Vegans Dating Meat Eaters, Advice for Day One (a Non-Chinese Perspective)
23 June 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
this is not the most serious video I've
ever made but you know this is addressing an issue that's never gonna go away of vegans dating non vegans and of the pragmatics of how you introduce the concept of veganism to someone who has really never heard of it before I never thought about it before I do get a lot of fan mail for my pragmatic videos in the sense where I talk about how I actually explain things to other people in real life and the family comes from new vegans but you know really the people who appreciate it most or people have been vegan for more than 10 years because a lot of the older vegans they feel frustrated that they've been having the same conversation again and again for 10 years and that's what they want to break out of right so the kind of discussions I have here on YouTube and via patreon and other places gives them some new angles fresh approach new concepts to work with and gives them a chance to break out of what they've been doing for the last issue so I'm gonna talk about I'm gonna tell a short anecdote which is like extracted from a larger much more hilarious anecdote about a woman here in China who picked me up that's the reality she I didn't pick her up she picked me up she got my phone number out of me and how I plan to introduce the concept of veganism to her and what actually happened but before that I gotta say you know it's gonna see this anecdote I am NOT looking for a Chinese girlfriend I'm not looking for a Chinese wife it may happen anyway cuz they're looking for me but you know I set up a profile on a dating website here and again there's no shame in my game but I'm also I'm honest I'm honest with these other women and I'm honest with you that like the odds of my actually having a romantic connection with anyone over one of these websites almost zero so the profile description I wrote myself in Chinese I sat down I did it really rapidly before I went to class I sat down and said okay I'm gonna take this as a writing composition challenge and I wrote in Chinese this statement about myself and of course I knew it would have a few you know grammatical errors or vocabulary errors in it and you know this is like everything else already but myself but it's not enticing it's not romantic it's very blunt I mean it ended in the most unromantic way possible it ended by saying like personal integrity matters you don't lie to me I won't lie to you what's the ending um and you know I meant that because with the vast majority these women may be the first thing I'm gonna tell them is we can be friends but this is not gonna be a romantic relationship there's just no chance of that and you know some people are not gonna want to hear it but hey yeah you don't lie to me I don't love you as a great great principal that to try to follow in life um and the rest of the description like as you can imagine one of the things I said was I am vegan but I am NOT Buddhist because here in China obviously if you say you're vegan people are gonna assume you're Buddhist and then I specified I I am a nihilist I used the Chinese term for historical nihilism which is an especially loaded term here in China not gonna explain why this is a specific school of nihilism if you like that I guess I promote on this Jamo promote is the wrong word I guess I make fun of myself for for using that term on this channel and I mean the rest of it you know I mean it was all business nothing romantic or enticing about this description you know I care about politics I care about history study the history of Asia studied Asian languages I'm now learning Chinese this is who I am you don't lie to me I won't lie to you so I upload this description of the dating website and then you know I take a copy of it to the classroom I actually wrote it out by hand again for the language practice writing out all the characters tell you the handwritten version to my teacher and said oh hey look you know I did this as like a writing challenge you know how many mistakes they make and you know me and the teacher laughed about it because it is it is funny in many different ways and she went through and you know corrected a few things so you know several hours go by I go to class I study Chinese I do other things and then I take the corrected version of this and go back to my computer to try to make the corrections to the grammar I've never heard of this before I've never seen anything like this before but this website they have quality control people who have to read and approve everything you upload to the website so the photos have to meet certain standards you know not too much of this not too much of that what you write has to read some say so everything is actually seen by a human being but the human being subtext of my profile of course it also said I'm a foreigner said I'm Canadian you know this person found it in their heart to completely rewrite the statement so now like instead of saying that I'm a nihilistic atheist it says you know I believe in the invisible strings of fate drawing our hearts together in this like romantic view with this like completely standard Chinese soap opera rhetoric that I would never say in my life I would never say it to someone I was in love with and I would never say it to a bunch of straight to the Internet and it's the exact opposite of everything fully and you know they had kept a few keywords from my original statement but looking at it I mean I know most of you were all we think oh no it must be a computer algorithm it must be something automated but no no no looking at the use of language um I absolutely have to believe that it was a human being guru so I'm just astounded at this total rewrite that you know changes you know any the most terrible thing but it seems like I wrote it it seems like the so I describe myself as up with a book but I've got the corrected text I think okay it's not that big a deal you know a cut and paste I put in the corrections that my teacher gave me and I can restore the description I made myself and that gives