I get zero support from "the vegan community," and zero intelligent criticism.

but the fact is that you know my name
and i don't know you art for art's sake is like gin for jin's sake vodka for vodka's sake etc um i've recently addressed the fact that part of my role here on youtube is criticism and i'm not ashamed of that i don't apologize for that i think that in the same way that we have to recognize the role of the critic in art the role of the critic and cinema is important the role of the critic in politics can be much more important so i had my um i had a youtube video playing and it was uh mr eisenhower's latest uh video and i'll put a link to it um down below and uh anyway he said and hit my ears pricked up because he said something that i profoundly disagree with i've made this comparison before if you look at some of the youtube channels that are devoted to comic books mainstream with dc comics marvel comics superhero comics they really do have more of a community than veganism does in 2017. really i'm not being sarcastic i'm not if you take a look they have conferences they have meetings they buy airplane tickets they do fundraisers they have donations they they auction things off and they raise the money to have a convention and then people fly there i think you can look at the game of thrones fan community but yeah sure the comic books are a really good example they have more elements of a real community than vegans ever have had and maybe ever will what is he talking about what is he talking about it's an unfair comparison uh comparing like veganism to game of thrones or uh you know marvel comics or something like that it's uh you know those things are hugely popular veganism is a you know it's a niche thing you know it's a niche usually thing like would you compare veganism to football oh food football we have a great sense of community more so than veganism well there's a surprise and you can look through the comments below their channels you go through their controversies sometimes those guys do have their own scandals but not like this and i don't see this level of um you know mean-spirited vitriolic you know ultimately just malicious in fighting within those other digital demi mods i think 90 of the people just don't care about what you know 90 percent of vegans don't care about youtube don't care about the stuff that's going on youtube most most of us find it mildly entertaining and and that's about it but to say we don't have a community come on dude come on like in in 2005 this was a flipping 12 years ago i rode a bicycle from los angeles to new york to raise money for animal sanctuaries and to raise the profile of veganism it's called the ride for goals and um and a couple of years later after i got it all edited the girl who uh the lady who runs the london v festival i was still living in england then she called me up she goes oh patrick you know we'd love to have your um we'd love to we'd love to to screen your film at the london vegan festival and i thought oh wow that's pretty cool and i remember uh and i don't know man he talks about like oh god the community that london vegan festival is massive it's like thousands and thousands and thousands of people go to the london v it is rams it is ram with people it is hugely popular and people come from all over the country in the uk to go to the london vegan festival not only that there's like thousands and thousands of vegan festivals all over the world every year we have to question shall we say commercial but populist activities like this all right i don't really know the population of the greater los angeles area i've been to los angeles where you draw the line around the city of los angeles is a very difficult question millions and millions of people go far beyond the limits of what is defined as los angeles okay fine i'll google it greater la population maybe 20 million people all right so los angeles you could call it 4 million and apparently you could call it 19 or 20 million depending on where you stop counting uh at the la county limits at the suburban limits so on and so forth and you know they hold this event called vegfest and they say on average they get 5000 people per year attending they boast that in 2018 they had over 10 000 visitors all right the images you see on screen here are actually from the 2019 event i have grave doubts that the real number of people attending is ten thousand i have grave doubts that the number of people who attended in 2019 at least was even 5 000 people i don't think that's what i'm what i'm looking at here i've had to deal with disputes like this all my life even in the period i can barely remember before i became vegan people can visualize what it looks like to have 50 000 people all in the same place at the same time they can visualize what it looks like to have 10 000 people all together in the same place at the same time and if you need to jog their memory you can go to google image search and look for examples of a stadium with 10 000 seats an arena a concert hall an opera hall a theater with 10 000 seats and show them this is what it looks like when you have 10 000 people together in one place at one time but when we're talking about political protests conferences events it's very strange how in our culture people are so willing and so eager to lie to themselves and lie to others for a blatantly political purpose you have to keep in mind there is a very real commercial incentive to lie about exaggerate or at least round up your estimate if you are operating you know a festival of this kind and you're trying to get both donors and participating restaurants and businesses to support it and that's fundamentally why social media is so important you know as a reality check pro veg international i'm sure they tell their donors that this event was a huge success they say oh we had people attend this conference from around the world we had all these wonderful speakers and they gave they delivered these important papers this was a major conference it's gonna save the planet and save the animals thank you please keep on donating millions of dollars and you know what the [ __ ] stops here the [ __ ] stops with the number of views you get on youtube i'm dead serious about that and look guys you know i'm not on an ego trip this applies to me both ways when you look at how many views i had on that video vegans were more hated than jehovah's witnesses okay it tells you something i reached an audience with that i said hey look i have a message that really matters to me i want to present my critique of what's wrong with vegan activism uh in the year 2019 that was i was over one year ago i don't know those 2018 2019 you know