Organizing Youtube Vegans Into Real-World Activists.

I bunderson like when I was looking at
the the Green Party when I was talking to the leaders of the Green Party in Canada I was having to say to them you have to stop expecting people to volunteer and get nothing in return you know whether the the return is that you actually get to see a bear or you actually get a tour of the zoo after the zoo is closed by an animal rights activists who's you know who isn't just showing you the zoo but he's actually discussing the problems this is just one example you know whatever kind of activism is you're doing wow that's a reward I did all this but I actually got to learn about this and see the elephants up close and whatever it is there's some experience there's a there's some reward that that provides you know that makes the whole situation dynamic and I do actually think those rewards also they justify both the work people do and they justify those inequalities what's the difference between a listserv and a magazine I know magazines are now a thing of the past in many ways well there's an editorial process you know listserv email anybody can write anything and for that reason the quality of Correspondence may be very low and it's probably not worth anyone's time to read every every contribution if people are contributing to an editor of a magazine already there's a relationship of inequality there why should that why should they take the effort to write a good quality article and even to put up with it being criticized by an editor and maybe have changes made or revisions before it goes to publication that effort is justified by the palpable reward of actually having a magazine at the end of the process but whether it's spending time with people you respect on a beach in Thailand or it's having a physical on paper magazine or it's being able to participate again I don't think participating in a street protest is enough of a reward but for some people it is you know meeting up with people you like and being able to chant slogans in Washington DC some people would go to DC just for that just to hang out with you and me and stand in front of the White House and chant something that makes no difference some people would do that but for me that's not enough of a palpable reward to me there has to be something meaningful they see or do or touch your marshington so that's what say I really think you need to structure that way because what you are asking of people is not what they're already doing it'sit's ultimately it's something more it's something above and beyond what they're already doing on their own YouTube channel etc so I think you're right and I'm interested to know how you think some kind of structure could be put into place that provides what is an unequal distribution of power but also a genuine and transparent distribution of benefits actually the easiest form of fundraising to do is project specific so it's exactly what Peter Singer says we shouldn't be doing it is for example when Aaron janeth wanted to save the life of one zebra why did that raise so much money so quickly why was it so effective in terms of fundraising well it wasn't effective in terms the final outcomes for unrelated reasons everyone knows exactly where the money is going and everyone gets to see it it's visible now by contrast what if I start a foundation that is much more vaguely to help the zebras where does the money go well I want you to pay my salary so I can be full time I want you to pay administrative costs and then we're going to do public education and lobbying and you know there are zebras here in Canada there are zebras in Africa there are zebras and some zoos in China we're going to go around do some stuff this has gotten too vague already right the the generalized concepts of helping the Zebras is much harder to justify it's much harder to be transparent and accountable then helping one zebra at one time now the great thing about the Internet is that it doesn't have to be an either/or is that we can do both simultaneously the great thing about the Internet is we could easily have a foundation like petta just to keep the same example or like Mothers Against Drunk Driving my favorite example we can have a Mothers Against Drunk Driving type foundation for veganism but then the same time at any given moment we can say hey we want to help this one zebra we want to do something like this which is totally transparent where exactly where the money is going you're going to see et cetera and the great thing is when you do both each one increases the credible of the other ah ba new gen were wondering who was going to take the lead there I was going to say to open you know something seemingly irrelevant but you know uh uh one of the things that comes up again and get in my life when I talked to other vegans because many vegans glamorize this idea of digital nomadism I often emphasize to people how important it is to look at where you're living and where you're living you know has a fateful impact and what kind of political difference you can make and even what kind of political influence your you're open to you know what you what you hear from other is what you read what you see what you participate in and for me there was a time when in Canada I considered moving to the capital city just for that reason living in Ottawa or rather crappy capital city and doing very humble work as a security guard just so I would have access to those political institutions and what have you for a couple of years you live in Washington DC and although that may be a kind of shallow and obvious thing to say at the beginning I think that actually does put you in a very different position from most other vegans the United States most other vegans in the world yeah you get to see the world from the perspective kinda yeah I would say you you get to see the world from the perspective of that capital city part of yeah it's it's it's definitely a unique perspective um and and I didn't really realize it because I've only been in Washington for a little under a year but I didn't realize it until I was here how much it really is kind of it's exactly what people imagine you're you're in Washington and everything that means so in terms of your day job you are already go ahead i hope i hope it on to the big delay i'm happy to talk but i was going to say in terms of your day job you are connected also to the world of ngos and lobbying and specifically called you to some extent obviously you can leave that vague you don't need to mention it but um you know you're not you're not banished to the outskirts of DC digging in a trend your own professional life also kind of keeps you engaged with the the world down at the mall yeah yeah exactly um that's right i'm in in in the vegas rooms possible i'm a non-profit environmental lawyer uh and so yes I interact with NGOs and you know journalists politico's all that right well I'm used to talking to people who basically feel powerless and feel like they can't make a change in the world and I mean a lot of people get excited about my channel because the message i have about politics is more optimistic and more empowering than some other vegans anis en recently reiterated his belief that any involvement with mainstream politics will result in you getting quote a bullet in the head close crown which he'll i wish i wish i could say that was a I wish I guess I've reflected his experience with the rough and tumble of Australian Parliament or something but it doesn't it's just it's just idiocy you you've probably heard me talk a whole bunch of times I have this kind of limited experience with politics than Canada at city hall at provincial Parliament level and what have you but I would think I mean you're now coming online you're now trying to connect with other vegans on the Internet I wonder do you feel fundamentally more optimistic about veganism in the in the public sphere or do you think you're more pessimistic given your experience on the ground well I think if I can answer with a non-answer it's kind of both depending on kind of the feedback I get from the people i talk to because my sense and kind of my whole theory of the case and the reason I reached out is because I have a firm belief in a very real way that there's an enormous amount of social power political power economic power in kind of the world of for lack of a better word we'll call vegan youtube and and I want to keep it myopic at least for now and if there's a real appetite bear for organizing communicating collaborating gathering information and jointly pursuing discreet specific goals I am beyond optimistic for that if it turns out that the cases that appetite isn't there and everyone is very happy just being in their corner and and you know doing their thing that would i would find profoundly depressing right well now i feel like i could talk for an hour in response to what you just say simple but i want to know how I I don't want to take up too much of your time I don't have anything particular planned for the evening so so I'm gonna need you to cut me off if you have stuff going on but yeah I could I could also go on for well uh just to start with there you know I think for me one of the contrasting veganism and other forms of ecological activism advocacy lobbying because I think