me an error message because because they employ the staff of people to correct to improve you're a romantic discover yourself it said no no no you can only change the text once every 24 hours left with the mortifying decision do I just delete this whole profile what do I wait 24 hours try to rewrite the text so that it says what I actually want to say and then wait in horror to see if they rewrite it again to sound like the back cover of a romance novel the level kid there's no way I can't believe you know a computer did the rewrite I mean there's no point on and why again so then I went I laughing but I said I'd laugh at my teacher I said can you believe this have you ever heard of anything like this admin and she like all her friends use these dating whoops here in China a huge percentage of population uses these dating websites whether it's to meet friends or to meet a husband or wife and and she said no she had never heard of anything like that happening before and she agreed it must be that the the managers of this website thought oh here's this poor foreigner and he's really trying to say something nice and enticing but he know his ability in the Chinese language just isn't good enough so we reckon for and what you know the blunt statement at the end about like personal integrity you don't lie to me I don't lie to you you know that was how I ended it Davey wrote that to be like I'm looking for someone with a pure heart and an honest character who could appreciate me is like oh I mean I know I know computer automation can do a lot of things but no I think I think it takes a devious and well-intentioned human mind to do that kind of rewrite all right so looks all right these are the surreal aspects of my daily life here in China um a woman approached me in a public place when I had no interest in flirting with her and she started flirting with me and you know right off the bat I respected her for doing that I respected you don't you respect the player II respect the game but I was sitting there I had all kinds of troubles on my mind just mostly just paperwork do a lot of paperwork here in China you know paperwork for the bank paperwork for your job paper just you know a lot of bureaucracy I've been dealing with and thinking steps ahead about different ways I'm gonna cope with things if this happens I do this if that was a you know paperwork alone was a big part of the stress it was under so I'm sitting there in this public building and this woman is like she really put in work for more than 15 minutes I'd say 20 minutes you know to flirt with me and you know assets to I just didn't want to hear it and she accomplished exactly what a flirtation should accomplish which is that she took me from an attitude of my having zero interest in her to my being interested in her a very good-looking woman it's not for that reason but you know I meet a lot of good-looking women and you know again even though like I respects I respect that she had the confidence to walk up on me and and you know try to get my phone number which she did in the end I respected that but still you know I mean I look I just say I'm not playing hard-to-get I just actually am hard-to-get and when she first started talking I just I just had no interest you know so that happened and then we're following up by text message and email afterwards you know both and so the question is the question you viewers this will be slightly more addressing you than the other ridiculous anecdotes have been telling how do you actually tell her I'm vegan and this is such a big part of my life and here is how I conspired to do it she was throwing out other date ideas that were you know meet at a restaurant meet at a nightclub or a bar or something and rather than saying to her directly well look I'm vegan and I don't drink alcohol so none of that works for me I said back to her I didn't open with that so she she mentions you know let's go to a restaurant etc and I said back no bring your bathing suit we'll go swimming and she could have reacted that in any way whatsoever but my theory was there was a very good chance she just be kind of shocked she'd be it's just such a weird idea when I should mention her age I would guess she's like 27 fully grown woman I mean you know she could be 25 but she could be 29 and a half - I would guess she was 27 so you know for two fully grown adults on a first date to go swimming it is a bit weird so it's I was expecting she might say you know what a crazy idea why why would you suggest that and then my reply was gonna be well look I'm vegan I don't eat meat I don't drink alcohol and the reality is most of the things people do when they go in on dates involve meat and alcohol and hanging out in places that are all about meat and alcohol so you know I'm always trying to come up with creative ideas I'm always trying to do so you know whether it's going hiking or going kayaking or you know something else you know so why would I approach that why would I make that the first time I mentioned being vegan because you know it's it's really positive it's really saying to somebody um this is an aspect of my life that shapes all the other things I do in profound and indirect ways you know you may think veganism is just a diet choice and then otherwise I live my life exactly the same as everybody else but no in a subtle way this is communicating to you right off the bat the fact that I don't eat meat I don't drink alcohol etc it actually does positively motivate me to go to the gym go swimming go hiking do other types of activities in my romantic life in my personal life it shapes and influences every other part of my life and I think that's a really positive way to introduce the idea at the beginning where it's just it's just practically coming up and how you shape the date at some point whether it's the first date the second date or what have you at some point from my perspective you have to communicate the the sad idea that look if you're gonna fall in love with me then you're gonna have to try being vegan too and you know if you don't try then falling in love with me is gonna be a waste your time we both cut