Softcore pornography destroyed the vegan movement ("activism")

i'm gonna go to the gym a little bit
later i could film myself but i won't i'm gonna go grocery shopping a little bit later i could film myself but i won't i'm probably going to cook food this evening probably would anyone in this audience want to watch a video of that i doubt it what's happened here on youtube is the creation of a cottage industry of people filming the banal minutia of their daily lives the meaningless details of themselves shopping eating and buying clothes and presenting this to an audience cumulatively of tens of thousands of people hundreds of thousands of people millions of people and cumulatively generating millions of dollars now that money is spread out pretty thin i don't think that someone like bonnie rebecca is making all that much money filming herself at the grocery store but nevertheless she has enough of a financial incentive to really take quite a lot of time filming herself doing a grocery shop right it may look natural but you have to pause and consider the extent to which this is an affectation when she films herself handling a box of cereal in the cereal aisle she's actually taken her camera and set it down on a shelf started it rolling and then you know behaves as if she's walking down this aisle picking up the box she behaves as if this is effortless she doesn't have a cameraman with her she doesn't have a tripod she's setting up each of these shots aisle by aisle item by item in this grocery store and her grocery shopping experience is going to take three times as long as it would if she just bought the groceries now my question here is not why would the audience want to see this but why would the filmmaker think this is a meaningful and interesting type of content to present the audience what happened within veganism was the idea that there was something instructive educational useful and even heroic in showing yourself buying macaroni and cheese because it was vegan macaroni and cheese showing yourself cooking the macaroni and cheese because it was vegan macaroni and cheese showing yourself enjoying the macaroni and cheese and showing yourself talking about how it's a perfectly good perfectly satisfying macaroni and cheese even though it's vegan and this is tied conceptually to a grand sense of moral purpose a sense of wanting to make the world a better place ecologically ethically animal rights however it is you think of it and then what you see with these ex-vegans like body rebecca is you take away that moral purpose you take away that political movement that aspiration to work make the world a better place and yet the cycle of filmmaking of producing video out of the meaningless minutia of your daily life still goes on the cottage industry of of manufacturing a product that nobody wants for an audience who can't possibly find these things interesting goes on it's like a wheel a wooden wheel that fell off the cart and keeps rolling down the hill for a good long while this one in particular really got me she says you use your thin attractive body i mean use that's a strong word isn't it i mean that's just who bonnie rebecca is she has a thin and an attractive body what is she yeah she was born attractive born with tall long lean genetics yeah i don't see why she should be penalized for that it doesn't mean that she's a bad person that she was born attractive and she takes care of herself i don't just think this is a problem with the state of veganism i think this is a problem with the state of youtube people are producing content that could only be interesting to a viewer in the most deprived circumstances imaginable and it's pathetic like you know you can laugh or you can cry but who would find it interesting to watch bonnie rebecca in the grocery store this way maybe someone who's on a refugee camp in south sudan who's never been in a grocery store like that someone whose life is so far removed from this that they regard this as exotic and interesting and bizarre like oh wow look at this girl picking cereal off the shelf i mean vegan gains sorry he's still vegan he's not ex v he does this too he films himself going to costco and trying on shoes he films himself going to costco and buying dry groceries it's my who who is this for who who who do these filmmakers imagine is in the audience who would enjoy and appreciate this content who would have something to learn from it and for the audience i mean again veganism provided this anchor it provided this sense of moral purpose that justified the filmmaking justified the presentation of the video and justified the audience's role as all being part of a quote unquote movement or a quote unquote community and the thing is now in 2019 even though i express my contempt for these ex-vegans there's also a limited extent to which i can sympathize with them because i've completely lost faith in this movement i've completely lost any hope for the future of this movement um obviously i still eat a vegan diet but i have none of the sense of moral purpose that i had when i started this channel on a very basic level i don't think even one person is going to come into my life and collaborate to accomplish anything in veganism as a movement like not to lobby government not to publish a magazine article or publish a book not even to collaborate on a youtube video like my