The Death of a Dream: Veganism After the End of HCLF / RT4 / Durianrider / Freelee /etc.

but whose yen to me looking back on this
evening five years in the future 10 years the future when people were asking what was this dream this dream that took the internet by storm for a short time and then it died how did people convince themselves that eating 11 mangos a day or 30 bananas a day that this was not just something you should do but something you should get on the internet and boast about that this was the crux of a social change of a moral change of a transformation of our society it's it's just bizarre huh that new Yin YouTube is like the only Club in town that's open after 3 a.m. you don't go there because it's good you go because you don't have a better alternative and the people you meet there too aren't good they're the people who just don't have anywhere else to go what I do on YouTube is not activism it is merely better than nothing a lot of us simply don't have much to give and don't have better options the choice is be honest about it as opposed to being on an insane ego trip a lot of us in the last five years have witnessed the rise and fall of an insane ego trip still today there are some people who are simultaneously buying and selling a dream that just can't be true what is that dream it's hard to talk about it now that it's finally dying now that it's finally become something that's laughed at and regarded as embarrassing within veganism the dream was that you could quit your day job live on permanent vacation make money promoting your lifestyle and the same time wrap that all up in the self-satisfied confidence that you were doing the most you can for the animals for the environment for the future of the planet that you were making the world a better place through a new and thrilling form of politics that's almost completely apolitical because putting on a bikini and going to the beach is about the least political thing you can do and yet it was glorified very seriously by so many people as activism and tacked on to this strangely was this idea of unlimited calories that you should feature yourself eating insane quantities of bananas mangoes dates list of almost arbitrarily chosen high calorie foods this was a sort of package deal a sort of air SATs ideology it was an air SATs a tea ology that for a couple of years there seemed like a dominant element of veganism animal rights in ecology and it seemed that way because so many people were vocally promoting it on the Internet a small number of people through the internet can cast a big shadow they can have a big impact especially when they are fanatical believers in the idea that they're not merely pursuing fame money sex ego but that they're actually you know making the world a better place at the same time and when the outcomes are for them guaranteed right outcomes as diverse as weight loss and fame itself that if you just follow this simple formula for making and uploading videos the fame that a very small number of other people have had can be reproduced for you in your life you'll be able to pay your bills basically by exploiting your own your own beauty even if you ain't beautiful now look this is one example obviously there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples and you're gonna see why I chose this this is not a bad example that's spending an above-average sample this young woman uses the screen name mole candy is her full name is more Kandee something like that objectively she's good-looking not my type not a subjective statement but I mean you know she's slim she has piercing blue eyes she has a lot of body arches a lot of tattoos and even more rare she has a huge advantage of living in one of the only places in the world one of the few places that does have a big vegan population she lives in Portland Oregon so she has the possibility to promote her channel really through a network of people who know each other face to face it's a huge advantage most of us don't have most of us online were the only vegan are in our town or we don't know or get along with even two or three other vegans and this young woman put quite some work into her Instagram accounts into her videos and so on and nobody cares you know nobody cares obviously after this video maybe some of you are gonna go check out her channel maybe she'll gain some fans from this but you know the brutal reality that this this ideology was ignoring is is basically the same that you have in something like music I mean you can't you can't point to a jazz musician and say look at that jazz musician he makes plenty of money therefore if you just start playing jazz music you'll have plenty of money to know know that the vast majority of jazz musicians spend years of their lives developing their craft practicing playing gigs and nobody cares and there's no fame and there's no money and they don't become sex icons you know is it even one in a million I mean today in 2016 if if you want to be a jazz musician in the year 2016 it has to be for some other reason it cannot possibly be for money fame sex or any of those things that come with success you have to be motivated by the art form itself or by I don't know some charitable instinct I have no idea I'm you know if you're a jazz musician these days you probably do gigs out of charity going and playing at old folks homes and that kind of thing I've known some jazz musicians well these examples like that you know I mean it is what it is it's an art form but I mean at least jazz musicians don't don't think they're saving the world I mean all these strange elements of it yes I just say a few more comments about about Moe can do as I say she is better looking than average by far a lot of people trying to play this game do not have her her unfair advantages in that respect she also is way more intelligent than average and you guys may think that's a backhanded compliment because obviously there are some remarkably stupid people who are in the high carb low fat echo chamber but she does actually have some monologues about the meaning of culture and you know she has some reflections that show that she's actually working with quite a few brain cells so is culture a good or a bad thing like ask yourself is the things that you're thinking the product of social conditioning and cultural I don't know whatever or is it your actual thoughts is it coming from innate inside you so yeah but still it's it's weird why the hell would anyone wake up and eat five mangoes for breakfast yeah