you and I both we have other other interests in addition to veganism and perhaps prior to veganism you know the crucial stumbling block most of the time with the other ecological causes I was involved in was access to information like both for me to access information and for me to get the information to members of the public who might care to give you an example like in Toronto we did have a Freedom of Information Act but in order to get a government document a government report I think technically you needed to have the complete title complete and correct legal title of the report and they could make a title very long of course you know there were the report on soil conditions having been examined by and if the title was not correct you couldn't get the document so you know that was 11 ish shows involved with was actually soil contamination in part of the city that was both populated and where they were doing new construction and where the soil was directly contaminating our drinking water you know when it rained basically we flow through and take the heavy metals they were just mention is not a normal it was what you call a brown site or a toxic toxic disaster said what if I said wasn't wasn't normal soil pollution um anyway so you know how do you actually get that information out of a government that is understandably secretive like I honestly I don't blame them for being secretive about something like that and then how do you get it to any segment of the public who cares and then how do you mobilize any kind of activity let's not even say activism any kind of human interest as incredibly difficult the press doesn't give a damn but nobody just say the car with the contrast boy but just finish the contrast is with veganism I feel like everybody already has all the information they need that to me is the contrast is that when dealing with veganism like I don't need to show you a slaughterhouse video or you know I can but it doesn't really help anything it's interesting because this is a political voice where we start with almost everyone involved already has the information they need even the people who disagree with us you know people who are not vegan but are vaguely aware oh yeah you know factory farming is kind of messed up so it is anyway let that's my opening comment to you is to me that's a very fundamentally different horizon short term and long term for a vegan activism and lobbying well if I can guess so oh i just i heard that echo again but um I think it's gone anyway um one of the things that I think is actually a real problem within a lot of the at least digital vegan activism that I've been exposed to is um there's kind of this this positioning where we like to talk about it as if you know everyone in like the public at large kind of knows all of the information that we know of and I mean really knows it to the degree whether it's you know I mean there are people who whether it's the protein myth a lot of people don't know about um just basic issues of ecology environmental damage in the meat industry and there are people who genuinely if you talk to them they kind of their gut reaction is olya animals they're automatons they whether it's religious kind of they don't have souls or they just don't matter because they're stupid and so I don't empathize with them there are people that feel that way and I think the problem is a lot of vegans will say there are more they'll jump right there and what that does is that doesn't acknowledge that there are innumerable social cultural political economic institutions that are what I think should be the target of our activism that when we talk about I mean I think the best contra are the best example of this is feminism feminist say dismantle the patriarchy they don't say you know vomit or exploded it's they understand it's a bunch of different cross-sectional individual issues and you have to attack them each so like when we say oh this person's immoral because they eat meat well we're not talking about poverty we're not talking about the fact that this person has no time to think about their food choices they live in a food desert and the government is subsidizing the meat that they eat so I think the problem with a lot of our activism is that we we aren't choosing the right targets because we feel so strongly on on this moral issue or and I say moral including just kind of the correctness of it that we don't have this idea of tolerating that like other people aren't there but it's not just their fault their reasons they're not there and we have to target those reasons well look I think there are two separate issues here that we're conflating we can we can talk about both one is public education / outreach and by definition that's talking to people who are not already vegan or who don't already agree with us and you know not only do I sympathize with that and think it's it's important but you know also probably my own background in in museum work probably gives me a slightly different perspective on that because the vast majority of musial G is propaganda especially where you are I've been to some museum exhibits in Washington DC where like I remember was just straight up here's an excuse for why Bill Clinton bombed the Sudan it was hilarious like wow thank you for this kid completely objective piece oh you know written by the written by though the White House written by the anyway who knows maybe written by the CIA whatever it they don't just come from the universe someone has to write them and approve them and decide them like this yeah no I mean I'm not complain but even even when I sympathize with the message you know with a sort of Human Rights Museum or Holocaust Museum those types of museums are often kind of eighty percent propaganda even if even if I'm pro-human rights I can i combine is that so that that part of my background gives me a slightly different perspective on that as well as my own direct activism or what you but that's public education outreach the other question it's what you asked about already first is the question of what use can we make of the vegans we've already got and YouTube in the internet plays a kind of unique and dynamic role in that in 2016 as never before you already asked this questions is going to answer me you were asking vaguely is it possible is there an appetite to do more to get organized amongst the vegans for online my experience is yes but my experiences with the people who are not intimidated by me all kinds of people will never talk to me just because they find me intimidating but the people who talked to me including the people who literally have bikini videos like where you wouldn't think they're they're hungry for political change they are hungry for real activism political changes that's why they talked but me that's why they talked to me so like to give examples that I don't think they'd be ashamed to have me mentioned I was very surprised how political and politically ambitious the light twins are the light twins are guys who you know take off their shirts a lot they're amateur bodybuilders and shout to them as well because of their interviews with you right they seem to be really like oh we have to we have to organize we got to get to you wait I think that's I think that's the first time that's the first time anyone saw that side of their character I mean who knew i didn't i didn't know that about them i would have never guessed and you obviously we talked offline a bit and you know Jason Fazzino is another one he's a bodybuilder I was just I was just looking one of his videos that's literally him with some girls in bikinis on the beach I would have never guessed about the guy that he really is is hungry for that political change beyond that and another person who's definitely gonna hear this podcast member my patreon group Amy the vegan transition I mean her channel she is very very few viewers but she said a big response from other other vegans on YouTube precisely because they have that appetite what she's doing is real activism also real research you know she's actually visiting farms and interviewing farmers so the research the research aspect of activism but she's also doing real active and because they say in her case they're not seeking Fame they're not going to increase their they're at their audience by talking to her that's really purely you know an interest in having three organisms so that that is out there and for me the contrast is I don't I don't think I've mentioned this before on youtube or on patreon but you know the contrast is when I try to talk to career academics just recently I wrote to a university professor one of a very few his name is a professor will Kim Luca Kim Luca is very difficult to spell and I'm not going to spell it but I can i can give you a link later Kim Luca is probably one of two or three professors in all of the United States and Canada in all of North America who are devoted to veganism vegan politics right like I mean I don't know maybe maybe you know a couple more I can I can think off hand up to maybe there were three in total you know it's just natural western acne is not going to pay the salary for a whole lot of people to sit around talk about vegan politics I wrote him I'd be happy to show you the email I sent up the email i send it was very you know sympathetic and