expectations of my fellow vegans have gotten lower and lower and lower there isn't anything immoral about filming yourself while you buy your groceries and i don't think there's anything immoral about an audience that finds it fascinating to watch someone buy cook and eat their groceries [Music] but i think there's something for us to pause and reflect on here ex-vegans tend to go through a transitional period where they at first want to glorify their own sense of having done something edgy and bold in having overcome having challenged the ethical lines they drew for themselves in becoming vegan you hear a lot of that kind of self-congratulation from them you hear them boasting that they decided to do what was right for them despite being conditioned or despite being part of a cult or however they put it so they often go through a brief period where they try to valorize their meat eating as a moral cause that's tantamount to veganism that's equal to veganism they try to valorize their being omnivores or carnivores as if it's now going to provide a sense of meaning and direction in their lives the way that veganism did before now a strict plant-based diet worked for me for many years and then it didn't i had to accept and admit to myself that the needs of my body were changing i listened to my body it's not about like judging something as being right or wrong it's about being open it's about being motivated it's about being truthful with yourself i feel empowered i feel excited i feel empowered to make the decisions that are right for me regardless of what others may think and i'm feeling inspired for the journey that lies ahead of me i truly believe that we have created this community for a purpose so i am going to continue sharing my life sharing my healthy journey to help you become a better healthier version of yourself they try to valorize their being omnivores or carnivores as if it's now going to provide a sense of meaning and direction in their lives the way that veganism did before and then soon enough that ends that fades away and what's left what's left is a cycle of the most meaningless filmmaking imaginable what's left is someone like bonnie rebecca or someone like kasumi chris filming themselves going through the meaningless actions of their daily life that could only be meaningful to an audience so far removed from that normality that they regard it as exotic or incomprehensible now five years ago four years ago three years ago i was warning people in the vegan movement look we've got to do more than this we've got to be more than this we've got to have a real community we're going to have we've got to have real collaboration real organization we've got to become a real movement but even within filmmaking we should be looking for talent and direction and meaning you know i say all the time we gotta write new children's story books and produce new children's stories gotta produce cartoons and kids shows and puppet shows but hey if you want to produce the vegan equivalent to game of thrones a drama for adults there are a lot of challenges if you think about youtube as filmmaking or you think about the future of veganism and filmmaking and what what can be done um but precisely what people were drawn to was this kind of you know pg-13 pornography this incredibly diluted pornography constructed out of bits and pieces of the banal details of of their coten habits i mean that's just who bonnie rebecca is she has a thin and an attractive body what is she she was born attractive born with tall long lean genetics the salacious promise of people like durianrider and freely telling you all you have to do is come on the internet and wear a bikini you know show off your body as a man or a woman and promise people they can get the same great diet results and you'll have money and fame and you know that was maybe easier for the audience to be aware of like they could see the bait and they could see the hook that the bait was hanging from you know you could see the incentive you could see what people were doing to get that incentive and you could see what was wrong with it stood out but the uh the ever more meaningless cycle of autobiographizing your daily life the way in which that became the predominant mode of vegan activism and people used to say to me people who say to me positively they say why don't you do the same thing people say to me why don't you quit your job why don't you drop out of your education and why don't you just become a full-time vegan activist and what they meant was why don't you become a full-time cinema verite filmmaker who films yourself cooking and doing grocery shopping and cleaning the dishes and trying on clothes and shoes you know and look i just bought a new pair of vegan shoes and i may do a video talking about whether or not those shoes are any good but if i do it's because i believe that review of that product that shoe actually serves a function for the audience and instead what we got was a type of filmmaking that had had no relationship to the audience that no utility had no purpose and no point for the audience and bit by bit i think this poisoned the outlook of the movement where where we had a movement that existed likewise for no other purpose no other purpose other than producing the self-same lifestyle that was packaged marketed and sold right here on youtube [Music]