The Thai Fruit Festival, Ego-Trips & the Future of Veganism

hi my name is eyes'll I'm vegan guy
behind me is actually uh Edward Snowden he's not vegan I'm making this video in response to a controversy that in 2015 has grabbed a lot of attention around the world inside the vegan community at least but I don't want to talk about it in a way that's only gonna be interesting or meaningful six months into the future when I make a video I'd like to talk about issues that I myself might want to come back and think about five years from now ten years from now I try to talk about the deeper broader underlying issues here and not the details of this controversy that people are only gonna care about in the short term for me this controversy raises a bunch of issues that seem to be invisible to everyone else who's jumping on it that's why I wrote a letter to Joe best man at center of the controversy and part of what I'm gonna do in this video is read that letter out add a few comments as I go what's the big issue here the real big issue is to ask ourselves what is the future of veganism what's it going to be the tie fruit festival currently is one of the most influential iconic events in the world connected to veganism it's high profile and because so many of its participants have a big web presence they broadcast what they're doing on the Internet it reaches a much larger audience than the number of people actually show up and participate people go to that conference seem to have no connection to social reality in Thailand is that ok well let's flip it around what is the future of veganism gonna be it can't be bikini models on Instagram I'm not even saying it shouldn't be it can't be that's not the future of veganism right like photographs yourself getting a manicure and living a life of luxury and hanging out in the beach this stuff is marginal to veganism at and it's being broadcast in a way that really right now puts it at the center I'm somebody who lived and worked and did research in Thailand for years Thailand Laos Cambodia Yunnan also Hong Kong and Taiwan my first diploma is in political science my political science perspective shows a little bit in this video I'm now getting 2nd diploma in Asian Studies I care about politics in Asia I care about vegan issues in Asia I care about ecological issues like deforestation in Asia and there are articles on the internet I wrote about that years ago when you look at the Instagram profiles and you look at the YouTube pages for the participants in this conference in Thailand there's no connection to any of those issues now some people will say that's not the point the point is just to have fun the point is just to get a manicure and hang out in the beach and take photographs of the food you eat and the luxury hotels and the resorts is that the point to me that sounds like an ego trip and look this letter I wrote to Joe best no no Joe best is on an ego trip also but for me that's a real concern and for me that raises deeper and broader issues about what is the future of veganism what is the future of Thailand what's the future of veganism in Thailand and this peculiar social movement of white Western people having basically an annual conference on veganism within Thailand I think it's that's what I'm here to talk about one man's sex life one short-term sex scandal for me that shines a light on these deeper issues but I'm not all that interested I'm not going to harp on the details of what happened in this particular scandal pretty much everyone watching this video in 2015 will already know those details and people who watch it five years in the future then won't know one that won't care just a letter I wrote a joke hi Joe I'm also a vegan and I have years of experience living in Thailand Laos Cambodia as well as other parts of Asia during my years in Asia I had many conversations with small business owners such as yourself foreigners who have started small hotels restaurants and so on as a disclaimer one of the things I found hilarious was the presumption of so many of your critics that you would have a hard time finding a girlfriend in Chiang Mai of all places I could only think these people know nothing about Thailand and of course is rather sad that your critics are still unaware of the extent to which beauty is in the eye of the beholder so what I'm alluding to here is that many of the people attacking Joe best basically at the opinion Joe best is fat therefore it is impossible that he could have a relationship with an amateur bikini model impossible I didn't add this in to hate on anybody real talk beauty is in the eye of the beholder there isn't one objective standard that separates a guy like Joe from a girl like Jill there isn't one standard that separates people or there isn't one standard that bring them together either conversely I'm aware that there are women who find fat men attractive and so on I can't imagine how naive or sheltered many of these people who hate you must be to imagine that it's extraordinary or even unusual for a fat man to end up with a skinny woman or vice versa I think that part of the trap that Thailand presents the foreigners such as yourself is precisely that so many of the businesses exists just to support the lifestyle of their owners I wasn't surprised at all to hear in your recent videos that your hotel isn't making money ie that it may just barely break even that's the case for the vast majority of Westerners who own small hotels and restaurants have spoken to you in Thailand Laos and Cambodia often Westerners run such things in their retirement and spend their savings to do so part of the attraction for many of them is precisely the sex life that this allows them and as I say this may be a bit of a trap some people are drawn to Thailand for sex some for sex drugs and rock and roll some for sex yoga and lectures about reincarnation it's all a trap all those permutations and combinations offer a sort of ego trip for the person who is paying the rent it is really easy for the landlord eg yourself to fall into a loop of treating people as his friends who can't really criticize them if they don't want to hear him play the guitar or