straightforward said look I know what it's like to deliver papers at academic conferences I know you put in so much work and maybe there are only 15 or 20 people there who really care who are really the audience here that paper I would love to talk to you you know via Skype or whatever you want you know whatever method you want and put you on my youtube channel I can guarantee you a minimum of two thousand people who really care about these issues and you really want to make a difference who are really aspiring vegan activists will hear you know what you have to say about vegan politics become a channel you know possibly five thousand what have you those are huge numbers compared to an academic conference I but I have never once had cooperation from an academic within veganism or ecology or animal rights more broadly I have never once never once had cooperation from someone who is a member of a non-digital a vegan organization not even direct action everywhere DXE direct action everywhere they're about their about forty-nine percent on the internet anyway they emphasize the 51% they do in the real world which is fine that's not a complaint nobody i mean when i was living in victoria i couldn't get anyone to even talk to me by email from direct action everywhere in vancouver or what have you so that's the other thing is the people on youtube they may be shallow or they may seem shallow like you know I don't know guys like Jason Fazzino and the light twins it's like I don't think any of their fans had any idea who they really were or you know what how they felt on those that that side of the game anyway so there their content may seem shallow or they may really be shallow but those seem to be the people the people who are sharing their lives on the internet are the people who are at least prepared to talk to you and I think in many cases they are prepared to get behind a real activism a real organization recommendation I think sorry I realized two been talking for a very long time continuously but if you want a simple litmus test you can ask yourself this question all of these people whether it's me or vegan gains just use we're both Canadian two examples wouldn't we be happier if we would continue doing exactly the same thing we're already doing but we also had a political organization let's just say like a perfect version of petta like it's pettah but it's actually vegan you know we kind of it's better without this [ __ ] without this problem this problem if you just try to reinvent pedda having learned from the experiences of the past and being obviously pettah is not perfect or something of course someone like vegan gains or someone like myself would at a minimum be delighted to keep doing what we already are doing but to also attend conferences by support and be involved in you know whether it's the public education and outreach side or direct political lobbying or you know there would be a foundation of that kind I think many many many of these people would be happy to bolt that on to that in addition to what they're now doing and you know it's not it's not that much time so it's not that much time for most people for a small number of people actually live in Washington DC it would be your full-time job of course yeah but so that's that's first off really inspiring um but i guess so i guess that i don't have a firm sense of because as you know i don't i'm not a youtuber I'm not involved in this world other than as a consumer of it um and as you're extremely aware of there's been this very recent like hyper drama um a certain group of vegan youtubers but but kind of in the aftermath of that or to the side of that um what is your experience like in terms of how individuals in this world communicate between it amongst each other and the reason I kind of asked that is because I was curious about like how big is vegan YouTube actually like help how many channels are there how many subscribers are there and so I actually counted it up and and i'll do a um a screen share if i can how do i do that well ok whatever you want to but just cuz i'm recording this i don't want to don't have gaps of silence we feel it I don't um look you know I just recorded an hour and a half long conversation with the vegan laughs young woman in Scotland I that should be uploaded within the next few hours I do recommend you listen to that on this issue you're just asking about you know it is very sad in some ways the level of hostility and infighting would have you but there's another sense in which it's not sad and you shouldn't let it impair oh sure you shouldn't let it click close off what you think of as the possibilities for what the digital vegans can do you shouldn't let it limit your vision of the future and I'll give you a very simple comparison hip-hop music rap music if you said to someone forty years ago look you know rap music it's got potential but it can never really go mainstream it can never really be come a gold album selling platinum-selling you can never become a huge phenomenon culturally because all these rappers they all criticize each other they all insult each other you know they all they all have drama with each other they all have comedy each other this is never going to grow now it would actually quite understandable why someone would think that at the beginning of hip-hop hip-hop was so different from jazz music that way jazz music at least everyone pretended to be played probably jazz musicians all hated each other anyway but you know at every stage of the history of rap music these rappers have been insulting each other and sleeping with each other's girlfriends and sometimes even shooting and stabbing each other and yet the genre grew and grew and grew and became within my lifetime it really became the most Dom most influential genre of music now obviously that that can't last forever you know it doesn't last forever for anything I mean you know probably within my lifetime it'll fade away or become become minor but I just say that's for someone of my age that's what I witness there was there was a time when wearing hip-hop clothing was both very rare and really frowned upon and now you know whatever streets of Toronto any major city people of all ages are wearing what used to be distinctive hip-hop you know 60 year old people as well as as well as teenagers and it's just invisible it's become so mainstream so you know the the drama and the infighting you can view it as an obstacle to progress but maybe that is just a feature of the genre maybe that's an element of what we're doing in veganism in the same sense that it's just a defining feature of of rap and hip-hop music that makes a lot of sense um but but so I guess has anyone ever done this or really looked at it that's like this embarrassing um like how big vegan YouTube really is because this is what I was able to find can you see my screen I'll check but you no answer that question there's there's how okay yeah okay well so I do see your screen well okay um I was just gonna say you know uh that the size of the market is one thing and then the size of people who could be potentially engaged in political activism is another so you know my audience realistically right now about 2,000 people really care about my channel are really passionate about it and I would say five thousand people are interested you know 20 to a lesser extent i do not think my audience is actually 10,000 people i have 10,000 subscribers but i would say 5,000 audience 2000 who are really interested I mean within my time on on the internet I think the single most successful channel I don't know if she's done your your list here is a cheap lazy vegan she just grew right so right so she has a huge market but who watches her stuff amino she's posting videos of I went to the supermarket today this is what I bought I'm not hating on that or or it doesn't profit us anything to to hate on that but um you know a very small percentage of those people would be interested in this conversation you and I are having or could be possibly mobilized for some kind of foundation some kind of direct political activism so that's all let's say is you know I mean my channel is so explicitly political that the stat for how many people are watching me is is significant obviously I'm not everyone's cup of tea but you can't look at for example unnatural vegan a very small percentage of her viewers would be open to this this political approach you know now the other thing this I did just say this in my conversation with vegan lass which again you can hear later today whenever it finishes uploading but you know one of the things I pointed up to her it's it's fine it's natural for us like including yourself you may well complain that some of these discussions about veganism are boring or you've heard them before these are you haven't seen nobody say like you know anyone who watches my channel regularly you can say you know oh god this is kind of the same thing again and again um think about the situation for someone who is 15 years old and is currently a fan of the vegan cheetah because his viewership is remarkably young at cec on you now and what have you you know obviously there are middle aged people like me also it is actually a very powerful and very positive thing that those people that that generation is growing up finding