- What's up guys, happy holiday season.
We have finally made it, to the end of 2020.
That's gonna be a cheers for me, f this year.
So I realized the other day that I have not done a Q
and A video for a very long time.
So I thought today would be a good day to do that
it's cozy in here.
There are a few questions that a ton of people ask.
So I'm gonna save those toward the end.
My friend Mems says, "A, more puppy on film please!!!"
She may make an appearance here.
She's an independent woman, so I don't wanna force it.
"B, I love you."
It's very sweet, I love you too.
And C, "With the chaos of 2020 what's one
or two things you've started doing
for your mental health or mindfulness?"
The main thing that I really committed myself
to is meditation more, and also I found that taking Poppy
to the dog park is like the best anti-depressant ever.
It's just like a swirl of puppies.
I would say people who don't have dogs
who need a little pick me up, should go to dog parks too.
But I don't know if that's weird.
Adam Sandler Stan acct asks, "Are you staying hydrated?"
Obviously! I do actually try to drink eight cups
of water a day, but otherwise I'm powered by wine and coffee.
Button nose asks, "How do you feel
about public relationships any of yours or others?"
I had a public relationship once.
I would say that the benefit of such a thing is
that you can kind of like enjoy each other's creativity
and make stuff together when you're YouTubers.
But outside of that, I feel like there are a lot
of downsides to having a public relationship.
People get very invested.
That's great if everything's going well
for both of you and you know, life is good
but obviously that's not always the case.
And I think it can be hard for teenagers
and stuff who have public relationships to deal
with the public aspects of it.
UltimateApathy asks, "What would you be doing
if you weren't doing YouTube?"
I would be doing more of what I'm doing
when I'm not doing YouTube
which right now is a lot of reading
and writing and research and a bit of coding too.
"Do you think you will ever start an Only Fans account?"
It was jarring to me coming back from my social media break
and realizing that like every YouTuber I watch
does porn now.
I mean good for them.
If everyone's happy, no one's getting hurt, whatever
but no, that is not my line of work.
Another one of my friends Bunty says,
"How do you hit the record button in silence
your inner sometimes negative narrative."
I think it's really easy for a lot
of us to kind of get stuck in this really this rut
of self-criticism, and to become consumed with all
of the things that we're doing wrong,
in that situation I think it's important to recognize A,
that it's good to be a little bit self critical.
I think that's something that conscientious people do.
They can see kind of where their weaknesses are
where there are opportunities of growth.
So the magic is in knowing when you're crossing
the self-criticism line.
Identifying when it's becoming unproductive, self-defeating
and then yeeting it away.
It's a very important skill to know how to yeet things
in this year 2020.
Bruno and several other people have asked,
"Have you been doing any more sex ed research or work?
What happened to sex plus, the sex ed thing?"
I guess I wasn't super duper clear about,
why did I shift away from sex ed?
There are a few reasons, I'm gonna put down my wine glass
'cause it feel like I need to use my hands right now.
One of the biggest reasons was that when you think about all
of the material that is in a sex ed class,
a comprehensive sex ed class, you're probably looking
at a couple of years worth, at the adult level.
And at some point I just felt like I had covered a lot
if not all of the things that I felt like I could cover.
And eventually the questions that I was getting both
from you guys, professionally, in the media,
were questions that I did not feel qualified answering,
things about trauma, things about medical issues.
The New York Times actually even asked me
to answer sexology questions.
So I had this realization that
if I'm gonna pursue sex ed, as my life's work
I need to become an expert
in something related to sexuality.
And the thought of going into that realm,
honestly didn't appeal to me that much.
I love these topics.
It's just not my everything.
There are many parts of me and a love of sex ed is just one.
Adrastia asks the difficult questions.
"Which is more important, tailbones or kneecaps?"
Let me just say that I had literally never thought about
how important my tailbone was until this moment.
I feel like I get through my day fine.
Do I need that energy?
Do I need that tailbone energy in my life?
I don't know, I have questions about that.
Kneecaps though, I feel like a lot of things would hurt.
Seaotter asking, "What are the best ways in ranking
that we as viewers can help content providers
beside Patreon or PayPal?"
That's a really thoughtful question Seaotter,
to me, the most important way to support content creators
is just to watch their work and to share it
with people that you think would like it.
Sirus the Virus asks, "Do you have an innie or an outie?"
I have an innie.
But I've always thought that outies were kind of cute.
Outies are like actual belly buttons.
Like they look like a button,
innies are just like what a belly hole, belly hole!
Oh, no!
I regret ever thinking about this.
Chance and a lot of people actually asked about my politics.
You know, where my politics are, have my politics changed,
how I feel about online activism these days.
Thank you so much for all the simple not loaded questions.
Something that I feel like I've repeated ad nauseum
at this point is that,
no my politics haven't really changed.
I took the political compass test a few days ago.
It's almost exactly the same unit, same mark
as it was five years ago.
I would say that the main difference
between now and five, really 10 years ago
is that I'm much more open to other perspectives now,
I find myself seeing the merits
in a lot of different viewpoints
even if I don't personally subscribe to those viewpoints.
And this is especially true when it comes to
what people describe as like woke activism, woke politics.
I do find myself kind of questioning some
of the methods of that form of activism.
For instance, one of the things that I've talked
about before in the past is sort of
this growing comfort with censorship
and authoritarianism in order to achieve political goals.
