My emails with ex-vegan Brianna Jackfruitson / Brianna Jackson

this video is about the past present and
dubious future of vegan activism it's also with a legacy of one youtuber and vegan activist known as Brianna jackfruits in' she later went on to referring to herself just as Brianna Jackson I am gonna read out the very few emails ahead back and forth with her over the years so the title of this video is not clickbait but I'm also going to address some issues that came up in the comments section in response to my first video that was basically making the announcement something she had announced but I managed to keep quiet that she is in fact no longer vegan she's now evidently eating meat eggs and dairy so here's someone whose life was really touched by Brianna's career here on YouTube broccoli writes in and says what a shame when I went vegan at age 14 Brianna was one of the first social media influencers that really put veganism in my mind being British not much older than myself and also haven't come out of an eating disorder at a young age she struck me as a bit out of my level in terms of confidence and such yet I still believe that her motivations were as genuine as mine despite our similar pasts and one day I hope my life could be as comfortable as her seed so just mentioned something that's not touched on here at all she just described her to be very confident and very appealing in some vague sense so it's not mentioned here was the body I put up a screenshot of my last video some of you were surprised to see of how she presented herself as a as a public figure within veganism she's obviously a very short very slight person but she obviously exercised very rigorously in a very tightly maintained diet and you know probably she could have gotten work as some kind of model maybe modeling you know athletic shoes or something I know she's not you know she's not as tall as most models for example but still probably should go into a talent agency during that time of life you probably could have gotten modeling work and there's no doubt that our influence on people like this at age 14 was in significant part due to her her appearance in her Fitness even so I quickly grew bored of her vapid monotonous fruit meals yeah pause on that word that I wish it were pronounced vape it but it's not the word is vapid not vape it I wish it were vapid I wish I would wear the other way around but what about quickly grew bored of her vapid monotonous fruit meals as they grew into veganism nevermind the fact that her channel stagnated for lack of a better term it breaks my heart to see how Breanna has become to think I ever wanted to meet her at a meet-up I'm not surprised she's still out of that she's still a lot of meeting fans in parks and public viewing events she always struck me as a bit overconfident and judging by her Instagram posts she now seems just recklessly cocky and it's become clear to me that there was nothing genuine about her ugh so at this point I'm gonna pop in a brief video clip showing you the type of slacktivism or activism the brand was known for and of course it's especially ironic because in this clip she's criticizing someone for being ex vegan and now she isn't excavating herself I used to use the whole argument of Oh circle of life oh well we're not lions oh just because - he doesn't mean we have to eat it according to our basic physiology you know Nick was talking earlier about biology and about how we are clearly omnivorous but honestly just looking at a simple diagram and you know comparing ourselves again to carnivores and omnivores and seeing that they have giant claws to be able to rip apart an animal and sharp fangs to be able to dig into their flesh and just eat their bloody meat you know organs spilling everywhere and blood running all down their face it's very very obvious that if we were out in the wild and we saw a deer we would not be able to hunt down a deer like a lion could you know it's just like people like to say that we have sharp teeth like honestly for like that could dig into a deer and I could eat it alive and moreover that I would actually enjoy eating that raw flesh again blood spilling all down my face without cooking it with that without adding any seasonings or spices to it like it and everyone else please honestly ask yourself would you actually enjoy that we don't have four chambered stomachs to digest plant matter like cows do or horses well we are humans we are not cows and we are not horses and you know it's just very obvious that we are not designed to eat me just by comparing our digestive tract to that of an omnivore or a carnivore right it doesn't matter how many calories of sardines I eat if there's no vitamin C in sardines I'm not getting it he feels like he might be deficient in something and he feels like he may be lacking in certain nutrients but as far as I am aware he hasn't been specific about the certain nutrients that he feels like he's lacking it does that mean that because I am vegan I know I'm lacking vitamin D and therefore the vegan diet is unhealthy no it's because you know humans are not designed to live in cold climates you know we're meant to have sunlight all year round but because the way that society is shaped right now and the fact that I was born in England and I don't really want to move away that means that I don't get sunlight all year round and it's in my best interests to take a supplement and again that does not mean that I am unhealthy or that the vegan diet is not the correct diet for humans just because I'm lacking in vitamin D so this is the other issue a lot of people wanted to dispute with me Derek Walter writes in how can she feel better when she's so much fatter now and we get us somewhat abstract and philosophical response from this commenter who's NEMA will not attempt to pronounce okay I was probably getting over invested overly invested when at first I had only been trying to point out that for all we know her body mass index is not over 25 let alone 30 I also guess if you put yourself out there on the internet the way Branagh does you should be prepared for some people being being dicks being mean and triggering you whether you struggle with an eating disorder or not thanks for your openness though have a nice day or a nice evening assume you live in America and this guy writes back and says hey I appreciate you're trying to turn this into something more profound but I was just being a jerk I was just being a dick no look guys I do not think that putting in the hours to optimize your physical appearance is the best use of your time as a human being on planet this this person already know who this is this is a vegan who posted progress pictures on Instagram and I saw it because another Instagram account linked to it or featured at the difference between these two bodies the before-and-after picture how many hundreds of hours of hard work can be justified by this difference in your appearance or this difference in your level of health or this difference in your level of strength here's a well-known vegan diet and exercise guru Stephanie naturally Stephanie and this is her before and after now in her case to estimate how many hundreds of hours how many thousands of hours she's