Vegan Youtube "Activism": the Politics of Performance, the Future of an Illusion.
09 December 2016 [link youtube]
The mask becomes the face.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
if you guys been watching this channel
for any length of time you have probably heard me say that what we do here on YouTube is simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing in the world um there's a lot to that there's a lot to unpack there and I think about that more and more now because so many of the people who are part of the generation of youtubers who came on who broke into this digital demi-monde of aspiring vegan activist who came on at the same time as me more more than we're dropping out some of them are quitting entirely some of them are deleting their channels some of them have just lost their taste for the game so their channel kind of sits there in limbo but you can tell the heart's just not in it they're no longer in the struggle they're no longer dreaming that dream and no more granite to win it now back when I first started this channel people used to ask me a lot of questions about real activism about real activists and people including me to some extent we're seeking out real activism and real activists on YouTube is very natural we're all seeking something real and we're all responding to getting excited about something real again this part of that dynamic of simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing um but something I've been up front about all along and that I still got to say day after day is that YouTube is not activism I don't mean that in a bad way the positive aspect of that is that I feel that what we're doing here on YouTube can create a foundation for future right it could be a basis for real activism in the future the many ways the debates were having right now on YouTube are a beautiful prelude to a real political movement and no political movement in history of the world has ever had this kind of preparation if you think there was ever this kind of open-ended democratic discussion when people were first organizing a labor union or when people were first organizing anti-war protests in the 1960s or when the various fractious and infighting groups pursuing feminist goals or pursuing you know advancement of african-americans rights or black people there was nothing like this for any other movement is through the world so even if you see this as a prelude to activism and not real activism itself it's still a beautiful thing and I mean the sense in which i think it's baffling too many members of the audience and many people even participating in it maybe who are coming on camera is the extent to which what we're doing is performance and even perform its art and yet at the same time is very much about our real feelings are real convictions or real aspirations are real sorrows or real struggles etc what we're doing here is performance but its performance with a purpose now one of the illustrations of this for me and some people get it and some people don't and some people never will was that so many people my audience just freaked out when I defended Sorcha merova so there's no point recapitulating what happened but the point was what I understood implicitly but profoundly when I was watching sources videos which I'm not a fan of and not particularly glorifying defending but whenever I saw Sorcha on the internet I recognize that what she is doing is a performance it's a type of performance now it doesn't mean she's an actress reading a script it doesn't mean she's playing a character it's completely different from who she is in real life to a very real extent what she does in these videos like where she was ridiculing PewDiePie where she was starting these kind of online disputes to a very real extent the character she's portraying overlaps with who she really is maybe it's an exaggeration of certain aspects of her character it's a caricature it's a self-parody but what she's doing is very much a performance and I completely understood that and it baffled me that other people were condemning her as a radical as an extremist or actually thinking she was crazy actually thinking she was insane on the basis of this performance they did not understand as performance now several people not a huge number but several people have sent me emails since then thanking me for that video and each of those emails is are on the same lines there people wrote you said this is a summary but this is really close with it said look when I first heard your video defending Sorcha I thought you'd lost your mind I they say back at that time I thought Sorcha actually was insane actually was out of control action was bad for the vegan movement and I thought you liked they thought oh I was out of touch with reality because ever guarded sources as portraying a character as doing something phony and fun and provocative that wasn't real and then they say with some variations they've later seen Sorcha on live streams or had conversations with her they've somehow interacted with her and it really sunk in for them that what I was saying was true and not not just a little bit true this was you know in a profound and important way really true that what they were seeing on YouTube this is a performance and again the interesting thing is I mean performance doesn't mean it's entirely fake doesn't mean it's imaginary doesn't mean it's it's totally separate from your real life I think what we do on YouTube in a really dynamic way still is part of our real lives it still is about our real lives and yet in this weird way it's not real life there was something completely parallel again somebody I don't really defend somebody who's gone dead and not really a fan of is vegan gains now one reason i'm not a fan of it is just some of its the thematically it's not about stuff that needs me i don't care about MMA I don't care about video games a lot of the studies into it's just stuff i don't i don't care for um a lot of people freaked out back when I defended him again in a very parallel way where people thought vegan gains was insane they thought he was bad for the movement they thought he was doing was toxic and causing a conflict and dissension what have you and like the people who really thought he wasn't saying I said to them know I really think he's very psychologically normal especially knowing his background as I do he comes from Toronto a lot of the things about him that I know um I said I regard him as psychologically normal but I regard what he's doing as a kind of performance and you you in the audience are really wrong if you're drawing psychological conclusions you're engaging in a kind of amateur psychoanalysis on the basis of a script performance of him playing a character again is the character totally different from who he is in real life no I think in some ways he is really engaging again the closest thing is self-parody I mean like when vegan gains talks about how much he hates babies how much he hates children obviously to some extent it's true and to some extent he's actually ridiculing himself he's not just exaggerating that tendency in his character he's actively making fun of himself so again I understood that so in many ways I understood the way in which what I was seeing on the internet was simultaneously very real and very fake and look guys this applies to me as well I mean what I do on camera I just uploaded a very passionate 30 minute video talking basically about gender equality kind of my first wave feminist view of the world i'm not a third wave feminist but i got some compliments from woman viewers saying that what i was dying but was real feminism the flattery by saying that my perspective was really feminist in meaningful sense okay thank you i can take a common uh you know in that video I'm quite passionate and quite pissed off at several points I do laugh at myself I mean I do there's an element of self-parody I'm aware of how ridiculous it is is this real or is this fake I mean there is a sense in which it still is a performance in real life you would never sit down with someone sit down with a friend and again this stuff is all unscripted it's amaze me some people still think my videos are scripted 100% unscripted 1% spontaneous and talk for 30 minutes solo with passion and conviction and emotion on a topic like that