Vegans: Anorexia, Bulimia, Body Image and the Movement.

I don't know if you guys maybe I've
understand it all sort of started and say February I was planning go to Thailand and we were going to really enduring order something subconsciously was like I want to look good when I meet these people so like I was saying um period gone it's been gone I am NOT healthy I have this sort of like thing on my neck I don't know if you have noticed it it's been around for a couple months and I don't really know what it is it's some kind of a dry patch of skin and I think I had something like this before in my life when I was 14 and then I was diagnosed with anorexia I'm so mad at myself that I that I I just I want to be the best example for you guys and I don't want anyone to do this Hey I had lunch today with a young woman who comes from a bit more of a conventional political science career path she got a degree in political science she got a job with the government push papers around a desk for a few years and now what do you know I bump into her here in China it's not a date unless I say it was a date but hey we met up and had lunch talk politics history etc etc and it's very peculiar for me to have to explain to someone from that background and in that position that yeah I'm kind of sort of part of this political movement called veganism and one of the things I said to were quoting one of my past videos I told her the best video I said one of the things I say about this movement it's simultaneously the realists and the fakest thing in the world like in terms of the gravitas the reality this has for us in our lives I gave the example the video I have up with Zarya you know the agony of activism I said during that video both she and I break down weeping and we're just talking about stuff like you know witnessing animals getting their throats cut protests at slaughterhouses the sense of hopelessness you have and trying to influence your fellow man to adopt veganism in that sense veganism is the realest thing in the world it's much realer to us than for example um the suffering of children in Vietnam was during the heyday of the anti-vietnam War protests and if you guys know anything about me unless this is the first video you've seen on my channel that is a chapter of history I care a lot about I've done a lot of research on but there's a visceral reality to how we care about animals how we care but in rights even how we care about ecology from ecology is pretty visceral I feel it I do um it's not just about knowing it's about feeling and it's about action so the sense in which the realest thing in the world and there's another sense in which it's just unbelievably fake is another sense in which we're dealing with this you know candy-coated fat shaming veneer of selling a body image selling diet books you know the bikinis the permanent vacation the women who are celebrated as great beauty icons who maybe aren't so beautiful anyway and you know all the kind of snake oil salesmen within what what he is fundamentally a form of activism you know it's it's it's a it's a political movement whether you want to be or not uh-huh lifestyle activism permanent vacation etc etc it's just someone who's a complete outsider so Mia this is just today it's a couple hours ago I'm having lunch with this very attractive young woman but it's not a date and I've got to explain - yeah you know what I'm I'm a vocal person in this I'm an aspiring activist myself I'm in some to some extent I'm an influential voice within this you know upcoming social movement but yeah you know what um there are shirtless selfie pics of mine on the internet yup and she's shocked and she's like why this part it's part of the reality's movement today people you know rolled in with this is diet and exercise and fat shaming yeah you know a related example for me before I get into the main topic of this video you know there is a woman who was flirting with me in the comments section of my live broadcasts I my videos are posted to YouTube but I do live broadcasting on you-now similar-sounding website but different interface people could chat with me real-time and there was this woman who was sending me kind of flirtatious messages she'd been doing that for a while she put in work and as another woman who I know from around the internet who just started that she would start saying your it was really nasty - it was really I've seen photographs of you you don't take care of your body and she was at the same time boasting about how lean she was so the woman doing the insulting not the woman flirting with me the woman the woman insulting the woman who was flirting with me was like you know I'm five foot five and a hundred and twenty five pounds and you don't take care of yourself you're like a fat piece of [ __ ] this kind of this kind of stuff and I know I know the woman making the insults she's not trying to flirt with me like it's not jealousy or anything like I really just think it's the it's the boiling frog syndrome for what's become normal and the woman who had been flirting with me this this piqued my interest because her response was like I'm not trying to be a movie star yeah I'm not trying to be a bikini model and she said something about her life she was like look you know like I I I'm in a biochemical research like that's my vehicle okay she's dodging accusations I don't know I don't know what she looks at us I've never seen it photographed that woman but you know what is a myth maybe I could lose a few pounds so the hell what is this conversation going and I love that I think it's a very relaxed very self confident attitude AB to say hey my life is not about being Beachbody ready my life is about biochemistry