SPEAKER_09 0:00

Because social media thing is the end result of what happened to me oh overall. China doesn't look like anything else around the world. Coming from the West man, what my I was expecting to see Kung Fu people everywhere, dragons flying in this that kind of thing. What happened at the end was it's a totally different world, not even explainable. But then it exposes you, it makes you feel like you're suddenly in this place you don't know anything about and you have to rediscover everything. When you start rediscovering things, you discover yourself as well. You restart your life in a way.

SPEAKER_06 0:30

Welcome to the Geopats Podcast, an audio experience to scratch your cultural curiosity itch with many different expat-lensed themed shows. This episode is part of the Virtual Expats Show, where we discuss how moving to different countries affects what we do online as expats or geopats. In this episode, I am pleased to welcome Yunus Emre Karasako, a Turkish expat in Shanghai, China. Yunus has a similar virtual activities trajectory from many of our guests here on the Virtual Expats Show, but where he differs significantly is he is one of the few expats I've met who uses their host country social media more than their previous non-host country ones. Yunus is a Brazilian jujitsu instructor here in China. Yunus brings jujitsu to a funny level in his current online video channel on the Chinese platform Doyin. Doyen's actually the original video platform that has an outside of China spin-off called TikTok. Since we did this interview, his video channel has taken off on Doyin with all of the content creators in this country of 1.0 billion. That is impressive. Let's find out more about Yunus's virtual expats experience. Welcome to Virtual Expats. I'm not gonna say that.

SPEAKER_09 1:44

Or I'm gonna have to be here. This is a very comfy setup. I really uh feel spoiled, but yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:49

Alright, and it's Yunus, right? Yes. Okay, because the spelling is very different than the Yunus name that I know.

SPEAKER_09 1:55

To be honest, I don't expect anyone to say it correctly. If you're not Turkish, it's almost impossible to say it correctly. It will sound weird.

SPEAKER_06 2:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:01

The real pronunciation is Yunus.

SPEAKER_06 2:03

Yeah, that would be hard. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard.

SPEAKER_09 2:05

It's like it kind of sounds weird for foreign languages. I understand.

SPEAKER_06 2:08

Very far back. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_09 2:10

But in Turkey, you just because Turkish language is like you read everything as you write, exactly as you write. So it's kind of weird. So I don't mind. Yunus, Jonas, Jonathan. I heard all of them. Jonathan? How do they get Jonathan from Yunus? It starts from Jon Jonas, I think. Because I think Jonas and Yunus are actually the same, same names.

SPEAKER_11 2:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:30

Basically, it's just the pronunciation is different. But I heard really interestingly, Yusuf, I heard a lot. Joseph, Yusuf, I heard a lot. And it gets worse. To be honest, because uh I'm a Jiu Juice athlete, right? One of the cultures or like uh maybe the habits in our sport is giving out nicknames. And those nicknames are never nice.

SPEAKER_06 2:50

Right.

SPEAKER_09 2:51

So hearing my name with the wrong pronunciation is like uh nothing to me.

SPEAKER_06 2:54

It's like being home. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.

SPEAKER_09 2:56

Not home, but it's much better than the horrible jujitsu nickname.

SPEAKER_06 3:02

Fair enough. What we do is we we track someone's geographical movements from their home or passport country to wherever they l have lived in the world.

SPEAKER_09 3:11

And with um what they've done no for the podcast to move into the toilet twice, and then you have been to this relocation. Why you this?

SPEAKER_06 3:23

More like cities, but yeah, okay. We do our our thorough research. We do anyway, we track your geographical movements, geographical movements with your online presence, your online activities, those kinds of things. So what we need first is where in the world have you lived?

SPEAKER_09 3:46

Well, I've been in a few different locations in my life, but to be honest, not too many. Uh I have some students that have lived in maybe multiple countries. Me, not really. I've come to China and I just stuck here because maybe it might be the same story with uh many uh other people in China as well. Um I came here just for a year, man. I just uh got graduated from the university. I came in as I I was thinking like, you know what? Look, there are my major in Turkey is not bad, but I was still thinking maybe let's get a bit of extra edge so maybe I can work overseas or something. So I just came in, uh wanted to learn some Chinese. I did that and doing some part-time work on the side as well. And then after the first year, I was like, maybe another year, you know, yeah, I can learn some more. Chinese like a big country. And another year, another year, and I before I realize, you know, I'm now married to a Chinese lady. I speak some Chinese, and when I go back to my own country, I feel like weird. I don't know, I get weirded out. So I let's get to the weirdness in a bit.

SPEAKER_06 4:45

So let's say you're from Turkey, right? Yes. Where in Turkey?

SPEAKER_09 4:48

Uh Istanbul.

SPEAKER_06 4:49

Oh, you're from Istanbul.

SPEAKER_09 4:50

I'm from Istanbul, just so you know, uh, in Turkey you don't really say where you're really from, as in like where you were born. Right. Tell your father's city. Or if you spent a lot of time there, maybe your mother's city, but I was born in Istanbul, yeah. But not originally Istanbul family, necessarily.

unknown 5:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:06

Oh, so people say more of their family heritage place than. Exactly.

SPEAKER_09 5:10

That's where you are from in Turkey.

SPEAKER_06 5:11

I think that's similar to here, isn't it?

SPEAKER_09 5:13

I think so. I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:16

Wow. And in the US, we move around so much that some people say the last major place they lived with not even the place they were born.

SPEAKER_09 5:23

That's always really interesting to me. Like whenever I uh meet anyone from the US and I ask them, hey where are you from? They don't really tell me US, they tell me where the state they're from. They're that's interesting to me, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:33

We're so statist.

SPEAKER_09 5:35

It's interesting.

SPEAKER_06 5:36

We are, we are, we are. Um and yeah. Oh man, that's a whole other conversation. So you moved to Ist from Istanbul to Shanghai at first? Did you start in Shanghai?

SPEAKER_09 5:46

Uh I started in Beijing. I was there uh studying some uh Chinese for the first year, apart from the part-time jobs and everything. And I stayed for another year, then I got a job over from Shanghai, then I moved to Shanghai, and then I've been in Shanghai since.

SPEAKER_06 6:00

And what year did you move to Beijing?

SPEAKER_09 6:02

Uh it was uh 2008.

SPEAKER_06 6:05

Oh, perfect. Okay, good. So I said perfect because there was already online stuff happening before 2008, so we can do a comparison from Turkey to China. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, sweet. So having said that, uh, what was the first time you remembered the internet being like a a part of your daily life?

SPEAKER_08 6:22

Oh, well.

SPEAKER_06 6:25

That sounds like a negative O.

SPEAKER_09 6:26

Yeah, yeah, that's because this is very uh for Turkish people maybe, you know what? Because I think in Turkey we might have gotten the internet like uh to our daily lives a bit later than US. But I think I was the last generation who got used to playing on the streets and then got introduced to internet. And I think for me, it was it might be a bit later, even because we my parents uh would worry about my studies and everything, so they didn't want to get a computer at home very fast. I think about the teenager times, like when I stopped playing on the streets and I got introduced to the internet, and then my brother, which is nine years younger than me, he started living with the internet straight away. So that's why I was like, oh, you know, that conversation maybe that is like interesting times for us.

SPEAKER_06 7:13

So what year would you say you started to use the internet regularly?

SPEAKER_09 7:17

Exact year is very hard.

SPEAKER_06 7:19

Ah, we're not about exact estimate, estimate.

SPEAKER_09 7:21

Let's say if I was about maybe 13, 14 years old, and I'm not even sure that's correct, but I remember about the teenager ages, but 2000 maybe.

SPEAKER_06 7:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 7:29

Yeah, so earlier or a bit later, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 7:31

Okay, so you've got about seven or eight years of using the internet in Turkey before you came to China.

SPEAKER_09 7:36

Should be correct, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 7:37

So in Turkey, what were you doing online?

SPEAKER_09 7:40

Whoa.

SPEAKER_06 7:41

And we're marked explicit, so share what you want to do.

