Why Erin Janus Hates Me. #vegandrama
18 August 2019 [link youtube]
#storytime
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I've seen all these other idols rise and
fall and veganism people like freely people like durianrider why is it so rare to find someone in this movement who's motivated by doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do why is it there are so few people motivated by saving the animals saving the planet ecology even health what have you you know what I mean why is it that almost everyone is instead motivated primarily we're entirely by money fame power respect sex like you know said Aaron you know somebody sooner or later has to be motivated just because they care about the future of the movement just because they care about these I hoped it would be you during the years in which I knew Aaron Janis she described herself as an artist she described herself as a creative artist and I reciprocated by perceiving her that way by talking to her that way I didn't treat her as a political leader and veganism I didn't treat her as a journalist I didn't treat her as someone he wanted to be a career or activist nor someone who wanted to do public education say definitely not as someone who wanted to lobby city hall or petition Parliament or get involved with the Toronto District School Board she presented herself as a creative artist so that was how I spoke to her and that probably did from the very start doom our friendship to failure I do not think of myself currently as a creative artist here on YouTube nor in terms of the role I'm playing within the vegan movement maybe that should change I mean this trip to Toronto has led me to question a lot of my basic assumption so what I'm doing right now what happened doing last couple of years and what I'm gonna do in the future maybe I should really change the rule on playing and I should become strictly and primarily a creative artist in relation to veganism maybe it is things like writing and illustrating storybooks for children that I should be doing my time or creating animations for children whatever it is I'm gonna be doing in the future of the vegan movement getting this but without even said if somebody asked me what to what extent am i a creative artist here on this YouTube channel I'd say well you know that there's a little bit of a role for the Arts in this channel there's something slightly artistic about you know juxtaposing a video of famous YouTube or feeding dog food to her dogs while claiming to be vegan and juxtapose it with a slaughterhouse where that food is created and set it to music and have captions some of those videos are edited together it is it slightly are just a little little role for uh for for art and what I do here but you know for the most part what I've been doing is critique commentary as I like to say active research and informed opinion whether I'm talking about mainstream news you know the war in Afghanistan and now the peace negotiations in Afghanistan or if I'm talking about what's been going on within the vegan movement the vast majority of what I do here I definitely do not think of as art nor as art criticism and I grew up in a household where both of my parents really began their careers in art criticism art criticism curatorship at some extent art history and I was keenly aware of the important role that not only patronage played in the arts but also criticism I knew that a few words from a well-informed critic or a curator curator of music a specific art exhibition curator let alone a museum curator a few words of guidance could profoundly impact an hour and their output for years to come positively or negatively or both and I also knew that very hard very often artists desperately needed exactly that kind of guidance in feedback it's often comical actually the extent to which artists seem to lose touch with how the public perceives their work maybe that's less true with something like music than it is in something like painted pictures that hang on a wall but nevertheless I heard a lot of anecdotes around the dinner table when I was growing up though my father talking to artists once in a while my mother talking artists and really trying to let them know where their strengths and weaknesses lie once my father he was curating a specific exhibition and he visit a particular artist studio and what she was proudly displaying was garbage sort of very poorly executed postmodern conceptual art and then for some reason my father walked past the fridge that was there on sue suddenly he had to go to the bathroom when he's walking past the fridge and there are these really high-quality beautifully executed pencil sketches conventional illustrations hanging on the fridge you said oh did you do this she said yeah you know I said well wow you know like looking at this you know I really think you're a tremendously talented artist whereas you know he said 'no Politis way possible he did not have such a positive impression looking at the stuff she was proudly displaying as her best work and she said well you know back when she was going to college she was really discouraged by her professors from going into old-fashioned representational art sketches illustrate pardon me sketches an illustration and she professors really pushed her into this postmodern conceptual war and you know my father really made an effort to tell her look kid this has look that this has a future and this doesn't that you know the work she was most proud of he felt really wouldn't ever make it in the free market would never make it on a global level in the arts and the other hand she had talents that she was neglecting or taking for granted it was like look you could really do something with this ability you've got with a pen and a paper one way or another up to you and yeah I mean I can remember some much shorter simpler anecdotes well you know my mother once sitting down and talking to an artist and really asking him look how many paintings did you actually create in the