what I have to say normal and even boring that's a huge paradigm shift because what I have to say to old it to older people and you see them freaking out on my channel all the time older people find what I have to say shocking and edgy and new and of course it needn't be you know that just reflects the contrast between what I'm talking about and what's been normal within the last 10 years but what I have to say is shocking of course it may be shocking to meet eaters but it's shocking even within veganism and yet on YouTube we are in effect raising a new generation who either through a higher level of sophistication or just to a higher level of familiarity will already know about all those arguments all those differences of opinions in veganism and will be comfortable with them moving forward so I think that is a very powerful thing it is easy to be cynical about the the drama aspect or the kind of muckraking aspect or what have you but what is the effect on the young audience coming up through that I think five years from now those are going to be people who really do understand in a very down-to-earth pragmatic way what needs to be done how to do it and who will be able to avoid the pitfalls that in other situations have torn you know ecological activist organizations apart because in the past you really would like the type of stuff I talk about my channel you'd managed to get some people together who just barely agree about saving some Apes from a lab or what have you but then the minute these other political issues come up or ethical and vegan issues come up they're showing each other down and and members are quitting or factions are forming and they're tearing the organization apart so I do think that in some ways we're rehearsing for the future we're practicing discussing and becoming comfortable with addressing the most divisive issue that you know I can boast I do that on my channel but I do actually think even a guy like vegan cheetah does that I do think he does I think he prepares his audience for that and so I'm very interested like in the future if I go to an animal rights conference or if you organize some event in Washington DC and I go there five years from now i would meet people who would say to me I grew up on your YouTube channel you know like I've been watching your youtube channel for five years and they may find it boring and that's a wonderful thing you know like it's a great thing I think there's a future where the stuff I've talked about on my youtube channel up till now has become well known and normal enough that those are no longer edgy and shocking issues yeah that's I guess that's true I never really thought about it as an intergenerational issue and that's an extremely important point I want to if it's okay kind of tack more towards a strict mechanics kind of discussion sure and by that I mean what I wanted to avoid at all costs is kind of explaining what my like most grandiose ambition would be um in too much detail because that's kind of a poison the well thing and and I imagine that the i think it's 212 vegan youtubers identified with over a thousand subscribers um you know they all of their own interests for a lot of people this is their primary or one of their main sources of income and and and those those interests are valid um but i guess on a mechanistic level it would be really difficult for someone loaded 44 like the light twins for example who have i think something like 60 some odd thousand subscribers to individually run political activism from their channel alone but when you think about the numbers of people you actually need to get organized to actually make real change i mean i don't know i'm mostly familiar with obviously domestic American politics um and I don't know if you've been following all the like AG gag legislation that's been going on safe I stayed here yeah I actually I've read a lot about that when my bought might when my daughter was just born I had a lot of time to read them but I haven't so up about three years out of date on that but I read about a pack then yeah it's all the same stuff you'd expect basically state legislatures kind of in the quiet of night passing passing laws preventing people from filming in slaughterhouses um but the truth is in terms of I mean even on a state level state like Indiana or Iowa which has 10 10 million or fewer people the light twins for example probably don't have that many individual subscribers in Indiana but among this group of 212 individuals with nine million 345 ish thousand subscribers and I'm aware obviously that's not fully intellectually honest because there's overlap and a lot of those are inactive but right if that network of individuals could be activated to deliver discrete messages and say hey you know throw you know for example this thing is happening in Indiana if you live there you know call your representative here's a number we've provided you now here's a sample script or an email or tweet here's the number you need to call here's the tool that shows you who you were representative is that's the kind of action that I think well that I did I oh yeah yeah I just say I mean you know i was just talking I guess two weeks ago or something I was talking to both vegan cheetah and Jason Posey know about organizing a festival or a conference or an event you know obviously in some ways to replace what durianrider and freely did but obviously because I'm the one doing the talking obviously the level of political organization is much much higher it's much more explicitly kind of a political science sort of thing and you know we were talking about it it's like well Virginia Beach that exists and that's near where you know the cheetah lives cheetahs moving to Virginia Beach and Virginia Beach amazingly has the American headquarters for pedicle treatment of animals there'll be one way to do it do you try to build bridges from do you try to you know get people attending from pettah try to get maybe pursue even formal cooperation features better do you go to some beach in Florida you know Miami or something do you make that the event you know another very real issue would be well what about Washington DC you know what about somewhere that matters politically for that reason again disproportionately the the youtubers I've been talking to our Canadian and you know vegan gains alone obviously as a huge pole and a huge following and so on within Canada you know so on that level I mean I always talk about constituency building I did not expect my channel to have a significant number of viewers until I started going to places like London England and meeting people face-to-face and shaking their hands I've been relatively fortunate by my own standards now it's possible if I did that if I went to London because your London has a huge vegan scene so does Berlin incidentally if I went to places like London Berlin probably I would both expand my audience and deepen the level of trust with my audience but i would have never attempted to do a fundraiser without doing that first but doing the constituency building of seeing people face to face shaking their hands and really expressing to people you know if you donate your money to me it's going to be used for exactly what I promised you know you sir that's really old-fashioned political science whether it's Washington DC or London or what have you and I do think the success of some of the other vegan youtubers even if it was short-lived was because of that because that face-to-face conference attending constituency building and even if the conference was [ __ ] it was just the fact that they did meet people they did participate with people you know pressing the flesh so to speak face-to-face so I know that's not your your final ambition or what have you but there is definitely also a desire to make events of that kind happen there's a desire of people who are online to get offline and do something meaningful in the real world face-to-face now I I've always said I don't believe in reproducing the defects of an academic conference and or at academic you know presenting an academic paper academic essay and again this comes back science said earlier I actually do feel like most of the information when we're talking about within veganism we're not talking about public outreach public education that most of these people already have the information they need so if you were to call together let's say 50 let's just say it's 50 youtubers 50 digital vegans on YouTube the last the last thing they need is an academic lecture on water pollution or slaughterhouse footage they don't need that you know they know enough you know they want to do something the question is you know what do we do now obviously the answer for me isn't putting on a bikini and going swimming like that can be part of it no like we can we can have an event where you know whatever if people want to get drunk if you want to go swimming that's fine that can be one one aspect what you do plenty of academic conferences people do that stuff also but you know especially at step one especially if it's if it's the first meeting where you are really building mutual trust your building constituency that to me is is we're thinking about and I don't mean in the long term future I mean it's worth thinking about within the next 12 months yeah that