in my case oh yeah so that my stack of books is in the shot here can I just kind of just push this out a lot a lot of my time is spent you know sitting at a table looking at funny little squiggles on a piece of paper studying languages history politics etc to some extent that's what my life is about and to some extent for me going to the gym is just a pleasant break from that but yeah we have a very strange little political movement here in that you know money and sex and fame are major motivating factors have I seen worse yes a situation I think in Buddhist politics is worse and there it's money sex and power a little bit of Fame different set of motive forces and you know other forms of corruption other other aspects of human nature come to the fore but no doubt I mean yeah I met here here in Kunming just a couple months ago I met a guy who was a Vietnam War veteran and then after he fought in the war he became part of the anti-war movements it was a politicized you know ethically motivated guy who had a lot of hands-on experience in the war did tell me some anecdotes about killing people to be blunt then he went back to United States and he was involved in those protests he was a speaker he would go to organized events and protest and he would give eloquent speeches and what was going on in the war and his perspective on why the war should be stopped etcetera etc um and when I told him just a little bit just a few sentences what was going on in be vegan politics he sat there and said oh yeah and he started telling me about the extent to which and I think this is an unwritten history he said you know what was going on in the anti-vietnam protests a lot of it was motivated by sex and fame and money and those guys like himself who went around from event to event on American college campuses and gave these very eloquent very pious speeches about why you know they should stop dropping bombs on Cambodia stop dropping bombs on Laos and this kind of thing I talked about the suffering of the innocent children they were very much at the same time lining up their date for that evening with the young women on the crowd again typically at college campuses but a some times these were at left-wing churches in Ho the the settings for these anti-war protests very often they were there were a lot of religious groups that were that were organized and opposed in Vietnam war but whatever was yeah sex and money and fame and those motives were very much on the table so it's interesting it was refreshing to hear that and he was he was someone who I guess benefited from that or in another sense he was somebody was corrupted by it so real talk our political movement and its problems it's not completely exceptional I don't know if we're the exception of the rule or if this is the rule but you see the way money sex and fame leads people around about the nose I know a certain friend of mine on YouTube the first month he made $5,000 on YouTube that really changed his perspective and why $5,000 isn't that much money but if you start thinking what if I can make $5,000 every month then I don't need a job anymore then I don't need a career then YouTube is you know pays my rent a little bit of money I mean some people are more easily influenced than others a little bit a little bit of fame a little bit of sex how much does it take to to lead you down the road now um I was just looking at this video from is Edie sounds like a rapper formerly known as Izzy Davis now she just uses her last initial is Edie and Anna from my perspective she is not really examining or explaining what the problems were but she was reflecting on the extent to which this movement influenced her just within the last few months to regress into an eating disorder apparently some years ago she was diagnosed with anorexia and she struggle with that she felt she'd won but she states very simply and very briefly in this video that in preparing to go to Thailand what believe I met her she was in Chiang Mai at the same time I was I met a nondescript blonde and her boyfriend at one of the vegan restaurants there and they knew who I was and they said hi but they were nervous but they were kind of glad to meet me and I didn't honestly I didn't really recognize her but I think that was is Edie who I bumped into we didn't it was it was really high hey hey I know you from YouTube yeah I know you from UTA okay I'm gonna I'm gonna get these noodles you know but that was it like I wasn't any profundity today to that it's ration but I'm pretty sure I did bumpy tour we were there in Chiang Mai at the same time but long story short she felt pressure to lose weight to go to that part of Thailand representing veganism right and we all know why that is look in a sense it doesn't need to be explained we all know that within this movement there is pressure on people as the face of the movement to be to look like freely let's be blunt and I think she's a she's a kind of sad case study of the impact that has on some people but the unpack it a little bit here it's not just to look like freely it's that you have to get the results in the same way that freely pretends she gets the results which is to say effortlessly one of the big catchphrases that freely is brought in the game is it's all you more effortless weight loss that the lifestyle and the weight loss is effortless and I think we all know part of what meets this so sad and so sick is that these people even when they don't have a full-time job and when they're not raising kids even when they're not giving lectures on biochemistry or giving lectures on the history of the Vietnam War that actually these people are putting a ton of effort into maintaining their figures male or female