that you care about never happens in real life right and again if there's this weird line you walk where it's simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing in the world I really feel that way and actually at some points in that video just using this example because the most recent video uploaded you know I cut myself off I was going to talk more about personal experiences and personal convictions and personal emotional gauging the issue it's like okay let's let's let's get back let's get back on track um and yet you know if somebody washed this stuff and thought i was actually emotionally out of control as with Sorcha maariv as with vegan gains I'd have to say them don't you realize there's a theatrical element to this don't you realize there's a heightened life element to this there's a sense in which all of this stuff just because it is being performed on camera um that's that's I guess the dynamism of what we do here on YouTube it's simultaneously so real and so fake it's about my real life and yet it's not my real life it's a part of my real life and yet it never will be real life right um so I'm going to read here a little interaction I had today really spontaneously written a message I sent somebody on the internet back back and forth but I sent this to somebody come back to the first issue I mentioned sentenced to somebody who has basically quit vegan YouTube he's lost he's lost the aspirations lost the dream you know and pause an f1 saying there's so many reasons to quit but something else is saying earlier I want to come back to you and I'm coming back to it now if you were here for real activism then that in itself is a reason to quit although what I said before is positive and saying this is not real activism but this can set a basis for real activism by the same token it's not real activism so if that was what you're looking for it's not here and I totally understand why the people who are realized this either quit or minimize their engagement with this medium because this is not real active and never going to be right you on the other hand if you're after a real Fame or real money there are all kinds of reasons why people get involved in this and then they lose their belief in that they believe they lose their passion for that and they quit and again to refer back to the last video I put up on this channel it's more than 30 minutes long but at the end i talk about my real motivations for being here which again it's very real it's very sincere and i say look i'm in this for the movement the reason why I'm doing this it is a performance but it's a performance with a purpose you know the only reason I'm coming online and talking to you for 30 about feminism gender equality and he sells rich shoes even though it may seem like a stretch believe me it's not for money it's not for fame it's and again it's not activism but I'm doing it for the movement and in my mind from my perspective I'm doing that for a movement that does not even exist yet so i wrote to this dude dude on youtube and i said it's sad man you lost the will i lost the will for certain types of but not for youtube I've still got the will for this YouTube thing man YouTube is a lot realer and a lot more rewarding than all the I was dealing with before academia charity work etc so he writes back to me I'm leaving him anonymous he is Rebecca me said what does it matter if you want to do YouTube or not I replied it changes everything in my life man I'm moving to doe Hong moving up to the border with Myanmar I'm moving the I'm moving to Hong without a single friend in the world I'm moving there with nothing but my backpack a bread machine and 140 kilograms of weights I'm going to be extremely alone in a place where nobody speaks English youtube means a lot to me I don't front at some point Bruce Wayne became a fake persona and Batman became who the guy really was he's really Batman but he pretends to be Bruce Wayne when I'm teaching classes in a university in China do you think I'm being Batman or do you think I'm being Bruce Wayne when I'm talking this talk on YouTube do you think I'm being Batman or do you think I'm being Bruce Wayne the mask becomes the face now I wrote that in about 10 seconds and I didn't think anything about it I did other stuff in my room I'm packing up now to leave town and what back and looked at it was like you know something there for even me to think about as I say what I do here is a kind of performance and thus in some sense it never can be real it's like there's a difference between talking about philosophy and philosophy this difference between talking about politics and politics difference been talking about activism and activism and there's a difference between performance and you know a real relationship real conversation real anything right but then there are other contrast we have to consider what you get from me here on YouTube even though it is heightened life even though it's more emotional it's kind of exaggerated it's more of a performance like you know if I was sitting with you in a cafe talking about feminism the conversation would go that way for one thing I'd listen to you all week just talk for the head sab you know but you know the level of intensity the level of emotion even the level of stupidity because part of what I do here is satirical and humorous I've you know I've been to laughing a lot on camera sometimes I cry on camera right maybe later in this video breakdown weeping watch for it oh you know in so many ways you can say that this is unreal or this is merely performance but compared to what if you actually came to the University when I'm teaching class who is that guy who is the guy standing there at the podium teaching a class in university context in some ways it's the real me and in some ways it's not and most of you people watching this video no matter what job you do you probably have a job or eight hours a day are you Batman or are you Bruce Wayne when you're on the job no matter what your job is you know and to some extent do you even know or do you have to switch between a public and a private persona and the really crazy thing about YouTube is that anyone who knows me in my fake identity by professional identity who knows me in the slightly phony way I live my life when I'm earning my living they can come on YouTube anytime and see the other side of me right it's up here on the Internet forever I'm going to be teaching classes in China any one of my co-workers any one of the other professors can come on youtube and watch these videos and see who I really am in a sense is it Batman or is it Bruce Wayne right any one of my students can come on the internet and see me criticizing freely and durianrider see me talking about effective activism can see me talking to university students I have some some videos on your mom talking to university students but what I'm talking about vegan activism I'm not talking them at all the way I talk to them when I'm on the job I'm actually talking about how to change the world terms of ecology human rights uh animal rights etc etc so in a sense they'll see a totally different man on youtube and my students can come online my course and they can see my shirtless selfies right I've got fitness videos showing you with my shirt off flexing my muscles right all that's out here and again simultaneously in some ways it's the realest and the biggest thing in the world but that is how I play it when I talk about keeping it real I think it's really worthwhile to reflect this is one of the ways in which keeping it real goes right in choosing to keep it so real with you guys that's the only thing it that makes it possible for as I say for the mask to become the face then in a very real sense i'm sharing who i really am even though it's maybe a more emotional more performative version who i really am and it's a side of me that my co-workers at work would never see that my teacher here at the school when i'm a student whenever sings I'm both the teacher and a student you know what I mean and that's a beautiful thing if you're strong enough to take it we've had a whole bunch of videos here lately talking with people who have serious emotional disorders serious intellectual impairments a serious psychological disorder like anorexia and bulimia and some of those people probably the smartest decision