that I think that that probably is among the most important first steps just the ID building a community of people who add I mean youyou rail about this all the time that it needs to actually be a community of people not a loose bunch of you know lone wolves roaming around um but one of the things that and if I can it feels very uncomfortable to voice the criticism because since i'm not on youtube it feels like i'm out of place um go ahead I'm hard to offend I'm not gonna cry it's all right no no it's actually it wouldn't be a criticism of you as much as kind of what YouTube can do because I think that there are three main things that being on on YouTube as a vegan activist can do obviously you can convert people from not being vegan into being vegan you can also help motivate people to prevent i guess i don't recall the loss or drop out of veganism because there's whatever percentage of people end up failing to continue a vegan lifestyle after X number of months um but the third thing you could do or one could do is to really empower your viewers and to tell them you know you are my I don't say army because I'm not trying to make that metaphor but you're a group of people connected by the fact that you're my viewers here are concrete things you can do because i think i've noticed at least in my life you're very comfortable or after the first I don't know year 18 months two years after you go vegan and then you realize that not having an impact is exactly that it's the same way I think I'm plagiarizing this from Steve breast is you know if you aren't a pedophile you're not contributing to end paedophilia which is a crude metaphor but it's true and I think that there is a real hunger just among among the group of people watching these videos and the people producing them to kind of get to that third stage of okay this isn't just lifestyle activism where I'm convincing you that you should adopt my lifestyle I'm also telling you here's the thing you can do this is a concrete task you can take that will achieve a real victory in the world and advance our movement towards us ultimate goals well look you know I probably would be if other things in my life weren't such a disaster i would be involved in much more locally rooted activism probably linked to specific wild species if it had worked out for me in first nations i was a student of korean a jib way i was involved with indigenous peoples language politics cetera if that had worked out i can very easily imagine a parallel universe where I was not looking at a conference in Virginia Beach and I was not looking at a conference in Washington DC or I was looking at organizing an annual event unlike the bike festival which may be was the vegan bear festival because if I was out in that country side and that could be seven people coming because you know who can afford to buy the airplane ticket but we tried to motivate a group of vegans to come every year and where you actually bring them out and show them the bear habitat of the ecological issues the struggles you're having why you're trying to raise funds and of course you film it and put it on the internet say okay here are the problems with these bears or with this you know this struggle to to give these wild animals a decent life I can completely imagine another life of that kind which again would be meaningful and rewarding for the people involved in it which would help some number of animals which would help support well promote veganism as a concept in some way but you know ultimately is also kind of isolated and kind of pure ech okay kind of pointless even though I mean I've many times talked about in my channel that in some ways the best the best way for your own life is to organize around one group of dolphins or one group of their something very tangible something rooted in one place and we're indeed you are dealing with one local government and not with a global question now however the life I am living that I'm likely to continue to lead pushes me towards instead these much more global international cosmopolitan and for that reason abstract questions of vegan which I'm very apprehensive of you know like if we had a conference in washington d.c london england or berlin germany we could get people from all over the world but then they can't really cooperate and do much of anything you know i can put a footnote there yes there are some things we can do there are some things that puzzle but you know like someone I'm interested in working with there's this other youtuber called mod vegan she talks a lot within my patreon group incidentally objectively a very good-looking woman but she is not selling a diet book unlike freely or what um you know mod vegan if I would I'd say to you why am I excited to meet someone like that she's a Canadian citizen she is completely sane or I mean if she's insane she's managing to conceal it on YouTube very well and I look at her and I think even if I disagree with this woman about a bunch of issues than veganism this is someone who could actually be co-signing who could be signing legal documents with me to create a foundation within Canada and that is what you need within Canada you need five normally ten people who can actually have joint legal responsibilities literally signing on the dotted line for a foundation to exist that is step one before we can do any kind of fundraising any kind of charity work even any kind of public education or outreach even if you want to give like to give an example even if you want to give lectures in schools you want to go around to schools doing education on veganism or animal rights or related issues that it's absolutely step one is having those five or ten people who you trust enough to be able to write checks from the same bank account the bank account where you collect donations if that's actually quite a high level of trust now I don't I've actually I've never even talked to up via Skype with mod vegan it is full disclosure we've actually never never spoken by telephone but my shallow impression is I look at her YouTube channel and I committee over there I think oh wow you know this is someone I can I can work with and I mean the problem is the the demi-monde I've been kind of forced into even though in some ways of course it's more it is it's more glamour essex more exciting i have a bigger audience than if I were humbly working with First Nations in one village in one place or working with one group of bears or one group of dolphins what I'm doing now has this of global element to it that's very enticing for many people but the problem is I could show up at a conference and there isn't even one person there like Maude vegan there isn't one person where there's the potential you know whether it's legally jurisdictionally or in terms of their personality or what have you to get that kind of boring work done and again that's not that's not your end goal we're talking about that's step one you know I don't have five people I can form a legal foundation with within Canada and some of my fellow vegans even if I like them some of them I have very very paternalistic feelings towards you know I feel in a kind of fatherly way I kind of love for some of my fellow vegans on on YouTube but some of them are crazy you know or some of them are drug addicts or some of them of other problems where they they really can't play that role so yeah this is a this is an underlying tension and I mention it for a totally pragmatic set of reasons because I think it comes up in the question of how and where you organize what kind of event there's natural obviously you're not this kind of guy but most people if they were organizing an event all they'd care about is basically having the biggest celebrities there but the biggest celebrities are not useful to me someone like mod vegan who has a hundred viewers or something sorry I forgot maybe she has 200 now or 300 but to me what's exciting is the real prospect for political organization and I don't even know I don't really know if I can do that within Canada or within the next few years if my home will be in some other country somewhere else in the world there's also a fundamental problem that I face and that any so-called digital Nomad is facing so that's interesting because I think I think we may have um I don't say talk past each other but my I don't say my ask I'm not that arrogant but my the way I'm looking at it is kind of a step back from that which is I don't expect part of the the obvious challenge about organizing among the online digital vegan activist community is the fact that it's so spread out I mean because of a whole raw till 4 thing there's a disproportionate number of people from Australia and New Zealand and and even beyond that there's just it's diffuse because that's the nature of the internet and all that and my my thought isn't that that all these individuals should physically get into one location I mean that would be fantastic and actually I think that would be a really productive use of a lot of people's time but that just the basics of coordinating I mean I think it's really easy to imagine for example a literally at 212 or 300 however many people however however deep you wanted to go literally a listserv of people where it's just anyone can email anyone and then you know committees bait essentially a