and 2 600 people got interested and we're willing to listen that means something you know what else it may mean that there isn't a very big audience for that message you know that may be the maximum number attainable or possible because not very many people care if you are putting on a well-funded uh populist vegan festival in los angeles and you could attract you know a huge number of people 4 million downtown maybe 19 or 20 million in the greater los angeles area and you're boasting that you attract 5 000 people and when i look at the pictures when i look at the film footage i think um that looks like a really generous estimate to say that there were 5 000 people there okay maybe that tells you maybe that tells you something about just how little interest there is in veganism in los angeles whether you're at the ostensibly respectable academic button-up end of the spectrum the moderately respectable populist commercial merchandising and food sales industry end of the spectrum or if you're way over on the lunatic fringe with the people who are engaged in acts of sabotage and civil disobedience going to prison whatever now that seems to me like a bit of a communism you know anyway so i remember i had like an auditorium i had like an hour to screen my film and uh and sea shepherd were on before me and uh and that was before they had their like tv show and they were like really popular but still there was a lot of people in the auditorium and they finished and then it was me to screen that screen my cycling film all right and uh it was 991 there was no one here there was no one in the auditorium but uh it was just me brother and a few friends and uh so i put the film on turn the lights out and the film was like edited like a 40 minute edit because i thought well i'll do a q a and then i thought well i shouldn't have done a 40 minute edit because there's no one to ask questions afterwards and anyway so the film finished right and then this was like massive cheer went up massive cheer and i turned around and the whole flipping auditorium was full of people like and i'm standing there i put the picture up i'm standing there on the on the on on the bank of the river um in new york and uh i was just it was just amazing so don't bloody tell me there's no community dude come on and i don't see this level of um you know mean-spirited vitriolic you know ultimately just malicious infighting within those other digital demi mods people say things online that they would never say to like a person's face if they met them in person would they people say awful things online awful awful things that they would never say but it's a is a quick thing one should always be polite all the time especially online i'll make a point of that and you i think it really is worthwhile to look across the table look at what the guys in comic books have going on and ask yourself why can't we have that and uh where is it going to start where are you more of a more of a constructive attitude towards making the most out of what we got here in veganism in terms of human resources can it start with this can it start with you watching this video right now can it start with something you can do today or tomorrow or sitting down with your calendar and looking ahead to the rest of this year i don't know what the future of veganism is but the future of veganism is not doreen writer it's not vegan cheetah it's not a community built on slander and defamation and get skinny quick 35 what a ebooks patronizing thing to say really really thousands and thousands and thousands of vegans put on events every year out in the real world not living in like youtube land i mean like two weeks ago we had the uh houston veg fest and i went along with my niece and the place was like rams and those organizers put in like flipping probably hundreds of hours to like organize that thing and you can't turn around like oh what you're doing like nothing happens no not in your world but in the real world people flipping people really really put themselves out dude the gal when i moved to galveston three years ago i started the galveston vegan group and on the facebook page we've got like over 100 people and we put on an acoustic jam and uh and a vegan like potluck 40 flipping people now it's really getting really popular and it's a really really good you know fun fun thing so yeah that's what i'm doing what are you doing get out in the real so look carefully at the crowd shot and think about what he's just claimed what he's just told you the place was rammed the place was round was it how many thousand people are in that crowd how many hundred or how many dozens he's not even aware of the extent to which he's lying he doesn't question the extent to which his claims are really ridiculous and in a sense even quite tragic come on i'll tell you i'll tell you what and it was rand that was so popular it was so popular thousands of people and let's just refer back to the little bit he's told us about his autobiography this guy is some kind of accomplished documentary filmmaker i ended my video asking people to positively reach out to one another and collaborate he never did that for me [Music] what are we gonna do what are we gonna do bloody patronizing right he could have said hey i see you're a younger guy with a youtube channel who cares about veganism and he's an older guy who under some circumstances made at least one documentary film that played at least one documentary film festival i don't know anything else with the rest of his career as a filmmaker maybe i really did have something positive to learn from him maybe he could have really helped me and help this youtube channel maybe we could have worked together to do something really positive for the vegan movement and make the world a better place but no he can't react that way he has to turn around and boast he has to pridefully claim that these conferences where vegans just meet up and pat themselves in the back where just a few hundred or a few thousand people show up and say hey let's all celebrate that we're changing the world he has to claim that that's actually more efficacious and more important than my youtube channel reaching 70 000 people a month with really in-depth really substantive discussions much more substantive discussions than you're gonna get from a street protest from outreach or even at these types of uh conferences and finger food festivals but there's a lot of money in this your game the moral of this story sadly is that veganism in the year 2020 is cash rich and talent poor millions and millions of dollars are being spent year after year the money is being spent by the wrong people for the wrong reasons with the wrong motivations