for them not to do this not to come neither and share their lives because of the risk they're putting themselves at there are risks for the movement that's all just risk for them personally right now Batman has been mentioned a lot on this channel the matter of fact in older videos talking about the concept of justice and social justice in terms of how that interacts with activism and veganism and animal rights I've often challenged people and saying look we can't think about justice in the way popular culture icons like Batman lead us to think about justice we can't think about justice in terms of revenge there he is I mean you know Batman is a image of Justice linked to morning and bereavement and sorrow and you know he's never ending quest to solve problems with his fists it's laughable and yet you know we all take it seriously Batman is a major influential cultural icon um I wanted from day one to be really honest here about the sorrow and the anguish that's behind my veganism and not to present a phony face of being so happy and so energized and Joe I wanted to break away from the fruitarian illusion that life was wonderful and that the innocent made you so happy and you know just tell this story for me it is not at all about a notion of justice it's not about notion of revenge but I think there is a much simpler and more fundamental notion that that probably does relate to the fact that I was brainwashed by comic books as a child like everyone else it does in some level I think tap into my own notion of you know human dignity and right and wrong some other vegans do criticize me for this behavior but you know to me this really this really relates to the ethic behind veganism and even the ethic behind what I'm doing here in the digital vegan demi-monde when I was walking on the street the other day things like this have happened many times in China there was yet another car barging its way through a bunch of pedestrians right so this is like the car is basically crashing into people at low speed to break the rules and get through the intersection 30 seconds faster right not that interesting story all kinds of people on this block on this at this intersection all kinds of people there who can't stand up for themselves there are women holding babies there are elderly people there are people from different ages and stages of life there are people there who either can't stand up for themselves or who feel that they can't stand up themselves and when a car like this basically threatens to run them over to barge its way through the pedestrians were crossing the street a lot of them just slink out of the way and I don't this particular case the other day i slam my fist down on the hood of the car that was dead center the car was running into me just running into me at slow speed and I didn't do that to damage the car but I put my fist down on the car to make that noise because you know it's hollow gives a bigger gets the driver's attention and driver was doing that thing a lot of drivers when they're doing something wrong they kind of don't want to look at you they want to pretend like they don't see you dude I'm huge I'm 6 foot 3 i'm over 200 pounds i'm standing dead center in front of your car you're gonna pretend you don't see me and you know i made this noise but putting my fist down on his car and i looked him straight in the eye the driver not gonna say he can't run me over he can but i'm not going to make it easy for him I'm not gonna lie down and die and i'm not gonna slink out of the way i'm not going to jump out of his way if he wants to kill me okay but i'm not going down without a fight and I know there are all kinds of people right there on that street where then who can't do that because they're carrying their baby or they're too old they're too weak or they don't have the confidence in terms of male beat may be dealing with the cops if it happens afterwards I mean if if if that did come to a fight which I knew it wouldn't i can see i could see through the windshield this guy wasn't going to enough to me um but if it came to a fight guess what I tell the cops yeah I crashing to me he intentionally hit me with his car what do you expect gonna happen I'll mine haha I'm front spending a few weeks in the Chinese prison either do me a world of good language immersion you know fine now again I'm bringing this back the contrast is Batman I'm not actually doing that out of anger I'm not doing that out of a sense of revenge I'm not doing it even under the sense of my own dignity like this driver you have to respect me i'm actually doing it because i want this driver to respect everyone I don't just want him to not run over me I don't just want him to not run over the guy who's big enough and tough enough to threaten to kick his ass if he doesn't put on the brakes when he knows he's wrong and he knows he should just wait for the light to change I want him to respect everyone including or especially the people who can't stand up for themselves and on a really deep level I do think that's behind veganism veganism as opposed to reduce at arianism veganism as opposed to just vaguely donating money to Greenpeace or the green party being ecologically aware but still eating milk and animal products now on that when you say no you know if I don't stand up for the cows who live and die their whole lives in a world of steel and concrete who will okay I've met people I've talked about this before I've met people who are physically disabled and they've got to eat whatever the nurse in the hospital gives them I've met people i know people now who are in hospital with different conditions and they got to eat whatever the hospital they don't have a choice either that or they try to find a new hospital right there are people who are on military service in a submarine and they got to eat whatever food the military gives them in the submarine whatever okay there are people I'm not any of those people if I don't stand up there are other people on that block crossing that street who can step if I don't stand up who will okay and I look at all you look at all you and ask that question I look at the other people in my school the other students i look at my teachers say why don't you stand up for what's right if you know if you can pull this is right and that this is a meal I don't know compared to compared to punching a car that's trying to run you over refusing to eat dairy milk refusing to eat yogurt it's not that much to ask it's not it's not that much of a risk you don't have to be that tough a guy to say even if i'm going to go hungry i'm not going to compromise i'm not going to eat this that I know is bad for the ecology the planet it's bad for the animals even bad phone health all right you don't take that stand in the grocery store or restaurant it's not asking that much and most of these people who are conformists are cowards and with that example with the car when I looked into the eyes of the driver he had his girlfriend or his wife next to him in the next seat and I could read his face like a book I've lived in Chinese culture for a long time so I'm very used to reading expressions trans people's faces the expression on his face was exactly one of fear and in a sense guilt because he knew he was in the wrong terms what he was doing with his car and of not wanting to let his girlfriend see yo of not wanting to let his girlfriend see that he was terrified of me and of what I was going to do next if I was going to come over to his window or what and of course he stopped he stopped he stopped his car me stop slow mo winning people over this this intersection and you know um just say I mean it's connect this is not experienced by once a night experiences like this you know roughly similar many many times open in China and I fool I've had I've had some experience that were worse in Canada actually you know um but here here in China now a couple of weeks ago there's I really got emotional hit by it because it's linked to this it's linked to this kind of normal not quite daily struggle as part of my life but you know I just saw a guy walking down the road actually one of the same roads you guys have seen on camera on this channel you know really messed up Road where you got a-you got motorcycles almost crashing into you and it's just a messed up road here this construction