move along you know yeah I think for me that's that's something I'm gonna share at some point cuz there's no way I would be in a relationship for any significant length of time with someone who was not vegan but that's not what I want to say first right this is somebody who may have never heard of the idea of veganism before or here in China more likely it's probably something they associate with their grandparents with something very unfashionable and old-fashioned which in some ways it is it's brand-new and it's ancient all at the same time anyway look guys you know the rest of the story of what happened with her I'm gonna try to work it out I'm gonna try to come up with an excuse to tell the whole hilarious story in a podcast on patreon but uh you know uploading for me in China is really hard here so the days of my doing 40-minute and one our videos are over I've got to keep my videos short whereas my podcasts are long maybe that's a much-needed discipline that's uh my internet connectivity here isn't forcing on me but hit me up on patreon wherever you are those who you think my laughter is insincere it's not at the top of my page on patreon you know it lists the different things the channel is for and that it does and one of them is self parody I do laugh at myself a lot I do find my own life absurd and ridiculous and whether it's writing that profile on the dating website or what happened with this woman who you know as I say she picked me up she got my phone number out of me when I wasn't really inclined to give it to her all the absurd contradictions that surround my being why I'm even in China what I'm trying to accomplish in China what happens next in my life I do laugh at it and you know that is a difference between me and some of the other vegans here on YouTube when you lose that capacity to laugh at yourself now you know the next step maybe is paranoia defensiveness you know and all these other terrible traits that we've seen play out at the end of the day I mean you know veganism is like the world's most morose boycott movement but within you know the horror that we all live with every day of being you know we see what other people don't see we see the suffering of the animals we see the terrible consequences for what's become so normal that it's invisible and ignored but everyone else around us or witnesses to you know the unspeakable unforgivable immoral reality that underpins daily life for 99 percent of humanity in the here and now and we say we refuse to be a part of it and yet on a daily basis we are a part of it we see it we hear it we smell it you know we walk past it the person sitting next to us at the same table you know in a cafeteria is eating it right in front of us you know we live immersed in and surrounded by everything we object to so stridently we live with that horror that sort of morose Perpetual heartbreak and we all struggle with these questions of effective activism and how we can actually do something positive about it but in the midst of all that man you've got to keep your ability to laugh yourself if you ever lose your ability to laugh to yourself vegan cheetah is gonna be laughing for you
ever made but you know this is addressing an issue that's never gonna go away of vegans dating non vegans and of the pragmatics of how you introduce the concept of veganism to someone who has really never heard of it before I never thought about it before I do get a lot of fan mail for my pragmatic videos in the sense where I talk about how I actually explain things to other people in real life and the family comes from new vegans but you know really the people who appreciate it most or people have been vegan for more than 10 years because a lot of the older vegans they feel frustrated that they've been having the same conversation again and again for 10 years and that's what they want to break out of right so the kind of discussions I have here on YouTube and via patreon and other places gives them some new angles fresh approach new concepts to work with and gives them a chance to break out of what they've been doing for the last issue so I'm gonna talk about I'm gonna tell a short anecdote which is like extracted from a larger much more hilarious anecdote about a woman here in China who picked me up that's the reality she I didn't pick her up she picked me up she got my phone number out of me and how I plan to introduce the concept of veganism to her and what actually happened but before that I gotta say you know it's gonna see this anecdote I am NOT looking for a Chinese girlfriend I'm not looking for a Chinese wife it may happen anyway cuz they're looking for me but you know I set up a profile on a dating website here and again there's no shame in my game but I'm also I'm honest I'm honest with these other women and I'm honest with you that like the odds of my actually having a romantic connection with anyone over one of these websites almost zero so the profile description I wrote myself in Chinese I sat down I did it really rapidly before I went to class I sat down and said okay I'm gonna take this as a writing composition challenge and I wrote in Chinese this statement about myself and of course I knew it would have a few you know grammatical errors or vocabulary errors in it and you know this is like everything else already but myself but it's not enticing it's not romantic it's very blunt I mean it ended in the most unromantic way possible it ended by saying like personal integrity matters you don't lie to me I won't lie to you what's the ending um and you know I meant that because with the vast majority these women may be the first thing I'm gonna tell them is we can be friends but this is not gonna be a romantic relationship there's just no chance of that and you know some people are not gonna want to hear it but hey yeah you don't lie to me I don't love you as a great great principal that to try to follow in life um and the rest of the description like as you can imagine one of the things I said was I am vegan but I am NOT Buddhist because here in China obviously if you say you're vegan people are gonna assume you're Buddhist and then I specified