SPEAKER_09 7:47

But apart from teenager stuff, you might also remember when you first got exposed to the internet, it was all this uh 56k, you know, it was very slow. You couldn't really download anything, right? Sure. So for me, I think it was a lot of it was downloading music, that was like a big part of it. Chat channels were very famous back in the day. Like the those I how do you pronounce it? M-I-R-C Mirk, is it? That's what we used to call it. M-I-R C.

SPEAKER_06 8:12

Is that like a chat room?

SPEAKER_09 8:14

Yes, it's like full text, like ch uh, you know, software. We used to use that a lot. I used to play games, I still like playing games. I used to do that a lot. I think that was maybe I spent the most time on while using the internet. And uh internet forums, that was a big thing as well. You know, we have some forums that just like BBS is, and some of them are still very famous to this day.

SPEAKER_06 8:35

Uh we have sorry, sorry, B what's BBS?

SPEAKER_09 8:37

Uh BBS, I'm sorry. It's like uh, you know, this the I think that's what mainly internet forum is. Like that's before Reddit. Before Reddit was very famous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well this maybe boards, message boards?

SPEAKER_06 8:50

Um BBS is like a term for okay. Because MRC sounds like IRC, and I've had a lot of people talking about um IRC and what's the other one? Q something. I cannot remember. I came online with hot mail, so I skipped over a lot of the initial chat rooms. Okay. So how is how was M IRC and the forums? How were they different from each other?

SPEAKER_09 9:12

Well, I think this uh M R I C thing or MIRC, that's what we call it. Forgive me, but I'm just gonna say the easier. Yeah. Uh those well, you know what? That was only like, oh, you know, you can connect with people, you can talk with people. That was it. Yeah. I wasn't really interested in meeting new people, and uh so on. And again, a lot of people inside were really weirdos too, you know.

SPEAKER_06 9:35

A lot has not changed online.

SPEAKER_09 9:37

It doesn't change at all. And then I would just go in there, like, yeah, troll a lot, you know, say weird things to people. That we didn't know what we were doing. Suddenly you give a you know, gun to a kid, you know what do you expect him to do? You know, just really stupid shit. And trying to meet up girls and stuff, you know, it's probably most of them were adults through the perbs and stuff. So that's really stupid stuff. But I think when I started using the message boards, that wasn't more different. That's that was a part, that was a time uh when we started getting uh to understand internet more, you know, people are more knowledgeable and everything. So we used to connect with people, yeah. We used to gather teams, maybe uh, you know, for the games we played, or we used to use that to discuss a lot of things. I know we that's the uh because I think Google was not that much of a dominant thing back in the day, and even YouTube wasn't either. So that's where we learn a lot of stuff as well. You know, we go in and discuss and learn.

SPEAKER_06 10:33

Were the message boards based on topics?

SPEAKER_09 10:36

Uh I think so. I think even the boards themselves were based on topics. Yeah. But then the boards themselves, definitely they would uh you know subgroup into different things. Um definitely you end up in the boards that you're more interested in. There were some really generic boards as well. But you we used to not spend too much time there, I think, because I used to like games, I used to like sports. Yeah, that's the kind of boards uh I ended up in. We used to have these really different boards, even very famous to this day. Like, for example, we have one that's called uh Exisous Vic, it's it's sour dictionary, something like that. But the the thing about this board is it's it's supposed to be a dictionary, but not really. There are all these topics, like let's say uh okay, oh I see they focus right here, I don't know what it does. Uh but anyways, let's somebody opens a topic about it, and people down below start listing the descriptions as what that means to them, but uh they use this format to keep talking, but at the end what happens is you're actually discussing certain things. So it grew up to be so big now, like all uh important topics maybe, or even less important ones. Even I have a topic that I guess people talk about you. For example, Yunus as kind of a person, you know, he's like really uh cocky, you hate him, blah blah. Or some other guy who's like, nobody says that. He does sports. Yeah, you know. I'm just trying to, of course, you know, yeah. But um that's uh we have those sorts of really uh how to say creative ways to use boards as well in Turkey.

SPEAKER_06 12:14

Are you really a topic? Did you see your name in the Oh yeah yeah, there is.

SPEAKER_09 12:17

I think but there's only one or two uh descriptions below, not too many. Except the first years I have been in uh China because I didn't know so many friends here. I used to still connect and there was a really famous uh or a few famous martial arts boards back in Turkey. I was a big part of them. We even like I would say we impacted Turkish martial arts world a lot, but that's closed now. You cannot even find my messages that kind of got uh they got leaded and everything, but definitely moved a lot from there. But I haven't really invested that much time in Turkish social media to be honest. I did some, it grew up to a certain level, then I realized I have to better spend my time, you know, in China. So I that's why I've been spending more of my time here.

SPEAKER_06 13:00

So you started martial arts in Turkey first.

SPEAKER_09 13:03

Yeah, I did karate for a while about like the year 18. A year before that, I think I've started doing Santa Fitness. The way I started it also was very funny as well. But I have done sports for almost all my life. Right because I I don't know if I mentioned to you, but uh, I mean, I keep talking about this in the other podcasts and everything. I was born kind of deformed uh with my body. Uh a few like not anything huge to be disabled, but uh a lot of things I still uh deal with today. I was even um uh have to say suspected autistic and stuff, so there were a lot of things, man. To kind of build myself up and kind of uh deal with some other issues. I s my parents pushed me into sports, started from swimming to deal with my uh water phobia kind of thing, and it just moved on from there. I uh never got really successful with anything I did due to the physical problems and everything. But what happened at the end was um yeah, it just became a part of my life.

SPEAKER_11 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 14:03

Only, like I said, about 17 or 18, I started getting into more. I don't want to say hardcore, but maybe mainstream stuff, like fitness, and then it turned into martial arts, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:13

Which martial art did you start with?

SPEAKER_09 14:15

It it was karate.

SPEAKER_06 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 14:16

It was karate. Um just straight uh jumped on it because I was I would go to this fitness school, uh, which was actually a karate school, also, and I used to see these guys, that that was very interesting to me. And then I noticed when I go back to uh my university, which was out of Istanbul but pretty close, um I I noticed they give free classes to the university students. Yeah. It was like, ah yeah, let me try. And then it just became a lifestyle shortly after. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:41

And what martial arts have you done since I I know you juju now, which I always struggle with saying that freaking tough name.

SPEAKER_09 14:48

Like a pyjama hugging something, you can't say anything you want. But um, yeah, what we what I did after Karate, I did some MMA, I did some Thai boxing, I I tried a lot of things many.

SPEAKER_06 15:00

Like Muay Thai kind of thing?

SPEAKER_09 15:01

Yeah, yeah, Thai boxing Muay Thai. I did that for a while.

SPEAKER_06 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 15:04

I I would never say I uh assume any uh have to say proficiency in it, I just did it, you know. Then I got into jujitsu and I realized when I first got into jujitsu, of course, it was due to some of the videos and that these tough guys beating everybody up, and that's what you think you want to be, like oh man, but then you realize I don't want to get injured, you know, I don't like anybody hitting me. You know, I just like the uh mental part of it, I like the challenge of it, you know, and I like the like you go really hard with your friend and you're still a friend, you get connected even more and nobody gets hurt. I like that feeling, so I just stuck with Jujitsu Pier Jujutsu.

SPEAKER_06 15:39

Got to, yeah, that's a lot of what Evan says too about it. He comes back looking like he just meditated. Like when he comes back from Jujitsu, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 15:46

And here's the funny thing, right? For example, Evan, it's good we dis uh mentioned him here as well. If you meet this guy outside of Jujitsu, you know, uh academy, I don't think you would necessarily think this guy fights or anything, you know, he's a the most nicest guy, well represented, you know, he speaks very nicely and stuff. But then he does jujitsu and he does well, you know, he uh fights hard when he's in there. Maybe, just maybe, these two are related. You know?

SPEAKER_06 16:13

Agreed, agreed. Oh, for the listeners, sorry, Evan's my husband. Um we're not just bringing a random person into the yeah. But yeah, but yeah, and he shows me the pictures of like the pictures of that people took while they were ro rolling, is the right word. Right. While they were rolling. And the the the angry look on and the intense look on his face, I'm like that is completely the opposite of how he comes home. It's just seriously looks like he's meditating. So there's something good that happens in that intensity.

