of the vegan movement including straight up ecological vegans I discovered a new guy I can't really show him out because I've read his book yet I haven't even had time to watch it select a guy based in a guy based in Michigan Kalamazoo Michigan never heard of him before Pope Yeah right sir Jim the confrontation anyway Kalamazoo Michigan shout-out to Kalamazoo um you know and this guy has a PhD he has decades of experience in ecology he wrote a book dealing with ecological effects of human diet etc etc and his form of activism includes he apparently owns and operates an animal shelter he also apparently owns and operates a cookie factory making vegan cookies I can't really show the motor the stage because I haven't looked that depleted way Dumbo's look Wow I discover this guy because one of my patreon subscribers in ago well so obviously I mean so this is way more like the PCRM style this is professional activism that's again I've already draw attention this the excuse made for donating money to earthling ed and james SP is that they're professional activists and my comment before was when you really think about it there's absolutely nothing professional about what these guys are doing okay but this guy by contrast then you discover this guy with a PhD in ecology distinguished career as an author activist researcher consultant apparently a cookie factory owner he's somehow the CI CEO of a vegan cookie factory you know he's doing food food production you know for the vegan movement this is professional what PCRM is doing is professional so if you want to talk about professional activism with financial transparency and accountability you know operations that really would merit you know donations and so on that's out there but the ultimate irony is the same guy this guy out in Kalamazoo his YouTube channel has fewer views than mine does he puts up you know a lecture about you know one of these ecological topics the impact on the rain cycle or water use or air pollution these these various things and he's getting less views sorry fewer views let's keep it chromatically right here on a Bella ciela he is getting fewer views than I would get if I put up a YouTube video complaining about my sex life coming soon but look so I continued I wrote I wrote to this you know colleague and in the movement here um I'm not deluded about how little I've got to offer I just know that I don't have that much to give okay James ass P flies to Ottawa flies to Israel and preaches self-congratulation to small crowds of vegans quote we are the future we are saving the planet at close quote and he really believes that he's doing something great he really believes that the airplane ticket was a great use of donors money and I would look at that as a complete waste of time and a complete waste of money this is neither false humility nor false cynicism on my part okay just pause now again I said earlier I'm not under selling this or over selling it I think these conversations on the street at the rallies I think they're equally as effective as a conversation you might have in a coffee shop but for real right now this look I raised six thousand five hundred dollars I did a fundraiser on this channel we raised six thousand five hundred dollars in less than 48 hours and straight donations no tax benefits no kickbacks should we right now raise two thousand dollars so that I can fly to Zurich and just talk to some people in a coffee shop to me that would be a complete waste of anyone's time and money and sure very often there are issues of a language barrier there are issues of a culture barrier there's the fundamental issue of the fact that when James ASPI gets there he really has nothing to say he really has nothing to offer as I've said again and again he's not in the position of a surgeon who gets an airplane ticket and flies to Myanmar or flies to Haiti and helps the pool or maybe helps people when there's been an earthquake or a tornado or some other natural disaster hurricane you know there are circumstances in which donors give money to send someone to a third world country even if they're already wealthy maybe the surgeon is already wealthy but you still are going to donate this money to put him on an airplane and reward him for going to this third-world kind of this disaster area and helping people he has a set of skills that the the donor that the donors can recognize and verify the recipients can benefit from there's something of value there being exchanged or being given away for free right and in the case of some doula James asked me my claim is very directly there is nothing of the sort when he gets to Zurich when he gets to Israel when he gets to Ottawa what is it that he can say or do better than a dozen other vegans who are already there in Zurich or Ottawa and of course he has no commitment to the place he has no knowledge of or concern with her engagement with you know local political conditions or community building or so on this is part of being a carpetbagger in the in the province of our time so there are a lot of constraints built into this now look guys I'm not totally opposed to flying to Zurich if we're actually gonna do a fundraiser for me to fly to Zurich right let's stick with this for a minute but there has to be a point if if there's an event if we organize something we're actually gonna do something I can contribute to in a meaningful way absolutely okay this justifies you guys donating the money and the airplane company burning the jet fuel and causing the carbon okay we're going to Zurich because it's actually gonna call for something it's actually gonna make a difference but you know I'm just questioning if the effectiveness is what we're doing here is comparable to just hanging out in a coffee shop let's be honest with our with ourselves about where this money is going and and what's what the outcomes are for these these efforts being made okay I continue to quote yeah Game of Thrones quote you may or may not know the phrase words are wind that's in the books for Game of Thrones all the time words are wind I mean you know people come on this YouTube channel and criticize me for that they say hey you're all talk and no action you you want special effects you you want my YouTube channel to have like fight scenes you know action sequences like you know what what is it you're looking for here you're right you know this YouTube channel is this is talk but if you're paying for activism the word activism contains act it's supposed to be about action and what I'm doing here on YouTube fundamentally is I'm trying to find other colleagues I'm trying to get organized I'm trying to create a basis a platform for real-world activism had mixed results but hey I'm looking for colleagues I'm looking for people I can collaborate with and I'm also looking in a sense to purify the language within the movement when I came into this game there were so many bizarre and muddied misconceptions ruling within veganism there were really a lot of you know deep and invidious divisions than veganism that people didn't even have the the vocabulary to express or understand and over the last four years of engaging in debate and discussion and philosophizing with people I really have seen things come into a much sharper focus there's a lot of mutual understanding about what are the meaningful and what are the meaningless divisions within veganism when I first came on to YouTube people were absolutely shocked that I would regard castrating dogs as negative as a form of violence that I regarded the domestication of animals in the negative and critical way I did there were a lot of really popular voices and veganism that made cuddling up to pets the core of the vegan identity and I was challenging that and saying no no no let's really think about this in a in a serious and thoroughgoing way on a long list of issues like that I've really seen in that sense progress but what kind of progress do I mean I mean progress from a vague and confused state of mutual misunderstanding within the movement to a state of much more crisp sophisticated mutual in recognition that is a type of progress that is a type of disambiguation that goes on within the movement I don't see James asked me doing that I don't see earthling head doing that I see those guys as [ __ ] artists you know I say words are wind well you know some are more like a light breeze Eric continue I'm not a surgeon and this ain't surgery I'm not flying in to save anyone nor even to attempt to help anyone if I attend a conference or if I attend a rally like that I know just how little I have to offer and yet I know it's more than James Aspie can