last twelve months you know how many in total and you know now you want to do an exhibition well your rate of painting pictures you need to do five years before he could select enough really outstanding works to do an exhibition of this kind and yeah some really great painters produce so many paintings in one year that you can make a selection to exhibition but you're not you're not working at that rate and you can imagine that kind of very simple fact can be very shocking and very devastating for a painter to think about even though maybe they spend all their time painting they never stopped and thought oh gee I only produce 20 paintings of last year might be the most obvious fact but it doesn't seem obvious to them and they're not hearing that kind of feedback from whatever their their agent or the marketing people they work with the various people who make money kind of selling their paintings out of hustling there are one way or the other so yeah I did grow up with an intense awareness of this and also hearing anecdotes about different artists who responded to critique and took on to conde directions and sometimes those those who fail to so Erin Janice I think she chose to style herself as a creative artist primarily as a defense mechanism I think she presents herself that way to the people who know her because it means she's not held to a higher standard of being an intellectual you know someone who actually reads books like books by Gary France aione or offers a critique of Peter Singer so people don't expect her to stand up at a conference like the one that was just that and really gives some kind of theoretically sophisticated perspective on vegan politics or animal rights or ethics or ecology or what-have-you people aren't really expecting research from her that way if she presents herself as an artist she doesn't want to present herself as an activist because she doesn't want people to expect from her the high level of effort and even some of the crazy stunts the outlandish forms of demonstration that are associated with vegan activism and you know when you even think about it someone like James ASPI there's a certain level of showmanship even for him let alone if you think about the more disruptive and outlandish forms of activism she didn't want to be in all of that so in some ways presenting herself as a creative artist felt safe for her I think she had a background as a musician there's still just a few YouTube videos circulating of her playing the guitar and she had in a background now quite embarrassing her dabbling in a cult spirituality those videos work for many many years and then she deleted them from her own channel the occult spirituality was not the only red flag with Aaron those of you have really been following vegan politics on YouTube for a long time may you remember that she once conspired with Charles Marlow who was at that time known as the vegan cheetah that they conspired together to sort of destroy the reputation and career of bite size vegan bite size vegan is named the channel she's an activist primarily known as Emily primarily know about her first name so if you don't remember that controversy or if you only saw the first video that came out cuz it was quite a boring sequence toward the end of the controversy Charles Marlow vegan cheetah vegan cheetah took out his cell phone and actually scrolled through the messages to prove that yes Aaron Chyna said God and touched them Aaron Jettas had guided him through this she had put him up to this stunt of basically accusing bite size vegan Emily accusing her of being a of plagiarizing of stealing ideas from Aaron Janice's videos and look let me tell you um I might remember that whole controversy and vegan gains got involved in being Ian's pointed out that the main video from Emily on that topic was actually uploaded before or Aaron Janice's video but she did have a more recent shorter video that might have been influenced by Aronson genesis view whatever concerns Aaron might have had at that time wow she really went about it the wrong way in that controversy that was a huge red flag in terms of the conduct of her character in terms of personal integrity the way she handled the way she created that controversy with bite size Emily and vegan cheetah and today I think not a single one of the videos related to that are still on the internet it's possible vegan gains as response to it is still on still on vegan gains his channel I haven't checked sorry loud noise went off in the background there for a second it distracted me slightly um having spoken to her privately over several years there were other red flags for me when dealing with Aaron I take it very seriously when people have self-serving lapses in memory for me that's a huge red flag that I don't want to work with you and I can't trust you if you don't know what I mean by self-serving lapses imagine you have an employer imagine you have a boss at work and sometimes he promises you things like he says okay if you do this this and this then I promise to help you all do this other thing or I'll reward you with this of the money and then you get halfway into this task and it's out but you say you both wait wait a minute why aren't you doing this thing you promised to do and he has no memory that he made that promise I find that impossible to negotiate with impossible to cope with and if you only know someone on a shallow level you will never know if they've genuinely forgotten if they genuinely have a lapse of memory or if this is a contrived excuse that it's not a real lapse of memory it's just convenient for them to assert this as if they've forgotten you could imagine you have an employer at work and they get angry at you for doing something and then you have to say them wait wait why you this is exactly what you ordered me to do three weeks ago well three weeks ago you you gave me this as an instruction as in order and then they're still angry and they say I don't remember that I never told you to do this for me