I'm I hope this isn't too shallow for you guys but I do want to pause on this for for a minute this young woman lives in Portland Oregon that's very very close to where I was living in Canada until recently I was living in Victoria BC so by boat they're incredibly close together it's just down the coast a short short distance I've also in the past lived in Thailand Laos Cambodia I'm living in China right now so I mean I know mangoes I know mangoes in Asia I know mangoes in that part of North America I'd be lucky in Victoria to get a lousy mango for one dollar generally you could only get a mango for one dollar if the store messed up its order had too many mangos they were getting overripe they were trying to sell them off as quickly as possible one mango in Victoria $2 $2.50 routinely $2.99 each for each mango $2.99 this $2.99 canadian not US dollars but nevertheless my point is in that part of the world whether it's Portland or Victoria mangos are very expensive and they are also low quality when I lived in Thailand and Laos by contrast mangos were extremely cheap and extremely high-quality because they're farmed locally even when I was out there just getting a ton of exercise just coping with life you know sorry if you guys are new to my channel I did you manage I did research I was studying languages I was not on permanent vacation I was never on vacation I was working my ass off intellectually and and otherwise and trying to do humanitarian work I did manage to do a little bit of humanitarian work but you do a lot more trying than you do getting in that field um I can remember eating three mangos in a day I don't know maybe if they were small mangos maybe in the whole day I ate four but this young woman in Portland had five mangos for breakfast and then what another six mangos in the rest of the day six mangoes for dinner she ate 11 mangoes in one day and I don't I don't have been 20 US dollars worth of mangoes in one day in in many different ways this is both not sustainable and frankly even disgusting I've eaten a lot of mangoes I mean the quality of mangoes you can get in Portland is garbage compared to other places that live but III honestly would feel revolted to eat that many mangoes in a day even if I had the money to waste so I mean you know okay obviously this is shallow but to me looking back on this evening five years in the future ten years the future when people were asking what was this dream this dream that took the internet by storm for a short time and then it died how did people convince themselves that eating 11 mangos a day or 30 bananas a day that this was not just something you should do but something you should get on the internet and boast about that this was the crux of a social change of a moral change of a transformation of our society it's it's just bizarre it's really hard to figure out even now now and also when I say the dream is dead you know in my own lifetime I have to compare it to 1989 you know the the end of communism the fall that the Berlin Wall now of course you can't call it the end of communism communism is still a very powerful very influential ideology but you know before 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall many people felt completely justified in making excuses for communism making excuses for mass murder I heard it all the time and it would be on mainstream TV on the nightly news and public access they'd have representatives of the Communist Party in the communist viewpoints sitting there and in a sort of respectable manner making excuses for mass murder another and mass murder and mass starvation other unbelievable failures of communism and after 1989 that's what ended you know the dream didn't die in some ways the dream never died there will always be dreamers there will always be true believers still today there are people making excuses for the high carb low fat lifestyle and unlimited calories and making excuses for the idea that YouTube activism is the most effective actives in the world but it has become embarrassing the animals hashtag cruelty free hashtags so vegan hashtag being activism it ceased to be a dominant ideal it seems to be an ideal people even feel comfortable you know making excuses for it's regarded increasingly with a kind of mute embarrassment and you know that's a change I've I've done my part to my small part to instigate expedite you know when guys like vegan cheetah also those are things that I have in common with cheat even though were such different people in so many ways you know what was the dream what was the dream that just died you guys have heard me say in many other videos before I mean as soon as money sex and fame are brought into the picture people will do anything to get them people will do anything to keep them they'll lie they'll cheat they'll steal they'll stab each other in the back but above and beyond that they'll also just censor themselves and these patreon beings won't give their nuanced opinion of anything that goes against the grain because if they do they're gonna to lose money they're gonna lose patrons there have been a lot of reflections lately from people on the kind of fear that freely seemed to inspire another's the people were afraid people were afraid to admit they gained weight oh gee you eat 11 mangoes in a day and you gain weight what a shock you know or people were afraid to admit that they stopped eating in this crazy way this this young woman I chose in Portland MO candy I just checked her Instagram she has changed her diet she's switched to eating a much more balanced diet with a lot of grains involved and she even admits that she now drinks beer what a shock so she's now given up many of the crucial tenets of the the high carb low fat lifestyle not all of them maybe but you know having a green bait having grains as the staple of your diet as opposed to mangoes as the staple of your diet makes a lot of sense even if you live in Southeast Asia but you know people who would lie about gaining weight people who would lie about curing diseases that they never cured even simple things like acne people I think they cured their acne and you see them two weeks later and they've still got acne or the acne came back but you know claiming they cured all kinds of diseases that are not curable you yeah I can mention examples of that including people who become disillusioned like lakenya you know hey Nia has talked about hennya mania some of her her health conditions simply came and went you know she would have them temporarily she'd