into maintaining a certain aesthetic a certain look and they still struggle with their life weight their life is still truant and and is Edie from my perspective she's another example of that the the the illusion isn't just that she's lean I mean I said she really is lean the illusion is that it's effortless because the idea is that we're supposed to be selling veganism as a lifestyle that will let you achieve those results effortlessly right and this has consequences hilariously even as consequence for someone like as Edie now is Edie is not just motivated by money if you look at her channel it's very clear that her main source of money her main source of notoriety her main source of fame are these so called ASMR videos I guess they're like mildly erotic videos where she has her friend run her run their fingernails through her hair is another one where she's using a brush to brush her friends back and they're like 20 minutes long each and they've got all of them have over a hundred thousand viewers they have nothing to do with veganism I'm not my point is not to hate on that John writes it's kind of a weird genre to me again I assume people watch it apparently simple watch because they find it relaxing or they find it erotic but if she were motivated by money every single video would obviously be that kind of video it's not her videos on veganism as a movement or her videos on Thailand or her videos on any of this other stuff that's bringing in money through YouTube so I'm actually saying that to give her credit and I'm pointing out that her talking about veganism or her personal life that is you know in a sense an authentic commitment to coming on YouTube and wanting to share something real and it's important her something she feels that matters more than what really gets her viewers and what gets her money so I'm not actually raising that to hate on it I just say that in terms of the the push and pull of the influence that money might have on this equation that's there but again there's money fame sex power and I think really what we're dealing with here with her case her looking at her as a canary in a coal mine it's the power element of the equation right it's the sense of authority and importance that someone like Frehley had it in effect saying to her not actually saying it but the message of freelee's whole methodology is if you want to come here to chiang mai you want to be respected you want to be a leader or you want to be a voice in this movement you better lose weight of course she already was lean but she decided she needed to lose even more weight before she went to Thailand to be seen in that context and as she narrates she lost her period she got critically underweight she was getting some other symptoms and she's afraid that she's really progressed into anorexia or anorexic type behavior which in the past she was diagnosed with and she thought she had she had overcome she thought that part of her life was over and it's not um and anyway all these things I mean there's a kind of power in pretending that these things are effortless but I mean I'm not interested in that power we can do that in Buddhism you didn't scholarship you do that in magic tricks and if the magician pretends something is effortless pretends it happened at that-air is that more of a convincing illusion then showing you a kind of struggle you know showing that that there's a price to be paid on the part of the conjurer you know I can see both ways for me I'm interested in a totally down earth way sharing with you the struggle that is my life but just lately it seems that trying to present again you know what look let's keep it all the way real that is one of the reasons why my channel exists is that I was sick and tired of people saying veganism is effortless and it'll make you happy and it solves all your problems and you feel great and you wake up with tons of energy every day and it's it's simple and anodyne and I for me on both a deep level in a shallow level I reacted that by thinking no veganism is a struggle my life is hard you know it's emotionally hard it's intellectually hard it's it can be harrowing I already use this example of me and Zarya we both break down weeping in that video talking about animals getting their throats slit you know the the steps leading up - you becoming vegan can be very emotionally hard and then you know what happens afterwards in terms of activism in terms of the struggle to actually influence government policy terms the struggle to bring about cultural change in terms of staring in the face of the indifference and hostility of your own parents your co-workers your cousin's your your best friends your boyfriend your girlfriend that you care about this so much and you know and just going hungry [ __ ] today I went hungry for hours and hours of not being able to buy food because you're freaking yeah some of that shallow some of that's deep but to me all of it is a struggle so that that illusion of effortlessness it is one of the reasons why this channel even exists why I take the time to come online and share my life with you people it's because I want to talk about what's real I want to talk about its political meet politically meaningful and I want to talk about the struggle and anyway so veganism as a social movement but even as a diet even as a lifestyle choice I think you know it behooves us to be honest about that struggle but for better and for worse veganism now is linked to a lot of body image issues and a lot of frankly debates about anorexia right now's Neil's to say I have no history and anorexia anniversary is not mayor of expertise there are plenty of other channels already on YouTube from people who are either