On Vegan Slactivism in 2018: Discussing "the Demimonde" with Flemface.
14 February 2018 [link youtube]
"Money, power, fame, sex, respect… not in that order."
https://www.youtube.com/user/HeiJinZhengZhi/playlists
^ There's a playlist collecting together the three parts of this conversation (with "TheFlemface"), and many more.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I'm recording in beautiful Seattle
Washington talking do horrible horrible and Chris Copeland to places that are probably kind of cold and rainy this time of year hard to say hard to say which one's more horrible place to find yourself but any we're having a very stimulating 10 day trip to Seattle because right now our landlord is installing new carpeting in the apartment that we will move into when we get back to Victoria and phlegm face don't worry I won't say anything probably fun taste is actually considering her own options that she move on may move on to shall we say greener pastures is it unbeatens that greener pastures should not stay enough all right that's my segue you're indirectly endorsing the explanation of cows by using their face alright it brings people together when they can collectively just like someone money power fame respect sex these are the motives for why people why people come on YouTube and do this not in that order you know and like look keeping all the way real like you know so the main thing that's disappeared is the money right like you were saying yourself like just the idea that uploading every day is gonna mean that you can quit your job people used to really believe that durianrider sold that myth and I can't I can't tell you who this was but I knew a guy he's on YouTube but I also knew him as a real person and he was telling me how horrified he was he met during ride her face-to-face with his girlfriend and durianrider was like lecturing his girlfriend about how she was going to be able to quit her job as soon as should be making something yeah the girlfriend that point having a channel on YouTube that was only known to family and friends like 50 views per video kind of thing you know you know the journal writer face-to-face does that with people too of really trying to preach to them and then after a jury might her left the room this guy had to sit there with his girlfriend or I don't know ride the bus this girlfriend I know what situation was but he was trying to deprogram I sorta said look you know it's really important that you know that stuff you told you it's not true you know that's really not true at all that's not the way YouTube works that's not the way you know the revenue works so money money left the game where the money came down to a much much lower level than people perceived it to be previously right and so again keeping this all the way real I've been talking to different people about having a conference so I'm not academic but a formal conference where we present papers we've written in vancouver canada west coast of canada and talking to people inviting and i say look you know i admit this is a lot of time and money and effort and you know i know how it is what's your reward for doing this if you're not you know if you're not getting laid you know the girlfriend or something you want to meet up with in vancouver if there's not somebody you're sharing the hotel room with it's really hard to justify the time and money to come to a conference of this kind and I was not imagining by the way doing like a Kickstarter or crowd funding to pay for people's airplane tickets which is also very hard to justify it's very hard to ask people to donate money so that a couple of speakers can come to a vegan animal-rights type type conference I know it's done I know it's possible but I do find that hard to do you know so I mean again I don't want to talk about sex as if it's something really negative I think sex can be a really positive force in a lot of people's lives I think people do buy airplane tickets to go to you know veg fest and other vegan events in major cities in the world because they want to find a girlfriend or they want to find a boyfriend or you know I think there's the you know human sexuality is a reason why people come on camera I was saying to a guy who does you know the other day he was talking he did a period of time where he did you know broadcasting day for 20 days straighter so I forget the number of days but he kind of challenged himself and I was shocked my honest response was you know but you're married like why would you bother like the only people I've known who were motivated to you that much broadcast is because they were looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something like that so you know um money fame power respect sex these are the things that motivate this this kind of behavior and you know when one by one those are taken out of the picture then you get you get less and less of that and again remember so look okay that's kind of chapter one if you anything about that we can talk we can talk more about that but then the other side of it that I deal with it all the time is that people otherwise find me um daunting or intellectually challenging to talk to you've been talking to me for two hours too cumbersome oh thanks for you at all but you know when I when I've offered to collab to people sometimes people say back to me directly at some times I see it or hear it indirectly they say it on their YouTube channel that they were afraid to talk to me that they you know they think I'm gonna make them look stupid or feel stupid or you know that somehow it's too it's too so in my case that's also going on you know even recently he hosted an actual this weekend stupid in the flesh with collaborative people who joined as guests I'm gonna give you another example on a very different scale so we were just in Naima Canada Nanaimo is a small town or anyway it's definitely not it's a small city or a big town whatever want to say but this is a small community Nanaimo Canada officially has three thousand Chinese residents perhaps the real number because a lot of people are living there unofficially is closer to seven thousand and they have a Chinese language newspaper and I believe that newspaper has at least three full-time employees maybe four or five I didn't ask the number I've been to their offices they have a physical bricks and mortar office I was over here I've been to their offices I met their editor and when I walked out of there with my girlfriend I said why don't we as vegans have this weather in Victoria or Vancouver or Glasgow or anywhere in the world you know we suck as a community we're a failure and we kept on failing so out of the 7,000 Chinese people in Nanaimo how many of them care about that newspaper a Chinese language newspaper maybe 300 you know it's just not everyone's gonna be interested you don't have seen their stats they don't have a huge number they have advertisers who support their existence who really paid for the newspaper to exist on paper and on the internet and I am certain those advertisers do it partly out of a sense of community spirit like you know partly they're paying to advertise their service but I think they are aware they're paying for a kind of community paper they're not you know they could be advertising somewhere else I think there is a mix of charitable motives and community blend