get symptoms for a while and become asymptomatic and when she was a true believer she attributed this to the high carb low fat diet to the fruit based diet and she was claiming or insisting back in the past that she had cured these conditions but when they came back when the symptoms returned then she'd be caught in a sort of cognitive dissonance trap and the question be are you gonna lie to the public are you gonna claim you're still cured or are you gonna are you gonna be honest about it so yeah that whole the faith healing element you know the natural medicine element the delusions of fruit being better than modern medical science those were also aspects of the dream that have died there is no known cure for Crohn's disease people and there is no neurotoxin in garlic etc etc and even though I disapprove of coffee I'm anti caffeine myself I have to admit there were millions and millions of people who manage their caffeine usage without having serious negative side effects in life I still implore you I still think you should try to have zero caffeine in your life if possible or as close to zero as possible that's my opinion but I'm not gonna make a pseudo scientific or pseudo religious argument as to why you have to agree with me or why you're a fake vegan if you don't so look I mean you know there are just so many of these channels where like the jazz musician would have you at the end of the day you got to say oh nobody cares you're beautiful you're doing lifestyle activism you're in the bikini or you're doing everything right you're following the whole formula but nobody cares because you were making a pitch for fame within a tiny subculture that's already oversaturated with meaningless vanity and as I say the kind of fishhook effect here like once you're in you get hooked once you get that little bit of Fame are you willing to tell difficult truths are you willing to challenge your audience or challenge yourself are you willing to say things that will risk you or losing followers and these patreon medians won't give their nuanced opinion of anything that goes against the grain because if they do they're going to lose money they're gonna lose patrons and the fact is the main people that suffer for this are people who want to go vegan so the main fact that you're financially exploiting other vegans for your own personal gain is [ __ ] disgusting in a real vegan wouldn't do that to other vegans unless oh my god imagine being at all they're crappy I did donate to certain youtubers who have patreon accounts who claim they're vegan activist in order to get a shout out because it said if you donate a certain amount they will give you a shout out I was never reciprocated for my payment and the fact is these youtubers social media personalities are running these patreon and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first one that for this to happen to and don't donate to these people if you think you're gonna get reciprocated the veg bro here I thought had some really interesting reflections on that he's partly reflecting on the dishonesty of how patreon works in in other ways you know paying money to someone and hoping that they're going to promote your YouTube channel in exchange as you guys may have noticed I promote a lot of other YouTube channels here because I sincerely believe they're worth watching and nobody pays me for that but hey join might join my patreon anyway because patreon right now is the only income I have on planet earth um but look um I am exactly the kind of person who's still gonna take those risks because my personal integrity means more to me than a hundred dollars and it means more than me than than a thousand dollars and that attitude has gotten me into trouble my whole life I have quit jobs over a point of moral principle again and again and again when I was in Cambodia some of the research we were doing it was immoral I'm not gonna tell the whole story it'll make this this podcast too long so many situations where I've had to say I can't do this job I can't continue this job for for ethical reasons but you know that that is that is a really nasty fissure once you're in once you've made those sacrifices for that fame for that little bit of money are you willing to say things that you know will challenge your audience like hey pet ownership is a lot more morally complex then we want to admit it it's it's a lot more morally dubious there are there are hard issues hard questions to ask there as vegans are you willing to admit that you kill insects or are you gonna come on do the dishonest thing Gary Yourofsky did and claim that he literally never kills a mosquito never kills a bedbug never never kills insects of any kind or are you willing to talk to about about hard truths even if it could hit your pocketbook even if it could destroy your your following and an essay it's a fishhook because I mean once once you're hooked it's so hard to get the hook out there's also sorrow involved there's also the sacrifices you've made lately I met some people on the Internet including people who wrote me letters within patreon that were really interesting you know people who paid the $1.00 on patreon and then they talked to me it's patreon is now my main social media platform what everyone say I say oh wow you know this is really interesting like can I can I talk to you can I interview you by Skype and then upload that interview as a you know as a podcast or or on my youtube channel and some of the people say no because they do not want to expose themselves to death threats to ridicule to doxxing to you know that they do not want to expose themselves to exactly the kind of things I I myself have endured and now you know because they're obviously they're real people who have real jobs and real lives and there's a real risk involved and that's very sad too so I mean the people who are not motivated by Fame but not may instead be motivated by fear once you're in the game once you've shared your life on the internet once you've made those sacrifices are you willing to question in question publicly maybe some of the things you used to believe in that you now know are dead wrong whether that's eating 11 mangoes a day or even just the idea that what you're doing on the Internet is activism and really helps people and has real world outcomes or does all of that have to be silenced to keep up a public image that pays your rent if you are in the tiny tiny minority of people for whom the dream pays off and for whom your web presence does pay you around