currently anorexic or recovering anorexics there's already a ton of material that in the internet so if you're looking for an expert insiders opinion on anorexia that's not what this videos about that's not more channels about but on the other hand already in this video in the last 10 minutes I think you've probably gotten a perspective that's very different for you get for another channel so I hope you hang with me for the next few minutes I've got a letter here I'm gonna read out from someone who has recovered from anorexic or saris or is recovered from anorexia it'll be pretty obvious to you why she's writing to me right away and she was actually asking me for advice about starting her own YouTube channel talking about veganism etc okay so now I'm gonna read this letter hello eyes'll long time viewer here before I get to my real questions I just wanted to make a suggestion of creating a schedule for your new you know broadcast because I always seem to meet miss the first 30 minutes to an hour of context you're not gonna get scheduled but anybody thanks thanks for thing with that I guess I'm writing this email to get advice for two main questions basically if I should start a YouTube channel and if my story would even be worth telling if it would give me if it would give people more excuses not to go vegan or if it would possibly possibly positively impact someone's life the next few paragraphs will probably be emotionally fueled contradictions I'm giving this as a warning I'm currently 23 years old and in recovery for an anxiety disorder for me for an anxiety disorder and bulimia nervosa okay sorry so believe me on on anorexia I've reached a stage where my anxiety disorder is pretty manageable and I'm just beginning to start recovery for my bulimia I'm about to move back to a major city to start part-time classes at a major university basically I'm just putting my life back together so she does mention where she's living I'm just censoring that stuff out I'm just making this anonymous by removing the the name of the city in the name of the University I'll try to put my eating order to store sorry I'll try to put my eating disorder story below in layman's terms as I don't know how well versed you are in the terminology in a lot of ways my eating disorder was the beginning of a cycle of veganism vegetarianism and an omnivore diet five years ago when my eating disorder first turned from disorder eating into an actual disorder I was an omnivore I ate mostly everything as long as it fit into my calorie goal for that day and then I watched the movie Earthlings that was when I first went vegan for me it was mostly an ethical commitment I'm not going to lie and say there wasn't a small amount of my eating disorder perhaps 5% influencing that decision I would say that this was around November 2013 that lasted if I recall correctly until the Christmas break during my first year of college December 2014 that's actually a pretty long run of being vegan especially for someone with two serious diagnosed disorders but okay during this time was what so during this time I first started showing signs of bulimia binging and purging I'm not so stupid as to blame veganism for my eating disorder I realized that it was a mix of Janette an environment that contributed to my bulimia though I think some eating disorder specialist would say that going vegan it may have been a trigger for me okay so this is someone who isn't at this point involved with the kind of peer pressure we've just been talking about yet in the movement or YouTube or anything else I remember four weeks before Christmas break I started to get the craving that some ex vegans would talk about though I think when you have bulimia those cravings take on a whole new monstrous dimension it's literally something you can't stop thinking about it keeps you up at night and you even start to dream about food binging and purging is not just about the cravings though it's also but the self-hatred and losing all self-control during and after the binge when you have a mental illness your worst enemy is your own mind it knows all your secrets all your weaknesses and how to break you for a vegan I think that one of the worst scenarios you could be in is being force-fed meat dairy and eggs for someone with bulimia and maybe coming back home during Christmas break and seeing all the food that you were craving but didn't allow yourself to have for over a year not to mention the normal questions and debates you have to put up with as a vegan so I gave in any meat dairy and eggs the whole spectrum of the industry so she means during that during that Christmas break I do want to say that it's possible to be bulimic and stay vegan I know people who do it and I applaud them after Christmas I decided to go vegetarian to try to have the best of both worlds but I knew in my mind that vegetarianism isn't really helping much but I didn't want to eat meat this started a cycle of constant change between vegan vegetarian and omnivore because she's struggling with her eating disorder during this time I never expected to live a full life I honestly thought that every year going past may be my last due my mental health problems did this play a role in these self-indulgence and self-hatred cycle probably so some of you can relate to that and some of you can't but when you feel like you're forced into a very short term view of your own life because you're not really sure if you're gonna be around five years from now real talk that basically is the short version of my history with eating disorders and veganism I'm now beginning a new chapter in my life where I'm starting to reach out and get support from my bulimia I've tried to read people's