going on is it there was a blind man walking down that same Road well I walk all the time and you could tell right away he wasn't just someone who lost said he was blind blind from birth and he had the he had the walking stick and he had another walking stick coming out of his backpack with a red flag on it you know to try to make him more visible try to prevent cars and motorcycles from just barging into and you know you know as modest and miserable and ineffectual as our little ways are of standing up for what's right not everybody can do it I can can you I got I got a piece of fan mail that got to me a little bit from a guy i do really regard as very smart as way enough if I thought it was an idiot I'd say he's an idiot guys you know that about me I got a piece of fan mail from another vegan who I do regard as highly intelligent and he said to me straight up he said the reason why he supports me you know in my career my long term aspirations to eventually get involved with real activism with you know veganism as a real movement as we hope it exists in the futures of movement he he said straight up that the reason why he supports me is that he feels that he's not smart enough to do what I do you know here on YouTube I know I'm knows if he said more than that this message obviously but he said he really had these high hopes for my future as a political leader and veganism because he knows he can't do what I'm already doing and what he sees in my future for me being capable of doing you know he has these these aspirations for me so it's you know it's a meaningful emo he's you know he's not a stranger he's been following my career on YouTube here for for a couple of years something and you know you got to sit there and look at that and look in the mirror and look back at all these issues you know the realness and the fakeness and the potential and the hopelessness of what we're all doing here on YouTube in some ways in rehearsing you know a political and social movement a rehearsal for you know this movement that doesn't yet exist I think that one of the beautiful things about veganism is that you don't need to be very intelligent to do it you don't need to be brilliant in a sense you don't even need to be courageous or strong this is something almost everybody can do and that's why I feel so comfortable preaching it you know i dont preach rock climbing who can do rock climbing a tiny magnifier I don't even page riding a bicycle not everybody can rap let's go this feel there's so many things added on to veganism that i dont preach but i do feel like veganism is for everybody or it's for almost everybody if you're not on that desert island you know etc etc and veganism is such a simple idea a child can understand it a child can understand the reasons why we do it you know that's not true of a lot of other political and ethical claims when have you um you know we were just looking at these excuses made today by vegan cheetah formerly a supporter of this channel now someone who hates it where he was saying that veganism is not possible and is not practical and we should be accepting of people who can't do it people who eat meat once a week or once a month or once a day or whatever that we should be broadening veganism to be to be more accepting of people and you know I see it in the exact diametric opposite way exactly what I'm interested in is meeting people who are good enough and smart enough and strong enough to take that stand whether they find it difficult or whether they find it easy and in a real sense none of us know what it takes um none of us know what it takes because veganism is still so much in the experimental stage nobody would have said from day one that you know like the major debates within veganism would have been masturbation versus no fap can you guys remember that within the last two years that tour the vegan community apart Matt you know masturbation versus the no-fat movement that it would be bicycles versus no bicycles these little you know anorexics versus not in a very crazy crazy debates within veganism but I mean in practice as this can of tomato soup rolls down the staircase step by step you know we get to see who's got what it takes and who don't I said from day one with the core challenge during writer I had absolutely no confidence that I would win the case at absa no confidence there would be outcomes but it was nevertheless so important to do the right thing to at least put in the paperwork and now we've had six months of litigation you know with no with Noel come and it's still totally possible that this is going to end after months and months of litigation with no come it's totally possible but you know at that time I got fan mail from the people who themselves were also victimized by during writer and he wanted to do what I did who wanted to stand up to him but they couldn't they couldn't or they felt they couldn't or they didn't write and you know if anyone had asked off off the bat if any way that started from a blank piece of paper what does it take for vegans to get off their asses and get organized as a movement absolutely nobody would have drawn up a schematic diagram of what's gone on here on YouTube in the last two years and I hate to say it but I was reading even more academic publications lately for veganism if you think that the debates within YouTube are crazy the stuff going on in the peer-reviewed academic literature is crazier it's worse the supposedly respectable world of animal rights activism is a nuthouse it's for another video man and authority cough it down by the other videos it's it's worse it's way more out of touch with reality um that's really my message for this video I think it's easy for people to lose sight it that's why people quit YouTube that's what people quit the movement people lose the hope and aspirations for they came on here and start doing this in the first place on that most basic level at some point in your life you realize the difference between right and wrong and what it means for your diet and what it means for industrialized agriculture and all the rest of it and something in you wanted to come on the internet and share that part of your life and in some ways it's real and in some ways it's fake it's already talked about at length but that that's part of who you really are and your co-workers never get to see it and probably a lot of your family members never get to see it maybe your grandparents maybe your brothers and sisters in terms of why you care about veganism why you want to see veganism progresses and movement um and in terms of that long slow sense of outrage that you carry with you every day of your life maybe nobody else ever sees it maybe your own boyfriend of your own girlfriend doesn't see it if you're in a relationship with someone who eats meat you know um you know that rage and that aspiration for a better tomorrow at some point you even if your channel is the phoniest on YouTube that made you want to pick up a camera and come out here and talk um that sense of I want to stand up and be counted you know don't ever lose touch with that because if you're here for the money there's no money if you're for the thing here's the thing if you're even here for activism there's almost no activism this is a hollow as a drum right but that's still something really real and like I said in that message you know my life I've dealt with extreme isolation when I was dealing with living Cambodia living in Laos living whatever but there's also a sense in which doesn't matter maybe I moved to Hong and I make five or ten great friends I assure you even if I make those friends and their local Chinese people don't speak English whatever that the story is there's a sense in which they will never know me they will never know who I really am even to that weird extent to which you guys if you've watched a few of these long videos you do know who I really am and even if the only thing we share is that aspiration to live in a world where the economy isn't dominated by this deeply immoral and ecologically destructive and nutritionally unnecessary industry the slaughterhouse and even if that is the only thing we share I've just got to beg you to look past all the all of the mutual hatred that so totally defines what we do here on YouTube and think about where you're going to be five years from now and 10 years from now because I want to be there with you Marty cut the lights that's a wrap that's a hard out