SPEAKER_09 16:42

Definitely. I think there are two uh ways to look at this. First one is like you said, there's a bit of intensity there, but then again, maybe some listeners uh never heard of Jujitsu before. When we say intensity, that's not the hateful intensity necessarily isn't like I want to hurt this guy, but it's just like he's so into it, he's trying his best. Yeah really. You see the uh intention of doing his best during his training, so that's what you see. And uh the second thing is when it comes to jujitsu, I think this might sound weird, of course, but you you well, we have to admit it's a close contact sport, and you're constantly in physical contact with uh your f the with the people in there. And really weirdly enough, like uh jujitsu guys end up being very connected, even though they don't share anything maybe every day. When they see each other, they're gonna be very happy, they're gonna be talking about like really, you know, I don't want to say intimate, but you know, that's maybe personal things with each other, even though they don't spend that much time with each other. Yeah, and we sometimes joke, you know. I have some friends, they maybe uh just recently got married, or that my students just recently got married, I recently got a girlfriend, and I tell them, man, you have been more intimate with me than your girlfriend, be careful. And we'll be closer, you know. And then but that's the truth, and if you look at it, they're like actually scientific research about this. Like even animals, yeah, how they respond to touch. Yeah. And uh the little monkey, and that's the real evil research, is you know, like little monkeys they put in the barbed wires and like the towels and everything. But it ends up like touching and getting close with people is so important.

SPEAKER_06 18:18

Such a good point. And there is one of the downfalls of the internet and the interactions that you have on there is that it's lacking that. And there is this isolation problem globally. Yes. The more we get online, the more we kind of forget about offline sometimes, and we don't get the touch and the human interaction and just the in even the in-fa the in-person face-to-face experience. So it's interesting. And jujitsu has gotten really, really specifically has gotten really, really popular.

SPEAKER_10 18:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 18:43

About the same time that the internet's gotten really, really popular. I wonder if there's a correlation. Well like the isolation, like the solution to the isolation is to roll.

SPEAKER_09 18:52

Might be. Actually, you make a great point because there's really a balance there. You see, like I I actually appreciate a side of the internet is what let's look at a good good part of it. Of course, yeah. Let's say, well, I want to talk about certain topics that are not allowed me to speak about maybe I mean uh we're Mark Disclosure, you can either could be politics, yeah, could be religion, could be anything, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're not allowed to talk about this stuff because if I tell talk about this to my friend, he's gonna get upset. I don't want him to get upset, but I have these opinions, so I can actually anonymously, or at least a bit more safely, I can uh uh have say express myself, which is a good thing. But then, like you said, um you take away some of the connection, and then for example, uh you know, I'm quite active in social media and I get commentaries or like all kinds of stuff every day, and I look nobody has to like me 100%, and I a lot of times I'm gonna have people criticizing me even to my face, which I encourage people to do, which is perfect. And then let's say the criticism is like, ah, let's just randomly, okay. Man, you could do your hair like this. Oh, you know, that makes sense. What do you think I can do with it? And he explains to me. Let's I'm just making a conversation. But I I mean, I but by the way, no, no, I do have that too as well. You know, I mean, it's very nice to talk about everything with your friends, and then we discuss, okay. But then the same guy, if he goes online, if he doesn't know me, yeah, that can come out really weird, man. Oh man, look at that loser, oh what a cringy something, you know. Yeah, like it when it then it turns into abuse. And here's a really funny thing: Jordan Peterson talks about this. Apparently, uh, even though we know the commentary online is fake and it's like not personal, we as people like our minds take it as personal, is like somebody said it to my face. Apparently, we cannot cope with it anyways, yeah. And then it ends up endangering people, which is kind of weird. But then what you're gonna do? Are you gonna censor people? Are you gonna just stop them? That but we don't want to do that too. So there's really a challenge at this which is really interesting.

SPEAKER_06 21:01

It is really, really interesting, and it's oh gosh, it's really hard. Because then I've heard people say, Oh, the only way they know how to deal with reviews is they just don't read them.

SPEAKER_11 21:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:12

But then you miss the good stuff too, and you miss the people who say, I really want to work with you, I want to do a collaboration, I want to interview you. Like you miss those bits too.

SPEAKER_09 21:18

Let me tell you this. I mean, I'm very active in Doin. Doin has uh for me, it's a lot of fans. It's about how much 350,000 something. But then it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_06 21:29

You have 350,000 fans on Doein.

SPEAKER_09 21:31

It's a bit more than that, I think.

SPEAKER_06 21:32

Oh, for the listeners outside of China, it's what, like a short video. TikTok, I think TikTok uh Yeah, TikTok is what it's called outside of China. A short video website.

SPEAKER_09 21:41

It's uh very short videos, it's hard to connect with people because the culture of it is just you look and you pass, you like it, you give a like and you pass. You don't really interact with people too much. So you don't really see that though that many commentaries. But even then, I do have a lot of commentaries there from time to time. And now uh well Some people see it maybe a waste of time, but some people of course might find it stressful because even though Chinese people online from what I've seen is quite nice. They don't really get that aggressive or destructive with you. However, uh you see some weird stuff from time to time. Yeah. And but if I don't look at it at all, then I miss out the good stuff. Because for me, uh one of the things, comments I get there a lot is oh, you spend a lot of time answering to everything, which I do, yes. Because I realize, look, this social media thing, well, I have this because of the I don't want to say fans, the followers. Well, if I don't have them, then my social media account is nothing. Well, then I I should be appreciating, and you know, I should be almost working for them in a way because that's the reason this exists.

SPEAKER_06 22:49

So why do you want to call them followers not fans?

SPEAKER_09 22:53

Yeah, because you know, um I don't know. I think the fandom fans thing might sometimes be misunderstood. You know, the the guy not necessarily had to be my fan to follow me. Right. You know, he just might like what I do, he might like my product, but it he might not like me as a person, he might not like m uh or I don't know, he might just not be a fan. He might just overlike me.

SPEAKER_11 23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 23:16

Uh I just think being a fan of because I'm a fan of a lot, I'm fans of a lot of people, and I think that's a special kind of um word that I don't want to waste on everybody. You know, if I uh you know, oh I I'm a big fan. Well, when people say that to me, I take a lot of pride in it. And um I I think that's a special word. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 23:40

I see what you're saying. No, I do I do follow a lot more people than I would say I'm a fan of. And I never thought of the difference before, but that's a really good point. Like just thinking about podcasts, because it's it's where my brain goes these days. There are people when I refresh my podcast feed, if a certain podcast comes out, I listen to it that day. Yeah. Like I'll even write it down on my schedule to listen to it that day. And there's some when they come out, I go, Oh, I'll eventually get to that. So I I think that would be partially the difficulty. Definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 24:05

I think that's a very uh like honoring world, even. And I don't even also like some of the um internet like internet uh how'd you say that? Famous people, I don't know. Celebrities, some kind of celebrities, sorry. My English sometimes goes I mean it's not that good anyways, but so uh you uh using that word a bit too often, you know, and almost being a bit too proud.

SPEAKER_06 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 24:29

I want to keep reminding myself to be honest. Um that's what I believe, you know.

SPEAKER_06 24:33

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, we've skipped ahead quite a bit. Yeah, sorry, sorry, no, it's okay, it happens. Look, life is not linear, so I just try to make it so on the paper. So we okay, you came to China, you came to Beijing in 2008, you studied Chinese for a year?

SPEAKER_09 24:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 24:49

Like only studied Chinese.

SPEAKER_09 24:51

Not even a year, actually, even a bit less. To be honest, I wasn't even that serious about it because I was trying to get some uh spending money, pocket money, that's what we say, at l uh at the end as well. I did learn some basics, let's put it that way, because as you know, Chinese language can get really hard and really advanced.