simply don't share his taste in music are they going to say it they're in a situation where they're rewarded for a certain type of phony pandering behavior there's a video up of Joe best playing the guitar for his captive audience I forget I think there were maybe five young women in the shop with him and you know there's also young woman holding the camera you can hear her voice I think that's Jill herself filming this and some of the women at least are scantily clad and Joe best you know the shot pans over to Joe best play the guitar and he is glowing with ego now look I don't think sex is evil human ego comes pretty close to evil that kind of ego trip is dangerous including dangerous for the people who are on it and he's probably realized that now in retrospect there's nothing evil about playing the guitar for your friends or tenants but there is a real slippery slope here the audience becomes part of the performance people pretending to be your friends pretend to like your music and you the landlord start to lose track of what's real and what isn't the categories of tenant client employee and friend all get mixed together in the context of a business that isn't really created to earn money but to provide the owner with a certain type of life I'm not saying that this is evil I'm just saying that is a confusing scenario for everyone involved your nine tenants who tried to kick you out and take over your hotel we're so deluded as to imagine that you were running a highly profitable business if they were to compare your hotel to the real for-profit hotels run by Chinese entrepreneurs near the bus stations in almost every city in Thailand they would soon see the difference the small hotels that actually turn a profit don't look anything like your living room and the owner won't play the guitar for you either yes I have directly known several cases where the girlfriend or wife tries to steal the property from under the husband or the boyfriend whatever the case may be I have known situations like that not that I was involved just because I talked to a lot of people who were these types of foreign entrepreneurs it's common it seems a little bit shocking that in this case the young women showed up but more apparently only there for a few days before they had this scheme in Joe's version of events he says that they met and talked with a Thai woman who runs a runs a tanning salon or waxed along and a beautician something like that and that that that woman may have put the idea into her head that I think reflects how widespread how typical that type of scheme is oh you moved into his house well here's how much the rent is here's how you can kick him out and take it over painful very common and if if you've lived out there and you've talked to people you've heard a lot of stories of that and sometimes they can involve corrupt police officers sometimes they can involve organized crime coming into muscle you out sometimes just extended family uncles in it can get ugly quick and that's the kind of game where you don't think you're playing a dangerous game you think you've got a completely serene hippie business whether it's on the banks of the mekong river or the side of the ocean or downtown Bangkok you think you're doing your thing and then you find out just how dangerous the Cape myths you know dangerous the people around you turn out to be said whoo vegans are not immune to this side of human nature as you spend time in Thailand I'm sure you're gonna be many examples of Westerners who have fallen down the rabbit hole after opening their own business with this type of self reinforcing ego trip in some ways you may have been saved from falling into this pattern by the shopping shocking experience you've just had I don't mean that in any kind of facetious or sarcastic sense at all I expect that you're really going to re-evaluate your priorities and realize that your most important relationships are with those ties small business owners who are there permanently and not with the short-term guests who will say anything to you create an ego trip for you and sometimes sleep with you with whatever mix of motives I'm not saying this cynically at all and I'm not insinuating that the women involved are all seeking free commendation or airplane tickets in Thailand huge numbers of female tourists will sleep with you simply because they're looking for a relationship that lasts until their next departure three weeks three days or three hours although I personally never played that game I don't hate the players and I don't hate the game itself either ie sex isn't evil however for the middle-aged landlords who are in a position to host couchsurfers it can be a huge ego trip can gradually lead to strange delusions and end up looking like a cult how true that is I feel like digressing from this letter now to provide like ten different except Lesseps een I knew a very very fat western guy and he was gay in Thailand so big fat gay white guy and he opened a house and he had you know younger skinnier boyfriend's not hating on it um when there's a scandal and people talking it looks bad it looks as big but you know I'm not hating and unknotting the players not in the game and I remember in in parallel the Joe vestige which in some ways you know some similarities I was reminded of this because you know that guy who ran that house he made people who showed up and wanted to use his facilities he made them sign a morality statement he made them sign a promise that while they were there they would be strictly vegetarian and there were some other things like they wouldn't think evil thoughts or something like there were some other kind of the moral commitments that his guests were expected to make and he himself the big fat white guy he would binge on fried chicken you know and I got this story straight from the horse's mouth of someone who was there and you know the person who told me she was vegetarian all the time anyway but you know she's there she really didn't like signing this contract and then she has to see this guy eating chicken and she has to see his whole you know kind of sex life a lot of these setups the category of friend and