Comedy & Activism: Keep Love in the Game.
09 April 2017 [link youtube]
Veganism can be bleak, and vegans can feel hopeless in facing the enormity of the task ahead of us, but that same sense of "doing the impossible" brings a lot of vivacity (and humor) to the movement.
Shout out to "Juice" (that's his name!) quoted in the video: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU4o-HR74og31-wAa_m-PJw/videos
And Repzilla gets a shout-out, starting @13:51, you can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXgGxoK-fsv1ScBHE7lYi_Q/videos
(The music playing in the the final few seconds of the video, also, is Juice's creation.)
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so when Joe vegan made his latest come
back you know some people appreciated his new comedy videos and thought they were very funny you could see that a comment section but a lot of people said wow his new videos are not funny at all you know the spark is gone whatever it was that made the videos funny before was gone comedy was part of my life when I was younger and I really took a turn at one point when I realized it wasn't for me and I'm reminded of you know the factors that went into that decision when I look at the latest collapse of Joe vegan I really think it's easy to underestimate the extent to which all of that has to come from a place of love and admiration and positive aspirations of the future in those days when he first got started there was a lot of love in the game he loved veganism as a social movement he loved the content on my channel and the people laughing with the videos for them also there was this sense of veganism being a lofty ambition and in the contrast between that ambition and how absurd these little political squabbles were you know whatever durianrider saying that I'm fat or whatever the country it's a tech North right the respect and admiration had for veganism as a concept and a movement is gone and what's left just seems like a bitter angry shell of a man you know you might think that bitterness is a great source for comedy but it's not that's what's really instructive Joel vegans video has nothing to do with the YouTube community veganism as a whole this is only an adult crying not taking responsibility for his own actions and there's all mistakes nobody told you to do anything you made a decision and that's it blame yourself not other people stop being a coward give the money back to everyone that donated money to you for this end with sanctuary and if you don't give the money back you are a scammer I've got a few different things on my mind in this video I'm going to talk about comedy and the theater and the strange kind of social engagement those are forms require from you which is Subway's similar to politics in my heart in my mind and I'm going to talk about why I decided not to be involved with theater not to bowl with comedy which I easily could have done my whole life is very different today if I'd stuck with you know stand-up comedy at least so you can easily do as a hobby while you're pursuing other jobs even when you're living in Asia even you're living in strange parts of Canada or what have you you'd be surprised if they're open mic nights everywhere they're calm because that'll have you and would stand up you know you don't need a cast and crew you don't need a bunch of costumes if you just have a pen and paper and you write down funny ideas when they come to you you can very very easily keep up you know stand up comedy as a hobby even if you're living in Hong Kong even if you're living in Saskatchewan and other than I've been living in both yeah now one time they he blame himself for his mistakes all he cares doing was letting other people backing him about not doing the right thing you decided to do it you chose to do adult decision you're an adult you did it by myself Joe vegan quit before and he sort of quit again now after saying you would never quit he was going to hold on to a social media presence so on who conflicted guy so when Joe vegan made his latest come back you know some people appreciated his new comedy videos and thought they were very funny you could see that in comment section but a lot of people said wow his new videos are not funny at all you know the spark is gone whatever it was that made the videos funny before was gone and you also saw a few people who were kind of reflecting back on it and saying he's saying well maybe I was wrong all along maybe go vegan never was funny you don't really maybe they remembered it as being funny but it had never had the spark that had never really been worth watching that way so that was interesting to see that range of opinions now I tend to agree I felt the new videos you made he made just a couple of comedy videos in this short-lived come back I agree I don't I don't think they were funny but I think what was missing that can be much more specific isn't just some nebulous notion of a spark it's only the guy lost his talent but you know with all these art forms as with political campaigning I really think it's easy to ignore the role of love in the game you know [Music] when I was involved in comedy I ultimately came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough love for my audience to want to make them laugh you know what I mean and with something like stand up you know some stand-up comedians their persona is harsh and castigating and they ridicule the audience but still the whole engagement with the society you're living in and the people you're making fun of even the people you parody there really has to be a kind of love there you know I maybe that's not the way other people use the word love