Freelee: Attack of the Clones.

this stuff ain't deep but it's real if
you're gonna come on youtube and talk about life in Thailand bring something real to it and I've been watching a youtuber he goes by the name of a boss slay seal and then just yen i think is how you say it that could be butchering the name but it's it's forwards Oh boss lay seal ah ma new CN look man here on YouTube honesty is the only currency we've got honesty is the only thing we're trading in it's the only thing with any value if people wanted something artificial polished prepared fake I don't think they'd be watching monologues on YouTube I don't think it'd be watching Marta logs on YouTube about politics about veganism or about anything else I did not put these books on my desk to try to look intelligent these the books that happened to have sitting out because I picked them up yesterday part of my part of my work at the University I'm not wearing any makeup this is not a makeup no makeup channel and I mean man on one level I can completely understand why people want to imitate freely on the other hand it blows my mind again and again when I see these amazingly fake and dishonest channels that try to make Thailand look like paradise on earth and really what they do is make the YouTube channel the person who runs the channel look like an idiot if you hang out in Thailand with people have lived there for even a few months not even people lived there for a few years they're all these topics of real conversation of real concern that just do not exist in the weird demi-monde of these vegans trying to be like freely I I mean of the big ones I've mentioned before is Thailand used to be a democracy and it's currently a military dictatorship does that concern you much is that something you might read about the newspaper and talk about with a friend over coffee you don't have to be the most profound or philosophical of characters to have some kind of honest human reaction to that and to mention on your YouTube channel but even simpler than that meant like how about the mosquitoes the level of glorification and self-delusion going on here I mean you know if you live in Chiang Mai mosquitoes are a problem and they can be a problem in a five-star hotel and they can be a problem in the cheapest one star hotel and they can be a problem in your apartment and they can be a problem on a bike trip and mosquitoes can make your life hell and if you know anybody there not even local Thai people which is foreigners you've been there for a while then you know people who have had dengue fever you've probably known people who've had malaria you know there's also tuberculosis drug-resistant tuberculosis there are concerns that might come up on your YouTube channel even shallower than that man I saw the tag for a video the other day and this girl was posing in a bikini next to a palm tree on the beach and the headline was either like this is Bangkok or life in Bangkok that photograph was not taken in Bangkok and I don't just mean that geographically Bangkok does have a beach bangkok as a city goes right down to the ocean if you're a tourist living in Bangkok take a look at the map if you buy a paper map of Bangkok mysteriously they never show you the harbor they never show you the ocean in that city and that's unlike any other major city anywhere in the world that's that's located on the ocean many cities you know the harbor area is not so beautiful it's not where tourists want to go because it's an industrial harbor it's a real working harbour and Bangkok is an example of that but before you reach the harbour in Bangkok you go through a kind of weird area of industrialized slums I guess you could say I read about that I remember talking to a coworker there because I had a full time job when I was in Bangkok I was not on vacation I remember talking to a coworker but the fact that that area is never it's it's censored it's omitted from the map or at least the maps that people make for tourists how strange that was I had an interesting place said read about it I'd read about some of the labor issues and what have you and when I want bit down there it's not it's not all bad but it means poor people doing honest work earning honest wages and in many ways having a better quality of life than in any of the neighboring countries that part of Southeast Asia ah a lot to think about a lot to make youtube videos about if you're living there you're actually interested in the world outside your window and not just taking photographs of yourself posing with a bowl of fruit look man I just got back in the South of France I could have made videos of myself on the beach holding a mango telling you how beautiful and fabulous that said the France is why would I do that and what would you think of me if I had done that I think even if I had more subscribers I think you'd think I was a [ __ ] here's this guy goes to southern France and what does he do it this time you know what's the meaning of life for this guy if this is all he does and a lot of these channels the channels imitating freely that is all there is it's not that there's a mix there's no mix of social concerns or what have you and some of these people look one of these youtubers I knew her I knew her just had some facebook messages back and forth before she moved to Thailand I know she's not an idiot I know that before she went to Thailand she was a law school student and she's now a law school dropout now I don't think you're stupid for dropping at a law school I've known some very intelligent people who dropped at a law school and probably there's there's a good chance that you're more intelligent if you drop out of law school than if you complete law school I don't think less of you for that but her major interest one of the reasons why she went to law school and one of the reasons why she went to Thailand was that she was really interested in human trafficking well why do none of these videos reflect the social reality of even what it's like to walk down the street in a city like chiang mai Chiang Mai is full of prostitution it's it's one of the world's greatest centers for human trafficking the only one that's worse is Bangkok Bangkok in Chiang Mai are two of the worst cities in the world for human trafficking if that was a major concern whew there was a major research interest ethical interest personal interest that you studied in school and now you're living in Thailand why is there not a single video about that on your YouTube channel and again doesn't have to be deep just like complaining about the mosquitoes I mean you know you could just have a video that that that reflects in a human