The Cult: Freelee vs. Cami Petyn ("Supreme Banana")

you know sometimes i look back and i'm
like were we in a cult were we in a cult and was freely our ringleaders if you guys are new here back in the old youtube days i actually went by the alias supreme banana and i was actually deeply involved in what was before it went up in flames the vegan community i look back and i'm like what the [ __ ] i was so like brainwashed thinking like this is the way to eat the only way to eat freely says it's great and freely so skinny that means it must be working for me and i completely would bypass like the fact that i felt like crap and of course i'm saying this in a totally biased way because i remember being in my shoes in this time and i remember being so obsessive over what i was eating um so maybe you guys watching you're like oh that's not that bad it actually looks pretty healthy but i just know my mindset at the time wasn't healthy but it's healthy now and i think what's like gotten me to be healthy now like mentally with food is stopping with the freaking restrictions like the intense restrictions like no oil high carb low fat raw till four like only eating raw until 4 pm like you bet your ass i wanted to eat cooked food like before four but i would force myself to just eat fruit before that because freely said so if someone told me say five years ago that in 2019 i will be living off grid in the jungle with a man from sweden i would have laughed out loud i wouldn't have believed it i lived in a city for 20 years and i know most of you do too city life is pushed as the most desirable lifestyle and as a result more than half the world's population now inhabits cities and towns sure it's fast-paced exciting stimulating and convenient for some things however it comes at a price this high stress environment is also a place of immense spiritual burnout the instant gratification lifestyle leaves us highly vulnerable and with an unhealthy dependency on an unstable system and you may think well i don't live in a tropical place so i can do this well that is not true although the tropics suits your food war genetics best and i do recommend you find a way to move to a warmer location you can still create your own little food forest paradise on as little as half an acre of land and store and preserve fruits and vegetables for times of scarcity obviously some countries are harder than others but there are regions throughout america for instance where this can be done [Music] it's really awesome to be part of such an amazing community [Music] [Music] [Music] freely is indeed the leader of a cult it's just not terribly successful cult you don't need to have thousands of followers to be a cult leader you don't even need to have hundreds when you go down the checklist for what it is that defines a cult three of the most important check marks to be found there will be encouraging the followers to reject the authority of their own parents to rebel against or separate themselves from the family unit convincing the followers to reject worldly authority which yes includes people like political leaders but also medical doctors and so on to what those people say because they're all part of an evil conspiracy and to instead primarily or only respect the advice and perspective of the cult leader and yeah another huge check mark is calling on your followers to reject mainstream society entirely to go and live on a commune to go and live in seclusion to start a new society to start a new world or a new life that is more strictly in keeping with the moral structures set down by the cult leader and that are incompatible with this world inhabited by you and i really is a cult leader her cult has become much less popular in the last five years and the ideal of how a modern woman ought to live has become more demanding in the last five years to the point of becoming unattainable or unappealing to the vast majority of her former viewers let's remember the shallow end of the pool five years ago had a lot to do with personal vanity personal purity too but the potential for personal success you too could lose weight look great make the world a better place get on social media and pursue fame just like freely that was the package deal five years ago today she's telling you you need to start prepping for the collapse of western society today she's telling you a lot of right-wing conspiracy theories about the banking system today she's telling you that you need to go and buy a few acres of land and start growing and preserving all of your own food so you can be self-reliant when the collapse comes the idealized life freely is presenting to her audience is more cult-like than ever and the sacrifices she's demanded of her audience so they can live up to her moral standards have become harder and harder to make abandoning all your worldly possessions to go and live in the jungle has a certain timeless appeal to it some cults invite you to leave this society to join or start a new society another society when you look at this map you see on screen this is oroville in southern india this is a cult group who built a whole city to house the followers of sri aurobindo and uh his wife who was simply referred to as the mother if that doesn't sound like a cult to you yet i mean i don't know what does but um these were people who said hey quit your day job leave your family and your home life behind come and live in a whole new place and a whole new part of the world with this distinctive style of architecture that still to this day draws tourists and admirers just like vatican city in one part what they're doing here is building another sort of disneyland but not all cults offer you a community some of them instead invite you to reject society to take your own solitary path to live a monastic existence whether that be in the jungle in the desert or in a cave and what's interesting to see with freely in the last five years is that she had her heart broken and she shifted from type one to type two she shifted from the community building leadership model of a cult to the renunciate monastic model of a cult where she is no longer holding meet-ups with thousands of people embracing her flocking to get a selfie with her where she is no longer inviting people to come and join her in chiang mai she is no longer trying to build a vegan future a vegan community a city on the hill and you know what i wouldn't put it past her i think she could have accomplished something very much like auroville i can easily imagine young architects jumping at the opportunity to build an ideal tourist destination for vegans that is in one part cult compound and another part disneyland she took that community building road as far as she could she had her heart broken and she now instead is on the narrow winding path to nowhere inviting you also as her follower to go and find your own little patch of jungle to go and find your own little patch of forest and start growing your own mangoes start making your own papaya chutney so on and so forth that you also can lead this utterly isolated life of a renunciate of a totally morally pure monastic figure in the middle of the forest accomplishing nothing and going nowhere whereas previously that community building phase of our cult leadership had something a little bit more revolutionary about it didn't it before there was just that possibility that people were going to get motivated to do something more than lose weight look great become an athlete become a social media influencer there was something about saving the world and now her cult is all about leaving the world behind my sling is editorial explicit material briefcase show live and stereo flow fill me