modes and these people have a newspaper okay thank you for my video on community or what have you you know the sky's the limit people obviously I think a boxing match is attainable obviously I think you know conference is attainable in my case a court case was attainable you know I've got six thousand five minutes to this court case obviously people selling t-shirts is attainable but you know more really is attainable and so I mean just think about how special it is in Chinese it's only in Chinese there's no English not for Vancouver not for Toronto not for New York not for Los Angeles for Nanaimo for the Chinese people of Nanaimo they have their own newspaper with an office and full-time employees right what is the global reach what is the significance of people who'd be interested in a veganism let's say it's a veganism and ecology paper let's say you don't just do veganism you also do some kind of scientific articles and update articles about deforestation and ecology well or you could define it another way you could have a veganism and anti-war publication I know one group in Taiwan they got a lot of attention that a lot of people who are vegan are also anti-war so you can combine vegan message with news and politics about current ongoing Wars now horrible they are on their body counts they have a kind of pro-peace become what do you think the market is for that I think it's more than 7,000 people so it's so so we suck ok that's my point here we are at failure we've been failing for 50 years and we keep on failing and yeah and it's it's it's really a significant example in contrast to any of these things yeah no it's funny do you bring up buildings because I remember by the train station there is this building and I think they supply renewable energy but when you get a glass building business building but inside it has loads of trees and it also has a massive treehouse networking and she was like do you really think so actually go in that building that you've managed well it's a real interesting question ask because you know I say all the time like vegans are fractious and fragmentary like how much do we have in common how much do I have in common with fully raw Christina how much do I have in common with during how much I haven't gone with you you know there are a lot of deep ghosts but then you look at a new store that how much do Chinese people have in common you know there are really deep divides within the Chinese community they don't even all speak the same language like some of them are from Fujian and they speak Fujian ease and some of them speak Hakka and some there are several different languages involved politically some of them are pro-communist and some of them are anti-communist and some of them are sitting on the fence there are really deep divisions of this some of them are pro-american and some of them are anti-american terrible these are big questions in the air and yet you manage to have a newspaper for them you know it's it's a real question what's possible now and look you're talking to the right guy about this because I say all the time you know I'm all for outreach and I'm interested in starting my own charity or my own nonprofit to do you know outreach education and lobbying direct government lobbying I'm thinking issues that I'd like to get that rolling here in Canada but most of what I've done with my energy in the last three years has not been reaching out to non-vegans it's been reaching out to other vegans and saying look guys let's organize the vegans we've already got let's do something positive with the manpower and talent you know we already have and the results the results are shockingly close to zero right the results are looser except for what you already mentioned the drama and the way in which you hit the nail on the head that's why I didn't comment the way in which hatred of a common enemy drew people together right which is a very dark but very real aspect of civilization I remember a political science professor once saying that back when Margaret Thatcher was in was in charge in England she was the Prime Minister of England he hated Margaret Thatcher and he spent all his time and energy criticizing barca Thatcher and writing articles about Ho terraformer Thatcher was but he said the moment Germany invaded England he would have become the world's most ardent supporter of Margaret Thatcher against Germany or something you know so he was recognising his own hypocrisy this way the hatred of a common enemy that does seem to you know galvanize people on jobs together that way and it's it's nothing to be proud of but on my channel is a microcosm we've gotten to see exactly that contrast right I've got this very easy framework where it's look I have all these contact details you send me a video of your topical your choice I will I will edit it put something over myself and give it back to you and you can use it the number of people who have done it has been shockingly low and that's a very I'm making content for them in that sense or editing content for them and still it's hard to get them to they're like oh we've just been here for three hours right well a lot a lot of people first discovered my channel back when I tried to collaborate with vegan revolution aka Josh in making a welcome home video for vegan cheetah when he just got out of jail we have there you go that's how you discover my shelters that he just got out of rehab and Josh blew his deadline and cheetah was already out of rehab and there was no thing and I got his permission I said look can I have your permission to edit together the clips I've already got here and do this because it's you know it's too late the guys already out of rehab there's supposed to be a welcome home thing and Josh said yes you know I can screenshot that if you want he did give permission and then 24 hours later she took back his permission and said no I shouldn't have given you permission you don't know this is terrible this is a betrayal of my artistic vision all that stuff so you know that was a hilarious example of attempted collaboration gone wrong and most of the other people who collaborate they never heard anything back but I contributed to this and then vegan revolution somehow bungled it and disappeared and [ __ ] you know anyway they know I know that one did they did have a big positive emotional don khon Charles Charles Marlow vegan cheetah back then when he was being a normal human being instead of a cartoon character he really thanked me it really it really meant Sonia then he started watching my channel and it went from there but yeah you know um I think the other lesson you've got to take from looking at say the last three years on YouTube we're seeing this right now with Joey carb strong almost all of the vitality in YouTube is an echo of what's going on in old media and traditional media you know so the same way somebody like Gary Yourofsky or somebody like Frehley suddenly had a huge surge in public interest that really was tied to the fact that Gary Yourofsky did television interviews and that freely had a series of mainstream newspaper articles about her you know that drew in you know a lot of Attraction a lot of interest a lot of action and that's not the only factor but we've just seen that right now with Joey Armstrong I remember when he was in nobody I remember when he was a durianrider