put in at the gym between this before picture and this after picture unbelievable now in either case if you think about that time on what you could have done with it Stephanie here could have learned Latin she could have learned Greek she could have learned Russian she probably could have learned Chinese in the amount of time and effort she put into developing her body now we all have to ask this about ourselves is it worth it is it worth the sacrifice is it worth the loss of time and talent to develop your body especially when you're looking at these kinds of contrasts so I was by no means suggesting that you know like Brianna when you look at her before-and-after pictures that she's beholden to try to maintain this appearance forever at any cost you know people even if it wasn't that she went from vegan to X vegan if she just went from being a vegan who was training a lot of the gym to being a vegan who was studying chemistry in university and need to spend all her time really studying chemistry and couldn't couldn't exercise that much and couldn't diet that's true so I'm really not some kind of advocate that everyone should try to maintain a fitness models appearance and in my own life you know fair's fair this is a picture of me being out of shape by my standards in this picture I'm out of shape but the difference in appearance we meet being out of shape and me being in shape this image is obviously a minute meant as a joke this is me joking around but when this picture was taken I was doing 200 push-ups a day every day I was going to the gym twice a day I was working very hard for the very slight difference in appearance that you see between these two photos and for me from my perspective I'm not doing it for the appearance I'm motivated by other things but other considerations but again look at these other young women how much time and how much effort it can possibly be just for this hey I'm open to the possibility obviously Breanna is not beholden to to maintaining that level of fitness we all have other priorities and most of us really have better things to worry about better things do the time so that's cool the problem is in this case when I'm drawing attention to at what the reason for my putting those photos in the video is to draw attention to the contrast between the claims she's making about feeling better about her quitting veganism being somehow related to her health it's like well you may say you feel better but looking at it objectively from the outside it really does not look like you're healthier now than you were when you were a vegan fitness model so this is an interesting little example my dialogue with Brianna this is way back in the year 2015 and you can tell from the way this started that she and I were already speaking so we had talked to each other in a vegan youtubers forum and I don't remember the conversation probably both of us were giving compliments to a third person I was probably somebody with a video that we both said was a good video we're both chatting about it was a Facebook group for vegan YouTube content creators and back in those days people were more collaborative more encouraging to one another so she and I started talking there and then I sent her a direct message saying hey I just made a video about veganism myself for the first time in nine years that's a very memorable very strange video for me I had no idea how to do lighting properly so the lighting and image quality is absolutely awful but hey I was just drawing it easy to work and she replies really interesting video exclamation point I totally relate to that frustration sometimes but I've learned I can only do what I feel is right and will help benefit the movement I do think vegan communities exist though there are lots of meetups and groups of friends and families who come together and try to fit the mission veganism so this is again worth hearing worth remembering at one time she was someone who was really sincerely concerned about the future of the vegan movement as I said in my first video she really was a significant person yeah both in digital slacktivism and in real world activism that's how I remember her and that memory is preserved here and this little old Allegan so then whatever a year or more goes by I wrote to her again saying hi Brianna I just reread this message because I was searching my message history for another friend with the name Jackson so Wow things have really changed since 2015 for both of us too bad we didn't meet in Chiangmai I think I left before you arrived oh so we were both there we were both there within the same within the same month or something maybe we'll cross paths sometimes I really do try to build bridges with all kinds of vegans who might only have a few things in common with and as you know anyone who gets kicked out of the fruit festival is a friend of mine so this is also interesting for you guys who may think I don't reach out positively to other vegans on YouTube whether vegan activists or YouTube content raters this is an example that and then the last attempt I had to write to or was this one this must be another year or later more more than a year later I wrote to her and said you know these are some pictures of a simpler time in my life baking college were enrolled to learn to become vegan bakers bread cakes etc a career that only interests me because of veganism so yes being a baker has occurred that only interested me because of vegan activism or as a form of veganism and she responded to that message by blocking me on Facebook though it wasn't in a position or way it is quite possible that when that message was sent she already knew that she was either quitting than being in a moment or that she was going to go back to eating me it is what it is people the past present and future of the vegan movement talent is scarce and it's a goddamn shame that so much of the money support and interest has gone behind some of the people who had the least talent the least potential to really positively benefit the movement who had the least sincere interest in building of the movement over the long-term future so we've talked about a number of prominent ex vegans on this channel in every case you have to wonder what if that's support what if that incentive not just financial support not just financial incentive what if that positive attention cooperation collaboration from both real world activists and digital what have that that had gone behind somebody somewhere who was sincerely thinking about the long-term future of the movement who was really trying to do something positive for the animals for the environment for human ethics for human health for all the rest of it a lot of people have been betting on the wrong horse again and again and again and in the year 2019 I feel like most of us have gotten tired of running around the same old track guys I hope someone in this audience can reach out to me and give me some hope some optimism for the future the vegan movement because I'm running on empty right now from my little apartment in town I have none at all nobody has done anything or said anything to me to offer me any optimism about the future of this movement I wish I could quit I wish I could but I can't so [Music]