and the obvious we're not talking about romantic love we're not talking about love in another sense but I mean there really is a sense in which put it this way you can't be making jokes on stage with the attitude and the feeling in your heart of this will keep this will keep those bastards happy you know it can't be a grudging relationship between boss and employee you know I think they're really does have to be a strange sort of love there for the subject matter you're portraying onstage for the audience you're reaching out to the reactions you're getting from the audience it's a very peculiar thing and I had to I do recognize one day I look myself in the mirror you know most of so I wasn't born in Toronto but most of my schooling most of my upbringing was in Toronto Canada and I could look around and talking about white english-speaking Toronto society it is just a culture that I despise it's a culture I don't want to be a part of it's an audience I don't want to cater to what they find funny I don't find funny and want to make a joke that they do find funny I despise that joke and I despised the audience for laughing at you know what i mean and i just realized in terms of my position in that culture in you know white english-speaking toronto canada i would be miserable and that was that the I I just did not have enough love in the game to make to make comedy work for me or for me to work for the audience you know I mean this is something that you have an issue with go vegan you seem to care very much what other people think about you and then affects your life you have to bring nobody but yourself about that you make a decision that's your business and in a weird sense now I mean I'm now teaching University classes of students you know 40 students at a time and it's brought back to my mind so often because you really work the crowd you know sometimes as a teacher being silly and getting the students to laugh and sums you're being serious the dynamics of how you work the crowd I literally I stand behind a podium and then I come down and walk in the audience and talk to people it really reminds me of the experience when I was young being involved the theater and being a vote with comedy and brings back a lot of these reflections to my mind I think a lot of you might not be aware of the extent to which you know Jill vegan when he first started doing comedy I think I was the first person he really did an impersonation of his colleague channel it really did evolve kind of organically so first he started doing this impersonation of me and then there was another turning point the first time he did an impersonation of Charles of the vegan cheetah that was a little bit afraid was a couple weeks later a couple videos later whatever it was but you know so then he had this full stable of impersonations because first he was impersonating me and then he started really putting some effort into impersonating durianrider and having durianrider and me talk to each other did I remember the first time Charles came on camera his impersonation of Charles and then he had a whole stable of characters and people loved it people went nuts and when he first did it the first couple of times you know he didn't have he didn't have a wig he didn't have the bold wig he was just had all of his hair but he just did his kind of wacky impression of a Canadian accent and made up this spontaneous stuff about me but you know in those days when he first got started there was a lot of love in the game he loved veganism as a social movement he loved the content on my channel and he wrote to me to tell me that I got email from him saying how deeply he respected the content on about Michelle how he and his wife have watched the videos together and it really changed their lives and improved their outlook on these political issues and so on how much they appreciated me now I know to an outside that might not be obvious that you know at that time he was ridiculing me but it was ridiculed that came from a place of love and respect and admiration and being passionate about the vegan movement as a whole we can all sit back and laugh at my tiny role in the vegan movement believe me I laugh himself all the time I laugh at the ridiculous you know elements of this but still I mean as harsh or castigating or critical as some of this common may have been those early days it was coming from a place of love and I saw the turning point when he started to really kind of hate me which was before he quit the first time I felt at that point the spark really went out of his comedy the comment that was about me you know maybe it didn't go out of his jokes about during writers into the people i mean i remember another turning point the first time his wife came on camera playing the role of vegan Ava that was the hardest i ever laughed on his channel you know and we suppose expected his wife came out doing this phony Eastern European accent when she first came on I didn't recognize her you know so I thought it was another youtuber but I didn't know who she was and then it clicked oh my god that's his life wearing a wig or whatever you know and wow that that really that really had me forward but all of it all of it I mean it wasn't coming from a place of you know harsh condemnation for the vegan movement there was love in the game ok I think he even had love for her vegan Ava you know it's been epic and I think he did talk he had a mix of love for and hatred for someone like durianrider to you know this is the same guy who had an itch on YouTube bashing up a vegan for entertainment hey channel last year was all about the vegan drama bashing people picking on people