clone he was in Thailand the same time I was when I had my conflict with during writer and solenoid and he believed in that stupid you know high carb low fat diet he did during writers died he gained a bunch of weight he got tubby he got a potbelly under his diet you know riding his bicycle and eating 15 bananas a day or whatever you know he gained a lot of weight doing that and then he had to lose her weight he slim right bottom line you know the energy behind his channel is because of mainstream you know media recognition even if it's critical even if it's if it's negative and that's that's a lot of what we've seen in in YouTube so I'm you know other things have changed there are other lessons you can draw from it but that's that's another one of the big ones right is that a lot of what we're doing is playing in the shadows of conventional media or old media or you know I don't know it's it's nice to think of you too is creating something new but the sense in which YouTube is something new is a lot more like Video Email it's like if I just put up a video on YouTube that's really like sending an email to my friends and family and then I can email them and say hey watch my video on YouTube and my friends and family can watch it but moving beyond that actually having an audience of thousands of people who want to see your content that still relies very heavily on whether it's newspapers radio or TV the thing is she said you know so many you will end up with so many different things given the you know had this experience in last year's I remember when your channel was much more just monologue senator was just you kymaro's and then you really put your time and energy into into collaborating more people and you know I kind of had my period doing that for me it took a long time for me to get the first person to collaborate on my channel and he was British the first guy to appear on my channel was violent vegan who's really kind of faded from the scene now but you know and before that people were really afraid to talk to me I think you know another example I don't know if you caught this example but you know when I talked to Jason Ficino aka hennya manias boyfriend he's also really faded from the vegan scene ever at the time he was really well-known because he was hideous he was saying his boyfriend when Jason came on my channel I wasn't trying to insult him or Punk him or you know make him feel bad but um he was living in Israel at the time and he did not know the word oh Sh wits or what the significance of Auschwitz was that was obvious and people were a lot of people were really laughing like oh you know what aisel made you look stupid I think a lot of people were kind of concerned but talking to me I'd somehow make them look stupid or make them look politically foolish which is I mean it's not why I'm on YouTube I'm just saying it's not why I'm here it can happen I'm going to happen with Jason but you know not like I was trying to make that happen with Jason I just assumed he'd heard of Auschwitz before especially given he was living in Israel at the time but anyway um you know let me ask you this looking ahead next say two years what do you think is the best possible scenario and what do you think is the worst got possible now what good can come of the energy you put in to collaborate because I think based on what you've said you've seen the good of the bad of it so far right yeah well first I'd say you know with people just up said the approachability is a massive issue I didn't collab for a long time simply because I was a spectator and completely forgot that I could actually talk to these people and they weren't untouchable they weren't these special people who but there was this kind of idea in the vegan community with some others the you know wait this is my life I I am one of these elite vegans yeah you can't talk to me because I'm not going to talk to you back but that's not the imager to actually there's a lot of people willing to talk and then they're like oh yeah this is such a good idea why don't we done this before but I think don't see your question the worst thing that can happen is I've seen it now over trusting myself some details about where I work you get this kind of idea that these people are kind of your family but every day it's more people are coming in and they're assuming a part of a crucian it's just like maybe the worst thing that could happen is people going their separate ways collectively crumbing because you know one person audience member sees you and then then sees the whole group you're growing together having a larger reach and then being able to maybe even afford in the future if you have your merch and stuff be able to afford to actually come together yeah I know merch I don't merch is the way to do that but yeah when we renovated it but I think I can go you one better you might think at this point I mentioned the example of Durham right about going to I think in terms of the dangers of collaboration it's interesting you said being overly trusting I think my experience with Josh with vegan revolution is a kind of really negative really important example that way cuz you know I appointed you there was a time when Josh was my friend you know he talked to me about personal life stuff you know my family and he talked to me about his personal life I didn't know his name but he was just meeting revolution but he talked about his struggles with depression and you know his education you know he was this former filmmaker and stuff you know he was a friend of mine and over something completely trivial over that welcome home vegan cheetah vegan cheetah a film you know he he flips to become my arch-nemesis you know which I give him no reason to do I've made it I sent him an apology and I made apology videos and look I'm sorry understand this is your position so I offered to take down the video and I did take on the video and he said he didn't want to take it down I put it back up whatever but you know he for how many years for at least two years you know he was on a constant campaign to defame and announce me to say that I had no right to see my own daughter that I was somehow a terrible parent or an abusive parent that was an abusive husband to make up lies above my divorce max way and he actually got in touch with he phoned and spoke to my ex-wife trying to get dirt on me and he collaborated with durianrider and trying to publicly defame it announce me no he didn't come up with anything I mean you know you heard my conversation that was on my channel in the end he had nothing on it all came nothing but you had a guy like that and you know making YouTube comments I saw the most in written form mostly I have also heard him verbally you know on his podcast he's suggesting that I'm employed by the CIA to a destroy veganism from within this kind of thing but I mean for like two years you have someone that obsessively trying to to destroy you uh you know look I'm now 39 years old did it upset me you know no and that's why I offered to talk to the guy had the podcast like I gave them opportunities and positive but that's the real warning you can have that experience and I think you know I think most people would find it more upsetting than I did especially if the person formerly was your was your friend all right and you know long story short cheetah is similar