recovery with eating disorders and how veganism helped or hindered them and the general consensus of how most specialists don't believe in patients going on a vegetarian or vegan diet unless they have proof of religious reasons so this is the consensus among psychiatrists are supposed to try to help people these eating disorders luckily or unluckily for me I don't meet the requirements for inpatient treatment so I have to go the long road of support groups I you she's not gonna be checked into a hospital I have the choice to do vegan eating disorder recovery or just work with nutritionists and doctors I have more control about what my treatment will look like and how I'm gonna go about it I believe that I can leave of lead a vegan life while recovering from bulimia I'm also someone who's well aware of what relapse signs are and how to deal with them I'm not here to ask you for eating disorder advice good thing too because I don't get beating disorder advice I'm not here to ask you for eating disorder advice or anything like that I'm asking you as someone who posts the ups and downs of their personal experiences life on YouTube even though it's mostly negative and real and some of the vegan community hates you for it sorry I didn't really give the pot that sentence didn't have any comments in it she's asking me as someone who posts his life including his ups and downs my personal experiences on YouTube even though some of the community hate me for it even though all those experience are negative so is my story worth telling to a vegan audience it wouldn't just be the eating disorder but my views on current events and veganism my experience of the mental health system in Canada my recovery internet culture tumblr Instagram etc honestly I can see other topics being more impactful but my eating disorder is a big part of my experience with veganism okay so I'm leaving off the ending she writes other flattering things at the end of her letter warming so I did respond to her briefly in email and I told that I was going to record a longer video in reply this video might be even longer than she imagined already um my advice tour is actually no don't come on YouTube and I've already I think covered one of the really important reasons why I would advise someone like this not to come on YouTube I think that the type of really negative you know fat shaming body image based politics that we have going on within the movement now I'm sorry there was like the first ten minutes of this video was talking about that in a pretty relaxed way um I might be able to scoff at it I might be able to laugh at it and I do um you know some of you guys are forgetting yes durianrider called me fat I had laughed at it I thought it was hilarious for a lot of other people you know being humiliated publicly by an influential figure with that possibly a figure they look up to like if you personally respect your and writers been watching his videos fears that may be extremely damaging and they be extremely emotionally harrowing and for someone like this that kind of experience put it this way it's probably not what you want to be dealing with so one part of it is what we've already talked about in this video um the the fact shaping image based elements of what we're doing in veganism as a fledgling social political movement that's one aspect there are others you know I think it really does matter for most people including me getting a job matters your boss and your co-workers can watch anything you put on YouTube and the vast majority of people in terms their personality type they're not cut out for that I just mentioned I had a delightful lunch appointment I didn't call it a date I met this woman for lunch today to me it's great she can learn about my divorce she can learned about my personal life she can learn about my vegan activism by coming on my youtube channel I'm completely comfortable that most people are not and even if you think you're comfortable with that you may be surprised just how uncomfortable you get as soon as the things are taken out of your control as soon as other people are misrepresenting what you've said people are expecting you to respond to a video they've made attacking you et cetera et cetera and all that stuff all those nasty person-to-person politics those happen to channels that are way down at two hundred subscribers five hundred subscribe really there are people with under two hundred viewers who've had terrible experiences I've mentioned repeatedly this guy whose channel is called don't interrupt daddy who ended up getting fired he lost his job because somebody who didn't like his YouTube channel somebody I don't know who repeatedly made phone calls to his boss at work made abusive and insulting and harassing and false phone calls to his boss at work and that guy he gets like 200 viewers per video he's not famous he's not making money out of YouTube or anything like that he's a small viewer who stated his opinions and his opinions were you know criticisms of durianrider right so that's had devastating consequence of quantum particles from just in terms of his ability to pay his rent um you know keep keep a roof over his head put food in the table etc I don't know what's happened I don't know if you found another job quickly or not I've checked his channel but I don't have any update on whether or not he's he's bounced back from that or not so don't think that the price of fame comes with Fame when you have Micro Fame you still have all the disadvantages of real Fame and again for someone with this background in terms of the two different diagnose disorders you've got it's a safe bet that you're not cut out for that and keeping real it's a safe bet you never