landlord employer and employee they all get mixed up together and when there's a religious or spiritual element a political element in this case a vegan element gets complicated and it gets invidious you get strong emotions and hatred and resentment and look in that example that that guy eating fried chicken he might not even know that people are hating and resenting him he might think business as usual and things are going great and you know the people around him are building up resentment the dangerous thing about this cycle is that the leaders themselves may not feel that there may leadership decisions the landlord basically creates a crossroads to attract a certain type of person and even if he or she just passively reacts the people who show up he or she can end up in a pretty dangerous ego trip I would say the same about someone who opens a yoga studio and then tends to only meet people who practice yoga and believe in magical rock crystals homeopathy etc in that scenario the owner of the yoga studio is not going to interact with people to challenge their beliefs and say look you're going off the deep end with this magical rock [ __ ] after a few years it is easy for people to convince themselves that everyone ie everyone they meet believes in the hate same half-crazy [ __ ] that they believe in themselves so obviously this is something I've seen happen like in Western academia it's something I've seen happen in Eastern Buddhism and it's something you can see happen within vegan s whatever like subculture within veganism you're talking about you put up that flag create a crossroads and then only like-minded people are showing up and reinforcing whatever your assumptions are whatever your values are including maybe your deluded view of yourself you're on an ego trip that you're the great leader of this vegan movement or whatever it is my impression is that you've only been running this small hotel in Thailand for a short time but ask yourself how much contact with normal Thai people do you really have when you have that contact how much of it is really discussing the problems in their lives yes the language barrier is a factor but I'm sure you already know that normal Thai businessmen are very different from the people you generally interact with in the vegan bubble I'm sure you never decided to live in a bubble of people who reinforce your opinions and assumptions but it can happen to you anyway for the future of vegetarianism this is a deeper issue than you might at first suspect and not because I'm a great fan of norm people look but look if you believe that veganism is not just for people who agree with your political views if you believe that veganism is for everybody then it doesn't just mean that you're happy when Bill Clinton becomes vegan and I wasn't happy I felt a bit shocked and stunned when I found out Bill Clinton was vegan and then he stopped being vegan a few years later and he thought what is this about oh sure on some level naturally we all kind of cherish this delusion that vegans are going to be people we have something in common with politically morally ethically we want to think we have a lot in common with other vegans but if you think veganism is for everybody then it's not just for people who agree with you and you you can't just be happy when you find out Bill Clinton is vegan in theory you've got to be happy if you find out George Bush has become vegan and that all kinds of people who disagree with you fundamentally about politics ethics and the meaning of life are also getting involved with veganism veganism can't just be for athletes veganism can't just be for bikini models veganism can't just be for left-wing socialists it can't just be for Buddhists or Hindus or Christians or skeptical atheists I think a lot of institutions consciously and unconsciously are doing the opposite where they're wanting to narrow the focus of who they deal with they're wanting to exclude more and more people so they can have a type of veganism that just affirms their own values and their own self perception it just builds on their own ego trip for one of a better word so writing to Joe bestir I think that several of your recent reflections have talked about your nine tenants as suffering from the same type of ego trip his nine tenants he was living with nine conventionally attractive younger women all at the same time and this is part of why people hate him on the internet despicable visible unthinkable impossible they were paying rent they were as tenants right normal vegans aren't bikini models on Instagram normal vegans might care about things like animal rights in Thailand elephants tigers deforestation etc that your guests never talk about that I've never seen on any of their YouTube channels or web sites party from the text none of the YouTube presents connected to the Thai fruit festival all these vegans in Thailand writing about film but none of you I mean none of you are just having an honest human reaction to something like deforestation species going extinct to elephants in zoos elephants and cages to Tigers at tourist attractions anything I don't expect you guys to all be philosophers and political scientists deeply involved with you know social and political reality around you but yeah I expect to see more substance just sincere informal reaction to the world around you than I've ever seen through any of the social media connected this event that's you know that's disturbing to me and right now with this controversy everyone's lining up to call Joe best scumbag normal people not to preach when normal people look at the web presence for the Thai fruit festival for this whole vegans and talent movement who's who do you think looks like a scumbag hey maybe you all look like scumbags man like freelee and durianrider by their own description of who they are I'm not hating durianrider former drug addict in and out of jail I don't know what the charges were I don't I've just heard him talk about being in and out of jail and you know if you look drug addiction touches so many people everybody watching this I expect you'll have a relative or a friend from high school you will have known somebody