parliament there are some people who are extremely interested in environmental issues related to livestock and animal agriculture they really they're they're eating oreos they don't give it you know they don't care if they're fat but that's that's what motivates them those people should be you know talking in a facebook group or in on a on a listserv and then there are some people who are just really into the nutritional aspect of it and I'm sure they care about other things but they're just like you know I'm concerned about diabetes and I want you to look good and I want to show you how good I look in a bikini or a bathing suit or whatever and those people should be in a room and then or like a digital room um and then I understand a listserv of 200-300 people is enormous but then individuals from each of those communities can communicate essentially in the basic structure of any Parliament or business or foundation or any organization whatsoever and having that kind of communication and then being able to share information if you say okay my viewers are disproportionately from Canada your viewers are disproportionately from the United States and there's this issue in Canada or the decision in the United States I'm going to bring this to your attention but now you can talk about it and that that I think it's a really big ask to ask individual youtubers in their in their towns to go find people who are close to them but it's that if we can connect all of these people who are line then we can collect information both about their viewership we can collect information about their physical locations we can kind of map out what the full strength of this network is and then the people on the ground all right I actually okay i I just I just I disagree with you partly based on my experience with ecologic items with green parties that are partly more more practically than than theoretically but I can state this in a very theoretical way I'd encourage I'd encourage you to reconcile this may sound very grim and and merely you know pecuniary but it's it's not what's the difference between a listserv and a magazine I know magazines are now a thing of the past in many ways well there's an editorial process you know listserv email anybody can write anything and for that reason the quality of Correspondence may be very low and it's probably not worth anyone's time to read every every contribution if people are contributing to an editor of a magazine already there's a relationship of inequality there why should they why should they take the effort to write a good quality article and even to put up with it being criticized by an editor and maybe have changes made or revisions before it goes to publication that effort is justified by the palpable reward of actually having a magazine at the end of the process right so I'm giving this obviously as a first set up for the the pattern I'm talking about in political organization on a small scale on a medium scale of this kind what are the actual rewards you can provide that incentivize people to do something more than pursue sex money and fame on youtube or just you know indulge in their own their own lifestyle and what have you now you know the rato for bikefest as as bad as it was and if ways fruit festival in Chiang Mai as much to my criticize it that did provide a reward that really incentivize people to make extraordinary sacrifices to be there including very real economic sacrifices flying to Thailand is a real cost spending a month in Thailand is a huge cost thinking a month off work this is a long period of time etc but people were going to do it and you know you could make a list of what were the palpable rewards that were there at the other end now you know again like when I was looking at the the Green Party when I was talking to the leaders of the Green Party in Canada I was having to say to them you have to stop expecting people to volunteer and get nothing in return you know whether the the return is that you actually get to see a bear or you actually get a tour of the zoo after the zoo is closed by an animal rights activists who's you know who isn't just showing you the zoo but he's actually discussing the problems this is just one example you know whatever kind of activism is you're doing wow that's a reward I did all this but I actually got to learn about this and see the elephants up close and whatever it is there's some experience there's a there's some reward that that provides you know that makes the whole situation dynamic and I do actually think those rewards also they justify both the work people do and they justify those inequalities in the same way that there's inevitably one editor who organizes something you know God knows even a festival or a conference is not egalitarian in the way that a lot of emails is so you know for me this this is a real question with pettah with people for the ethical treatment of animals I can tell you right now what the reward is it's money you have no idea what a galvanizing effect on the human mind money has and I think Pettis still to this day they may be the only animal rights organization that's paying a significant number of people a salary of age but those people pardon me those people it's not even the total number of people may not be that great making money but there's a big turnover for those jobs people have that kind of job for one year or six months rarely five years but the whole network of petta global network is galvanized by the fact that they pay salaries to people I can't imagine being that successful you know definitely not within the next ten years having a foundation that I should pay salaries but whether it's spending time with people you respect on a beach in Thailand or it's having a physical on paper magazine or it's being able to participate again I don't think participating in a street protest is enough of a reward but for some people it is you know meeting up with people you like and being able to chants slogans in Washington DC some people would go to DC just for that just to hang out with you and me and stand in front of the White House and chance something that makes no difference some people would do that but for me that's not enough of a palpable reward to me there has to be something meaningful they see or do or touch in Washington DC so that's what's say I really think you need to structure that way because what you are asking of people is not what they're already doing it'sit's ultimately it's something more it's something above and beyond what they're already doing on their own YouTube channel etc yeah that's actually I'm glad you brought that up because I kind of got ahead of myself I'd like written out a whole template of an a series of questions that I wanted to ask before ostensibly putting my foot in my mouth um the there's there's two parts of that the first is you're absolutely right that were a group of individuals who are just happily making videos and and doing their thing and get together I think there would need to be some kind of system that that was rewarding whether it was you know more aggressive cross promotion of e-books or just simply more exposure that that provides people with more subscribers and more views from a strictly financial perspective which I understand is a lot of people's if not primary at least secondary concern and rightfully so I think that would have to be extremely important and extremely transparently like part of the transaction that we understand that that as much as this is activism you have to balance it against the other concerns in your life um but the other thing is is I I don't think it would be a good idea to have just an unmitigated a kind of pure Athens style democracy where it is just a group of people any one of which can just say whatever they want I think there would need to be a degree of internal governance what I don't want to do as someone on the outside is try to suggest what that should be I mean I think we've seen I don't want to rehash this but like we've seen that kind of the organic leadership structure that existed with the raw till 4 movement and kind of have that stuffed a lot of the oxygen out of the room when there's a failure of leadership it can become really jarring for a lot of people um because it's you know it's it's personality based leadership it's kind of the charismatic leadership um so I think you're right and I'm interested to know how you think some kind of structure could be put into place that provides what is an unequal distribution of power but also a genuine and transparent distribution of benefits well I mean you know ultimately this comes down to money and I'm one of the few people whose want enough to say that to you Buddhism in Southeast Asia you know Thailand Laos Cambodia my part Southeast Asia the single easiest form of fundraising to do is building a new roof on top of a Buddhist monastery why is that because it is actually a hundred percent transparent everyone in the village sees the roof being built most of them can know if they want to know they can find out how much the materials cost because within a village and Laos or something you know a guy will come and sell the shingles sell the wood whatever you saw the gold if there are some gold elements or what have you everyone will know everyone will see it being