SPEAKER_11 25:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:08

But very I'm sorry, very basic uh speaking like streetwise Chinese is quite simple. It's like I verb something, you're aware, you know, you can create quite uh easy sentences like this. So I just got a good basic like that. It didn't really made me make me any Chinese expert or anything, but it gave me something good to start with.

SPEAKER_06 25:30

You're very modest. So when you moved from Turkey to China, how did your internet usage change?

SPEAKER_09 25:38

Well it changed in a way where I spent uh I used to have a fiancee back in the day, so maybe 70% of the time I was trying to apologize and trying to explain why I couldn't make it on time to talk with her. Yeah. That there was most of it for a few uh for a short period. But other other than that, um I cannot really remember. I think Facebook was not blocked yet, or 2008.

SPEAKER_06 25:59

I think that was the year that it that it got blocked.

SPEAKER_09 26:01

It was getting blocked or something like that, right? So uh I used to use it to connect with uh family first, and then family eventually gets used to you being away, you know. Then it's start to use it to connect with Turkey some more, you know, with the martial arts world or the all the message boards I was in and stuff. And of course, a lot of it is wasting time watching videos, uh some films and whatever it is.

SPEAKER_06 26:26

So it sounds like you kept up with the stuff you were doing online in Turkey when you came to China.

SPEAKER_09 26:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 26:30

Did you do anything new on the WeChat wasn't in existence yet? Not much. Did you get on any Chinese platforms or apps or anything?

SPEAKER_09 26:39

Weibo, I was using Weibo a lot of people. Where are you so soon? Wow. Uh I I used to see uh nothing really professional though. About those times, I didn't really uh understand how to take advantage of social media. How can I, you know, uh be good at it?

SPEAKER_06 26:53

Oh, so hard. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Weibo's like Twitter, right? Weibo's a bit similar.

SPEAKER_09 27:00

Twitter, a bit of Twitter, a bit of Instagram, kind of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 27:04

But I would say more heavily like Twitter, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:07

Right. So what were you what were you doing on Weibo?

SPEAKER_09 27:10

Like pictures, copies, really random stuff, whatever I think is interesting. I used to put it there, it doesn't get any lights, and you know. That's what I used to do, mostly just wasting time.

SPEAKER_06 27:19

And more importantly, what language were you writing it on in Chinese on Weibo?

SPEAKER_09 27:23

I think mostly it was in English or horrible Chinese.

SPEAKER_06 27:27

Oh, I'm a specialty. My specialty is horrible Chinese. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that's that is way longer of a sentence than I can produce. I say, what do I say, like E Dien Dien? Like, no, a little bit, just a little bit. That's it. And that's and even saying that opens up a bit. I can grade my English so that you can understand me, but I can't necessarily speak Mandarin Chinese. Yeah. Okay, so Weibo and what else was there? There weren't really video sites or anything like that.

SPEAKER_09 28:06

Uku was, I think Yuku and Tugu. Tugu was very famous. Tugu is not not existing. I don't know that one.

SPEAKER_06 28:12

Oh, QQ, is that still?

SPEAKER_09 28:13

QQ was very famous. QQ was very famous. And uh oh, look, even those times, though those were the first times I was meeting up with my wife and my first uh the my girlfriend back in the day. Yeah, I remember this very clearly. I asked her, hey, can you give me my g can you give me your QQ? She said uh no, I don't use QQ. I said, I was like, come on, you're Chinese and you don't have QQ, come on, I'm a foreign, I have QQ. And then she ended up giving it to me. Yeah. And then she laughed and she gave it to me. But me saying that means QQ was a big thing back in the day. That's what she asked for first. Now it was We Chat.

SPEAKER_06 28:47

Well, I remember we were in Nanjing in what, 2010, 2011, and QQ and Renren were the two big ones.

SPEAKER_09 28:54

Renren, I uh Renren, I never used Renren though. I know Chinese people used it. It was a Facebook office.

SPEAKER_06 29:00

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_09 29:01

Well, I never really used it yet.

SPEAKER_06 29:02

No. And I was teaching like 18, 19 year olds, and they were really into it. But when I were to talk to people my age, they'd be like, eh, kind of thing. So I really think it was a very young person for that moment kind of.

SPEAKER_09 29:13

Yeah, does it exist now? People use it still? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_06 29:15

I hear it still exists, but I think I don't what's the equivalent? I think outside of China, like MySpace, it's kind of gotten that n unpopular. Oh, okay. I don't know if you were ever on MySpace.

SPEAKER_09 29:26

Well, MySpace still use it, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:29

Yes, but again, very few.

SPEAKER_09 29:32

I think Google Space is it again. Google Space or Google Plus is getting ready to get closed down.

SPEAKER_06 29:37

I thought it already got closed down. Right. Is it still I don't know. I never got I was going to start using it for calls and I heard it was closing down, so I didn't even look into it.

SPEAKER_09 29:45

I just recently said received an email that they sent.

SPEAKER_06 29:47

My space is still up. Oh my god, I thought it was down.

SPEAKER_09 29:50

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_06 29:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_09 29:52

That might be like a cult like thing, and it's just really specific people.

SPEAKER_06 29:56

I wonder if those three people are still enjoying it.

SPEAKER_09 30:00

Or maybe they some people maybe have so many content that maybe they just keep sharing it or something. Maybe.

SPEAKER_06 30:04

Why wouldn't you move over to another platform though? I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 30:08

I mean to be honest, I have like I told you, I wasted a lot of time on waiting. But when I say wasted, a lot of posts were really waste. I don't know what I was doing. But in uh on the low, because of that, I have about 4,000 posts there. How am I gonna move it every to somewhere else? What if somebody else did the MySpace, right?

SPEAKER_06 30:26

My Twitter is my biggest my Twitter is my biggest one. And I just saw the other day how many I've done and it was it was downright scary. I was like, have I really? You can request your actual like a file of all of your 10,000 over 10,000 tweets. It's the one I've been on homologous.

SPEAKER_09 30:44

I still never got into it. Maybe I should. Because I don't use Facebook anymore. I think Facebook really sucks to be honest. Seriously. Oh my gosh. For a period it was very useful. I was really thankful to them. I was praying to them, you know, like thank you so much. But now I think it's really horrible.

SPEAKER_06 30:59

I was off of Facebook. I was on it for like two or three years, and then I went off it for a decade, and I went back on two months ago. Yeah. Just to kind of some people kept telling me there were all these podcasting groups on there and all these groups. The groups are the good thing. You can just do groups and not do individual timeline stuff. And I was on it for a month and a half, and I just I was bored.

SPEAKER_09 31:17

Same. I was so bored. I think the only reason I use it is I still have some Turkish friends there to kind of see what's going on. I don't like it because I don't even read the news. I want to see what's happening with the news from Facebook people, so they I see their comments and everything. And uh maybe I don't know, I'm in toilet, I'm bored. That's the only reason. Like I don't really see any value in Facebook anymore.

SPEAKER_06 31:39

Yeah, no, I agree. I I really thought I'd be on it for a little while just to keep up with those groups, but it's just I don't really feel like I feel like there's so many other places I can keep in touch with them.

SPEAKER_09 31:48

And one another thing is Facebook I think is a bit too aggressive when it comes to uh wanting money from your posts or sharing your posts. I mean, I have certain followers there. Uh one of the reasons I never push it so hard is I shared a post and it just like uh doesn't even give it to ten or five percent of the people who is following me. What? And then it's like yeah, you have to get likes, blah blah, but then uh it you constantly say, uh, how about you pay my and I we can push it to this many people and Facebook, do you have any pages there?

SPEAKER_06 32:23

You have to pay to have the people that follow you view your content.

SPEAKER_09 32:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 32:27

That's the epitome of ridiculous.

SPEAKER_09 32:29

Yeah, and I I understand because I think most of the social media platforms do that at the moment. But Facebook and even I think Instagram is doing it a bit too aggressively.

SPEAKER_06 32:39

Well, what's the point of following someone if you can't see their stuff?

SPEAKER_09 32:43

Yeah, uh well they their point is uh you know what, but you share it first if there's enough likes, blah blah. But you know what, uh man, I think I I see the logic, but I because for example, Instagram says eventually all your followers will see your posts if they scroll down enough. Well, I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_06 33:02

I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 33:02

You know, I understand you want to balance it out and you want to make some money, but here's how to make money.

