Bikinis & Bomb Craters (Claire Michelle & Growing Up on the Internet)

hey guys the fact that I'm recording in
China actually does still influence what I do and how I do it in this video what I'd really like is actually to go back to to put in a clip from an older video I have that's called real politics fake diet there's a nice moment in that video you know all unscripted memmer Hurst where I just replied to another vegan who was presuming who was talking about how veganism was about looking like freely and where I just said spontaneously like um I don't think veganism is about how you look or who you look like you know I don't think veganism is about looking like freely and I don't think veganism is about looking like Patrick Stewart you know or anyone else it's just a moment that came up spontaneously now because I'm in China and because uploading is really difficult I actually am I'm not gonna add that in if I get into the editor and adding clips it it increases the file size and I don't know if I can get this on a youtube at all when the files get too large but you know in this video what I'm responding to is a whole whole genre of videos here on YouTube but also one particular example from a very successful young youtuber named Claire Michelle now some of you guys get and some of you guys don't get the tone with which I comment on this phenomenon of younger primarily female vegans creating a public image themselves on the internet and then you know they basically start to profit from the image politics now I know what it's like to get money when you're still in your teens uh when I think I was 16 but maybe I was still 15 when I first started publishing articles you know in in small magazines but back then whether I made $200 or $400 as a journalist a journalist you know at a very very low level but um when you're still living with your parents you're not paying your own rent a little bit of money like that a few hundred dollars kind of a big impact on your life and it may have a big impact on how you perceive yourself in my case it didn't what wasn't an ego trip for me public publishing few articles didn't didn't mess me up too much but sure a few hundred dollars to go a long way so it's very easy for me to imagine how a few hundred dollars from YouTube talking about your life talking about beauty or putting on a bikini and filming yourself at the beach I definitely understand that that can powerfully shape how you perceive yourself how you're living your life and so on um what I'm really responding to in this video right now recorded at 5:30 a.m. in China I've been getting up early my video yesterday was recorded at 4:30 a.m. I think um you know I really can relate to exactly 50% of the discourse that I get from people at Claire Michele and then there's a flipside there's another 50% that leaves me cold and that I feel I have to respond to negatively I mean negatively in an almost logical sense here pointing out the opposite pointing out the other side I see these young women primarily coming in the internet I know just one young man who's in this category they're probably a couple young men doing the same thing but I see these young women coming on at the Internet and they kind of present a philosophy that life is not about being as skinny as possible that life is not about being as as beautiful as possible and I realize they're saying that because they themselves are under pressure quite literally to appear in a bikini on Facebook on Instagram on their YouTube channel that's actually how they're earning their money and in many of these cases these young women have either dropped out of university or dropped out of high school or have just decided not to enroll in university at all to take this on as a kind of short-term career path as being a self-made model self-made Internet personality what have you so there is real pressure on them to be blunt to exploit their own sexuality to us their own image I'm you know they're doing it um you know that that's very directly what they're you know you their internet presence is based on and what-have-you but again I really do sympathise I really do understand that they have a kind of philosophical reaction to that of saying look this is not who I really am this is not what life is really about life in so Claire Michelle in the video I just watched she says when you're 80 years old and you look back on your life when you look back in your life from a distance at an old age do you think you're really gonna remember that you maintained a size zero figure do you think you're really gonna remember how you looked in a bikini or that you maintained certain physical features like a thigh gap that some women strive for that you worked so hard to get certain results and she says no you know that she is in effect saying this is not the meaning of life this is not what your gonna look back on and I'm valuing what's gonna stay with you so that first 50% of the argument I really do sympathize with I sympathize with why they're saying it I sympathize with what they're saying and I sympathize with the whole direction they're moving it but then the next 50% is that she goes on to argue as I've seen other or others argue others in this kind of genre or in this category of vegans we're just talking about vegans here but still it's it's a huge kind of genre right now in terms of the number of viewers it's huge and in terms of the cultural influence probably a lot of young women are being influenced about this in a sense a lot of young men there be what's by this to probably having a very different effect on the male audience but the next 50% of what she does is then to go on to argue for what she thinks is meaningful and important by contrast and like many other young women in this genre what she's really arguing for is the the importance of what I call the permanent vacation even though I think in her case I think it's just a temporary vacation i if you watch earlier videos in my channel here I'm not against vacations if you want to go on vacation for two weeks fine but I I do not think young people should drop out of college to go on vacation forever or I don't think they should give up their ambitions or career paths or stop trying to make the world a better place so they can go on vacation and I do not think you should convince yourself that your vacation itself is is a form of activism that the vacation makes the world a better place because it doesn't but vacations are not evil I'm not I'm not against vacations so she's somewhat vaguely argues that what will stay with you what you will remember are doing wonderful things like traveling like going on vacation like going to Italy or I don't know going to Thailand Thailand is another example and spending time with your friends with people you love I think she just talks about friends not family but whatever so going on vacation Italy and spending time with those friends that these kinds of happy memories of the happy memories of this kind are what will really stay with you when you're 80 years old or what matters to them now I'm 37 I've got to tell you I really disagree with that I'm gonna give you a couple of examples from my youth of what really stays with me and of what really shapes me as a person and it's