calling people out no just embarrassing people to make a good video and that was this is joe vegan the same guy crying about people are backing him you are bashing people to think the people laughing at the videos and the people laughing with the videos for them also there was this sense of veganism being a lofty ambition and then the contrast between that ambition and how absurd these little political squad were you know whatever durianrider is saying that I'm fat or whatever the car it's a techno earth right um that was really I mean it's not about the spark in his eyes that was the light that made the whole thing shine that made the you know the audience so excited about it at the time and people really did get excited and at one point course he had a much smaller audience than I did and then I got to see his audience grow even bigger it's like okay I remember explaining it to my chinese teacher saying you know there's this other channel that does like a weekly show impersonating me because I was a regular character on this show does a fictional first me and the the fictional version of me is more popular than I am you know there are more viewers you're lucky I was explaining that in Chinese device yetiz teacher and having a laugh about it you know it's so it's so absurd but again I really think it's easy to underestimate the extent to which all of that has to come from a place of love and admiration and positive aspirations of the future I think that would be similar I mean look someone like Chris Rock making fun of black radical politics or something you know it can't come from an absolute distaste for you know black left-wing politics there has to be some feeling of you know aspiring to the same things that political movement aspired to or hope for the future you know there's gotta be found love in the game what's adding to me is you know the respect and admiration he had for me is gone needles to say the respected admiration he had for veganism as a concept and a movement is gone and what's left just seems like a bitter angry shell of a man he hates himself he self-loathing because he's a failure and he's even flunked out of veganism apart from [ __ ] out of this particular you know fundraising project and so on and you know you might think that bitterness is a great source for comedy but it's not that's what's really instructed to me about this example I can call missing people gave you money they donated money to you because they want to support another vegan and that's what they thought you were and this ought to do I think we should give the money bags to everyone that donated money to this animal sanctuary that's what I think it just feels like a lot of these people know you're vegan cheetahs your [ __ ] tato avocados you're so vegans it seems like these people were never vegan in the beginning it was just so easy to say I can be vegan anymore clearly this is an adult not taking responsibility for his or her own actions that's what's going on and that's what go vegan is trying to say I'm too much of a coward to blame myself for my mistake this has nothing to do with the vegan community and while I go vegan decides not to be meeting so look as one closing thought about this I made a comment to another youtuber recently because this youtuber was talking on his own channel about taking on a new direction and I said he's a guy who does basically news about stuff that's happening within YouTube I said look you know what the truth is what you're doing really is too safe a YouTube channel that reports on things happening on other YouTube channels is never going to have the edge is never going to have the thrill is never going to have the profundity or the entertainment value of a channel that is actually aspiring to do something impossible you're way better off try to set your sights high try to do something thought impossible try again and again try a hundred times over and you know your greatest failures you can put up on camera put up on put up on YouTube you can upload and I do think that is the light and the light behind what's going on in digital veganism right now however observed our failures may be whether they're on a tiny scale or an enormous scale whether it's a fundraiser to something build a new farm or it's me doing a fundraiser to publish my children's story book I've got the artist on lock you know show the story book has been translated into five languages I've got Japanese Russian Chinese German English this is great project let me know whether it's a tiny project or a huge project whether it's a weight loss fad or a festival and Thailand or you know all of veganism fundamentally is attempting the impossible trying to save the planet trying to make the world a better place trying to convince our own grandparents to give up eating bacon yeah whether it's trying to save one person's life you know as a heart condition but just won't stop eating animal products will start feeding you know cheese and and beef and what have you or it's on the enormous scale of being worried about what's happening to our lakes and rivers air pollution and so on there are so many dimensions to veganism with a sense of scale is just bewildering you know it dwarfs us it makes us feel tiny and powerless and we are every day attempting to do the impossible or we're aspiring to do the impossible whether that's in protest movements are lobbying organizations and that I think is the thrilling energy that makes what we're all doing here on YouTube exciting and inspiring and enjoyable whether you're uploading what I eat in a day videos or bikini videos or grocery shopping videos or comedy videos or like me you want to come on and just talk about your own life experience and politics in your hopes of the future okay guys so let's all try to keep that in mind let's be at peace with the fact there were a bunch of people turn on the computers and want to feel some sense of kinship and community with other people who share that positive aspiration to do the impossible [Music]