built if for some reason you know construction is delayed everyone sees that it's it's literally exterior it's it's it's every stage of the process is visible and you know there are other things within within tera vaada Buddhism the donors are in some ways kg but I mean donating food to the children living as residents within a Buddhist monastery again even in poverty-stricken areas you have no problem doing that fundraising it's a hundred percent transparent on a day-to-day basis the villagers see where the food goes they see it being eaten they know it's not being you know they're not nobody's stockpiling this wealth and taking it off for some other purpose where you have a hundred percent transparency in Buddhism you have a remarkable capacity for fundraising even in the midst of dire poverty because I have been open areas that are in technically extreme poverty now remember my my boss on my shitty humanitarian project we were we were technically helping people avoid starving to death the myths it's real humanitarian work in a way but it's also a joke in some ways and I remember him complaining to me he said oh you know I don't get it I mean you know these these Buddhist groups they manage to do so much fundraising in these same villages these impoverished area villages I don't see why our project can't okay it's like the same way and I looked him straight in the eye and I said you want to know the answer the problem is you you you cannot ask these villagers to donate money to a foundation that pays your salary your salary alone is so enormous and not transparent and what you do with that money compared to you know the few shekels these people can put together the contrast in terms of transparency accountability responsiveness to building the roof on that temple is extreme now I myself am already in this ridiculous situation I raise six thousand five hundred dollars in less than 48 hours I think it was just over 24 hours but I don't know exactly unbelievable I I did not expect that at all I did not expect to raise 6005 and US dollars in one day so amazing once that money is raised we're already in a situation of total inequality I have all the money I make the decisions nobody can tell me anything and that is generally the way almost all foundations and charities start is with a situation of basically 00 transparency 0 accountability total total inequality and asian making with these types of foundations the lesson I'm drawing here from Buddhism or from other examples i could use is actually the the diametric opposite to what peter singer likes to say about this so Peter singers a vegan who talks about how charities organized but I don't think he has real experience in impact evaluation which is an aspect of political science that pertains to charity and in jail work actually the easiest form of fundraising to do is project specific so it's exactly what Peter Singer says we shouldn't be doing it is for example when Aaron janeth wanted to save the life of one zebra why did that raise so much money so quickly why was it so effective in terms of fundraising well it wasn't effective in terms the final outcomes for unrelated reasons because like the roof of that temple everyone knows exactly where the money is going and everyone gets to see it it's visible now by contrast what if I start a foundation that is much more vaguely hug be to help the zebras where does the money go well I want you to pay my salary so I can be full time I want you to pay administrative costs and then we're going to do public education and lobbying and you know there are zebras here in Canada there are zebras in Africa there are zebras in some zoos in China we're going to go around do some stuff this has gotten too vague already right the the generalized concepts of helping the Zebras is much harder to justify it's much harder to be transparent and accountable than helping one zebra at one time now the great thing about the Internet is that it doesn't have to be an either/or is that we can do both simultaneously the great thing about the Internet is we could easily have a foundation like petta just to keep the same example or like Mothers Against Drunk Driving my favorite example we can have a Mothers Against Drunk Driving type foundation for veganism but then the same time at any given moment we can say hey we want to help this one zebra we want to do something like this which is totally transparent where exactly where the money is going you're going to see et cetera and the great thing is when you do both each one increases the credibility of the other it's not detrimental the credibility it deepens your relationship with your constituency it deepens the trust and so when you can show results like that transparently it will make people have a greater sense of trust and engagement with what you may be doing that's that's invisible or what have you so just one last thing on that I guess the opposite extreme is musial adji because you know I've worked in museums a friend of mine outside of the job once asked me to do a cost estimate for a specific museum exhibit and I did it you know so gratis because I had access to databases and what have you and this friend of mine was shocked was horrified because I fret that lets say the estimate was 35 million dollars and said how can it possibly be 35 million dollars that's ridiculous and I said I'll tell you exactly how i made the estimate i went through a database of other museum projects that match certain criteria same size same geographies and whatever and then i took an average of those so you know if you don't like it [ __ ] you you know yeah don't worry about it it's part of the part of the part of the ambience no but you know and and she wrote back wanting an itemized list of where the money goes which is totally reasonable I understand it's like what what do you mean if this is gonna be 35 million dollars where does the museum spend $35 how does it how does it disappear and you know the honest answer I gave because this of course this wasn't professional I said this was just doing a favor for a friend I said the honest answer is you will never know like not even the government knows not even the CIA know there are some types of institutional spending once you get over a certain scale where all you can say is this is how much money is likely to disappear and there's really no accountability there's no transparency what have you so that's my opposite extreme to the the Buddhist temple in the small village yeah that's that that's depressing say it it's depressing it's well it's it's actually something that I've seen echoed in the environmental movement and actually I think I'm not just environmental I think one of the things that's most interesting I don't know if you've been following like American electoral politics particularly closely um but this is the big struggle that people are facing now um with the end of the Bernie Sanders campaign because it was really easy to convince a lot of people to give money to a specific thing we're going to give it to a campaign that will get this person and even if they didn't know where the individual dollars were being spent like there is a very clear goal there is a very clear objective and now we're in a situation where and you can see this happening online there's already fracturing and people are receding into their corners about oh it's about money in politics or oh no it's about financial regulation that when you have people who are relatively what like minded um and are pursuing specific goals it's phenomenally easy to get them together but to just kind of have this sort of this this group of people that doesn't have any momentum that's just like oh we're doing things it it doesn't hold together and I mean you saw that with occupy occupy was huge and then it didn't really have a concrete ask and then it dissipated and that's why you can see especially now black lives matter have kind of responded to some of that outside criticism and recently released a specific list of asks and and I think that point is extremely well taken but but part of that I think is as it applies to veganism is that there are such specific things that we can be pursuing that as far as I can tell just no one except maybe you and a few others are talking about and these things aren't on the table um and and my concern is just we need to put them on the table well look we're passing the one hour mark so I think we should wrap it up for this conversation but you know I think that the the negative examples to learn from are probably the agricultural examples you in the u.s. especially in the United States have really colorful examples of hippie groups political groups some of them left-wing groups some of them most of them religious groups starting small farms then you know often there's kind of an initial period of optimism and then look what happens 20 years later I mean any of the groups that started in the 1960s or what have you whether they were independent communes but many of them interested in ecology deep ecology in organic farming or what have you and there are certainly some groups doing that for veganism some of them promoting themselves on the internet and so on too so you can find them to me to be blunt I think that's the ultimate failure it's the ultimate case of wasted potential