and there was a time when vegan cheetah really was my friend and then he flipped to being my enemy in a very cartoonish and sincere way because he thought he could get more YouTube views out of it or whatever you know so that's I think that's really the warning and you know we're fractious we're fragmentary we don't have that much in common but I know this comes up with I mentioned this to my current girlfriend Melissa a lot or I say look you know remember I mean in some ways I'm a snob some ways I just don't want to spend with people I don't want to spend time with people that I consider stupid or useless or bad for the vegan cause but in the other hand I've really made an effort to reach out to some of these people some of these crackpots including Charles Marlow vegan cheetah and what have you I've made an effort to overcome those bears and other examples the light twins right that goes way back you know I reached out to the light twins broke up they broke up they're no longer than another light twin singular there's only one of them but yeah they went nuts and broke up and that guy's obviously now into some really weird you know alternative spirituality and stuff but you know those are guys I don't have a lot in common with but we recorded one really good podcast together and you know I talked to them about their work history and educational you know talk to them about life I was really willing to reach out to and and work with those people for veganism you know for the cause for the future of the movement and this is where I'm at for me after three years of that or something you know I depending on the account they might YouTube channels past four years now but you know it's it's pretty negative and I think those are really the warnings about the the downside of collaboration I don't think anyone else is gonna have the same kind of problem I had with Duran Ryder but I think that kind of problem that I had with Josh you can have again and again and the internet is not running out of you know obsessive you know I know that are you talking about oh yeah yeah he's still trying to get touch with you know the BDDs group as well and try to get in and he just doesn't understand how to speak to people it's very confusing it but that whole situation it was so exhausting I genuinely thought that his threats were true that he was going to hack me that I had to change all my passwords to this day I have lengthy password remember just and you know I had to call the police at one point and it's just a very real thing I didn't understand how there were people who could do this regular basis like look at Charles result but there was a long time when people calling up or calling up him and giving him death friends I was just like how could you how could that be your life isn't it easiest just collaborate with people and talk about ideas of debate yeah yeah you know yeah different people are playing different games by different rules on the internet you know what are you trying to win and and what are you trying to lose and what are the what are the rules you play by and kind of nobody agrees to those rules before they get involved this and people do get their hearts broken and it does have a really negative you know impacts in their lives but the other side of it is I think this is especially true of vegans meat like maybe people who are video game fans this is true of but it's way more true of vegans on the internet or Star Trek fans or some of these other special communities the feeling we have of vegans I think is really of being alone in the crowd you feel isolated you feel nobody you know understands you and it hasn't come up that much in this conversation but you know we are witnesses to this you know unbelievable atrocity that's happening on a daily basis we see things other people don't see we used to serve on my girlfriend Melissa died we used to go to the supermarket and the farmer's market in China and you know they'd be hanging the whole pig there with its with its head on there'd be these pieces of meat hanging from the roof and I would just joke to her like oh don't you feel tempted to go back to eating meat is this stinking rotting flesh with you know the the Flies on it everything you know there were not many flies oh there were few but since I'm not teaming with flies or anything you know if this awful spectacle of of these corpses you know that here in the West in a sense you see the same thing in a sense you don't it's neatly wrapped in plastic in a little white square and so on you know but I was I was just yesterday we were at the grocery store together and I was really horrified by seeing lobster tails set out on ice you know I just wondered you know how can this be you know how is this acceptable to people how is this invisible or normal you know seeing seeing chopped up pieces of lobster sitting on an ice that way and knowing where it comes from and why it's there and why it's made that way so the reason why they sell pieces of a lobster they'd make more money if they could sell you the whole lobster so something happened to damage the rest of the lobsters body you know in the net or in the cage or whatever you know it's a reason why this one's being sold in pieces and this one over here is selling for a higher price hole you know all right it's intuitively obvious and think about it um anyway you know we see those things other people don't see or we see them in a different way we feel in every way you have this terrible sense of being alone in the crowd and being ethically burdened by that so we don't want to be alone anymore and you know again even without a mention before sex money power fame even with that taken out you know when I was reaching out trying to collaborate with Josh in the first place Josh aka pecan revolution that's for others are the reasons we had other things in common he grew up Hindu I used to be Buddhist you know we thought we'd talk about Sanskrit and Buddhism and India and Southeast Asia and stuff I thought we had other things to talk about but you know sure it is also that that isolation of being vegan even if you have meat eating friends or meat-eating family member saying I'm specifically wanting to know other vegans I'm wanting to feel like you're part of a movement or part of a community or part of something or at least knowing other people who commiserate with you about that that unbelievable burden you know that horror we're all witness to at a time when again I don't want to oversell it but I mean ecologically there's less and less of the world that's not destroyed by human human habitation human exploitation so you know that's that the situation what does an 18 that's that's the framework and it's easy to forget that just because so much of what gets views on YouTube of course is have a bikini body you know feel great for the beach this weekend but even those people I don't want to take that away from even like a complete piece of [ __ ] like Cory McCarthy you know the racist bodybuilder or white supremacist vegan bodybuilder why do you think he came on vegan YouTube in the first place probably a lot of the same motivations I'm talking about here even I don't know some despicable Instagram model selling you know weight loss tea or you know taking photos of resolver bikini even those people a lot of them a lot of those same you know keep issues are there so I don't really want to want to hate on them too much a lot of the same impulses and I'd like to think there's also a lot of the same potential to do something positive in the future