SPEAKER_06 33:08

Charge people like a dollar a month and just give us who we follow.

SPEAKER_09 33:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 33:11

Forget the algorithm, just show me who I want to keep up with.

SPEAKER_09 33:14

I agree.

SPEAKER_06 33:15

Please, listeners, make this make this new social media, honest social media. Just call it honest social media.

SPEAKER_09 33:20

Or just give us I would appreciate this too.

SPEAKER_06 33:23

HSM. HSM. Somebody run with this, please. Somebody in the tech industry.

SPEAKER_09 33:28

There's like SM, but this is HSM. This is like hi. This is honest social media.

SPEAKER_06 33:33

Forget the algorithm, just charge us. I'll pay to not see things I don't need to see. More on Yunus and his virtual life in a moment, but first, some podcasting information. A special thanks to Damon Castillo for letting us use songs from the Mess of Me album. The one we're using this month is called Sometime Guy. You can find all of his information, music, merchandise, and tour dates at DamonCastillo.com. The new Geopats podcast newsletter is out now. In fact, it comes out on Tuesdays. To get it in your email inbox, go to steffuccio.com, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O.com. If listening to podcasts makes you think about making your own, I can help you. You can get a free month of Podbean hosting, which is where I host the Geopats podcast, at podbean.com forward slash virtual expats. And if you are in fact an expat, I am moving my beginning expat podcasters workshops from in-person to online. We're going to use Zoom Cloud Recording and it's going to be very simple, very effective, and you're going to have a ton of resources. In fact, it feels more like a resource dump with some very streamlined chats on planning and idea sharing and those kinds of things than it does a workshop workshop. More information on that, you know where stefffuccio.com. If you don't need to record a voice but do need a voice, I'm selling mine. If you or your company needs a voice over talent, please contact me at voices.com forward slash actors forward slash stefio. All of this information is in the show notes at geopaths.podbean.com. What I'm not charging for are the promo spots in the Geopaths Podcast. About every 20 minutes you'll hear a different announcement. These are free to content creators and people that have announcements related to the topics that we're talking about. In fact, the other two announcement spots in this particular episode with Eunice are China related. Alright, let's get back to Eunice and his virtual expat story. At this point, yeah, because it's so frustrating.

SPEAKER_09 35:33

Well, at least give me the choice. Hey, you know, you can tell me, hey, look, this is our normal system. You're not forced to pay the $1 or whatever a month. But if you do, we're gonna just treat you like this. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 35:43

Exactly. I'm okay with that too. So HSM could actually be a part of social the the like part of Twitter, part of Instagram, part of that can be.

SPEAKER_09 35:50

It could be an overlay or something.

SPEAKER_06 35:52

I don't know. I like creating tech in my head and I don't create it in real life.

SPEAKER_09 35:55

Yeah, I just don't want to create a content, spend a lot of time, and at the end I don't know if anybody can see it. Because again, I understand, okay, I have a post and you want to show it to ten people first, if it gets a lot of uh ch uh likes or whatever, and then it's gonna move on from there. You choose a 10 person randomly, and you luckily choose the 10 guys, maybe that day having a bad day or something, and just not looking at their phone, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it gets gets wasted. And Chinese social media is doing that now too. Weibo uh is doing that. Even Do Yin recently started, you know, they had a huge strike on a lot of like your followers.

SPEAKER_06 36:32

So fun fact. Um did you ever get into live streaming in China?

SPEAKER_09 36:37

Not yet. I tried to. I was gonna do it on Doyin. What happened is they asked for Chinese ID and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 36:43

Ah.

SPEAKER_09 36:43

And then I kind of do it somewhere somehow.

SPEAKER_06 36:46

There's a really good movie that came out last year called The People's Republic of Desire, and he followed some people through the YY competition, live streaming competition. It's really, really interesting. It's a little gloomier than I would like. But it it seems like a fair representation of those two hosts and their process through the competition.

SPEAKER_09 37:05

Well, I think I mean I like the concept of it. It's just uh I haven't started doing it, yeah. I'm still getting my uh Doein account by business verified, so they can't give me more rights and anything.

SPEAKER_11 37:15

Right.

SPEAKER_09 37:15

But um I from time to time I'm gonna go in and look at what other people are doing.

SPEAKER_11 37:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 37:22

It's I don't know, man. I mean it's it's really weird because first of all, a lot of them are like really interesting things. Like, I mean, the guys, uh girls are eating food or something. I don't know, it's really weird to me, man. I mean I understand, I just think everybody's uh, you know.

SPEAKER_06 37:40

And people are paying a lot of money to watch them eat food. I see them in restaurants, I see all of the multiple cameras that they have set up around them and them sitting alone and just eating, and and I'm imagining people are throwing money at them online.

SPEAKER_09 37:54

And to be honest, another part of it is the fakery of it, you know. Like um I I I sometimes go to Starbucks, okay, and I'm occasionally gonna see this lady, uh, I she does makeup and everything, and she goes to a corner in Starbucks, and she's gonna put that, you know, the even the small white or whatever that's putting on her face. She's just you know interacting there. I don't know. I look at it and it just feels weird to me. Yeah. I have done videos, I still do videos this day, and the one thing I want to keep doing is I want to keep it natural. I want to see if somebody's watching me shooting a video, there's something really a connection that really like they they see me trying to connect, making jokes, trying to be funny, acting natural. Yeah. I like that natural feeling. And when I see these people, I don't know, there's a lot of fakery going there and just pisses me off. I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 38:39

I don't know. See, I keep thinking, okay, what is this similar to? Like if you think of television and like scripted TV programs and those kinds of things, we know those are fake.

SPEAKER_08 38:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 38:48

But I have the same reaction you do to live streams. I'm just kind of like, what's happening right now?

SPEAKER_09 38:53

Yeah, because I mean I just think clearly the lady sits there for an hour and she doesn't speak. Maybe very rare, and then it's all the girl is just changing the tilting the head this side of it, then the other side of it, smiling a bit, and then people give money. I mean, okay. Uh maybe, maybe maybe you want to see some beautiful girl or something. I understand, man. You can do that too. It's just when it's heavily populated, and that's the only thing with live streaming, especially in China. I don't know. I would love to see content. That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_06 39:25

I know, I agree with you, but but not everybody wants the same kind of content.

SPEAKER_09 39:28

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, not everybody wants to see the same for sure.

SPEAKER_06 39:32

It's interesting. So we we've been talking about all of your um how your social media habits, but we haven't been talking about your content. Can you tell the listeners what you what you make?

SPEAKER_09 39:41

It started as GGC mostly, you know, because I try to connect in GC people first and foremost, and that's what I know better. Uh but then here's the thing, GGC community, number one, is kind of not that big to begin with, but I like connecting with more people. So I tried many different ideas. I did uh movie commentaries, not in like just five scenes or something. I did like many, many different stuff, but to be honest, one thing people reacted so well was my funny videos. And some things got exploded, not only even in China, but like some of the funny content I've done is uh has been purchased in the US by uh some media agencies uh that's connected to Fail Army and stuff, they put it somewhere. Fail army, you know, they they have very famous fail videos online. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:31

I'm looking this up right now.

SPEAKER_09 40:32

I I think what was the media uh agent's name? Joking media, something like that. I forgot. But yeah, they purchased one of my funny videos, they put it in one of these uh what's it called? Uh compilation videos they just added in there.

SPEAKER_06 40:47

They wouldn't put your name on there though?

SPEAKER_09 40:48

No, it's just because a lot of short videos back in the day.

SPEAKER_06 40:50

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 40:51

And I have one you can search though, but but I don't use my real name.