whose lives have been destroyed by drug addiction whether or not they went in and out of jail whatever the story was if you have a friend who was a former drug addict and they turned their life around the way durianrider did you would be elated you'd be so happy room say wow that's so great you went from being a drug user and a convict to being some kind of fitness guru some kind of fitness leader and a vegan and Wow I'm so happy for you that's great the fact that he's lean and muscular you know again in terms of how normal people look at them durianrider could never get elected as the mayor of a small town and one of the reasons would be that people would look at well what is his criminal record I don't know I've never heard any one of the vegan community even ask that question and you know I'm sure it's a public record you look at maybe it's completely trivial the charge is put into jail for maybe not you know is durianrider a scumbag what makes you a scumbag how do you think the world views a group of tourists who just go and celebrate this life of luxury and self-indulgence in Thailand and like in terms of disconnect from social reality you don't even have videos complaining about the cockroaches Chiang Mai is full of cockroaches you don't have any reaction to just witnessing human poverty dislocated refugees I mean like I I heard something on the radio I don't I don't read like and I don't I don't watch TV I don't read a lot of mainstream media but I heard somebody on the on the radio is a political radio show and they were talking about one of the members the the Kim Kardashian family going to Thailand and apparently her mobile phone was not working temporarily so just during a drive from the airport to some luxury hotel some luxury residence just during that drive because her cell phone wasn't working she was looking out the window and she was you know she had this reaction to what she saw you know she saw people living in bamboo huts I'm guessing I'm guessing she saw the stray dogs walking the streets I'm guessing she saw some people who have no shoes maybe she saw some people working in rice fields whatever but apparently she had this reaction to the the poverty in probably the shanty towns or whatever that she saw during five minutes of Thailand and like the reason why this was discussed in the political radio show was listening to was that you know the Kardashian family are famously shallow and just obsessed with a life of luxury and self-indulgence how much worse are we as a vegan community if we have hundreds of people going to and participating in this event at Thailand and like not one person has some kind of authentic spontaneous reaction to those types of issues apparently not one person during their vacation reads a newspaper and just feels concerned about what's happening on the streets or like not one person is going past a monument or museum or a building and they see all the military man with machine guns and you know like that's just natural even if you're completely ignorant of politics to be like gee why is that building so heavily guarded then you ask someone you know ask a local Thai person and they tell you oh it's because they're afraid of political protests that were pro-democracy protests there in the past so the military is guarding that building don't have to be brilliant you don't have to be a genius but like just to have some kind of reaction to what's happening outside of your life that seems to consist of nothing but like showing off your body at the beach and getting your nails done and taking photographs of a plate full of fruit like man we've seen what a watermelon looks like all right if you were in Thailand during 2015 during the military dictatorship what photograph would you want to look back on ten years from now and tell your friends about why didn't you take photographs related to the political events the military dictatorship the poverty the elephants the Tigers you picked the issue and say wow that was something meaningful I witnessed that moment in time you know where gee this this picture reminds me of what was gone you think ten years from now even yourself if you're the one took the photograph you're gonna look back and go oh yeah I remember that watermelon I remember I remember getting that pedicure oh how is your life that much more shallow than the standard set by Kim Kardashian in her family but I've never seen a single comment from any of the participants at the Thai fruit festival about the fact that there's a military dictatorship that replaced an elected government a looming succession crisis following the crown prince's sudden divorce etc etc these are all things you might read about in the newspaper when you're in Thailand it's not it's not deep it's not hidden it's not secret some of these people talk about gender issues in the abstract but have you seen a single statement on the status of women in Thailand or in Thai Buddhism the whorehouses are ubiquitous in Chiang Mai and throughout all of northern Thailand but they seem to be invisible to these vegan feminists ie the same vegan feminists who are attacking Jill best for being a subhuman terrible person why is there so little interest in the real world while there's so much interest in Joe best sex life people film themselves eating mangos in front of a Buddhist temple or riding their bicycles past [ __ ] houses but there seems to be absolutely zero interest in the real world even in the limited sense that a normal tourist might have curiosity about these things I'm not suggesting that anyone or everyone is going to engage in deep political analysis of the situation but yes I would expect some vegans to be talking about something more meaningful than a life of total self-indulgence makeup eating swimming bicycle upgrades etc etc veganism defined entirely in terms of vanity is going to be Vichy aided by that same vanity I don't think that vanity is evil but the mix of extreme vanity shallowness and self-indulgence accompanied by claims of over-the-top compassion and saving the world from bikini models who don't seem to give a [ __ ] about anything but where their next wax job is coming from is