Washington talking do horrible horrible and Chris Copeland to places that are probably kind of cold and rainy this time of year hard to say hard to say which one's more horrible place to find yourself but any we're having a very stimulating 10 day trip to Seattle because right now our landlord is installing new carpeting in the apartment that we will move into when we get back to Victoria and phlegm face don't worry I won't say anything probably fun taste is actually considering her own options that she move on may move on to shall we say greener pastures is it unbeatens that greener pastures should not stay enough all right that's my segue you're indirectly endorsing the explanation of cows by using their face alright it brings people together when they can collectively just like someone money power fame respect sex these are the motives for why people why people come on YouTube and do this not in that order you know and like look keeping all the way real like you know so the main thing that's disappeared is the money right like you were saying yourself like just the idea that uploading every day is gonna mean that you can quit your job people used to really believe that durianrider sold that myth and I can't I can't tell you who this was but I knew a guy he's on YouTube but I also knew him as a real person and he was telling me how horrified he was he met during ride her face-to-face with his girlfriend and durianrider was like lecturing his girlfriend about how she was going to be able to quit her job as soon as should be making something yeah the girlfriend that point having a channel on YouTube that was only known to family and friends like 50 views per video kind of thing you know you know the journal writer face-to-face does that with people too of really trying to preach to them and then after a jury might her left the room this guy had to sit there with his girlfriend or I don't know ride the bus this girlfriend I know what situation was but he was trying to deprogram I sorta said look you know it's really important that you know that stuff you told you it's not true you know that's really not true at all that's not the way YouTube works that's not the way you know the revenue works so money money left the game where the money came down to a much much lower level than people perceived it to be previously right and so again keeping this all the way real I've been talking to different people about having a conference so I'm not academic but a formal conference where we present papers we've written in vancouver canada west coast of canada and talking to people inviting and i say look you know i admit this is a lot of time and money and effort and you know i know how it is what's your reward for doing this if you're not you know if you're not getting laid you know the girlfriend or something you want to meet up with in vancouver if there's not somebody you're sharing the hotel room with it's really hard to justify the time and money to come to a conference of this kind and I was not imagining by the way doing like a Kickstarter or crowd funding to pay for people's airplane tickets which is also very hard to justify it's very hard to ask people to donate money so that a couple of speakers can come to a vegan animal-rights type type conference I know it's done I know it's possible but I do find that hard to do you know so I mean again I don't want to talk about sex as if it's something really negative I think sex can be a really positive force in a lot of people's lives I think people do buy airplane tickets to go to you know veg fest and other vegan events in major cities in the world because they want to find a girlfriend or they want to find a boyfriend or you know I think there's the you know human sexuality is a reason why people come on camera I was saying to a guy who does you know the other day he was talking he did a period of time where he did you know broadcasting day for 20 days straighter so I forget the number of days but he kind of challenged himself and I was shocked my honest response was you know but you're married like why would you bother like the only people I've known who were motivated to you that much broadcast is because they were looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something like that so you know um money fame power respect sex these are the things that motivate this this kind of behavior and you know when one by one those are taken out of the picture then you get you get less and less of that and again remember so look okay that's kind of chapter one if you anything about that we can talk we can talk more about that but then the other side of it that I deal with it all the time is that people otherwise find me um daunting or intellectually challenging to talk to you've been talking to me for two hours too cumbersome oh thanks for you at all but you know when I when I've offered to collab to people sometimes people say back to me directly at some times I see it or hear it indirectly they say it on their YouTube channel that they were afraid to talk to me that they you know they think I'm gonna make them look stupid or feel stupid or you know that somehow it's too it's too so in my case that's also going on you know even recently he hosted an actual this weekend stupid in the flesh with collaborative people who joined as guests I'm gonna give you another example on a very different scale so we were just in Naima Canada Nanaimo is a small town or anyway it's definitely not it's a small city or a big town whatever want to say but this is a small community Nanaimo Canada officially has three thousand Chinese residents perhaps the real number because a lot of people are living there unofficially is closer to seven thousand and they have a Chinese language newspaper and I believe that newspaper has at least three full-time employees maybe four or five I didn't ask the number I've been to their offices they have a physical bricks and mortar office I was over here I've been to their offices I met their editor and when I walked out of there with my girlfriend I said why don't we as vegans have this weather in Victoria or Vancouver or Glasgow or anywhere in the world you know we suck as a community we're a failure and we kept on failing so out of the 7,000 Chinese people in Nanaimo how many of them care about that newspaper a Chinese language newspaper maybe 300 you know it's just not everyone's gonna be interested you don't have seen their stats they don't have a huge number they have advertisers who support their existence who really paid for the newspaper to exist on paper and on the internet and I am certain those advertisers do it partly out of a sense of community spirit like you know partly they're paying to advertise their service but I think they are aware they're paying for a kind of community paper they're not you know they could be advertising somewhere else I think there is a mix of charitable motives and community blend modes and these people have a newspaper okay thank you for my video on community or what have you you know the sky's the limit people obviously I think a boxing match is attainable obviously I think you know