SPEAKER_11 40:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 40:55

That's also on Facebook. There's something called the mass martial arts in Facebook. So what's going on there is uh because martial arts is a funny thing. Yeah. There are a lot of fun things to do, and it's real, but there are a lot of fake martial arts. So one day I just did a funny video, and then there was actually uh a prep video for a competition I was gonna join. Right. And I was waiting for the camera, uh how do you say that? Team to uh start shooting, and I get bored and I gave the camera to my students. I said, hey, let's shoot this, let's shoot this. Yeah, and then somebody's hugging me around the waist and I do some funny dance videos and he falls down, like oh, I'm dying. And then we somebody put this video and sent it to them, right? And I just got famous, and I got connected to the uh guy. I kept sending him uh other funny videos where I pretend uh this Eastern European guy, you know, I'm this guy, and I teach really horrible martial arts movies. Right as straight funny. But here's the funny thing a lot of people take it seriously, uh you know, and I like they swear at me and stuff that makes me more famous. And even funnier, even funnier, some of the guys were trying to defend the moves, that's like even funnier to me.

SPEAKER_06 42:05

Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 42:07

So, like we we say have a saying in Turkey, one crazy guy throws a stone in the w into the well and four smart, like uh wise guys couldn't take it out. It's something like that. People actually start arguing about these things, it's crazy. I get my student and I do really stupid stuff. But the funny thing is, not really the people swearing at me and cannot see the joke, which is funny to me. Right. But the actual ones who are defending it, he's like, man, look, this is a good technique, but the guy he just is kind of bad. He he does not do it. Come on, man. I cannot find it right now. I mean we have to keep looking there, but the funny belly dancing video, when the guy just like they hug my belly, my students, yeah, and I really kind of just twist my hips and they fall down and they keep trying to do that, and I keep doing that, and I walk around very serious, and then it got big. But uh, but this again, this is never I wanted something I wanted to focus on. So I don't really focus on foreign media. I just did this and sent away when I was I was I was born aboard. But I also have some other videos on uh, for example, on Doin, and I think more of my famous videos are funny videos because I want to give back to the community, you know. I have every now and then I'm gonna go visit a tournament, people want to take photos that does jujitsu, and it's really interesting, man. I mean, uh it doesn't have to be too many for me. It's already special, even if one person comes to me and says, Yunus, you know what, I've seen you going competing, doing this, man. It inspires me inspired me, and that's why I started jujitsu. It sounds so special, you know. Yeah, so uh that's why I just do my best to put on some good instructionals for free. I uh uploaded on website just recently started on Blibili, for example. Blibili is a very famous uh web website for young people. I've been using it for months, but it's growing up okay. It's been like I had uh three thousand viewers for now.

SPEAKER_06 44:00

Between Doin and Billy Billy.

SPEAKER_09 44:01

Doin is like just entertainment. Fast entertainment and um very short attention span. Your videos are gonna get really big or just very small. Because the guys is just like they look at the video and like ah, it's good, oh shit, everything is so fast. It grows very fast or just it dies off very fast as well. Um Billy Billy's also short videos, right? Billy Billy is like a bit longer. Oh because my videos are there like uh because one thing is I want to do my best, and if I do a technical introduct introduction, I keep uh putting up more and more info and it goes closer ten minutes sometimes. But mostly it's about five minutes. Yeah, okay. I put some vlog stuff in, but overall, like it's more like YouTube. YouTube, but with more maybe younger uh uh how to say com no viewers.

SPEAKER_06 44:47

Okay, so you cue is similar to YouTube.

SPEAKER_09 44:50

Yuku is more like you could not really YouTube anymore. Oh is more like watching TV serials, movies, that kind of sort of thing.

SPEAKER_06 44:58

No, more longer.

SPEAKER_09 44:59

BW is much more like blog vlog or actually to be honest, BW would be a good fit for you. You should look into that. That's very nice. And if you can spend some time putting out that's the thing, it's a setup, yeah. Instead, show the videos maybe 10 minutes, 20 minutes with some subtitles if you can't do that as well. B is uh because they their followers are hardcore. They will come in, they're gonna put in comments, not necessarily always positive as well. I mean it's mostly positive, okay, but um they're gonna put in suggestions, let me put you down. They're gonna put criticisms, which is awesome. And one thing I like about Billability as well, again, is in order to post there, you should pass a test. That's really interesting. What? Or in order to make posts, you have to pass a test. What's the test? They have this 120 questions uh test and you have to pass it. First 60 questions is like, oh, do you think this post is offensive? Uh if you got mad about this, what do you think? How would you respond? And these kind of things. That's so good. I I love it. And the same thing.

SPEAKER_06 45:59

Is that for viewers and posters, or just viewers and it's like?

SPEAKER_09 46:02

Do you think you want to be posters? Or, for example, if you wanna uh donate the people or you wanna put in comments, you have to do that. But you can like the videos.

SPEAKER_06 46:10

That's the first I've heard of any sort of screening for social media.

SPEAKER_09 46:15

Nothing elitist, you know, nothing like you have to be perfect.

SPEAKER_06 46:18

It's a very simple thing. Just being a good digital citizen.

SPEAKER_09 46:21

Exactly. Like uh do you think this poses of acceptable in the channel or not acceptable in the channel? Yeah. Would you report this or not? Those kind of things.

SPEAKER_06 46:29

This is amazing. At the end, the end of the questions for this podcast, I ask people about like what sort of education should we have with people, you know, to be good digital citizens. And they actually I didn't realize they had it already.

SPEAKER_09 46:41

And the second part of this is the first six questions. Second sixty questions is like uh, are you kind of uh how to say well connected with the thing you're trying to do?

SPEAKER_10 46:52

Right.

SPEAKER_09 46:52

Because it's gonna ask you, okay, choose a few topics, sports, uh I don't know, games. So you choose these topics and it tests you on these. Right. These are a bit more maybe hard, but um what they ask you is like, for example, if you choose sports, where was the last Olympics? Or those kind of things. And then you know what? They give you enough time. You know what I mean? You can just go search a lot. Sure, sure, sure. To be honest, I just all answered A. This part.

SPEAKER_06 47:20

And you passed, obviously.

SPEAKER_09 47:22

Because they uh here's the other thing, they don't need too high of a record from you as well. Right, right. You know what I need? So I think six state points. And yeah, you look at it.

SPEAKER_06 47:32

But it leads to something because enough people would fall off just not even wanting to take the test.

SPEAKER_09 47:36

Exactly. So that's really good.

SPEAKER_06 47:38

And do you notice the difference in the feedback that you get on Thayer versus Doyen?

SPEAKER_09 47:42

100% versus anywhere else. 100%. That's right. Because it's like, for example, some of the bad comments I get in Doyen. Okay, let's compare the worst. Straight swearing at me, straight threats, it's like, hey, let's fight. Let's sorry. But even the threats that are like, let's fight, not like I'm gonna kill or murder your family, not like in YouTube. Right, right, right. But it's like, yeah, let's fight. You think you're tough, let's fight. Yeah. That sort of thing. In there, the maybe the least, like, or like the worst comment is like, man, start adding some subtitles, come on, add some subtitles. Or man, come on, improve your Chinese. Which I take it quite positively, actually. It helps me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like maybe I should do that, or like, oh man, I should start training my Chinese harder, even.

SPEAKER_06 48:22

Right, right, right. And that's really cool.

SPEAKER_09 48:25

Very heavily, uh I would say overwhelmingly heavy part of the comments is either positive or positive criticism. So nice.

SPEAKER_06 48:33

That's really nice.

SPEAKER_09 48:33

And they're into it. They're really into it.

SPEAKER_06 48:36

Yeah, so they're more fans than followers, probably.

SPEAKER_09 48:38

Exactly. And at least fans of the topics that you're talking about, let me tell you that. They take it seriously.

SPEAKER_06 48:44

That's really, really cool. Okay, now I'm I'm super inspired.

SPEAKER_09 48:47

Yes, like in Instagram, for example, sometimes I want to share some stuff. They might not necessarily be a fan of the topic they're following. I recently, just very recently, received a message on Instagram. Uh, it's me like kicking the bands, and you know, I'm hoping to see some comments. Maybe I did bad or good, but the message I get is like, oh brother, can I see some of more of your souls? You have nice souls. Come on, bro.