for any length of time you have probably heard me say that what we do here on YouTube is simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing in the world um there's a lot to that there's a lot to unpack there and I think about that more and more now because so many of the people who are part of the generation of youtubers who came on who broke into this digital demi-monde of aspiring vegan activist who came on at the same time as me more more than we're dropping out some of them are quitting entirely some of them are deleting their channels some of them have just lost their taste for the game so their channel kind of sits there in limbo but you can tell the heart's just not in it they're no longer in the struggle they're no longer dreaming that dream and no more granite to win it now back when I first started this channel people used to ask me a lot of questions about real activism about real activists and people including me to some extent we're seeking out real activism and real activists on YouTube is very natural we're all seeking something real and we're all responding to getting excited about something real again this part of that dynamic of simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing um but something I've been up front about all along and that I still got to say day after day is that YouTube is not activism I don't mean that in a bad way the positive aspect of that is that I feel that what we're doing here on YouTube can create a foundation for future right it could be a basis for real activism in the future the many ways the debates were having right now on YouTube are a beautiful prelude to a real political movement and no political movement in history of the world has ever had this kind of preparation if you think there was ever this kind of open-ended democratic discussion when people were first organizing a labor union or when people were first organizing anti-war protests in the 1960s or when the various fractious and infighting groups pursuing feminist goals or pursuing you know advancement of african-americans rights or black people there was nothing like this for any other movement is through the world so even if you see this as a prelude to activism and not real activism itself it's still a beautiful thing and I mean the sense in which i think it's baffling too many members of the audience and many people even participating in it maybe who are coming on camera is the extent to which what we're doing is performance and even perform its art and yet at the same time is very much about our real feelings are real convictions or real aspirations are real sorrows or real struggles etc what we're doing here is performance but its performance with a purpose now one of the illustrations of this for me and some people get it and some people don't and some people never will was that so many people my audience just freaked out when I defended Sorcha merova so there's no point recapitulating what happened but the point was what I understood implicitly but profoundly when I was watching sources videos which I'm not a fan of and not particularly glorifying defending but whenever I saw Sorcha on the internet I recognize that what she is doing is a performance it's a type of performance now it doesn't mean she's an actress reading a script it doesn't mean she's playing a character it's completely different from who she is in real life to a very real extent what she does in these videos like where she was ridiculing PewDiePie where she was starting these kind of online disputes to a very real extent the character she's portraying overlaps with who she really is maybe it's an exaggeration of certain aspects of her character it's a caricature it's a self-parody but what she's doing is very much a performance and I completely understood that and it baffled me that other people were condemning her as a radical as an extremist or actually thinking she was crazy actually thinking she was insane on the basis of this performance they did not understand as performance now several people not a huge number but several people have sent me emails since then thanking me for that video and each of those emails is are on the same lines there people wrote you said this is a summary but this is really close with it said look when I first heard your video defending Sorcha I thought you'd lost your mind I they say back at that time I thought Sorcha actually was insane actually was out of control action was bad for the vegan movement and I thought you liked they thought oh I was out of touch with reality because ever guarded sources as portraying a character as doing something phony and fun and provocative that wasn't real and then they say with some variations they've later seen Sorcha on live streams or had conversations with her they've somehow interacted with her and it really sunk in for them that what I was saying was true and not not just a little bit true this was you know in a profound and important way really true that what they were seeing on YouTube this is a performance and again the interesting thing is I mean performance doesn't mean it's entirely fake doesn't mean it's imaginary doesn't mean it's it's totally separate from your real life I think what we do on YouTube in a really dynamic way still is part of our real lives it still is about our real lives and yet in this weird way it's not real life there was something completely parallel again somebody I don't really defend somebody who's gone dead and not really a fan of is vegan gains now one reason i'm not a fan of it is just some of its the thematically it's not about stuff that needs me i don't care about MMA I don't care about video games a lot of the studies into it's just stuff i don't i don't care for um a lot of people freaked out back when I defended him again in a very parallel way where people thought vegan gains was insane they thought he was bad for the movement they thought he was doing was toxic and causing a conflict and dissension what have you and like the people who really thought he wasn't saying I said to them know I really think he's very psychologically normal especially knowing his background as I do he comes from Toronto a lot of the things about him that I know um I said I regard him as psychologically normal but I regard what he's doing as a kind of performance and you you in the audience are really wrong if you're drawing psychological conclusions you're engaging in a kind of amateur psychoanalysis on the basis of a script performance of him playing a character again is the character totally different from who he is in real life no I think in some ways he is really engaging again the closest thing is self-parody I mean like when vegan gains talks about how much he hates babies how much he hates children obviously to some extent it's true and to some extent he's actually ridiculing himself he's not just exaggerating that tendency in his character he's actively making fun of himself so again I understood that so in many ways I understood the way in which what I was seeing on the internet was simultaneously very real and very fake and look guys this applies to me as well I mean what I do on camera I just uploaded a very passionate 30 minute video talking basically about gender equality kind of my first wave feminist view of the world i'm not a third wave feminist but i got some compliments from woman viewers saying that what i was dying but was real feminism the flattery by saying that my perspective was really feminist in meaningful sense okay thank you i can take a common uh you know in that video I'm quite passionate and quite pissed off at several points I do laugh at myself I mean I do there's an element of self-parody I'm aware of how ridiculous it is is this real or is this fake I mean there is a sense in which it still is a performance in real life you would never sit down with someone sit down with a friend and again this stuff is all unscripted it's amaze me some people still think my videos are scripted 100% unscripted 1% spontaneous and talk for 30 minutes solo with passion and conviction and emotion on a topic like that that you care about never happens in real life right and again if there's this weird line you walk where it's