Ken Saviour: Satire "vs." Vegan Activism.

my girlfriend is cracking up in the
background maybe that's appropriate for this video because this is video responding to a political satire Ken Saviour is a satirical vegan activist or a satyr is a ssin of vegan activism and I received a very open-ended request than to make a video responding to or perhaps criticizing this phenomenon and I'd be interested to know the person who sent me that message asking me to make this view I wonder what their expectation might be for many of you this is the first you've heard of it or seen it but apparently many many vegans are responding to this satire with a real sense of hostility and outrage and if you've been watching my channel for a long time you can probably imagine that I actually have mixed sense of admiration and appreciation for this satire because it is addressing many of the same issues I addressed on my channel in a much more serious way so if you just take some time to examine the image that's on your screen right now I know it looks like there's not a lot there but really if you think about it you've got the title of this video permanent vacation to vegans drop out of school for social media activism and the word activism is in quotation marks then you've got the text on the image itself fame is fleeting the vegan movement is not it might also jump out at you here that this video I'm mentioning from over a year ago on the channel it's 55 minutes long this is the better part of an hour addressing this and I don't I don't remember joking around a whole lot in that video I don't remember it being satirical in tone and then the fine print the bottom left side of that that image says don't drop out of school for selfies so actually in this in this one video or even just in the preview image for this this video you can see I actually have tried in my way to address a lot of the same themes that can Savior is here dealing with in a format that takes much less than 55 minutes of your time to consume so I'll just read this one out for you can hear Wow I can no longer hold in my excitement I have a huge announcement to make to all my adoring fans I am going on a vegan Van prophecy tour around the world I've been vegan for just over three weeks and Cana calling for justice can no longer wait I've decided to give up my day job to peruse animal ah Liberation's there's an intentional typo I think I thought I thought that was an intentional witticism but no to pursue Animal Liberation and I will be mentoring underprivileged African and Asian kids I've set up a patreon account and will be relying on single moms to fund my journey to freedom I need to speak on their behalf because they are voiceless just like the animals if I can do this anyone can just get a job save up leave your kids behind university debt your mortgage wives husbands and elderly parents the most oppressed minority needs you sacrifice for the animals this is my crusade and it comes at a price but I'm willing to let you pay it and I hope you are too i accept paypal and cheques so that's that's ken saviors pitch now not only Hawaii criticized this as I say I think sometimes satirical I think sometimes there have been elements of humor and joking around but sometimes it's been deadpan serious and I've known people who did this not just enemies and frenemies I think I can say there were some people that were my friends who really did this and there were some people who urged me to do this my girlfriend doesn't remember this time of my life but before we got together there were people who said to me look why don't you just become a full-time freakin activist why don't you just start you know raising money this way accepting donations listen donations went so on and cinnamons there were people who'd done it themselves to some extent or what-have-you but it it pretty much was this type of lifestyle activism permanent vacation they were they were talking about and no that's not what I'm all about I just briefly searched my channel I have over 900 videos on this channel when I search for the word permanent vacation you can see again and again I have actually been confronting and criticizing other vegans about this kind of you know I was gonna say hypocrisy but really it's not hypocrisy it's not hypocrisy it's just stupid I mean it's stupidity is what it is that we're we're trying to deal with here and a lot of these same themes are coming up in a satirical way that offends some vegans with Kenan Saviour but let's keep it a little real my videos also like you just even that what I just had on screen Thailand permanent vacation versus political reality a lot of people were really offended where I said hey look guess what Thailand's a military dictatorship when was the last time you heard of there being elections in Thailand what about the freedom of speech and the right to protest now let's really talk about the political problems in Thailand that are being you know kind of steamrolled by vegans on this kind of self-indulgent political vegan it was a political vision quest but it came out political vegan quest and we survey this kind of you know Vision Quest permanent vacation lifestyle activism and you know there were people who were offended flabbergasted to be raising these these kinds of questions so it's not really a shock to me that Ken Xavier is is offending some people too and I don't know the people who are behind the Ken Saviour or SATs are I don't know if they're Pro vegan or if they're you know if there are actually meat-eaters who just want to have a laugh at vegans I really don't know I would assume they're people who really do support veganism just because the level of knowledge of the vegans they're making fun of is pretty high most meat eaters if they engage in this kind of satire they just wouldn't know enough about what they're making fun of to really skewer it this way so now I here's here's