I've been canceled! It's the price of "doing politics", period.

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we have this untranslatable idiom in english it comes with the territory good luck explaining the meaning of that phrase to someone born and raised in china laos thailand or cambodia i think i've tried them all really a uniquely american phrase really comes out of the american genocidal colonial experience if you stop and think about it for a minute you know exactly what kind of territory they're talking about you know exactly what comes with it story i'm covering in this video part of it's shallow and part of it is really kind of deep and profound and might have some application in your own lives all right yeah you know what people say bad things about me on the internet it comes with the territory i came up as a teenager i was involved in theater acting stand-up comedy and i knew other people who were at varying degrees of commitment to that lifestyle and i knew people in toronto were part of the hip-hop scene becoming rappers i knew a couple people actually the punk rock scene at that time too but rap in toronto was booming it's huge sorry i mean i know people don't think of toronto that way but really it was another one of those centers for you know recording artists i was gone and you know people come to you and say oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i love acting it's my dream this is what i want to do with my life uh but i hate going to auditions and i hate having people talk about me by my back and say i'm too fat or i'm too thin or i'm too pretty for this part even that happens in acting you know you want to roll as a gangster or something and you're too pretty to be the gangster role whatever it is you know oh yeah yeah yeah and i can't stand being judged and i can't stand and you know what maybe you don't like acting because it comes with the territory if you think you want to be a rapper but you can't stand to have other people say insulting things about you and your mom and your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your sex life or whatever if you can't stand to have people insult you in rhyming couplets set to a beat if you can't put up with the kind of confrontations that happen on stage and off stage maybe maybe what you want really is not to be a rapper because it comes with the territory people are afraid to come on youtube people are afraid to come on the internet and keep it real and tell it like it is because they're afraid of this i got a two-part answer this okay part of me wants to say don't be don't be afraid okay you know what you know what the truth is though you know what the deeper truth is okay it's relative to the merit of the content you're producing if you really think that what you're producing has substance has merit that it's still going to be meaningful five years from now or 15 years from now or 50 years now if you think you're coming on the microphone and saying something that is really worth recording and sharing with the world then you shouldn't be afraid of any of this [ __ ] and if and when people step to you people write to you saying that they think your content is offensive or shallow or evil or should be cancelled you should be in a position to write back them and say you're damn wrong [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my [Music] i had one person one one person write to me saying that she thought my videos about hitomi mochizuki were offensive it is very likely her opinion was just based on seeing the thumbnail maybe the title and not clicking on the video and i wrote back to her and said you're wrong these are really meaningful videos that are talking about this stuff in a sincere and serious way and i ain't ashamed of them i'm proud of them my daughter can watch those videos one day and my daughter's gonna ask you about them i'm cool with that and this particular person i don't even think they're an exception to the rule i don't think they're special they took a look at what the titles of my videos were they clicked on they listened to them for a couple minutes threw it back and they said hey you know what you're right hey you know what you've got a point you know they wrote back and said hey i guess i was wrong you're actually doing something meaningful this is the kind of critique that's worth something i was mistaken you know what that happens to me all the time and it's not always that polite and it's not always that easy okay one person one wrote into me offended by my video about rachel ziegler vegan activist of dxe won so rachel if you think your campaign to defame me denounce me get me cancelled has any traction one person one friend of yours wrote to me and the same script played out in exactly the same way i'm not ashamed of what i said in this video i think i'm producing something that's really worthwhile i stand by this video my daughter can watch this video one day my daughter can ask me questions i'm proud of the content i burst i'm not ashamed my girlfriend melissa was in the room when i had a phone call with a dude this is a white dude from thailand who was shouting at me because of my video about nina and randa from a million years ago and it boils down to the same thing what i had to say to him was what are you talking about what i said in that video was really meaningful and he hadn't even seen the video i've been through that with other youtubers too but they jump on it okay you tell me you tell me who should be afraid of whom in this equation if you do a book review and you haven't read the book you should be ashamed of yourself right or wrong if by dumb luck you managed to give a really accurate analysis of a book you haven't read you should still be ashamed of yourself if you've read the book right and if the