simultaneously the realist and the fakest thing in the world I really feel that way and actually at some points in that video just using this example because the most recent video uploaded you know I cut myself off I was going to talk more about personal experiences and personal convictions and personal emotional gauging the issue it's like okay let's let's let's get back let's get back on track um and yet you know if somebody washed this stuff and thought i was actually emotionally out of control as with Sorcha maariv as with vegan gains I'd have to say them don't you realize there's a theatrical element to this don't you realize there's a heightened life element to this there's a sense in which all of this stuff just because it is being performed on camera um that's that's I guess the dynamism of what we do here on YouTube it's simultaneously so real and so fake it's about my real life and yet it's not my real life it's a part of my real life and yet it never will be real life right um so I'm going to read here a little interaction I had today really spontaneously written a message I sent somebody on the internet back back and forth but I sent this to somebody come back to the first issue I mentioned sentenced to somebody who has basically quit vegan YouTube he's lost he's lost the aspirations lost the dream you know and pause an f1 saying there's so many reasons to quit but something else is saying earlier I want to come back to you and I'm coming back to it now if you were here for real activism then that in itself is a reason to quit although what I said before is positive and saying this is not real activism but this can set a basis for real activism by the same token it's not real activism so if that was what you're looking for it's not here and I totally understand why the people who are realized this either quit or minimize their engagement with this medium because this is not real active and never going to be right you on the other hand if you're after a real Fame or real money there are all kinds of reasons why people get involved in this and then they lose their belief in that they believe they lose their passion for that and they quit and again to refer back to the last video I put up on this channel it's more than 30 minutes long but at the end i talk about my real motivations for being here which again it's very real it's very sincere and i say look i'm in this for the movement the reason why I'm doing this it is a performance but it's a performance with a purpose you know the only reason I'm coming online and talking to you for 30 about feminism gender equality and he sells rich shoes even though it may seem like a stretch believe me it's not for money it's not for fame it's and again it's not activism but I'm doing it for the movement and in my mind from my perspective I'm doing that for a movement that does not even exist yet so i wrote to this dude dude on youtube and i said it's sad man you lost the will i lost the will for certain types of but not for youtube I've still got the will for this YouTube thing man YouTube is a lot realer and a lot more rewarding than all the I was dealing with before academia charity work etc so he writes back to me I'm leaving him anonymous he is Rebecca me said what does it matter if you want to do YouTube or not I replied it changes everything in my life man I'm moving to doe Hong moving up to the border with Myanmar I'm moving the I'm moving to Hong without a single friend in the world I'm moving there with nothing but my backpack a bread machine and 140 kilograms of weights I'm going to be extremely alone in a place where nobody speaks English youtube means a lot to me I don't front at some point Bruce Wayne became a fake persona and Batman became who the guy really was he's really Batman but he pretends to be Bruce Wayne when I'm teaching classes in a university in China do you think I'm being Batman or do you think I'm being Bruce Wayne when I'm talking this talk on YouTube do you think I'm being Batman or do you think I'm being Bruce Wayne the mask becomes the face now I wrote that in about 10 seconds and I didn't think anything about it I did other stuff in my room I'm packing up now to leave town and what back and looked at it was like you know something there for even me to think about as I say what I do here is a kind of performance and thus in some sense it never can be real it's like there's a difference between talking about philosophy and philosophy this difference between talking about politics and politics difference been talking about activism and activism and there's a difference between performance and you know a real relationship real conversation real anything right but then there are other contrast we have to consider what you get from me here on YouTube even though it is heightened life even though it's more emotional it's kind of exaggerated it's more of a performance like you know if I was sitting with you in a cafe talking about feminism the conversation would go that way for one thing I'd listen to you all week just talk for the head sab you know but you know the level of intensity the level of emotion even the level of stupidity because part of what I do here is satirical and humorous I've you know I've been to laughing a lot on camera sometimes I cry on camera right maybe later in this video breakdown weeping watch for it oh you know in so many ways you can say that this is unreal or this is merely performance but compared to what if you actually came to the University when I'm teaching class who is that guy who is the guy standing there at the podium teaching a class in university context in some ways it's the real me and in some ways it's not and most of you people watching this video no matter what job you do you probably have a job or eight hours a day are you Batman or are you Bruce Wayne when you're on the job no matter what your job is you know and to some extent do you even know or do you have to switch between a public and a private persona and the really crazy thing about YouTube is that anyone who knows me in my fake identity by professional identity who knows me in the slightly phony way I live my life when I'm earning my living they can come on YouTube anytime and see the other side of me right it's up here on the Internet forever I'm going to be teaching classes in China any one of my co-workers any one of the other professors can come on youtube and watch these videos and see who I really am in a sense is it Batman or is it Bruce Wayne right any one of my students can come on the internet and see me criticizing freely and durianrider see me talking about effective activism can see me talking to university students I have some some videos on your mom talking to university students but what I'm talking about vegan activism I'm not talking them at all the way I talk to them when I'm on the job I'm actually talking about how to change the world terms of ecology human rights uh animal rights etc etc so in a sense they'll see a totally different man on youtube and my students can come online my course and they can see my shirtless selfies right I've got fitness videos showing you with my shirt off flexing my muscles right all that's out here and again simultaneously in some ways it's the realest and the biggest thing in the world but that is how I play it when I talk about keeping it real I think it's really worthwhile to reflect this is one of the ways in which keeping it real goes right in choosing to keep it so real with you guys that's the only thing it that makes it possible for as I say for the mask to become the face then in a very real sense i'm sharing who i really am even though it's maybe a more emotional more performative version who i really am and it's a side of me that my co-workers at work would never see that my teacher here at the school when i'm a student whenever sings I'm both the teacher and a student you know what I mean and that's a beautiful thing if you're strong enough to take it we've had a whole bunch of videos here lately talking with people who have serious emotional disorders serious intellectual impairments a serious psychological disorder like anorexia and bulimia and some of those people probably the smartest decision for them not to do this not to come neither and share their lives because of the risk they're putting themselves at there