that's that's the worst guy situation to be in it to me that can't be resolved through reasoning and it can't be resolved rationally whether they're elapse and memory is sincere or whether it's contrived insincere you're never going to know if you know someone deeply if you really have it then you probably can tell you can probably figure out through Socratic dialogue to what extent they really are forgetting or to what extent they're they're pretending to a forgotten because it serves their interests but in my interactions with Janice over pardon with Janice in my interactions Aaron Janice over the years she had several lapses of memory that really left me cold where I thought whoa this is not someone I want to trust this is not someone I want to work with I think that almost everyone who's known her long-term even if it's just a few messages back and forth over the years will have heard her say many times that she's working on 12 different new videos right now and she's also working on a documentary film and she has a new song coming out or a new album and she has like very often and when she talks to you she tries to give you the impression that she has this amazing flurry of activity that she's doing so much as a creative artist and it's about to come out the day after tomorrow she sometimes claims that she's completely finished to work and even uploaded to YouTube but then decided the last minute to delete it as you know she's uploaded nothing for several years now oh and you know what sir it's fine as a choice but if you know her and she's telling you this kind of thing I'll never know I'll never know if that's sincere I'll never know if she's lying to me and I'll never know if she's if she's lying to herself but these various documentaries she was supposedly involved in these various projects and new videos and new songs I've never seen any of them materialized and she is obviously someone who's been you know unbelievably fortunate she's had the support you know not just a view to benefit YouTube audience she said the support of many many you know organizations in the vegan movement including if you guys don't know about this there was a there was an advertising campaign that had her face and her YouTube channel promoted on huge billboards by the side of the highway I think that was in Los Angeles I'm sorry I forget maybe I'm forgetting where it was in the United States but in one of the major American cities and that was paid for by a charitable foundation it wasn't paid wasn't paid for by her wasn't paid for by her YouTube revenue so she's had some really extraordinary and certainly rare opportunities that she never acted on so Erin gave me a lot of confused and confusing signals over the years and you know the fundamental question I had to ask her was you know if you care if you really care about this and you've been handed this tremendous opportunity you know why aren't you out here or trying and you know you can try any way you want to doesn't doesn't have to be YouTube you know I don't mind you can you take this at any direction with a but you've been given this amazing platform this amazing opportunity and you say exactly this is what you want to do but now years have gone by was something like three years yeah I started talked to her when I was still in Victoria yeah it could be four years now you know it's it's a little bit like the the contradictory signals we got from Gary Yourofsky Gary Yourofsky said that this was his lifelong dream this was exactly what he wanted to do and then as soon as he was handed his dream it became a nightmare for him and he didn't want to do this anymore he started talking about retiring and he eventually did retire I immediately Yaffe's key went into this kind of downward spiral when he'd had his dream handed to him and his dream was handed to him by a small number of very wealthy donors by the way that opportunity was ultimately bought and paid for as they so often are in the in the nonprofit you know sector here in the trust of a small number of people who made his dreams come true but then it seemed he didn't want them with Aaron I mean it was really puzzling because you know love for this way it's not that I never doubted her sincerity it's that I didn't want to deal with her sincerity but there was no sign that she was sincere and acting on this amazing opportunity should be given and again I will never know you know Aaron still has several YouTube channels up devoted to her music it's a guitarist and singer recording artists maybe what Aaron really wanted was to be a musician and it's just happenstance it's just chance fortune and luck that she had this huge success as a voice of the vegan movement maybe what Aaron really wanted to do was being a filmmaker or some other kind of creative artist and she ended up you know a victim of her own success of her unplanned and accidental success as a voice for veganism and maybe this really isn't what you wanted to do if so I could certainly sympathize with that um [Music] when I came back to Canada after a couple more years in Asia living in Kunming and then till Hong in China when I came back there were very very few activists within Canada for me to get in touch with had a shopping list buy gifts to give to activists in Canada that we might meet up with and Aaron had told me she not remember she made I remember this but she told me she told me that she wanted to meet up with both myself and Melissa my girlfriend and collaborate with us like maybe just make a video with Melissa made with me but with both but she wanted to do a series of collaborations she had some set of ideas and of course this is surprising she's like what like hasn't it been like two and a half years since you uploaded a video like Wow okay well great sure yeah happy to do something with you all right um so when we came back I started sending and Rijn updates about where we were in Canada like you know when we'd be in Ontario as opposed to being on the west coast and stuff and you