SPEAKER_06 49:09

Are they talking about feet or is it inside? Okay. What does that mean? They want to see more of your soul.

SPEAKER_09 49:15

You see, but over there, I don't get those kind of comments. I see like related topics. Not weird, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:21

Why do you think people write these ridiculous comments?

SPEAKER_09 49:24

And he says this, and I maybe hope that he knows he's a weirdo and he doesn't follow up with this and then he says, Is that possible to get those photos? I had to block it. Yeah. I hate doing that. That's one of the things I hate the most, but I at least you can.

SPEAKER_06 49:37

I was blogging in 2003, and it was really hard to block people then. And so I got some weird, weird stuff. I was outside of my home country, so I didn't care so much, but then somebody, same city I was in in Taiwan, started to s kind of stalk me. And I was like, oh shit. So I literally posted his phone number online and was like, can somebody just talk to him?

SPEAKER_03 49:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 49:56

I have no other recourse here. And there were there was nothing online. Now at least there's some stuff online to to stop it before it gets that bad.

SPEAKER_09 50:03

But it was just it's nice to see that there's even more like and people suddenly understand this kind of abuse is not really good. Again, I see it's these days is you know, like this PC, S G W, blah blah. These things are getting discussed a lot, and I see two sides of the coin, definitely. That's why nobody likes me when it comes to arguments. Because this guy's gonna be like, hey, you know, this has to be like this, yes, but I say you have to do, and then the other guy's gonna come in like uh, you know, but how about this? Yeah, then I say, hey, hold on, you have to hold on as well because what he says is also correct. And then you're like, oh, you're a dick, you're a dick. Nobody likes you in the end. But to be honest, I find a lot of things are always circular. Uh for okay, here's the thing. Why I love martial arts, I don't fight with anybody. I try to avoid it.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 50:49

And I do believe if you're a nice person, if you have nice friends, if you don't hang out in weird pos locations, and if you try your best to uh avoid uh conflict, and that does not mean you have to be uh sorry, like you have to be a total, I don't know, loser sound. I was gonna say another word, but you don't have to be that guy, you can still have a strong character and still avoid conflict. And if you're that kind of guy, you're not gonna need this. Most of the yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:11

Martial arts, from what I understand, is not about attacking, it's about defending, right?

SPEAKER_09 51:15

That's one thing. But even then, my point is you might not even need to defend yourself if you, you know, really take care of it. But it's about building a strong enough character that you can actually define yourself, find your thoughts, and then express yourself. Now, when it comes to these two arguments, it's always like this, right? There's A and there's B. A is the A believes he's the absolute truth, B is believes he's the absolute right. But hold on. If you have been around so long and you still cannot find the like you have to say solve this conflict, you both definitely have some right parts and the wrong parts because you still can't solve it and you think your absolute truth. It always is circular, I think. Once you keep going too far, you end up being you uh what you were fighting against. So you have to look at the things from two sides and you have to have a certain balance. Most of the times the problem exists because even in the politics, there's a left, there's a right. Right is like, oh I can do this, and the left is like, no, you can't, but you should stop talking about, but then left is without realizing turning into fascists, and then the right is like, you know, turning to something else. So you know, I really try to make it a habit. Yeah, let's have a fair look at both sides and try to find the best solution. But that's you don't do that. But which which side are you fighting for? That's the most similar thing. I know you should choose a side and try to kill the other side. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_06 52:30

It's crazy, and people think you're you're you're undecided or you're uh educated if you don't pick one of the sides. And it's like, but life isn't really uh either extreme, it's somewhere in between.

SPEAKER_09 52:40

I think here's the thing though. I still believe most of the people are like this. Most of the people are smart enough. It's just they're not the most vocal.

SPEAKER_06 52:48

Exactly, exactly. And the people that are that stubborn about being on those extremes are so loud.

SPEAKER_09 52:55

Exactly. And then they end up affecting everybody else. Exactly. It's always the common people, yeah. Common people are always, you know, getting uh how to say then like a wave getting carried away to that side and this side.

SPEAKER_06 53:08

It's so true, it's so true. And it's it's so easy to do that online because you don't see the full person. You just exactly hear their words or see read their words and you think, oh, that makes sense. Like the the ridiculousness of some logic can seem very level-headed without knowing the full person it's coming from. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So again, the evils of the internet, but then there's so much good. Let's talk about some good.

SPEAKER_10 53:30

Yes, there's something.

SPEAKER_06 53:30

So wait, but let's finish the timeline. So you moved to Beijing and then you moved to Shanghai.

SPEAKER_10 53:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 53:35

Now, in 2019, are you still playing any of the games that you played in Turkey? Uh any of the what'd you call it? Merck? Merck of the full. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's not a good idea. Are you doing anything you were doing in Turkey online now?

SPEAKER_09 53:49

I don't really follow boards anymore because it's m mostly about discussions and everything, but you know what? Uh I find I uh I can use my time more efficiently instead of discussing, actually doing things. And other people end up discussing about it now. It's a different level. I don't want to sound too cocky, but now even when I go we go online, people talk about uh what about the tournaments and you know who won. Well, we are doing those things now, and people discuss about it. That's why I want to keep it at. And I don't get me wrong, I try to follow them from time to time, see what people think about what we do, and I try to learn from it as well. Sometimes I in the WeChat groups, instead of maybe message boards, I go to the WeChat groups that I like more, and we're gonna discuss there. And not we always see I to eye, you know, even sometimes people less experienced than me in the field I am, they give me some great ideas or they correct me in certain things which I love. But uh yeah, maybe I spend a bit less time on that. Games are always there, games, you know, that's that's what I was saying, like the expressing yourself thing, right? Because before before martial arts, it's always like, oh, you cannot do that. If you do that, you're gonna sound like this, you're gonna sound soft, you're gonna sound gay, you're gonna sound that well, first of all, there's nothing wrong with any of these things. You can be that, you still have a strong character, yeah. And then uh, you know, I even playing games back in the day, man, uh you know, if I play too many games, if I talk about uh you're gonna really be a loser. If I wear this t-shirt with the games on it, people are gonna think I'm a loser. But you know what? If you're a martial artist, you can do it what the hell ever you want. You know, I don't care. Like, for example, I have my Ed Hardy shirt, but which is I'm supposed to. Yeah, what does your shirt say? Yeah, it's it's Ed Hardy. And Ed Hardy is uh one of the uh how to say uh in the world. If you wear it in the US, I think they're gonna think you're you're a total poser and loser or something like that.

SPEAKER_06 55:44

Ed Hardy, H A R D Y?

SPEAKER_09 55:46

Ed yeah, Ed H A R D Yes. Ed Hardy is a very famous uh tattoo artist. Oh, okay. And then a lot of his designs they have this very shady, uh not shade, I'm sorry, not shiny, shiny, not shady, shiny. Ooh, like oily, you know, uh look at me kind of designs.

SPEAKER_11 56:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 56:06

But then um in US it turned into like uh wannabe a tough wannabe tough guy thing and it's a bit pricey as well. So in US it has a very bad image, but the thing is they have different designers for different areas. So I'm sponsored by Ed Hardy China, and even though I specifically choose the shinier one still, they have a lot of nice designs.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

Right, right.

SPEAKER_09 56:29

And uh, but even then I would never be able to wear something like this that will get some attention if I wasn't doing martial arts. But now I'm like, I can do it. And here's the funny thing: even people I know is like if you're a units, you can do it, but I wouldn't do it because you know, I'm I feel free that break my chains.

SPEAKER_06 56:46

That's the thing about martial arts because of confidence or because they know you can kick their ass?

SPEAKER_09 56:51

I think there is a bit of okay, let me tell you something. This is from Jordan, I'm gonna steal it. This is from Jordan Peterson as well. But look, we are people, we are definitely advanced, and we are beyond our instincts, okay? Like uh we do a lot of things uh that our maybe genes call for, but uh sorry, we don't do a lot of things that our genes call for, we go beyond these things. I understand. But at the same time, for example, even when it comes to male to male relationships, there's a part in our minds, you know, like uh male to male relationships a lot of times gonna be very respectful to a certain level because at the end, subconsciously we always have that it can turn into a fight. Sure. And I we we want to uh pretend it doesn't exist, we are all civilized and stuff, but it's there.