even though I personally am strongly biased in favor of that form of activism on an emotional level my early childhood was on a farm when I was in Laos it was deeply gratifying to me just to be in fields of certain crops I know that's ridiculous but it's sentimental and emotional you know like I I like Deep Ecology I like agriculture based activism i I'm so biased in favor of this but I think if you look at every single one of those projects they're a failure especially compared to the amount of money and time and effort that went into them and I think that even looking at in the future even if you try to draw up a list of lessons learned there's there's no way to make a success out of any of them or to take you know to start again and reproduce it you know why is that I don't know amino you could make a whole list of all the factors a farm obviously is stuck in one place it's insular it relies on people making enormous financial sacrifices like you how would I ask you to quit your job as a lawyer and come live on this organic farm you know even if you to do that for for three months or something is an enormous oh you know so they're all these elements built into that that I think we have to learn from uh because it is romantic it is it is tremendously appealing and we need to de romanticize that and on the other hand you know your your way of putting it there I think one of the best organized protest movements have seen in terms of having an ask as you put it I actually don't use that term but it's perfectly fine term having organized set of demands i was in england when there were street protests calling for reforms to how university tuition is charged and funded yes and although the protests were often stupid like in terms of what people said on the street the leaders were not stupid and they had a completely brilliant plan that could be implemented very well basically in a nutshell it would gear the rate at which you repay your student debt was linked to your income like like income tax so after you graduated from university if you got a high paying job you could pay back your debt in installments a certain percentage of your income would be deducted to pay it but if you ended up unemployed or working at starbucks it would be a very very low percentage or zero you know there'd be a threshold where you're earning so little and that this would open up the way so that people could study poetry and go on to work at starbucks without being crippled by that they're just very gradually repay the debt and someone else could study banking and get a high salary or what have you this would fundamentally change the economics from the individuals perspective of higher education in England brilliant actually souls that were actually constructive actually legislation that hits us all the problems however that movement was a total failure it ended um you know it fizzled out the same way you could say Occupy Wall Street fizzled out or what have you and nothing so it's interesting you know my own video that I keep uploading again and again in new languages on community this is I guess in a sense why I put this emphasis on from the cradle to the grave I think one of the things that's stupid about the commune about the agricultural base the the organic farm based activism is that you're not thinking about cradle to the grave no I can do this for months and it may be a waste of my time and a waste of my money yes I can do a few months but no no I want the whole I want to think about the whole life cycle I want to think about my own university education my daughter's university education wanna think about my retirement can I retire on that farm know what happens to you in a note no I mean seriously a real toy real problem are you so what if I what if i spend 10 years in your commune then what happens to me you know you know I I want to think about every stage and of the form of activism or form community organization being meaningful for parents who have kids for the kids themselves for the educational period and so on at the end and likewise I mean even the kind of best examples of those street protests and I do think that that movement in England is a kind of best case in some ways they actually assaulted the Prince of Wales and one of their protests so big yeah there with that car I think that happened in my town that was in Cambridge don't forget but I was in Cambridge when that was covered them anyway so the Prince of Wales and his consort I don't know she's his wife I guess she's his wife now you know they they were assaulted by protesters and the photographs were somewhat hilarious um anyway I'm against violence though people let me reiterate but you know again as as good as that was as meaningful and important as that protest wasn't as good as the ask was good at said of demands were okay five years later where are we know where you know not only did it did it lack a lifecycle vision obviously the horizons for that whole thing were incredibly short term it could only last a couple of months and then and then fizzle out okay do you have any closing thoughts because I say we're well over an hour here it's great to talk to you it's great to talk to anyone who's you know sincerely interested in in vegan activism I really I really do appreciate you taking the time it's also profoundly weird because you've always just been like a guy on the other side of the screen but I just I just was wondering what your advice would be regarding contacting other vegan youtubers because it appears that sending like the messages on YouTube is not an effective way to get people's attention um but I'm i want to just at this point the initial stages i want to hear people's opinions on what their needs are what their thoughts are because I think of my role in is if I can be so arrogant as to even claim that I have a role is um have you seen the Avengers that the movie franchise I have but I'm aware of the cultural phenomenon the idea is I think of myself as in the position of shield which is the government organization that has no interesting people but that reaches out to all the people who do have superpowers and and helps bring them together that i'm not on youtube and I'm not the person who can do the kinds of things that I'm hoping to see happen but I am at least tenacious and analytical and detail-oriented and we'll take the time to make however many phone call is a 212 phone calls if I have to it's got to be it's got to be the palpable reward like I said before it's got to be that structure and for you the palpable reward you can already offer the part you can start thinking about is simply that you're in Washington DC now this is going to sound like ridiculous example but I use it because it's a zero-cost example unlike providing elephants or bears or even beaches or bikinis if you could provide a walking tour of Washington DC related to animal rights legislation or something if you did a walking to and obviously you could put that on YouTube you could record it a couple times and edit together the best takes or whatever if you just had that and a small number of activists or people interested in veganism took this walking tour with you where I mean whatever you string together these okay you walk to this point so this is actually the point where you know the decision made by the Nixon administration on torturing monkeys to death in laboratories was made etcetera etcetera so that was actually Ronald Reagan not exit Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan past our current animal rights legislation our landmark it correctly says the u.s. good old Ronald Reagan unbelievably it was Reagan but you know if you walk to the point where that happened and do whatever like you know and I don't even know how much condo let's say there's only one hour of content about that in Washington DC as silly as that sounds that is a palpable reward and it's a palpable reward for the people who go there and take that tour with you and you know i don't know maybe there's something you can show them in the National cribes there you know something maybe they you know you put together those things it's a powerful reward for the people who come to your YouTube channel it shows who you are and you're to be taken seriously but you you've got to put out something like that and again like I say the role of the magazine editor why does the magazine editor have power and influence you know why are people willing to work harder for a magazine editor than they're willing to work in writing an email or even in recording a youtube video because most people just put disorganized crap on on YouTube you know to actually make a well well written essay or book chapter what have you ultimately there there has to be that that palpable ward okay great talking you this is our first time meeting I'm sure you know what we'll talk again and I expect to return to Canada during the month of December currently I will probably return via Europe and I do hope to be doing real world activism real world organization in canada and i do not know where really i'll be living in Canada but quite likely across the board the United States and try to start meeting other vegan activists both YouTube activists and real-world activists you know from my own long-term future okay great i can you Steven goodbye