back you know some people appreciated his new comedy videos and thought they were very funny you could see that a comment section but a lot of people said wow his new videos are not funny at all you know the spark is gone whatever it was that made the videos funny before was gone comedy was part of my life when I was younger and I really took a turn at one point when I realized it wasn't for me and I'm reminded of you know the factors that went into that decision when I look at the latest collapse of Joe vegan I really think it's easy to underestimate the extent to which all of that has to come from a place of love and admiration and positive aspirations of the future in those days when he first got started there was a lot of love in the game he loved veganism as a social movement he loved the content on my channel and the people laughing with the videos for them also there was this sense of veganism being a lofty ambition and in the contrast between that ambition and how absurd these little political squabbles were you know whatever durianrider saying that I'm fat or whatever the country it's a tech North right the respect and admiration had for veganism as a concept and a movement is gone and what's left just seems like a bitter angry shell of a man you know you might think that bitterness is a great source for comedy but it's not that's what's really instructive Joel vegans video has nothing to do with the YouTube community veganism as a whole this is only an adult crying not taking responsibility for his own actions and there's all mistakes nobody told you to do anything you made a decision and that's it blame yourself not other people stop being a coward give the money back to everyone that donated money to you for this end with sanctuary and if you don't give the money back you are a scammer I've got a few different things on my mind in this video I'm going to talk about comedy and the theater and the strange kind of social engagement those are forms require from you which is Subway's similar to politics in my heart in my mind and I'm going to talk about why I decided not to be involved with theater not to bowl with comedy which I easily could have done my whole life is very different today if I'd stuck with you know stand-up comedy at least so you can easily do as a hobby while you're pursuing other jobs even when you're living in Asia even you're living in strange parts of Canada or what have you you'd be surprised if they're open mic nights everywhere they're calm because that'll have you and would stand up you know you don't need a cast and crew you don't need a bunch of costumes if you just have a pen and paper and you write down funny ideas when they come to you you can very very easily keep up you know stand up comedy as a hobby even if you're living in Hong Kong even if you're living in Saskatchewan and other than I've been living in both yeah now one time they he blame himself for his mistakes all he cares doing was letting other people backing him about not doing the right thing you decided to do it you chose to do adult decision you're an adult you did it by myself Joe vegan quit before and he sort of quit again now after saying you would never quit he was going to hold on to a social media presence so on who conflicted guy so when Joe vegan made his latest come back you know some people appreciated his new comedy videos and thought they were very funny you could see that in comment section but a lot of people said wow his new videos are not funny at all you know the spark is gone whatever it was that made the videos funny before was gone and you also saw a few people who were kind of reflecting back on it and saying he's saying well maybe I was wrong all along maybe go vegan never was funny you don't really maybe they remembered it as being funny but it had never had the spark that had never really been worth watching that way so that was interesting to see that range of opinions now I tend to agree I felt the new videos you made he made just a couple of comedy videos in this short-lived come back I agree I don't I don't think they were funny but I think what was missing that can be much more specific isn't just some nebulous notion of a spark it's only the guy lost his talent but you know with all these art forms as with political campaigning I really think it's easy to ignore the role of love in the game you know [Music] when I was involved in comedy I ultimately came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough love for my audience to want to make them laugh you know what I mean and with something like stand up you know some stand-up comedians their persona is harsh and castigating and they ridicule the audience but still the whole engagement with the society you're living in and the people you're making fun of even the people you parody there really has to be a kind of love there you know I maybe that's not the way other people use the word love and the obvious we're not talking about romantic love we're not talking about love in another sense but I mean there really is a sense in which put it this way you can't be making jokes on stage with the attitude and the feeling in your heart of this will keep this will keep those bastards happy you know it can't be a grudging relationship between boss and employee