know I got kind of contemptuous and dismissive messages Zoomer hey you know ultimately just wrote to her and said look you were handed the opportunity of a lifetime here to really be a voice for veganism you've been handed this amazing you know whether by chance by fortune you know to some extent on the basis of the merit of your videos you know it's always a combination of these things but you've been given the opportunity of a lifetime and I just don't understand why it is you're letting years go by without you know taking any action um you know I had a little bit more constructive criticism there in that I said I said look I've seen all these other idols rise and fall and veganism people like freely people like durianrider why is it so rare to find someone in this movement who's motivated by doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do why is it there are so few people motivated by saving the animals saving the planet ecology even health what have you you know what I mean why is it that almost everyone is instead motivated primarily we're entirely by money fame power respect like you know said Aaron you know somebody sooner or later has to be motivated just because they care about the future of the movement just because they care about these I hoped it would be you you know I hope you would be one of those people even though I know she's a creative artist you know she's not really an activist she's not a politician but even so there's a creative artist that she'd take on that kind of leadership role and most of what she wrote back to me were just angry and incoherent insults just really dumb really childish in self but that was the one thing she responded to directly she said no it is me like I'll show you it is me I really will be that leader and now here we are many months later and I see her at this activist event at this vegan conference you know in two separate days I'm standing there looking at her as she's dead and they're looking at me neither one of us said a single word so she neither wanted to scream at me and let everyone know how much she hates me nor did she want to bury the hatchet nor did she want to patch over the conflict then I'm fine well Aaron I don't believe in you as a creative artist I don't believe in you as journalists I don't believe in you as an activist I don't believe you know political as you as a political leader don't believe in you as a researcher I don't believe in you as an author I don't believe in you as an intellectual I don't believe in you in any of these ways and I've seen a lot of evidence of just how crazy you are including you know your videos about demon demon possession but the third eye and this really insane religious views use the whole you continue holding until pretty recently including your involvement with vegan cheetah and saying you know I don't have any hope for you that way but still I'd like to believe that you're sincere when you say you're gonna step up to this challenge take advantage of this rare opportunity you were handed at any rate I would not like to doubt your sincerity [Music]
fall and veganism people like freely people like durianrider why is it so rare to find someone in this movement who's motivated by doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do why is it there are so few people motivated by saving the animals saving the planet ecology even health what have you you know what I mean why is it that almost everyone is instead motivated primarily we're entirely by money fame power respect sex like you know said Aaron you know somebody sooner or later has to be motivated just because they care about the future of the movement just because they care about these I hoped it would be you during the years in which I knew Aaron Janis she described herself as an artist she described herself as a creative artist and I reciprocated by perceiving her that way by talking to her that way I didn't treat her as a political leader and veganism I didn't treat her as a journalist I didn't treat her as someone he wanted to be a career or activist nor someone who wanted to do public education say definitely not as someone who wanted to lobby city hall or petition Parliament or get involved with the Toronto District School Board she presented herself as a creative artist so that was how I spoke to her and that probably did from the very start doom our friendship to failure I do not think of myself currently as a creative artist here on YouTube nor in terms of the role I'm playing within the vegan movement maybe that should change I mean this trip to Toronto has led me to question a lot of my basic assumption so what I'm doing right now what happened doing last couple of years and what I'm gonna do in the future maybe I should really change the rule on playing and I should become strictly and primarily a creative artist in relation to veganism maybe it is things like writing and illustrating storybooks for children that I should be doing my time or creating animations for children whatever it is I'm gonna be doing in the future of the vegan movement getting this but without even said if somebody asked me what to what extent am i a creative artist here on this YouTube channel I'd say well you know that there's a little bit of a role for the Arts in this channel there's something slightly artistic about you know juxtaposing a video of famous YouTube or feeding dog food to her dogs while claiming to be vegan and juxtapose it with a slaughterhouse where that food is created and set it to music and have captions some of those videos are edited together it is it slightly are just a little little role for uh for for art and what I do here but you know for the most part what I've been doing is critique commentary as I like to say active research and informed opinion whether I'm talking about mainstream news you know the war in Afghanistan and now the peace negotiations in Afghanistan or if I'm talking about what's been going on within the vegan movement the vast majority of what