probably not what Claire Michelle would expect it's not what many be Ginsburg maybe if you're watching this you're over 50 years old it's also not what you'd expect and this channel I just remind you guys it contains a lot of very negative reflections and how awful University is my experience University in Canada is uniformly negative I've got only bad things to say about University so please do not think that this is a kind of uncritical endorsement of paying thousands of dollars in tuition as an as a pretext to read a stack of books but look you know um I did research in might when I was a normal undergraduate student Normal University aged kitty-kat normal crappy university degree I just got an assignment to do an essay on the history of the civil war in Sudan and the assignment was crappy the professor was crappy the whole class was crappy it was a lousy course of Laozi University and I got a lousy great I mean it did too well on the test I didn't do well on paper whatever you want to say uh but you know I sat down with a stack of books and I did some research on the history of the civil war in the Sudan and the guy who graded the paper didn't care and didn't know what the civil war in Sudan was some ta the whole context was completely uninspiring and frankly dehumanizing and you know there was no positive social interaction outside of it I didn't have a nice conversation with the prof or the TA or anyone in the class about the civil wars have completely isolated have this assignment sit down with the books but you know in many ways that research I did on the civil war in Sudan it still is with me today it still is something that shapes Who I am it influenced the man I became it influences how I think and feel about politics even though you know now I very intentionally performing this video I did not open up Wikipedia I did not open up Google and check anything when I reflect on it how much can i really remember from that reading or that research how you know how many names of cities in Sudan could I even recall if I force myself to you know that fades the names of the cities obviously the dates and locations of the battles and so that don't remember at all how many of the names of the political leaders the Prime Minister's or the rebel leaders could I remember maybe one maybe all the other names have faded except one those details are not what stayed with me but in a very real sense the process of learning and a certain kind of political perspective that came out of that research really did stay with me and you know is that more emotional or is that more intellectual I think probably a type of emotional change maybe a type of appreciation that you gain from doing research of that kind that that stays with you and it has an emotional effect just a few days ago here at my school I was talking to some much younger men who I assume were around 25 years old um and the civil war in the Sudan came up amazingly you know it's very rare my whole life how often is como conversation and I remember I just said them yeah you know I stated my paying one cents I said oh if you're interested you know you can look into it and one guy who was who was British the British are always more easily offended than Americans and the stuff he actually found that offensive that I would just use the phrase I just don't you know if you hunch no more you know you should you can look into it he said you know how dare you say you know you know in my whole life what I read maybe six books about that Civil War but obviously the vast majority people are trying to have not even read a Wikipedia article now you know I'm mentioning this Sudan is so cut off from all my other interests in life in other videos in the past I mention the research they don't Haiti the political history of Haiti that also really influenced me really shaped me in a lot of ways even though Haiti and Sudan have nothing to do with my interest in life if you guys have watched this channel I mean on the one hand you hear me talk about veganism but also you know Cambodia Laos Thailand China etc and at the time I did the research I could not have known what it would mean to me or how much it would mean to me especially given how crappy the whole context of the University course was that there's nothing nothing inspirational nothing emotionally rewarding or warm or entertaining about it unlike maybe going to a beach in Italy with your friends and taking pictures of yourself in a bikini and putting them on the Internet I think for many young people you can't know that at the time and even now so now I'm 37 just a couple of months ago I did a bunch of research on and wrote a long essay on a political Massacre a political disaster where thousands of people died in the year 1920 and this massacre involved Russia involved Japan involved China out in East Asia where those countries overlap so it's in Russian territory but in East Asia fascinating but also again that political history has an emotional impact on me I think I broke down weeping twice and doing the research not open weeping but I had tears come to my eyes because yeah I was reading detailed accounts of you know mass murder and including perspectives of survivors people who were victims who survived people who committed the crimes who survived and later reflected on it you know what I personally find tragic are moving about it and different things I could say even now even in my late 30s there's a sense in which I can say to you I don't know how that impacts me how that changes me but I can tell you one thing I've been all around the world I've been to beautiful places I've seen beautiful things yes I have spent time with friends I'm not especially into beaches but I've been to a couple beaches and I've been to beautiful mountains I've been to beautiful rivers I've seen things that are both beautiful and horrific I've seen bomb craters and I've seen men living their whole lives with craters in their skin craters in their faces from bullet wounds from war I've got to tell you just as Claire Michelle has come on and said it's not your bikini it's not your body that's gonna stay with you for the rest of your life I have to tell you also it's not tourism it's not seeing beautiful things that's gonna stay with you for the rest of your life and then you're gonna look back on and think is meaningful when you're 80 years old and the university system as I know it which is primarily at the university system is deeply flawed but that does not mean that research itself is meaningless that does not mean that learning itself is meaningless and if you had the self-discipline to challenge yourself to sit down and do research on some thing as random as the Sudan or Haiti or Cambodia or anything then you wouldn't need a university but as terrible as my experience the University is with organized education of every kind is I remain deeply grateful for the fact that I had that experience that I had the opportunity in the conditions to sit down and learn about those political episodes and when I'm 80 years old if I live to be 80 years old I will still look back and I will know that that really has changed me that has shaped me that is profoundly that's changed the world as I know it and it's changed the way I live in this world