a combination that anybody would find laughable my suggestion for your channel and for your own sanity frankly is just that you try to engage with the reality outside of your walls a bit more when was the last time you saw anyone connected to the Thai fruit festival mentioned Thai politics even in passing when was there a YouTube video that even commented momentarily quote you know I've been feeling kind of worried about what I've been reading in the newspapers lately I am NOT suggesting that someone like jalisa Galatia still is going to start reading foreign policy magazine and I'm not suggesting that your channel is going to become profound and morose either however the vegan movement within Thailand has in 2015 no connection to the reality of Thailand I've never once seen any of these vegans in Thailand even remark on the poverty they witness eg refugees from civil wars in Burma etc nor have I seen any of them talking about animal cruelty in Thailand animal agriculture in Thailand the total deforestation of the country it brings that the extinction of wild species etc one of your comments mentioned the Thai owners of a small restaurant some small restaurant he has a business connection with a person with I know maybe you could interview them in a video via a Thai translator the mechanic who fixes your bike in Chiang Mai is probably either a Burmese refugee or allow speaking immigrant you could talk to that guy on camera too couldn't you I'm just talking about having some meaningful connection with the real world outside of the vegan bikini model bubble okay now these examples are [ __ ] my own experience lotions are an ethnic minority within Thailand they're not all migrants from Laos some of them are migrants from us--and in the northwest but yeah probably the guy who fix your bike either his first language is Lao or his first language is Burmese and again this does not have to be hard-hitting documentary filmmaking but if some of your videos are going to be interviewing bikini models about this kind of stuff couldn't you also have a video where you're just talking to the guy who fixes your bike and like you know again in Thailand even something that casual would would ground this this so-called movement in some type of greater social reality and like man it's painful to see people using the language of a political movement to describe this type of totally self-indulgent vacation I've seen real protests that were really you know trying to raise awareness and protest an issue in the face of public and difference or public scorn like in France the status of vegans is really terrible because that the French culture is so strongly in favor of meat-eating you're posting videos of a bunch of white people who are all inside the vegan bubble who are all on vacation together and who are all already vegan hanging out and you say that's a flashmob you say that's a protest you say that's a movement it's none of those things and like in a way I mean that's it's insulting to the real activists who or who are really doing the work all over the world I mean you know Toronto Pig save they're a protest movement in Toronto obviously and they show up at the slaughterhouse and where the trucks full of pigs about to be killed are waiting and so on you know this is a kind of meaningful confrontation with the meat industry and you know whatever whether you call that a flashmob a protest what-have-you I mean that is a political movement no joke what I see going on in Thailand and what the whole world sees going on in town isn't hot a movement I'm not saying that the future of veganism shouldn't be bikini models on Instagram I'm saying that it can't be all right and like even in hip-hop even in rap music one of the things you most commonly hear is social media is destroying hip-hop the future of rap music can't be Instagram models you know and you know rap music's not that deep a lot of it's about absolutely nothing but still even in that art form in that part of the music industry people really feel that tension a veganism is a relatively deep and complicated and politically loaded subject yeah like I said five minutes ago veganism defined entirely in terms of vanity is going to be vitiated by that same vanity my letter to Joe best continues if you had been living in South Africa under apartheid you would have had access to great quality fruit also South Africa still farmed some of the best fruit on earth but you would look back in your life with regret if you had produce nothing but videos blogs and photographs of the most trivial and vain nonsense imaginable mind the latest manicure etc etc how shallow is a movement that thus has its eyes closed to everything except for the artificial paradise presented within the dotted lines of resort hotels and vegan restaurants if these vegan festivals were being held in the Ukraine or Iran would vegans be similarly oblivious to everything aside from their lives of self-indulgence I hope this letter gives you something to think about beyond the limits of what your critics have to say about you what I find interesting what your case is precisely that it raises these deeper and broader issues what is the future of veganism what is the future of Thailand the future of veganism is not going to be ten million Instagram models writing 10 million blogs about hair and makeup the future of Thailand is not going to be 10 million colonies of self-obsessed vegan athletes photographing themselves on bicycles and posing with plates of fresh-cut fruit that won't be the future because it can't be that's an illusion of a perpetual vacation that isn't even real during the few weeks that people pretend to live it at such great expense I know what the real Chiang Mai is like and I know that it is being edited out of all these videos intentionally or unintentionally but people who are pretending to live the dream when you think about the future of veganism the challenge is not gonna be adapting to include scumbags like Joe best it's going to be adapting to include all kinds of people who have nothing in common who represent totally different political views and so on in a meaningful movement for social change