I do here I definitely do not think of as art nor as art criticism and I grew up in a household where both of my parents really began their careers in art criticism art criticism curatorship at some extent art history and I was keenly aware of the important role that not only patronage played in the arts but also criticism I knew that a few words from a well-informed critic or a curator curator of music a specific art exhibition curator let alone a museum curator a few words of guidance could profoundly impact an hour and their output for years to come positively or negatively or both and I also knew that very hard very often artists desperately needed exactly that kind of guidance in feedback it's often comical actually the extent to which artists seem to lose touch with how the public perceives their work maybe that's less true with something like music than it is in something like painted pictures that hang on a wall but nevertheless I heard a lot of anecdotes around the dinner table when I was growing up though my father talking to artists once in a while my mother talking artists and really trying to let them know where their strengths and weaknesses lie once my father he was curating a specific exhibition and he visit a particular artist studio and what she was proudly displaying was garbage sort of very poorly executed postmodern conceptual art and then for some reason my father walked past the fridge that was there on sue suddenly he had to go to the bathroom when he's walking past the fridge and there are these really high-quality beautifully executed pencil sketches conventional illustrations hanging on the fridge you said oh did you do this she said yeah you know I said well wow you know like looking at this you know I really think you're a tremendously talented artist whereas you know he said 'no Politis way possible he did not have such a positive impression looking at the stuff she was proudly displaying as her best work and she said well you know back when she was going to college she was really discouraged by her professors from going into old-fashioned representational art sketches illustrate pardon me sketches an illustration and she professors really pushed her into this postmodern conceptual war and you know my father really made an effort to tell her look kid this has look that this has a future and this doesn't that you know the work she was most proud of he felt really wouldn't ever make it in the free market would never make it on a global level in the arts and the other hand she had talents that she was neglecting or taking for granted it was like look you could really do something with this ability you've got with a pen and a paper one way or another up to you and yeah I mean I can remember some much shorter simpler anecdotes well you know my mother once sitting down and talking to an artist and really asking him look how many paintings did you actually create in the last twelve months you know how many in total and you know now you want to do an exhibition well your rate of painting pictures you need to do five years before he could select enough really outstanding works to do an exhibition of this kind and yeah some really great painters produce so many paintings in one year that you can make a selection to exhibition but you're not you're not working at that rate and you can imagine that kind of very simple fact can be very shocking and very devastating for a painter to think about even though maybe they spend all their time painting they never stopped and thought oh gee I only produce 20 paintings of last year might be the most obvious fact but it doesn't seem obvious to them and they're not hearing that kind of feedback from whatever their their agent or the marketing people they work with the various people who make money kind of selling their paintings out of hustling there are one way or the other so yeah I did grow up with an intense awareness of this and also hearing anecdotes about different artists who responded to critique and took on to conde directions and sometimes those those who fail to so Erin Janice I think she chose to style herself as a creative artist primarily as a defense mechanism I think she presents herself that way to the people who know her because it means she's not held to a higher standard of being an intellectual you know someone who actually reads books like books by Gary France aione or offers a critique of Peter Singer so people don't expect her to stand up at a conference like the one that was just that and really gives some kind of theoretically sophisticated perspective on vegan politics or animal rights or ethics or ecology or what-have-you people aren't really expecting research from her that way if she presents herself as an artist she doesn't want to present herself as an activist because she doesn't want people to expect from her the high level of effort and even some of the crazy stunts the outlandish forms of demonstration that are associated with vegan activism and you know when you even think about it someone like James ASPI there's a certain level of showmanship even for him let alone if you think about the more disruptive and outlandish forms of activism she didn't want to be in all of that so in some ways presenting herself as a creative artist felt safe for her I think she had a background as a musician there's still just a few YouTube videos circulating of her playing the guitar and she had in a background now quite embarrassing her dabbling in a cult spirituality those videos work for many many years and then she deleted them from her own channel the occult spirituality was not the only red flag with Aaron those of you have really been following vegan politics on YouTube for a long time may you remember that she once conspired with Charles Marlow who was at that time known as the vegan cheetah that they conspired together to sort of destroy the reputation and career of bite size vegan bite size vegan is named the channel she's an activist primarily known as Emily