writer wrote the book all right then we're on one we're on one level right like one person is being a sincere creator of content and someone else is being a sincere critic and that's good for everybody steel sharpened steel everyone in my audience is welcome to criticize me everyone welcome to criticize my youtube videos including you rachel rachel's got her own youtube channel i'm happy to hear it i'm a vegan and an old political science major making his way as an obscure author airsats filmmaker and slightly less obscure youtuber keeping it keeping it all the way real i've interviewed a wide variety of people over the years vegan and anti-vegan and i'd be happy to interview you via skype presumably if you've got the [Music] time [Music] i don't know if rachel gets a lot of fan mail and i don't know if rachel gets a lot of hate mail all right but this is clearly neither one it's not stalking it's not harassment it's not hate mail it's just two content creators on youtube and at least one of the two is trying to keep it real her reply i don't know if i really appreciate the narration in this video especially laughing about the part that anyone can make a website accusing someone this is not a video that i want to share or have anything to do with it doesn't feel like support to me i don't support anyone i do research and then i present an informed opinion thus the name and the motto active research and informed opinion reply active research and import opinion well i'm not interested yeah i guess both of us are keeping it real in this conversation you dug through old personal photos of mine like a creep what you didn't see the video she didn't even see two minutes of the video before making this comment it's not true at all editing out parts of me where i sound stupid and where i'm talking about my insecurities if you continue to do this i consider it harassment and i will report your page and publicly call you out actually you know what i don't need to wait for it to happen again period bye quote i treat men and women equally you'll find that i offer critique and cross-examination of the politics of gary yourofsky gary francione and innumerable others all with the same ricker and no there's nothing creepy about research there's nothing creepy about quoting the front page of the newspaper it's one of the cheapest points that people try to score on the internet is accusing you of having spent many hours quote-unquote stalking them or like digging through their old facebook posts which again if you think of yourself as a journalist there's nothing wrong with that as a journalist there's nothing wrong with going out looking through someone's old facebook post to find the image you want to find or find the political i've seen journalists go back 20 years in someone's twitter history to find the one homophobic comment they made 20 years ago and then make a news story out of it that is legitimate journalism but no that's not what i did i'll ask you in the audience have you ever put your own name into google this is what you get for my name in google image search could be worse and yeah if you put rachel ziegler's name into google image search that week you got the images that i used in that video trust me i put five seconds of effort into putting together the images and the video clips used there as i told you before i'm not on anyone's side i'm not supporting you nor wayne syong nor anyone else i do research and i present the audience with an informed opinion you know the motto apparently she did see that message because i got two posts that were unreadable to me i i don't know if she tagged me after she'd blocked me or what but those never popped up and that is the end of the conversation why come on the internet and conversely why cower like a coward and stay off the internet why share your opinions with the world and why keep your opinions yourself the number one reason for privacy is that you are afraid of looking like a fool here's the wonderful thing about social media in the 21st century nobody else can make you look like a fool you shouldn't be afraid of rachel ziegler you shouldn't be afraid of socrates you shouldn't be afraid of durianrider or nor vegan there's a list of people there is a quantifiable list of people who've tried their hardest to defame me denounce me counsel me counsel me there is a finite list of people we could name here who have worked very hard for short periods of time to defame me denounce me drag my name through the mud and in some cases quote unquote cancel me sometimes making a rumor and innuendo about my sex life and this kind of thing and guess what none of it will ever work because all that anyone has to do to debunk it is click on that link is take that one minute that one second to click over and read whatever my actual article was that i'd written watch whatever video it was i'd put on youtube read the actual statement i'd made in writing whatever the format might be none of my critics can make me look like a fool that's not a power anyone in the audience can give them it's not a power i give them myself the only one on the internet who can make you look like a fool is you so if you believe that the content you're producing has some meaning and that it matters today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow for the rest of your life and maybe for your children and grandchildren if you think you're doing something meaningful then take that risk get on the internet roll up your sleeves and you can deal with the same mud and blood and colony and innuendo and cross-examination like every other battle rapper like every other stand-up comedian like every other aspiring model and actor who has rumors told behind their back it's not a risk it's a certainty people are gonna talk if you are a person worth talking dad