conference is attainable in my case a court case was attainable you know I've got six thousand five minutes to this court case obviously people selling t-shirts is attainable but you know more really is attainable and so I mean just think about how special it is in Chinese it's only in Chinese there's no English not for Vancouver not for Toronto not for New York not for Los Angeles for Nanaimo for the Chinese people of Nanaimo they have their own newspaper with an office and full-time employees right what is the global reach what is the significance of people who'd be interested in a veganism let's say it's a veganism and ecology paper let's say you don't just do veganism you also do some kind of scientific articles and update articles about deforestation and ecology well or you could define it another way you could have a veganism and anti-war publication I know one group in Taiwan they got a lot of attention that a lot of people who are vegan are also anti-war so you can combine vegan message with news and politics about current ongoing Wars now horrible they are on their body counts they have a kind of pro-peace become what do you think the market is for that I think it's more than 7,000 people so it's so so we suck ok that's my point here we are at failure we've been failing for 50 years and we keep on failing and yeah and it's it's it's really a significant example in contrast to any of these things yeah no it's funny do you bring up buildings because I remember by the train station there is this building and I think they supply renewable energy but when you get a glass building business building but inside it has loads of trees and it also has a massive treehouse networking and she was like do you really think so actually go in that building that you've managed well it's a real interesting question ask because you know I say all the time like vegans are fractious and fragmentary like how much do we have in common how much do I have in common with fully raw Christina how much do I have in common with during how much I haven't gone with you you know there are a lot of deep ghosts but then you look at a new store that how much do Chinese people have in common you know there are really deep divides within the Chinese community they don't even all speak the same language like some of them are from Fujian and they speak Fujian ease and some of them speak Hakka and some there are several different languages involved politically some of them are pro-communist and some of them are anti-communist and some of them are sitting on the fence there are really deep divisions of this some of them are pro-american and some of them are anti-american terrible these are big questions in the air and yet you manage to have a newspaper for them you know it's it's a real question what's possible now and look you're talking to the right guy about this because I say all the time you know I'm all for outreach and I'm interested in starting my own charity or my own nonprofit to do you know outreach education and lobbying direct government lobbying I'm thinking issues that I'd like to get that rolling here in Canada but most of what I've done with my energy in the last three years has not been reaching out to non-vegans it's been reaching out to other vegans and saying look guys let's organize the vegans we've already got let's do something positive with the manpower and talent you know we already have and the results the results are shockingly close to zero right the results are looser except for what you already mentioned the drama and the way in which you hit the nail on the head that's why I didn't comment the way in which hatred of a common enemy drew people together right which is a very dark but very real aspect of civilization I remember a political science professor once saying that back when Margaret Thatcher was in was in charge in England she was the Prime Minister of England he hated Margaret Thatcher and he spent all his time and energy criticizing barca Thatcher and writing articles about Ho terraformer Thatcher was but he said the moment Germany invaded England he would have become the world's most ardent supporter of Margaret Thatcher against Germany or something you know so he was recognising his own hypocrisy this way the hatred of a common enemy that does seem to you know galvanize people on jobs together that way and it's it's nothing to be proud of but on my channel is a microcosm we've gotten to see exactly that contrast right I've got this very easy framework where it's look I have all these contact details you send me a video of your topical your choice I will I will edit it put something over myself and give it back to you and you can use it the number of people who have done it has been shockingly low and that's a very I'm making content for them in that sense or editing content for them and still it's hard to get them to they're like oh we've just been here for three hours right well a lot a lot of people first discovered my channel back when I tried to collaborate with vegan revolution aka Josh in making a welcome home video for vegan cheetah when he just got out of jail we have there you go that's how you discover my shelters that he just got out of rehab and Josh blew his deadline and cheetah was already out of rehab and there was no thing and I got his permission I said look can I have your permission to edit together the clips I've already got here and do this because it's you know it's too late the guys already out of rehab there's supposed to be a welcome home thing and Josh said yes you know I can screenshot that if you want he did give permission and then 24 hours later she took back his permission and said no I shouldn't have given you permission you don't know this is terrible this is a betrayal of my artistic vision all that stuff so you know that was a hilarious example of attempted collaboration gone wrong and most of the other people who collaborate they never heard anything back but I contributed to this and then vegan revolution somehow bungled it and disappeared and [ __ ] you know anyway they know I know that one did they did have a big positive emotional don khon Charles Charles Marlow vegan cheetah back then when he was being a normal human being instead of a cartoon character he really thanked me it really it really meant Sonia then he started watching my channel and it went from there but yeah you know um I think the other lesson you've got to take from looking at say the last three years on YouTube we're seeing this right now with Joey carb strong almost all of the vitality in YouTube is an echo of what's going on in old media and traditional media you know so the same way somebody like Gary Yourofsky or somebody like Frehley suddenly had a huge surge in public interest that really was tied to the fact that Gary Yourofsky did television interviews and that freely had a series of mainstream newspaper articles about her you know that drew in you know a lot of Attraction a lot of interest a lot of action and that's not the only factor but we've just seen that right now with Joey Armstrong I remember when he was in nobody I remember when he was a durianrider clone he was in Thailand the same time I was when I had my conflict with during writer and solenoid and he believed in that stupid you know high carb low fat diet he did during writers died he gained a