will be not when you're 30 not when you're 40 not when you're 50 I assume you're in your mid-20s from this message I actually don't know Orange um look I think there's this big kind of anti shame movement on the internet which is very misleading I had people saying just a thin my patreon group pay one dollar to subscribe to my patreon channel by the way but we do have conversations in patreon and there were people saying oh it's wrong to shame someone for being a prostitute and it's equally wrong to shame someone for being a John to shame someone for paying money to have sex with prostitutes now this exercise I've done research on in Southeast Asia and Cambodia Thailand Laos in this area I've done recent probe because of hiv/aids partly because of human trafficking you know slavery to be blunt there are different reasons why I did formal research on that that sector and those issues ethical as well as political issues and economic issues and religious issues they're all intertwined um now I actually have a moderate view of prostitution I'm neither an extremist on one and or the other of that debate however if you ask me is there a shame attached to this for no reason no it's completely sensible that there is shame attached to this now that doesn't mean people I think people should be thrown in prison for it I think you have to have very moderate laws governing these things it doesn't mean I want police going through the streets and brutalizing people with billy clubs but if you ask me on the cultural level is there no reason why there is shame attached to a man paying money so that a woman will say flattering things to him and pretend that he's handsome and have sex with him in contrast to a man who builds up a relationship with a woman I don't know because of his sense of humor or his charm or what-have-you is there just no reason is there no explanation for why shame is attached to one of these activities and not the other no I can't say that is there no reason why a woman who selects her mate or her boyfriend purely on the basis of cash why that's regarded as more shameful than someone who makes that decision on the basis of a whole bunch of reasons like he has a great sense of humor or boredom or veganism no you know shame is attached to these things for real reasons and I know of other people on YouTube who have the bravery and frankly who have the economic stability in their lives to come on camera and show you the meds they're taking show you the anti-anxiety meds or the antidepressants or the different mind-altering drugs they take on a daily basis that is very brave and I do think for the right person that's very useful in terms of their personality types or what they can do with who I I do I in a sense I applaud that bravery but if that person that says to me that this is something that shouldn't be in any way shameful you shouldn't feel bad about this you should be proud like you should be proud of your meds you should be proud of your disorder um you have to look at it from the employers perspective if you're going to be employed as a schoolteacher does it matter that six months ago you were a prostitute if you're going to be employed employed as a schoolteacher does it matter that you're on anti-psychotic medication and that you may at any time go into a dissociative State where you don't recognize the people around you and you don't know where you are that's not that extreme an example of a psychotic episode by the way well you don't recognize the faces of the people in the room it matters you know people feel shame about these things people very carefully guard the reality of their diagnosed mental disorders of their experience you know with the medical system etc for real reasons now I have I came on and shared my life on the Internet at a time when my prospects for employment were zero and they're still pretty close to zero like the career I have in front of me is extremely humble and if you guys been following this channel for a while you know I even signed up to join the army I volunteered to go work in a mine while I was in University in Canada getting my second University diploma I was applying for all kinds of crazy jobs in Canada in Europe in Asia what have you but my own career situation is so terrible that the negative impact of me coming on and talking about Buddhism is not that bad and sorry what is it I said that is but it's true you know in Japan I think that was a problem I think people in Japan did not want to hire me because of my material Buddhism but I've just put up videos talking about how terrible my experience was in Buddhism and you know maybe from some perspective that's something to be ashamed of from my perspective I'm not ashamed of that and I think I'm sharing something really important and meaningful for a certain audience my experience in veganism again I feel that something important and meaningful for a certain audience and I just put up a video now I think my most recent video before this one is about how when I was doing humanitarian work in Laos the government there some members of the government very seriously threatened to murder me very seriously threatened to throw me in jail ended up being Excel and of having to flee the country amidst threats of execution execution imprisonment I was I was persecuted to put it in one word now I'm not ashamed of that but one of the reasons is I didn't do anything wrong I was doing I was do sand completely moral I was actually being employed by an agency that was handing out sacks of rice to starving people so I don't feel someone's gonna shame me for that although they do people like Jeff Nelson try to shame me because I have a background work Jeff Nelson wants