subjective way how disturbing it is to walk past the brothels now look I I have done research on human trafficking in cambodia thailand laos formal research i've published some articles on that informal i think all of them are informal on that topic but look i have never been inside a brothel and anywhere in the world never in Thailand everyone sat East Asia but I mean Chiang Mai was one of the few places where walking down the street I remember one pimp had his prostitutes set up sitting in chairs in rows on the street so it wasn't even indoors and all the women were you know we're sitting at attention in this very unnatural way and in that culture that's really striking because like in Thailand the cops don't sit up straight the military don't sit up straight it's just a culture where people generally have a very relaxed way of sitting around even at a board meeting even in a formal situation and I remember how disturbing it was to walk down the street and see these women I forget how many that were more than 20 let's say 25 women in chairs in a row sitting still looking straight ahead on sale you don't have to be an intellectual you don't have to be a skull you don't be a research just say wow life here is kind of messed up man but justjust have a reaction that and talked with that and who is paying you to misrepresent what life in Thailand is like this way like if I moved to New York City I'm not saying I would hate on New York in every video maybe some videos would show me having a great time in New York maybe in some videos to talk about was wonderful in New York but in some videos at least I'd say gee you know what I saw something the other day and it kind of broke my heart I sauce in the other day that really made me stop and think about how life here is messed up gee you know I read something in the newspaper the other day that stop made me think gee you know I had a conversation with another guy the other day and he was telling me about no he went in a bike trip but he got dengue fever man you would think there were no cockroaches in Thailand you would think there were no mosquitoes in Chiang Mai in watching this completely artificial bimbo centric world that vegans have created it of Thailand and I mean none of it's true it's not the real Thailand and look I've known oh jeez in the game when I lived in Southeast Asia most of the Westerners I talk to you were over 50 years of age because they were my elders and I want to learn from their experience and not one of them ever said to me you know what I really remember about my years in Thailand was this mango was this bowl of fruit not one of them what a lot of them said to me was you know what I remember being Thailand in this year when there were tanks in the street I remember being there when this election happened and then the elections got canceled and you know there were protests there were riots they remember the political conditions whatever the weather they were in the Philippines or they were in Mongolia wherever they were in the world what's meaningful and what stays with you and what lasts a lifetime is being sensitive to the social and political conditions around you and I meet the guys I'm talking about they're not philosophers I mean some of these guys were scumbags but these guys over 50 you would lived in Asia for years who had made it their home one way or another yeah that stuff matters that stays with you and if you're living in Tyler we've had another period of you know military dictatorship when in many ways the whole country is sitting on the edge incredibly tense situation politically and this is what you're putting on line what the hell does that say about you and like I say in this one case I know this girl is not stupid because I've talked to I talked to her before she move to Thailand but she seems determined to live out this fantasy of imitating freely and it makes her look like a [ __ ] and the stuff on her channel is BS it's of absolutely no substance because again the only substance the only thing of value we can have here on YouTube is honesty is keeping it real there are no special effects man look you know what I've still got it in the closet I'm gonna get this out you know what this is can you guess what this is yeah I'm 643 by the way I think I've never stood up on camera on this channel before case you thought I was short that's a mosquito net okay if you're serious about living in Thailand whether you're serious about doing bike trips or you're just serious about getting a decent night's sleep when you're checked into hotel that is what you carry with you everywhere you carry a mosquito net at all times just to cope and still you're going to have things to complain about I remember being way up north in the lab order in a town where there were no European tourists no Westerners ever went there maybe has changed few years a long time there were small hotels that were just for Chinese businessmen visiting those villages that village I was in who's all ethnic minorities tyloo and akka mostly akka maybe a couple Hmong and I remember even though I brought i was on a bicycle going from town to town dirt road even though i had my own mosquito net with me guess what i lay down on the bed probably nobody had stayed in that hotel room for a month there were bedbugs tropical bedbugs my back was covered with welts this stuff ain't deep but it's real if you're gonna come on youtube and talk about life in Thailand bring something real to it and look I mentioned I used to hang out with guys in their 50s some of them were scumbags some of the more businessman some of them were scholars some of them were professors some of them were men with PhDs who were unemployed or surviving as English teachers some of them were Buddhist monks you'll notice about me if you click through my youtube channel what do you talk about we hang it with Buddhist monk you talk about some real [ __ ] I remember having a conversation with a Buddhist monk about a time he got attacked by a giant Python in Thailand in the jungles of Thailand I think that was not far from tac if I remember correctly this guy fell asleep in a lawn chair in front of his Hut in the middle of the jungle he woke up and there was a [ __ ] Python with its mouth over his hand and he had to figure out how he was going to deal with a Python trying to devour him non-violently because he's a Buddhist monk and he believes in not harming any animals that's a real story I've never seen or heard anything like that on these tube channels all I see are the bikinis the bowls of fruit the illusion of opulence man keep it real because on YouTube reality is all we have got an attack