bunch of weight he got tubby he got a potbelly under his diet you know riding his bicycle and eating 15 bananas a day or whatever you know he gained a lot of weight doing that and then he had to lose her weight he slim right bottom line you know the energy behind his channel is because of mainstream you know media recognition even if it's critical even if it's if it's negative and that's that's a lot of what we've seen in in YouTube so I'm you know other things have changed there are other lessons you can draw from it but that's that's another one of the big ones right is that a lot of what we're doing is playing in the shadows of conventional media or old media or you know I don't know it's it's nice to think of you too is creating something new but the sense in which YouTube is something new is a lot more like Video Email it's like if I just put up a video on YouTube that's really like sending an email to my friends and family and then I can email them and say hey watch my video on YouTube and my friends and family can watch it but moving beyond that actually having an audience of thousands of people who want to see your content that still relies very heavily on whether it's newspapers radio or TV the thing is she said you know so many you will end up with so many different things given the you know had this experience in last year's I remember when your channel was much more just monologue senator was just you kymaro's and then you really put your time and energy into into collaborating more people and you know I kind of had my period doing that for me it took a long time for me to get the first person to collaborate on my channel and he was British the first guy to appear on my channel was violent vegan who's really kind of faded from the scene now but you know and before that people were really afraid to talk to me I think you know another example I don't know if you caught this example but you know when I talked to Jason Ficino aka hennya manias boyfriend he's also really faded from the vegan scene ever at the time he was really well-known because he was hideous he was saying his boyfriend when Jason came on my channel I wasn't trying to insult him or Punk him or you know make him feel bad but um he was living in Israel at the time and he did not know the word oh Sh wits or what the significance of Auschwitz was that was obvious and people were a lot of people were really laughing like oh you know what aisel made you look stupid I think a lot of people were kind of concerned but talking to me I'd somehow make them look stupid or make them look politically foolish which is I mean it's not why I'm on YouTube I'm just saying it's not why I'm here it can happen I'm going to happen with Jason but you know not like I was trying to make that happen with Jason I just assumed he'd heard of Auschwitz before especially given he was living in Israel at the time but anyway um you know let me ask you this looking ahead next say two years what do you think is the best possible scenario and what do you think is the worst got possible now what good can come of the energy you put in to collaborate because I think based on what you've said you've seen the good of the bad of it so far right yeah well first I'd say you know with people just up said the approachability is a massive issue I didn't collab for a long time simply because I was a spectator and completely forgot that I could actually talk to these people and they weren't untouchable they weren't these special people who but there was this kind of idea in the vegan community with some others the you know wait this is my life I I am one of these elite vegans yeah you can't talk to me because I'm not going to talk to you back but that's not the imager to actually there's a lot of people willing to talk and then they're like oh yeah this is such a good idea why don't we done this before but I think don't see your question the worst thing that can happen is I've seen it now over trusting myself some details about where I work you get this kind of idea that these people are kind of your family but every day it's more people are coming in and they're assuming a part of a crucian it's just like maybe the worst thing that could happen is people going their separate ways collectively crumbing because you know one person audience member sees you and then then sees the whole group you're growing together having a larger reach and then being able to maybe even afford in the future if you have your merch and stuff be able to afford to actually come together yeah I know merch I don't merch is the way to do that but yeah when we renovated it but I think I can go you one better you might think at this point I mentioned the example of Durham right about going to I think in terms of the dangers of collaboration it's interesting you said being overly trusting I think my experience with Josh with vegan revolution is a kind of really negative really important example that way cuz you know I appointed you there was a time when Josh was my friend you know he talked to me about personal life stuff you know my family and he talked to me about his personal life I didn't know his name but he was just meeting revolution but he talked about his struggles with depression and you know his education you know he was this former filmmaker and stuff you know he was a friend of mine and over something completely trivial over that welcome home vegan cheetah vegan cheetah a film you know he he flips to become my arch-nemesis you know which I give him no reason to do I've made it I sent him an apology and I made apology videos and look I'm sorry understand this is your position so I offered to take down the video and I did take on the video and he said he didn't want to take it down I put it back up whatever but you know he for how many years for at least two years you know he was on a constant campaign to defame and announce me to say that I had no right to see my own daughter that I was somehow a terrible parent or an abusive parent that was an abusive husband to make up lies above my divorce max way and he actually got in touch with he phoned and spoke to my ex-wife trying to get dirt on me and he collaborated with durianrider and trying to publicly defame it announce me no he didn't come up with anything I mean you know you heard my conversation that was on my channel in the end he had nothing on it all came nothing but you had a guy like that and you know making YouTube comments I saw the most in written form mostly I have also heard him verbally you know on his podcast he's suggesting that I'm employed by the CIA to a destroy veganism from within this kind of thing but I mean for like two years you have someone that obsessively trying to to destroy you uh you know look I'm now 39 years old did it upset me you know no and that's why I offered to talk to the guy had the podcast like I gave them opportunities and positive but that's the real warning you can have that experience and I think you know I think most people would find it more upsetting than I did especially if the person formerly was your was your friend all right and you know long story short cheetah is similar and there was a time when vegan cheetah really was my friend and then he flipped to being my enemy in a very cartoonish and sincere way because he thought he could get more YouTube views out of it or