I'm on Patreon. Surprised? Me too. (à-bas-le-ciel, 2016)

if you're a regular on this channel then
you're used to seeing me sitting at exactly this desk with some stack of books in the background with that same poster in the same workout equipment of the background talking to you about veganism ecology politics my own research on Asia my own personal and private life my divorce my daughter my travels around the world my experience is growing up whatever and if you've never seen this channel before I'll tell you a little bit about what its what's going on here in just a moment to but the truth is everything you're familiar with in this scene is about to change because in less than a month I'm packing up everything i own and I'm moving to China and whatever I can't pack including this desk and that poster is going to go in the garbage yeah so let's cue the intro sequence here oh and in case you hadn't heard my channel has a name that's impossible to pronounce and the most people can't spell which is turned out to be a great marketing tactic if anybody noise Perez his name is in maza does anybody know how to pronounce his is youtube channel i banished yen oh yeah do you follow that guy I bet business care still that guy you for the guy yes yeah no no no that guy ah bah Luo Yin I want to say to a pollution I don't know whether I can pronounce upon this yet I want to say thank you youtube name is a badass yet which basically means to tear down heaven I get that name I got it she'll be honest I really appreciate his channel but i don't really like a lot of other new youtubers I do really like Oh abolish CLE but he covers a wide variety of topics not just freaking isn't this a distinctive thing that marks us be done that unifies us that shows who's be really vegan who's not is that you are willing to face up to that truth and witnessing that truth and admitting it to yourself how terrible and how terrifying it is being a witness to the grim reality of animal agriculture a massive scale that's what makes us vegan that's what we have in common not bicycles not between not yoga not even you know your food preferences place right he's right is these bike really right I subscribe to him but be prepared to really feel like you shoot a stage and skill for longer I can't brand name hey what's up so the simple question you have has a pretty complicated answer why am I starting up a patreon channel why am I starting up a patreon channel now so patreon unlike YouTube is not free you have to donate something to come and see me there why would I do that now especially given that I've never monetized my youtube presence the answer is actually that I'm not doing fundraising what I am doing is packing up and moving to china in less than one month now i will be living in china there's a wikipedia page called list of websites blocked in china all the websites i currently rely on to stay in touch with the outside world are blocked in china i will not be able to use my blog because my blog is on my google all google based websites are banned in china i will not be able to use youtube youtube is blocked in china i would not be able to use twitter or facebook or many of the obvious alternatives that are out there however if you check that wikipedia page the list of websites blocked in china patreon is not on their patreon apparently is not blocked or not banned in china so patreon will be an opportunity for me to keep in touch with the people who have come to my youtube channel the people who know me in the internet either because my work on asian languages buddhism history politics or of course veganism the vast majority of people are interested in hearing my voice on the internet know me as a voice for and about veganism animal rights ecology naturally enough that's a large percentage of what I've been talking about but of course my internet presence now in the future will also continue to reflect whatever is going on in my real life my research my humanitarian interests my political interests even my economic interests and of course the languages i'm studying moving to China now in some ways should be a very intellectually stimulating period of my life it should be interesting both in ways I can anticipate and in ways i cannot possibly anticipate I have lived in China before I have experience doing research in Yunnan in Laos and Thailand etc it seems that my life will be back and forth between kunming and Thailand via Laos all places i'm familiar with i will be a student of the chinese language learning chinese but i will also be a professor working in a very unusual university that has some unique advantages that are very interesting warning for me personally it's a university that actively reaches out to it helps indigenous ethnic minorities I've been involved with ethnic minority languages politics history etc in Yunnan in the past in Laos in Cambodia that's been a major area of interest for me in Asia but it's also been an area of interest for me in Canada where I tried to work on the Kree in a jib way I used to actually be a student First Nations University long story that side of it is rewarding for me the university i'll be working at also is very very unusual very rare in taking Southeast Asian languages seriously so they will study and teach languages like cambodian Thai and Lao incredibly rare in the whole world very few universities do that within China very few universities do that so this is potentially a year of my life in which I'm going to exercise you know some of my own areas of interest of expertise in which hopefully I get to really grow a lot as a human being now there are disadvantages when I'm teaching there I will be teaching English in formal University classes I'm told will have 40 students in a class will be university lectures on the English language that's where my money will come from people are not paying me to learn Chinese or paying me to learn the other things I may learn fine and I will be paid about 850 US dollars per month 850 US dollars these are really third-world wages I hope that is enough for me to survive on in kunming china it is obviously not enough to be saving up money it is not enough for me to be buying airplane tickets to fly back and forth to France it's not enough for all kinds of other things in life but I mean the point is this is a real educational opportunity and I'm making a short-term economic sacrifice in order to embrace it in many ways I think in this one year I will have the opportunity to learn much more than I would in one year of an MA program or one year of a ph.d program in a formal Western academic setting so in some ways this is a very positive opportunity my life in some ways both short-term and long-term it's worrying so what I'm doing on patreon I'm not asking you to donate the maximum possible I would encourage you to donate the minimum if the minimum is one dollar donate one dollar what can I offer on patreon well for one thing any time and energy have to put into the internet once i'm in china will have to go through patreon there's no other way for me to upload content i can't use youtube i can t these are the things i should be able to upload video to independent video sites within China and then to share that video with the West via patreon that should work at an absolute minimum I'll be able to upload audio podcasts and to make blogs through patreon because patreon host that data itself but there are chinese video platforms and i should be able to make new video available there obviously i'm going to continue to be engaged with and agonize about issues of veganism ecology related political concerns and a lot of you want to come along with me for that ride a lot of you wanted to stay in touch with me and I know because I've had hundreds of really wonderful people send me email and I'd like to stay in touch to you guys also optimistically I don't know but I would hope that patreon also can be a crossroads for you guys to meet one another because what my youtube channel has attracted is in some ways the most talented minority within veganism the people who are willing to ask the tough questions and the people who really are motivated to try to find answers to what is effective activism how can we make a the difference in the world now and Brooke once I watched the entire video and I heard this guy's arguments I could see where I was coming from he made some really salient points and that's what I like about this guy he really forces you to think about your default position forces you to examine currently held paradigms and I mean one of the things I love about his name a bet a vassal seal is the whole ideology behind that name is apparently if it means tearing down the sky this take no prisoners mentality where you simply just tear everything down you don't care about aligning yourself with any ideology you're here to shake things up and that's what I like to do that's what I try to do on my podcast