Ken Savior arrives in in Asia Ken here my exotic Asian and veg sure continues as I infiltrate the local bird markets where millions and millions and millions of wild birds were enslaved in cages and being sold into pet slavery for just $5 this candid shot was taken as I was liberating some of the birds in their prisons I could see that this young child was lost and in need of my mentoring my words of love rained down on her as I unlight 'end her with the vegan prophecy of love and freedom for all animals are not objects even that kind of phrasing I think it was a meat-eater writing this they wouldn't know to use that that's straight out of the you know the abolitionist playbook animals are not objects so most most non vegans wouldn't even know to make fun of that that line of reasoning all right they should not be sold as slaves and for that reason I could not pay her as I walked away I could hear her sobbing as the darkness of reality lay upon her and at that moment I knew I had liberated another mind from the chains of speciesism she will never sell birds again stay woke Asia next stop Africa you know durianrider back when he was defending his reputation the reputation he destroyed himself I remember he told the story which of course may not be true of him going and liberating a bird in that sense basically stealing a bird from a market a live bird what was being being sold I never he claimed he you know he never met he's lived in Thailand for years but he never made the language but he claimed that just communicating through the eyes that Thai man whose bird was being stolen he got it he understood the moral purpose of his bird big stolid like you know you're just looking into his eyes I could feel that he felt me like it was it was pretty self-serving and delusory all right can savior arrives in africa hey Ken here touchdown in travel Africa today and I feel overwhelmed with emotion as I look upon the land of our ancestors but as usual there was no time wasted straight into activism the animals can't wait this picture was taken as I was spreading my seeds of vegan knowledge to the poor underprivileged children at the local markets lucky for them I brought foreign vegan aid Oreos and the impossible burger my mentoring skill my girls really crack yeah but now that Mike picks it up anyway my mentoring skills came in handy as I explained that cruelty free food will save the world from poverty and starvation especially vegan chocolates because they support the local cacao is Right Wow my blazing heart has no limits and sees no color I just see Earthlings in need we are all animals and my vegan prophecy will liberate us with your ongoing donations we will rise together stay tuned for more some tips the saga continues so look I looked I went to the Facebook page that all these images come from and you know it actually has a review section like as if it were a restaurant people can leave reviews I think every single review was either five stars or one star it was the highest possible said it were the lowest and the people leaving one-star reviews were vegans and it was very interesting people claimed this is divisive this is going to divide the vegan community you know and I think that is profoundly misguided I mean you know satire is not a sign of weakness it's a sign of strength if your movement is worth satirizing it means you're doing a lot of things right not that you're doing a lot of things wrong and I hope the movement is strong enough that there are a lot of people who feel confident in their own activism and confident in their own knowledge of economics and politics and foreign policy in Africa and Asia and everything else that they can look at this and laugh and if you've been involved with veganize activism you probably do know a few people out there like Ken safer you you probably do know a few people where you know hey if the shoe fits wear it if this criticism comes it's a little bit too close to home maybe you should feel criticized and you should examine what you're doing but um you know satirizing the worst of the most buffoonish elements of what's going on in vegan activism obviously i regard this you know positively there's there's a lot here that's worth laughing about and there's a lot here that's worth laughing at and i don't know when when you imagine the present and future of the vegan movement if you imagine something so feeble that it can be divided and destroyed by me and my videos you know like pointing out for example that hey test bag dropped out of high school to do this you know why why do we have people on YouTube encouraging more high school students to drop out of high school and just start living on the Internet dole internet handouts from you know and I mean there are a lot of other elements to that too there's the bikini based activism element there's you know in some ways it's it's pretty pretty sure to say drop out of high school and start posting half-naked pictures of yourself in the Internet as activism starts soliciting donations and then start traveling around it normally is Asia not Africa you know there probably are some examples in Africa too I noticed for some reason it's not Syria for some reason nobody wants to ship out to a war zone and breach veganism there for some reason it's not it's not Iraq what the Americans want in Iraq the war's over why don't we have more ken savior's what I was going to Iraq what's up what's up Ken come on take your Oreos to Iraq start explaining the Iraqis could use some some vegan activists but anyway you know still it was interesting for me and it really brought me back to the situation that Channel two years ago or more seeing the harsh shrill thin-skinned reaction of some vegans to this giving it one star and saying no this is terrible you're gonna divide the movement you're gonna let the animals down you're sabotaging what we're doing guys satire is not sabotage evolution