primarily know about her first name so if you don't remember that controversy or if you only saw the first video that came out cuz it was quite a boring sequence toward the end of the controversy Charles Marlow vegan cheetah vegan cheetah took out his cell phone and actually scrolled through the messages to prove that yes Aaron Chyna said God and touched them Aaron Jettas had guided him through this she had put him up to this stunt of basically accusing bite size vegan Emily accusing her of being a of plagiarizing of stealing ideas from Aaron Janice's videos and look let me tell you um I might remember that whole controversy and vegan gains got involved in being Ian's pointed out that the main video from Emily on that topic was actually uploaded before or Aaron Janice's video but she did have a more recent shorter video that might have been influenced by Aronson genesis view whatever concerns Aaron might have had at that time wow she really went about it the wrong way in that controversy that was a huge red flag in terms of the conduct of her character in terms of personal integrity the way she handled the way she created that controversy with bite size Emily and vegan cheetah and today I think not a single one of the videos related to that are still on the internet it's possible vegan gains as response to it is still on still on vegan gains his channel I haven't checked sorry loud noise went off in the background there for a second it distracted me slightly um having spoken to her privately over several years there were other red flags for me when dealing with Aaron I take it very seriously when people have self-serving lapses in memory for me that's a huge red flag that I don't want to work with you and I can't trust you if you don't know what I mean by self-serving lapses imagine you have an employer imagine you have a boss at work and sometimes he promises you things like he says okay if you do this this and this then I promise to help you all do this other thing or I'll reward you with this of the money and then you get halfway into this task and it's out but you say you both wait wait a minute why aren't you doing this thing you promised to do and he has no memory that he made that promise I find that impossible to negotiate with impossible to cope with and if you only know someone on a shallow level you will never know if they've genuinely forgotten if they genuinely have a lapse of memory or if this is a contrived excuse that it's not a real lapse of memory it's just convenient for them to assert this as if they've forgotten you could imagine you have an employer at work and they get angry at you for doing something and then you have to say them wait wait why you this is exactly what you ordered me to do three weeks ago well three weeks ago you you gave me this as an instruction as in order and then they're still angry and they say I don't remember that I never told you to do this for me that's that's the worst guy situation to be in it to me that can't be resolved through reasoning and it can't be resolved rationally whether they're elapse and memory is sincere or whether it's contrived insincere you're never going to know if you know someone deeply if you really have it then you probably can tell you can probably figure out through Socratic dialogue to what extent they really are forgetting or to what extent they're they're pretending to a forgotten because it serves their interests but in my interactions with Janice over pardon with Janice in my interactions Aaron Janice over the years she had several lapses of memory that really left me cold where I thought whoa this is not someone I want to trust this is not someone I want to work with I think that almost everyone who's known her long-term even if it's just a few messages back and forth over the years will have heard her say many times that she's working on 12 different new videos right now and she's also working on a documentary film and she has a new song coming out or a new album and she has like very often and when she talks to you she tries to give you the impression that she has this amazing flurry of activity that she's doing so much as a creative artist and it's about to come out the day after tomorrow she sometimes claims that she's completely finished to work and even uploaded to YouTube but then decided the last minute to delete it as you know she's uploaded nothing for several years now oh and you know what sir it's fine as a choice but if you know her and she's telling you this kind of thing I'll never know I'll never know if that's sincere I'll never know if she's lying to me and I'll never know if she's if she's lying to herself but these various documentaries she was supposedly involved in these various projects and new videos and new songs I've never seen any of them materialized and she is obviously someone who's been you know unbelievably fortunate she's had the support you know not just a view to benefit YouTube audience she said the support of many many you know organizations in the vegan movement including if you guys don't know about this there was a there was an advertising campaign that had her face and her YouTube channel promoted on huge billboards by the side of the highway I think that was in Los Angeles I'm sorry I forget maybe I'm forgetting where it was in the United States but in one of the major American cities and that was paid for by a charitable foundation it wasn't paid wasn't paid for by her wasn't paid for by her YouTube revenue so she's had some really extraordinary and certainly rare opportunities that she never acted on so Erin gave me a lot of confused and confusing signals over the years and you know the fundamental question I had to ask her was you know if you care if you really care about this and you've been handed this tremendous opportunity you know why aren't you out here or trying and you know you can try any way you want to doesn't doesn't have to be YouTube you know I don't mind you can you take this at any direction with a but you've