you know I think they're really does have to be a strange sort of love there for the subject matter you're portraying onstage for the audience you're reaching out to the reactions you're getting from the audience it's a very peculiar thing and I had to I do recognize one day I look myself in the mirror you know most of so I wasn't born in Toronto but most of my schooling most of my upbringing was in Toronto Canada and I could look around and talking about white english-speaking Toronto society it is just a culture that I despise it's a culture I don't want to be a part of it's an audience I don't want to cater to what they find funny I don't find funny and want to make a joke that they do find funny I despise that joke and I despised the audience for laughing at you know what i mean and i just realized in terms of my position in that culture in you know white english-speaking toronto canada i would be miserable and that was that the I I just did not have enough love in the game to make to make comedy work for me or for me to work for the audience you know I mean this is something that you have an issue with go vegan you seem to care very much what other people think about you and then affects your life you have to bring nobody but yourself about that you make a decision that's your business and in a weird sense now I mean I'm now teaching University classes of students you know 40 students at a time and it's brought back to my mind so often because you really work the crowd you know sometimes as a teacher being silly and getting the students to laugh and sums you're being serious the dynamics of how you work the crowd I literally I stand behind a podium and then I come down and walk in the audience and talk to people it really reminds me of the experience when I was young being involved the theater and being a vote with comedy and brings back a lot of these reflections to my mind I think a lot of you might not be aware of the extent to which you know Jill vegan when he first started doing comedy I think I was the first person he really did an impersonation of his colleague channel it really did evolve kind of organically so first he started doing this impersonation of me and then there was another turning point the first time he did an impersonation of Charles of the vegan cheetah that was a little bit afraid was a couple weeks later a couple videos later whatever it was but you know so then he had this full stable of impersonations because first he was impersonating me and then he started really putting some effort into impersonating durianrider and having durianrider and me talk to each other did I remember the first time Charles came on camera his impersonation of Charles and then he had a whole stable of characters and people loved it people went nuts and when he first did it the first couple of times you know he didn't have he didn't have a wig he didn't have the bold wig he was just had all of his hair but he just did his kind of wacky impression of a Canadian accent and made up this spontaneous stuff about me but you know in those days when he first got started there was a lot of love in the game he loved veganism as a social movement he loved the content on my channel and he wrote to me to tell me that I got email from him saying how deeply he respected the content on about Michelle how he and his wife have watched the videos together and it really changed their lives and improved their outlook on these political issues and so on how much they appreciated me now I know to an outside that might not be obvious that you know at that time he was ridiculing me but it was ridiculed that came from a place of love and respect and admiration and being passionate about the vegan movement as a whole we can all sit back and laugh at my tiny role in the vegan movement believe me I laugh himself all the time I laugh at the ridiculous you know elements of this but still I mean as harsh or castigating or critical as some of this common may have been those early days it was coming from a place of love and I saw the turning point when he started to really kind of hate me which was before he quit the first time I felt at that point the spark really went out of his comedy the comment that was about me you know maybe it didn't go out of his jokes about during writers into the people i mean i remember another turning point the first time his wife came on camera playing the role of vegan Ava that was the hardest i ever laughed on his channel you know and we suppose expected his wife came out doing this phony Eastern European accent when she first came on I didn't recognize her you know so I thought it was another youtuber but I didn't know who she was and then it clicked oh my god that's his life wearing a wig or whatever you know and wow that that really that really had me forward but all of it all of it I mean it wasn't coming from a place of you know harsh condemnation for the vegan movement there was love in the game ok I think he even had love for her vegan Ava you know it's been epic and I think he did talk he had a mix of love for and hatred for someone like durianrider to you know this is the same guy who had an itch on YouTube bashing up a vegan for entertainment hey channel last year was all about the vegan drama bashing people picking on people calling people out no just embarrassing people to make a good video and that was this is joe vegan the same guy crying about people are backing him you are bashing people to think the people laughing at the videos and the people laughing with the videos for them also there was this sense of veganism being a lofty ambition and then the contrast between that ambition