are risks for the movement that's all just risk for them personally right now Batman has been mentioned a lot on this channel the matter of fact in older videos talking about the concept of justice and social justice in terms of how that interacts with activism and veganism and animal rights I've often challenged people and saying look we can't think about justice in the way popular culture icons like Batman lead us to think about justice we can't think about justice in terms of revenge there he is I mean you know Batman is a image of Justice linked to morning and bereavement and sorrow and you know he's never ending quest to solve problems with his fists it's laughable and yet you know we all take it seriously Batman is a major influential cultural icon um I wanted from day one to be really honest here about the sorrow and the anguish that's behind my veganism and not to present a phony face of being so happy and so energized and Joe I wanted to break away from the fruitarian illusion that life was wonderful and that the innocent made you so happy and you know just tell this story for me it is not at all about a notion of justice it's not about notion of revenge but I think there is a much simpler and more fundamental notion that that probably does relate to the fact that I was brainwashed by comic books as a child like everyone else it does in some level I think tap into my own notion of you know human dignity and right and wrong some other vegans do criticize me for this behavior but you know to me this really this really relates to the ethic behind veganism and even the ethic behind what I'm doing here in the digital vegan demi-monde when I was walking on the street the other day things like this have happened many times in China there was yet another car barging its way through a bunch of pedestrians right so this is like the car is basically crashing into people at low speed to break the rules and get through the intersection 30 seconds faster right not that interesting story all kinds of people on this block on this at this intersection all kinds of people there who can't stand up for themselves there are women holding babies there are elderly people there are people from different ages and stages of life there are people there who either can't stand up for themselves or who feel that they can't stand up themselves and when a car like this basically threatens to run them over to barge its way through the pedestrians were crossing the street a lot of them just slink out of the way and I don't this particular case the other day i slam my fist down on the hood of the car that was dead center the car was running into me just running into me at slow speed and I didn't do that to damage the car but I put my fist down on the car to make that noise because you know it's hollow gives a bigger gets the driver's attention and driver was doing that thing a lot of drivers when they're doing something wrong they kind of don't want to look at you they want to pretend like they don't see you dude I'm huge I'm 6 foot 3 i'm over 200 pounds i'm standing dead center in front of your car you're gonna pretend you don't see me and you know i made this noise but putting my fist down on his car and i looked him straight in the eye the driver not gonna say he can't run me over he can but i'm not going to make it easy for him I'm not gonna lie down and die and i'm not gonna slink out of the way i'm not going to jump out of his way if he wants to kill me okay but i'm not going down without a fight and I know there are all kinds of people right there on that street where then who can't do that because they're carrying their baby or they're too old they're too weak or they don't have the confidence in terms of male beat may be dealing with the cops if it happens afterwards I mean if if if that did come to a fight which I knew it wouldn't i can see i could see through the windshield this guy wasn't going to enough to me um but if it came to a fight guess what I tell the cops yeah I crashing to me he intentionally hit me with his car what do you expect gonna happen I'll mine haha I'm front spending a few weeks in the Chinese prison either do me a world of good language immersion you know fine now again I'm bringing this back the contrast is Batman I'm not actually doing that out of anger I'm not doing that out of a sense of revenge I'm not doing it even under the sense of my own dignity like this driver you have to respect me i'm actually doing it because i want this driver to respect everyone I don't just want him to not run over me I don't just want him to not run over the guy who's big enough and tough enough to threaten to kick his ass if he doesn't put on the brakes when he knows he's wrong and he knows he should just wait for the light to change I want him to respect everyone including or especially the people who can't stand up for themselves and on a really deep level I do think that's behind veganism veganism as opposed to reduce at arianism veganism as opposed to just vaguely donating money to Greenpeace or the green party being ecologically aware but still eating milk and animal products now on that when you say no you know if I don't stand up for the cows who live and die their whole lives in a world of steel and concrete who will okay I've met people I've talked about this before I've met people who are physically disabled and they've got to eat whatever the nurse in the hospital gives them I've met people i know people now who are in hospital with different conditions and they got to eat whatever the hospital they don't have a choice either that or they try to find a new hospital right there are people who are on military service in a submarine and they got to eat whatever food the military gives them in the submarine whatever okay there are people I'm not any of those people if I don't stand up there are other people on that block crossing that street who can step if I don't stand up who will okay and I look at all you look at all you and ask that question I look at the other people in my school the other students i look at my teachers say why don't you stand up for what's right if you know if you can pull this is right and that this is a meal I don't know compared to compared to punching a car that's trying to run you over refusing to eat dairy milk refusing to eat yogurt it's not that much to ask it's not it's not that much of a risk you don't have to be that tough a guy to say even if i'm going to go hungry i'm not going to compromise i'm not going to eat this that I know is bad for the ecology the planet it's bad for the animals even bad phone health all right you don't take that stand in the grocery store or restaurant it's not asking that much and most of these people who are conformists are cowards and with that example with the car when I looked into the eyes of the driver he had his girlfriend or his wife next to him in the next seat and I could read his face like a book I've lived in Chinese culture for a long time so I'm very used to reading expressions trans people's faces the expression on his face was exactly one of fear and in a sense guilt because he knew he was in the wrong terms what he was doing with his car and of not wanting to let his girlfriend see yo of not wanting to let his girlfriend see that he was terrified of me and of what I was going to do next if I was going to come over to his window or what and of course he stopped he stopped he stopped his car me stop slow mo winning people over this this intersection and you know um just say I mean it's connect this is not experienced by once a night experiences like this you know roughly similar many many times open in China and I fool I've had I've had some experience that were worse in Canada actually you know um but here here in China now a couple of weeks ago there's I really got emotional hit by it because it's linked to this it's linked to this kind of normal not quite daily struggle as part of my life but you know I just saw a guy walking down the road actually one of the same roads you guys have seen on camera on this channel you know really messed up Road where you got a-you got motorcycles almost crashing into you and it's just a messed up road here this construction going on is it there was a blind man walking down that same Road well I walk all the time and you could tell right away