to shame me because I didn't you know go to business school and try to earn as much money as possible with whatever you know mental abilities I've got in life well no I don't know how about you Jeff you ever volunteered for a project to hand out sex advice to starving people you ever had people threaten to kill you because you were doing that you know is what it is but you know that's a funny story it's a weird story I'm willing to come online and share that and I'm willing to deal with and you know any shame that may be cast upon me and there is something cuz people do try to shame me and humiliate me that way but I've got to say I've read your email I've taken what you said here seriously and my advice to you is don't do it you've got problems and your problems are problems you haven't solved yet and your problems are shameful you may not feel any shame your friends may not see the machine for think about an employer think about an employer who's hiring you to be a babysitter or a schoolteacher or a firefighter if you want that as an example something where they're a life-and-death moment to moment decisions and they want to know if you're reliable they want to know if they can count on you from that perspective this is shameful because it makes you look unreliable we'll talk if you are gonna make a youtube channel you specifically this one person who wrote to me I don't mean everyone I would give you the exact opposite advice of the advice I give so often here about keeping it real I think you would have to have a very very carefully controlled very narrow on message YouTube channel in which you don't deal with those aspects of your life at all and I mean one of the reasons for that psychologically as well as politically is simply that your your problems aren't solved yet these are problems you're still wrestling with these problems you're still trying to solve and I think that someone could have said to me so I just made I just made that video about the government of Laos threatening to kill me years and years ago right what if I had been making and uploading those videos while I was doing the job in Laos what if I'd been filming myself handing the sack of rice to the starving family what if I was making the video while the government official was threatening to kill me what if I was making the video even the next day when I'm sitting there like yeah you know guys yesterday this guy from the government threatened to kill me and you know now they're kicking me out of other country oh my god it's not cool it's not and I know for me personally psychologically would a lot of people would be a lot of people you'd really really go through a lot at that time so maybe this may be what your any but maybe it's something you can talk about in the internet 20 years from now 20 years is not a bad estimate I don't even mean 10 years maybe 20 years from now this is something you can put on YouTube and maybe you've accomplished so you know a level of economic stability and just a level of authority in your life where people know you're reliable where 20 years to know you can talk about this what you went through and the people who have to trust you as a babysitter as a schoolteacher as a firefighter or just as a friend where they're not gonna look at you funny they're gonna know yeah yeah that girl Lisa I don't know her name I'm just making him am that girly you know she's a rock you know yeah yeah yeah yeah you know did you see her video where she talked about what a tough time she had in her 20s when she was struggling with bulimia yeah but you know what wow she came out of it even stronger you know we you know if that's the situation or 20 years from now that's when you make that video not today don't do it it's gonna make you unemployable it's gonna make you miserable and it's gonna open you up to an unending cycle of fat shaming and humiliation and body image politics within veganism that you know that right now is an endemic feature of veganism as a movement I don't know if it always will be but I can definitely say in the next two years next five years it's not gonna change when I first came on YouTube people were shocked and horrified that I challenged that paradigm that I challenged the paradigm of lifestyle activism that I challenged the paradigm of the permanent vacation and said no this is bad and it's counterproductive and it's wrong and in the last two years I've got to say I'm winning in a major way that's really been challenged people view it all from a different angle and that sometimes people want to insolvent they said what have you accomplished in activism this is a ballast yell this is the channel that pulled the gods out of their heaven okay I did accomplish something and a lot of what I accomplished it wasn't even anything I did it wasn't any Talent I brought to the game that was an incredibly brittle backstabbing shallow paradigm that was so influential in veganism for a couple of years there I think it had to crumble I think it had to fall inevitably but I played my part whether you see that as a canary in the coal mine or the tack that someone stepped on barefoot whatever it was yes you know I did play my role in challenging that and I hope that in the future ten years from natori of snow I hope that the whole situation for this movement is more grounded in real politics so the door is open for people like you to get involved even if you are to be blunt psychologically fragile because you're struggling with bulimia you're struggling with an anxiety disorder I hope that we do have a situation where someone like you can share your voice in your perspective without having to live in fear but right now we'll talk the fear is real about us Yin