I I am a nihilist I used the Chinese term for historical nihilism which is an especially loaded term here in China not gonna explain why this is a specific school of nihilism if you like that I guess I promote on this Jamo promote is the wrong word I guess I make fun of myself for for using that term on this channel and I mean the rest of it you know I mean it was all business nothing romantic or enticing about this description you know I care about politics I care about history study the history of Asia studied Asian languages I'm now learning Chinese this is who I am you don't lie to me I won't lie to you so I upload this description of the dating website and then you know I take a copy of it to the classroom I actually wrote it out by hand again for the language practice writing out all the characters tell you the handwritten version to my teacher and said oh hey look you know I did this as like a writing challenge you know how many mistakes they make and you know me and the teacher laughed about it because it is it is funny in many different ways and she went through and you know corrected a few things so you know several hours go by I go to class I study Chinese I do other things and then I take the corrected version of this and go back to my computer to try to make the corrections to the grammar I've never heard of this before I've never seen anything like this before but this website they have quality control people who have to read and approve everything you upload to the website so the photos have to meet certain standards you know not too much of this not too much of that what you write has to read some say so everything is actually seen by a human being but the human being subtext of my profile of course it also said I'm a foreigner said I'm Canadian you know this person found it in their heart to completely rewrite the statement so now like instead of saying that I'm a nihilistic atheist it says you know I believe in the invisible strings of fate drawing our hearts together in this like romantic view with this like completely standard Chinese soap opera rhetoric that I would never say in my life I would never say it to someone I was in love with and I would never say it to a bunch of straight to the Internet and it's the exact opposite of everything fully and you know they had kept a few keywords from my original statement but looking at it I mean I know most of you were all we think oh no it must be a computer algorithm it must be something automated but no no no looking at the use of language um I absolutely have to believe that it was a human being guru so I'm just astounded at this total rewrite that you know changes you know any the most terrible thing but it seems like I wrote it it seems like the so I describe myself as up with a book but I've got the corrected text I think okay it's not that big a deal you know a cut and paste I put in the corrections that my teacher gave me and I can restore the description I made myself and that gives me an error message because because they employ the staff of people to correct to improve you're a romantic discover yourself it said no no no you can only change the text once every 24 hours left with the mortifying decision do I just delete this whole profile what do I wait 24 hours try to rewrite the text so that it says what I actually want to say and then wait in horror to see if they rewrite it again to sound like the back cover of a romance novel the level kid there's no way I can't believe you know a computer did the rewrite I mean there's no point on and why again so then I went I laughing but I said I'd laugh at my teacher I said can you believe this have you ever heard of anything like this admin and she like all her friends use these dating whoops here in China a huge percentage of population uses these dating websites whether it's to meet friends or to meet a husband or wife and and she said no she had never heard of anything like that happening before and she agreed it must be that the the managers of this website thought oh here's this poor foreigner and he's really trying to say something nice and enticing but he know his ability in the Chinese language just isn't good enough so we reckon for and what you know the blunt statement at the end about like personal integrity you don't lie to me I don't lie to you you know that was how I ended it Davey wrote that to be like I'm looking for someone with a pure heart and an honest character who could appreciate me is like oh I mean I know I know computer automation can do a lot of things but no I think I think it takes a devious and well-intentioned human mind to do that kind of rewrite all right so looks all right these are the surreal aspects of my daily life here in China um a woman approached me in a public place when I had no interest in flirting with her and she started flirting with me and you know right off the bat I respected her for doing that I respected you don't you respect the player II respect the game but I was sitting there I had all kinds of troubles on my mind just mostly just paperwork do a lot of paperwork here in China you know paperwork for the bank paperwork for your job paper just you know a lot of bureaucracy I've been dealing with and thinking steps ahead about different ways I'm gonna cope with things if this happens I do this if that was a you know paperwork alone was a big part of the stress it was under so I'm sitting there in this public building and this woman is like she really put in work for more than 15 minutes I'd say 20 minutes you know to flirt with me and you know assets to I just didn't want to hear it and she accomplished exactly what a flirtation should accomplish which is that she took me from an attitude of my having zero interest in her to my being interested in her a very good-looking woman it's not for that reason but you know I meet a lot of good-looking women and you know again even though like I respects I respect that she had the confidence to walk up on me and and you know try to get my phone number which she did in the end I respected that but still you know I mean I look I just say I'm not playing hard-to-get I