he wasn't just someone who lost said he was blind blind from birth and he had the he had the walking stick and he had another walking stick coming out of his backpack with a red flag on it you know to try to make him more visible try to prevent cars and motorcycles from just barging into and you know you know as modest and miserable and ineffectual as our little ways are of standing up for what's right not everybody can do it I can can you I got I got a piece of fan mail that got to me a little bit from a guy i do really regard as very smart as way enough if I thought it was an idiot I'd say he's an idiot guys you know that about me I got a piece of fan mail from another vegan who I do regard as highly intelligent and he said to me straight up he said the reason why he supports me you know in my career my long term aspirations to eventually get involved with real activism with you know veganism as a real movement as we hope it exists in the futures of movement he he said straight up that the reason why he supports me is that he feels that he's not smart enough to do what I do you know here on YouTube I know I'm knows if he said more than that this message obviously but he said he really had these high hopes for my future as a political leader and veganism because he knows he can't do what I'm already doing and what he sees in my future for me being capable of doing you know he has these these aspirations for me so it's you know it's a meaningful emo he's you know he's not a stranger he's been following my career on YouTube here for for a couple of years something and you know you got to sit there and look at that and look in the mirror and look back at all these issues you know the realness and the fakeness and the potential and the hopelessness of what we're all doing here on YouTube in some ways in rehearsing you know a political and social movement a rehearsal for you know this movement that doesn't yet exist I think that one of the beautiful things about veganism is that you don't need to be very intelligent to do it you don't need to be brilliant in a sense you don't even need to be courageous or strong this is something almost everybody can do and that's why I feel so comfortable preaching it you know i dont preach rock climbing who can do rock climbing a tiny magnifier I don't even page riding a bicycle not everybody can rap let's go this feel there's so many things added on to veganism that i dont preach but i do feel like veganism is for everybody or it's for almost everybody if you're not on that desert island you know etc etc and veganism is such a simple idea a child can understand it a child can understand the reasons why we do it you know that's not true of a lot of other political and ethical claims when have you um you know we were just looking at these excuses made today by vegan cheetah formerly a supporter of this channel now someone who hates it where he was saying that veganism is not possible and is not practical and we should be accepting of people who can't do it people who eat meat once a week or once a month or once a day or whatever that we should be broadening veganism to be to be more accepting of people and you know I see it in the exact diametric opposite way exactly what I'm interested in is meeting people who are good enough and smart enough and strong enough to take that stand whether they find it difficult or whether they find it easy and in a real sense none of us know what it takes um none of us know what it takes because veganism is still so much in the experimental stage nobody would have said from day one that you know like the major debates within veganism would have been masturbation versus no fap can you guys remember that within the last two years that tour the vegan community apart Matt you know masturbation versus the no-fat movement that it would be bicycles versus no bicycles these little you know anorexics versus not in a very crazy crazy debates within veganism but I mean in practice as this can of tomato soup rolls down the staircase step by step you know we get to see who's got what it takes and who don't I said from day one with the core challenge during writer I had absolutely no confidence that I would win the case at absa no confidence there would be outcomes but it was nevertheless so important to do the right thing to at least put in the paperwork and now we've had six months of litigation you know with no with Noel come and it's still totally possible that this is going to end after months and months of litigation with no come it's totally possible but you know at that time I got fan mail from the people who themselves were also victimized by during writer and he wanted to do what I did who wanted to stand up to him but they couldn't they couldn't or they felt they couldn't or they didn't write and you know if anyone had asked off off the bat if any way that started from a blank piece of paper what does it take for vegans to get off their asses and get organized as a movement absolutely nobody would have drawn up a schematic diagram of what's gone on here on YouTube in the last two years and I hate to say it but I was reading even more academic publications lately for veganism if you think that the debates within YouTube are crazy the stuff going on in the peer-reviewed academic literature is crazier it's worse the supposedly respectable world of animal rights activism is a nuthouse it's for another video man and authority cough it down by the other videos it's it's worse it's way more out of touch with reality um that's really my message for this video I think it's easy for people to lose sight it that's why people quit YouTube that's what people quit the movement people lose the hope and aspirations for they came on here and start doing this in the first place on that most basic level at some point in your life you realize the difference between right and wrong and what it means for your diet and what it means for industrialized agriculture and all the rest of it and something in you wanted to come on the internet and share that part of your life and in some ways it's real and in some ways it's fake it's already talked about at length but that that's part of who you really are and your co-workers never get to see it and probably a lot of your family members never get to see it maybe your grandparents maybe your brothers and sisters in terms of why you care about veganism why you want to see veganism progresses and movement um and in terms of that long slow sense of outrage that you carry with you every day of your life maybe nobody else ever sees it maybe your own boyfriend of your own girlfriend doesn't see it if you're in a relationship with someone who eats meat you know um you know that rage and that aspiration for a better tomorrow at some point you even if your channel is the phoniest on YouTube that made you want to pick up a camera and come out here and talk um that sense of I want to stand up and be counted you know don't ever lose touch with that because if you're here for the money there's no money if you're for the thing here's the thing if you're even here for activism there's almost no activism this is a hollow as a drum right but that's still something really real and like I said in that message you know my life I've dealt with extreme isolation when I was dealing with living Cambodia living in Laos living whatever but there's also a sense in which doesn't matter maybe I moved to Hong and I make five or ten great friends I assure you even if I make those friends and their local Chinese people don't speak English whatever that the story is there's a sense in which they will never know me they will never know who I really am even to that weird extent to which you guys if you've watched a few of these long videos you do know who I really am and even if the only thing we share is that aspiration to live in a world where the economy isn't dominated by this deeply immoral and ecologically destructive and nutritionally unnecessary industry the slaughterhouse and even if that is the only thing we share I've just got to beg you to look past all the all of the mutual hatred that so totally defines what we do here on YouTube and think about where you're going to be five years from now and 10 years from now because I want to be there with you Marty cut the lights that's a wrap that's a hard out