and how absurd these little political squad were you know whatever durianrider is saying that I'm fat or whatever the car it's a techno earth right um that was really I mean it's not about the spark in his eyes that was the light that made the whole thing shine that made the you know the audience so excited about it at the time and people really did get excited and at one point course he had a much smaller audience than I did and then I got to see his audience grow even bigger it's like okay I remember explaining it to my chinese teacher saying you know there's this other channel that does like a weekly show impersonating me because I was a regular character on this show does a fictional first me and the the fictional version of me is more popular than I am you know there are more viewers you're lucky I was explaining that in Chinese device yetiz teacher and having a laugh about it you know it's so it's so absurd but again I really think it's easy to underestimate the extent to which all of that has to come from a place of love and admiration and positive aspirations of the future I think that would be similar I mean look someone like Chris Rock making fun of black radical politics or something you know it can't come from an absolute distaste for you know black left-wing politics there has to be some feeling of you know aspiring to the same things that political movement aspired to or hope for the future you know there's gotta be found love in the game what's adding to me is you know the respect and admiration he had for me is gone needles to say the respected admiration he had for veganism as a concept and a movement is gone and what's left just seems like a bitter angry shell of a man he hates himself he self-loathing because he's a failure and he's even flunked out of veganism apart from [ __ ] out of this particular you know fundraising project and so on and you know you might think that bitterness is a great source for comedy but it's not that's what's really instructed to me about this example I can call missing people gave you money they donated money to you because they want to support another vegan and that's what they thought you were and this ought to do I think we should give the money bags to everyone that donated money to this animal sanctuary that's what I think it just feels like a lot of these people know you're vegan cheetahs your [ __ ] tato avocados you're so vegans it seems like these people were never vegan in the beginning it was just so easy to say I can be vegan anymore clearly this is an adult not taking responsibility for his or her own actions that's what's going on and that's what go vegan is trying to say I'm too much of a coward to blame myself for my mistake this has nothing to do with the vegan community and while I go vegan decides not to be meeting so look as one closing thought about this I made a comment to another youtuber recently because this youtuber was talking on his own channel about taking on a new direction and I said he's a guy who does basically news about stuff that's happening within YouTube I said look you know what the truth is what you're doing really is too safe a YouTube channel that reports on things happening on other YouTube channels is never going to have the edge is never going to have the thrill is never going to have the profundity or the entertainment value of a channel that is actually aspiring to do something impossible you're way better off try to set your sights high try to do something thought impossible try again and again try a hundred times over and you know your greatest failures you can put up on camera put up on put up on YouTube you can upload and I do think that is the light and the light behind what's going on in digital veganism right now however observed our failures may be whether they're on a tiny scale or an enormous scale whether it's a fundraiser to something build a new farm or it's me doing a fundraiser to publish my children's story book I've got the artist on lock you know show the story book has been translated into five languages I've got Japanese Russian Chinese German English this is great project let me know whether it's a tiny project or a huge project whether it's a weight loss fad or a festival and Thailand or you know all of veganism fundamentally is attempting the impossible trying to save the planet trying to make the world a better place trying to convince our own grandparents to give up eating bacon yeah whether it's trying to save one person's life you know as a heart condition but just won't stop eating animal products will start feeding you know cheese and and beef and what have you or it's on the enormous scale of being worried about what's happening to our lakes and rivers air pollution and so on there are so many dimensions to veganism with a sense of scale is just bewildering you know it dwarfs us it makes us feel tiny and powerless and we are every day attempting to do the impossible or we're aspiring to do the impossible whether that's in protest movements are lobbying organizations and that I think is the thrilling energy that makes what we're all doing here on YouTube exciting and inspiring and enjoyable whether you're uploading what I eat in a day videos or bikini videos or grocery shopping videos or comedy videos or like me you want to come on and just talk about your own life experience and politics in your hopes of the future okay guys so let's all try to keep that in mind let's be at peace with the fact there were a bunch of people turn on the computers and want to feel some sense of kinship and community with other people who share that positive aspiration to do the impossible [Music]