been given this amazing platform this amazing opportunity and you say exactly this is what you want to do but now years have gone by was something like three years yeah I started talked to her when I was still in Victoria yeah it could be four years now you know it's it's a little bit like the the contradictory signals we got from Gary Yourofsky Gary Yourofsky said that this was his lifelong dream this was exactly what he wanted to do and then as soon as he was handed his dream it became a nightmare for him and he didn't want to do this anymore he started talking about retiring and he eventually did retire I immediately Yaffe's key went into this kind of downward spiral when he'd had his dream handed to him and his dream was handed to him by a small number of very wealthy donors by the way that opportunity was ultimately bought and paid for as they so often are in the in the nonprofit you know sector here in the trust of a small number of people who made his dreams come true but then it seemed he didn't want them with Aaron I mean it was really puzzling because you know love for this way it's not that I never doubted her sincerity it's that I didn't want to deal with her sincerity but there was no sign that she was sincere and acting on this amazing opportunity should be given and again I will never know you know Aaron still has several YouTube channels up devoted to her music it's a guitarist and singer recording artists maybe what Aaron really wanted was to be a musician and it's just happenstance it's just chance fortune and luck that she had this huge success as a voice of the vegan movement maybe what Aaron really wanted to do was being a filmmaker or some other kind of creative artist and she ended up you know a victim of her own success of her unplanned and accidental success as a voice for veganism and maybe this really isn't what you wanted to do if so I could certainly sympathize with that um [Music] when I came back to Canada after a couple more years in Asia living in Kunming and then till Hong in China when I came back there were very very few activists within Canada for me to get in touch with had a shopping list buy gifts to give to activists in Canada that we might meet up with and Aaron had told me she not remember she made I remember this but she told me she told me that she wanted to meet up with both myself and Melissa my girlfriend and collaborate with us like maybe just make a video with Melissa made with me but with both but she wanted to do a series of collaborations she had some set of ideas and of course this is surprising she's like what like hasn't it been like two and a half years since you uploaded a video like Wow okay well great sure yeah happy to do something with you all right um so when we came back I started sending and Rijn updates about where we were in Canada like you know when we'd be in Ontario as opposed to being on the west coast and stuff and you know I got kind of contemptuous and dismissive messages Zoomer hey you know ultimately just wrote to her and said look you were handed the opportunity of a lifetime here to really be a voice for veganism you've been handed this amazing you know whether by chance by fortune you know to some extent on the basis of the merit of your videos you know it's always a combination of these things but you've been given the opportunity of a lifetime and I just don't understand why it is you're letting years go by without you know taking any action um you know I had a little bit more constructive criticism there in that I said I said look I've seen all these other idols rise and fall and veganism people like freely people like durianrider why is it so rare to find someone in this movement who's motivated by doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do why is it there are so few people motivated by saving the animals saving the planet ecology even health what have you you know what I mean why is it that almost everyone is instead motivated primarily we're entirely by money fame power respect like you know said Aaron you know somebody sooner or later has to be motivated just because they care about the future of the movement just because they care about these I hoped it would be you you know I hope you would be one of those people even though I know she's a creative artist you know she's not really an activist she's not a politician but even so there's a creative artist that she'd take on that kind of leadership role and most of what she wrote back to me were just angry and incoherent insults just really dumb really childish in self but that was the one thing she responded to directly she said no it is me like I'll show you it is me I really will be that leader and now here we are many months later and I see her at this activist event at this vegan conference you know in two separate days I'm standing there looking at her as she's dead and they're looking at me neither one of us said a single word so she neither wanted to scream at me and let everyone know how much she hates me nor did she want to bury the hatchet nor did she want to patch over the conflict then I'm fine well Aaron I don't believe in you as a creative artist I don't believe in you as journalists I don't believe in you as an activist I don't believe you know political as you as a political leader don't believe in you as a researcher I don't believe in you as an author I don't believe in you as an intellectual I don't believe in you in any of these ways and I've seen a lot of evidence of just how crazy you are including you know your videos about demon demon possession but the third eye and this really insane religious views use the whole you continue holding until pretty recently including your involvement with vegan cheetah and saying you know I don't have any hope for you that way but still I'd like to believe that you're sincere when you say you're gonna step up to this challenge take advantage of this rare opportunity you were handed at any rate I would not like to doubt your sincerity [Music]