just actually am hard-to-get and when she first started talking I just I just had no interest you know so that happened and then we're following up by text message and email afterwards you know both and so the question is the question you viewers this will be slightly more addressing you than the other ridiculous anecdotes have been telling how do you actually tell her I'm vegan and this is such a big part of my life and here is how I conspired to do it she was throwing out other date ideas that were you know meet at a restaurant meet at a nightclub or a bar or something and rather than saying to her directly well look I'm vegan and I don't drink alcohol so none of that works for me I said back to her I didn't open with that so she she mentions you know let's go to a restaurant etc and I said back no bring your bathing suit we'll go swimming and she could have reacted that in any way whatsoever but my theory was there was a very good chance she just be kind of shocked she'd be it's just such a weird idea when I should mention her age I would guess she's like 27 fully grown woman I mean you know she could be 25 but she could be 29 and a half - I would guess she was 27 so you know for two fully grown adults on a first date to go swimming it is a bit weird so it's I was expecting she might say you know what a crazy idea why why would you suggest that and then my reply was gonna be well look I'm vegan I don't eat meat I don't drink alcohol and the reality is most of the things people do when they go in on dates involve meat and alcohol and hanging out in places that are all about meat and alcohol so you know I'm always trying to come up with creative ideas I'm always trying to do so you know whether it's going hiking or going kayaking or you know something else you know so why would I approach that why would I make that the first time I mentioned being vegan because you know it's it's really positive it's really saying to somebody um this is an aspect of my life that shapes all the other things I do in profound and indirect ways you know you may think veganism is just a diet choice and then otherwise I live my life exactly the same as everybody else but no in a subtle way this is communicating to you right off the bat the fact that I don't eat meat I don't drink alcohol etc it actually does positively motivate me to go to the gym go swimming go hiking do other types of activities in my romantic life in my personal life it shapes and influences every other part of my life and I think that's a really positive way to introduce the idea at the beginning where it's just it's just practically coming up and how you shape the date at some point whether it's the first date the second date or what have you at some point from my perspective you have to communicate the the sad idea that look if you're gonna fall in love with me then you're gonna have to try being vegan too and you know if you don't try then falling in love with me is gonna be a waste your time we both cut move along you know yeah I think for me that's that's something I'm gonna share at some point cuz there's no way I would be in a relationship for any significant length of time with someone who was not vegan but that's not what I want to say first right this is somebody who may have never heard of the idea of veganism before or here in China more likely it's probably something they associate with their grandparents with something very unfashionable and old-fashioned which in some ways it is it's brand-new and it's ancient all at the same time anyway look guys you know the rest of the story of what happened with her I'm gonna try to work it out I'm gonna try to come up with an excuse to tell the whole hilarious story in a podcast on patreon but uh you know uploading for me in China is really hard here so the days of my doing 40-minute and one our videos are over I've got to keep my videos short whereas my podcasts are long maybe that's a much-needed discipline that's uh my internet connectivity here isn't forcing on me but hit me up on patreon wherever you are those who you think my laughter is insincere it's not at the top of my page on patreon you know it lists the different things the channel is for and that it does and one of them is self parody I do laugh at myself a lot I do find my own life absurd and ridiculous and whether it's writing that profile on the dating website or what happened with this woman who you know as I say she picked me up she got my phone number out of me when I wasn't really inclined to give it to her all the absurd contradictions that surround my being why I'm even in China what I'm trying to accomplish in China what happens next in my life I do laugh at it and you know that is a difference between me and some of the other vegans here on YouTube when you lose that capacity to laugh at yourself now you know the next step maybe is paranoia defensiveness you know and all these other terrible traits that we've seen play out at the end of the day I mean you know veganism is like the world's most morose boycott movement but within you know the horror that we all live with every day of being you know we see what other people don't see we see the suffering of the animals we see the terrible consequences for what's become so normal that it's invisible and ignored but everyone else around us or witnesses to you know the unspeakable unforgivable immoral reality that underpins daily life for 99 percent of humanity in the here and now and we say we refuse to be a part of it and yet on a daily basis we are a part of it we see it we hear it we smell it you know we walk past it the person sitting next to us at the same table you know in a cafeteria is eating it right in front of us you know we live immersed in and surrounded by everything we object to so stridently we live with that horror that sort of morose Perpetual heartbreak and we all struggle with these questions of effective activism and how we can actually do something positive about it but in the midst of all that man you've got to keep your ability to laugh yourself if you ever lose your ability to laugh to yourself vegan cheetah is gonna be laughing for you