There's literally...Okay, maybe not literally
but there is almost literally no discussion about,
how some of these same exact tools censorship
has been used in the past.
It's been disturbing watching some
of these liberal strongholds, like the ACLU sort of soften
or retreat from, their free speech positions
that they had defended for years.
And part of me wonders, like,
is the problem that these activist organizations
are becoming a little bit too online?
They're compromising some
of their core values and in doing so
they're compromising their ability to really speak
to the average American.
I really like how Andrew Yang has talked
about this issue actually,
he points out that there's a lot of focus
on policing cultural attitudes in the democratic party
and not enough focus on materially improving the lives
of people of the working class. A word on class,
because I think that's important here too.
The American feminist conversation today is largely driven
by corporate media.
And I know this firsthand
because I dipped my toes in that pool.
I have turned down six figure salaries
at fancy media companies who want me to talk
about social justice and stuff, because something
about that just doesn't sit right with me.
I used to just be happy to get paid
to talk about what I believe,
but I noticed like a bigger insidious
sort of machine taking shape.
And I didn't and don't want to be part of that machine.
There are so many media executives
and people with cushy jobs who are just slapping a rainbow
on their logo, selling the future is female t-shirts
and pumping out an avalanche of think pieces
and hot takes that are specifically meant to incite outrage.
Teen Vogue before 2017 was a sinking media company.
And then they brought on a new editor who decided
that wokeness was gonna be Teen Vogue's brand.
And look what happened, hugely successful.
Are there good things that come out of that?
Of course.
Are there also sort of sinister, feel baddy things
that come with something like that?
Yeah!
And obviously it's not just Teen Vogue,
like celebrities and influencers
across the political spectrum.
People have realized that there's so much content
to mine out of stirring up these culture wars.
They manufacture cultural division.
And then they tell members of their own tribe
how right and moral they are
and how horrible the other tribe is.
And it goes viral because it appeals to,
our tribalism, we're human.
And it appeals to our need to feel
like we're a part of something that we're helping
to make the world a better place.
We all want to feel like we're doing that.
The most horrific injustices of our day are not sexy
and they don't sell magazines and they don't get clicks.
Material injustices, like poverty
or sex trafficking or homelessness.
Those are issues that make us feel bad.
They make us feel powerless.
They're very complicated problems
that can't be solved by publicly shaming the celebrity
of the day or the company of the day.
It can't be solved with hashtags.
Poppy obviously agrees with me by the way.
Wow, this has been a rant.
I apologize.
I'll just say that the future of activism, in my opinion
isn't gonna be led by Vox writers or YouTube bloggers.
It's happening on the ground in our local communities.
That is where the real heroes are.
Those are the people who are working directly
to make the lives of people around them better.
Obviously I think the internet is a hugely important tool.
I think it's great for organizing,
I think it's great for education,
I think it's great for getting the word out
all that kind of stuff.
But at the end of the day I do think it's a mistake
to treat the internet as some kind
of silver bullet that is going to make society better.
I think that in some ways it's making things worse.
That's why I started indirect message,
to think critically about the tools,
about the methods, about everything, just think critically.
That's my advice.
All right.
Let's do a few more questions.
J Tizzle asks, "If you were a train,
where do you get off?"
Oh my God, I love it the idea of just getting
on a train and getting off somewhere amazing.
I've been in my house for eight months
maybe more I've lost count.
My ideal train stop would be somewhere
with lots of trees, big trees, huge trees
and some waterfalls too...very important.
Actually, you know what?
I might be thinking of Rivendell.
I definitely had a Hobbit marathon the other day,
so it's fresh on the mind.
Dre Meets World asks, "What's your best advice
for someone who feels stuck in life
and is struggling to get started?"
I have experienced that feeling.
I would say, try to follow the heat.
Follow the things that make you excited.
Figure out what that is if you don't know what that is.
And then pursue it and do it and let it inspire you,
let it motivate you. Sometimes it can be helpful to talk
to a counselor, there's no shame in it.
So I would certainly suggest that.
The last sort of major genre of question is about Chris.
"What happened to you guys?"
"I loved you guys."
Very sweet.
Gosh!
We broke up more than two years ago at this point.
I know I was gone for a lot of that.
So that's probably why I'm still getting these questions
and I never fully addressed it publicly,
but yeah nothing dramatic or horrible or crazy happened.
We just sort of decided
that we weren't compatible as romantic partners.
That said, Chris is one of my best friends.
And I adore the shit out of him.
My fur baby loves him.
And we talk all the time and I see him fairly often.
I just saw him last week, actually, Oh my God
this is a really weird story.
We went hiking the other day.
And the next day in the news
the exact place where we were hiking
they found a dead body.
Is Chris to blame?
Maybe.
Isn't that stressful?
I was like, "Of course, we'd go hiking somewhere
and a dead body would turn up later."
It's actually very horrible and tragic.
That was the last time we hung out.
Anyways, what was I talking about?
Chris, not murder.
I'm really grateful that Chris was receptive to being friends
and building a friendship because not everyone can
or wants to do that when you decide to break up.
And he did.
And I'm grateful for that.
On that note, I feel like I've been talking a lot.
My drink is almost empty.
I hope that answers some of your questions
and hope you guys feel up to speed.
If you like this, we can do more Q and As
and yeah, I like that.
It feels more like, talking with you guys.
Oh God, she's chewing on the wires.
I gotta go, love y'all.
Bye.