whatever you know so that's I think that's really the warning and you know we're fractious we're fragmentary we don't have that much in common but I know this comes up with I mentioned this to my current girlfriend Melissa a lot or I say look you know remember I mean in some ways I'm a snob some ways I just don't want to spend with people I don't want to spend time with people that I consider stupid or useless or bad for the vegan cause but in the other hand I've really made an effort to reach out to some of these people some of these crackpots including Charles Marlow vegan cheetah and what have you I've made an effort to overcome those bears and other examples the light twins right that goes way back you know I reached out to the light twins broke up they broke up they're no longer than another light twin singular there's only one of them but yeah they went nuts and broke up and that guy's obviously now into some really weird you know alternative spirituality and stuff but you know those are guys I don't have a lot in common with but we recorded one really good podcast together and you know I talked to them about their work history and educational you know talk to them about life I was really willing to reach out to and and work with those people for veganism you know for the cause for the future of the movement and this is where I'm at for me after three years of that or something you know I depending on the account they might YouTube channels past four years now but you know it's it's pretty negative and I think those are really the warnings about the the downside of collaboration I don't think anyone else is gonna have the same kind of problem I had with Duran Ryder but I think that kind of problem that I had with Josh you can have again and again and the internet is not running out of you know obsessive you know I know that are you talking about oh yeah yeah he's still trying to get touch with you know the BDDs group as well and try to get in and he just doesn't understand how to speak to people it's very confusing it but that whole situation it was so exhausting I genuinely thought that his threats were true that he was going to hack me that I had to change all my passwords to this day I have lengthy password remember just and you know I had to call the police at one point and it's just a very real thing I didn't understand how there were people who could do this regular basis like look at Charles result but there was a long time when people calling up or calling up him and giving him death friends I was just like how could you how could that be your life isn't it easiest just collaborate with people and talk about ideas of debate yeah yeah you know yeah different people are playing different games by different rules on the internet you know what are you trying to win and and what are you trying to lose and what are the what are the rules you play by and kind of nobody agrees to those rules before they get involved this and people do get their hearts broken and it does have a really negative you know impacts in their lives but the other side of it is I think this is especially true of vegans meat like maybe people who are video game fans this is true of but it's way more true of vegans on the internet or Star Trek fans or some of these other special communities the feeling we have of vegans I think is really of being alone in the crowd you feel isolated you feel nobody you know understands you and it hasn't come up that much in this conversation but you know we are witnesses to this you know unbelievable atrocity that's happening on a daily basis we see things other people don't see we used to serve on my girlfriend Melissa died we used to go to the supermarket and the farmer's market in China and you know they'd be hanging the whole pig there with its with its head on there'd be these pieces of meat hanging from the roof and I would just joke to her like oh don't you feel tempted to go back to eating meat is this stinking rotting flesh with you know the the Flies on it everything you know there were not many flies oh there were few but since I'm not teaming with flies or anything you know if this awful spectacle of of these corpses you know that here in the West in a sense you see the same thing in a sense you don't it's neatly wrapped in plastic in a little white square and so on you know but I was I was just yesterday we were at the grocery store together and I was really horrified by seeing lobster tails set out on ice you know I just wondered you know how can this be you know how is this acceptable to people how is this invisible or normal you know seeing seeing chopped up pieces of lobster sitting on an ice that way and knowing where it comes from and why it's there and why it's made that way so the reason why they sell pieces of a lobster they'd make more money if they could sell you the whole lobster so something happened to damage the rest of the lobsters body you know in the net or in the cage or whatever you know it's a reason why this one's being sold in pieces and this one over here is selling for a higher price hole you know all right it's intuitively obvious and think about it um anyway you know we see those things other people don't see or we see them in a different way we feel in every way you have this terrible sense of being alone in the crowd and being ethically burdened by that so we don't want to be alone anymore and you know again even without a mention before sex money power fame even with that taken out you know when I was reaching out trying to collaborate with Josh in the first place Josh aka pecan revolution that's for others are the reasons we had other things in common he grew up Hindu I used to be Buddhist you know we thought we'd talk about Sanskrit and Buddhism and India and Southeast Asia and stuff I thought we had other things to talk about but you know sure it is also that that isolation of being vegan even if you have meat eating friends or meat-eating family member saying I'm specifically wanting to know other vegans I'm wanting to feel like you're part of a movement or part of a community or part of something or at least knowing other people who commiserate with you about that that unbelievable burden you know that horror we're all witness to at a time when again I don't want to oversell it but I mean ecologically there's less and less of the world that's not destroyed by human human habitation human exploitation so you know that's that the situation what does an 18 that's that's the framework and it's easy to forget that just because so much of what gets views on YouTube of course is have a bikini body you know feel great for the beach this weekend but even those people I don't want to take that away from even like a complete piece of [ __ ] like Cory McCarthy you know the racist bodybuilder or white supremacist vegan bodybuilder why do you think he came on vegan YouTube in the first place probably a lot of the same motivations I'm talking about here even I don't know some despicable Instagram model selling you know weight loss tea or you know taking photos of resolver bikini even those people a lot of them a lot of those same you know keep issues are there so I don't really want to want to hate on them too much a lot of the same impulses and I'd like to think there's also a lot of the same potential to do something positive in the future