SPEAKER_06 57:36

It's denial when we think that.

SPEAKER_09 57:38

Yeah, and by the way, I'm sorry, of course. I also understand you know the gender is blah blah just allow me to be like the you know uh very uh say male, female, black, white. I understand I don't want to get into that discussion, allow me for this ones, but with the male and female relations, it gets more complicated because we don't have this kind of connection, and so females can offend, uh, males more comfortably, males can offend, females more comfortably because blah blah blah. So I kind of think when you build up strong enough physically, it kind of builds respect. And the reason might be that subconsciously, this animal thing, like this guy's strong. I don't want to mess with this guy. Yeah, but not necessarily mean like man, if I sing he's gonna kick my ass. Not necessarily like thuggish, but i I think subconsciously we know when uh somebody has a strong character, you don't want to necessarily mess with this guy. You people prey on weaker guys. Right. I teach this in self-defense courses as well. If you appear weak, not you don't have to be strong, but if you appear weak, uh you're gonna be preyed on. Right. That's why a lot of things are gonna prey on this kind of thing. So I think by but now it comes to the you know, but then is because you're strong physically? I don't necessarily think so, because maybe being physically strong turns on these things in my brain and makes me act more confident. And because if I wear this shirt and I walk around like I own it, then people don't judge you. Sure. You know what I mean? But how did you build that confidence? So like the way those instincts come up, maybe it's because of the training. So that's I don't know if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_06 59:12

It does, it does. Of course it's not one or the other, it's yeah, all of them together. Exactly. And it's not denying there are still differences between the genders and there are different there there is a dynamic an animalistic dynamic to our existence. We're still we're still primal in so many ways. I think so. Yeah, and denying that's silly.

SPEAKER_09 59:30

I prove it again, too far from the question, I'm sorry, but uh yeah, I think playing games I still do. I now have tattoos of the games I used to play. Do you wear? Yeah, this is this is from Planescape for Men. RPG game, and just so you know, I was the leader of the science and fiction club in uh my university. And this is kind of a shout-out to Fallout game as well. I mean, I haven't been in the US. In US, being a how to say part of the science and fiction club or anything related makes you kind of a nerd loser or something like that. Well, I was the leader of that club.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:04

See, those are all the people that grew up to be interesting in my high school, though. Like those people that at the time people were like, oh, they're so geeky. Now geeks are cool. Like geeks are interesting. Geeks are the people you want to talk to at the parties that you go to.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:18

Yeah, now I can't act like it, okay? That it's posers. These posers, they don't really play games, but they put on those glasses. I know it's fake. Don't do that. It's ours.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:32

Well, you actually that's a that's the second time that you've brought up the idea of fakeness.

SPEAKER_10 1:00:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:37

How do we distinguish that online? How do we? How do we do that? Yeah. Because it's really hard. People can change a lot of things with technology.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:46

Yes, now it's time to because I have been that part of the argument for two times. Let's look at the other side of it, just people understand we try to be objective. Now, I also don't buy the argument, uh, I was just being satirical just now. Yeah. Uh I don't take the argument like, oh, you know what? If you wear the cap, you have to be that person. Like, for example, I have a I have a cat that it has the NY on it. I don't even know what baseball or anything related, but I just like the cat, you know? It's New York.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:14

Just NY? It's not NY it's it's a baseball cap.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:18

Yeah, yeah. And then I like I think it's I even have their shirt.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:21

Yankees or is that?

SPEAKER_09 1:01:22

I think it's New York, it might be Yankees. Uh I don't know, sorry, I'm not really old. I don't know either.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:27

But you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:28

But at least let me tell you this.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:30

Uh the Yankees one says Yankees on it.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:31

Okay. It's N, and there's a Y in that N?

unknown 1:01:34

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:36

That's fine, it's fine. Continue, sorry.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:38

I have a cap and even clothing of it, and then whenever I wear it, it's like you don't even know anything about the game, or you don't even support that team. Yeah, I don't think it's a good idea. It is the Yankees.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:47

It is the Yankees, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were right. Uh they have variety of different things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:52

And in China their clothing is very famous too. That's interesting. But um, anyways, the thing is I don't buy the argument, oh you had to be this, then you can get the enjoy. No. But I think there's a certain limit to certain things. If I start um how to say, take it as a kind of indicator of my character. If I start to think that this defines me, and I start to come up from with a character, maybe, and I'm like, hey guys, you know, I start wearing this everywhere, and I start talking about the sports and everything. Well, you know what? In that case, maybe yeah, I would appreciate if you know a little bit at least about what you're doing, what you're trying to represent. At least if you're representing it, and you clearly say, hey, I'm representing this, then maybe you better know about this a little bit, right? Uh I because I oftentimes see these people, for example, uh, I don't want to pull the argument there again, but they talk about like the genius but like in the computer games, and you ask them, okay, you take this quite like a lifestyle, thanks. Uh how many games have you played? I don't necessarily play games, I just like criticizing them. What? You know, I don't like that. No, that that feels like strange.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:00

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I was just thinking, as you were saying all of that, you're a Turkish man who does a Brazilian Japanese martial art in China. That's an interesting because there's a lot of talk in the PC circles now of appropriation, appropriation, appropriation. Like, where is that line between what you can represent and what you can be into compared to like what's from your home culture?

SPEAKER_09 1:03:24

Yeah, uh, that's a nice question, actually. I think it to be honest. This is me, uh say, getting time.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:34

No, I thought it was a genuine couple.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:36

I think that's a very nice question because, like you said, first of all, I'm from Turkey. I'm in China and teaching Chinese people something from Brazil and from Japan, and I don't even look like uh your stereotypical Turkish guy, blah blah. And but the thing is, I think at the end you have to choose, you know what I mean? You find yourself what defines you, not because somebody told you, okay, if you're coming from Turkey, you have a plus one point on representing something that comes from Turkey as well, because you automatically know about certain things. I understand, but that doesn't mean necessarily mean you're bound to represent anything from Turkey. No, yeah. I would of course, if you're from Turkey, I would hope that you know something about Turkey, you know, to a certain level, about the history, about the you know, kind of it doesn't mean you're an expert on everything though. No, you don't have to.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:25

But I I would appreciate the thing you should, but you know, appreciate that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:30

But in the end, you have to find what defines you at the end. And again, I I'm sorry, I'm advertising my martial art a lot, but it comes back to martial arts again, it gives you the power, it breaks the chains off of you so you can pursue this much better. Yeah, I found uh out like a lot of people after they study jujitsu, they found the real passions in their life, maybe even outside of the jujitsu circle. But because they are strong enough to have to pursue what they want to pursue, I don't know if it makes sense. So uh that's the kind of thing. I think at the end you have to find it out yourself. I often see these really um you know depressing things that oh but you know, life is pointless, the world's gonna end anyways, the universe is gonna. Yeah, but you know what? I mean, you're here, man. And you just just try to find out what's what's uh you know good about yourself, or maybe take it like a challenge. Let's try to be like good at something in your life. I don't know. There's just so much good you can find in the exactly. I really like this. Uh recently I was listening to a podcast of a semi-famous uh how do you say that theater uh player? He's an actor, yeah, theater actor. And he talks about like they ask, but this guy always plays some depressing roles. Actually, he's a very positive guy. Right. He ends up dying early, and that's the shows he plays. Yeah, and but he's like uh very positive and influencing guy, and he says, like, look, there's this famous story, and it might be maybe you heard this before, but I'm horrible at explaining it probably. He there's this guy uh hanging off of a Cliff uh which is it's like there's a cliff and there's a twig, not the straw out the cliff as well. So he's hanging off the branch, branch. He's hanging off this branch. Yeah, and then on the cliff, there's a lion is waiting for him. If he comes up, he's gonna eat it. And below there's a snake. So if he just lets uh go, uh sorry, just below him, there's uh he's just too high, or there's an animal, I don't remember. Sorry. Let's say it's too high. So if he lets go of the branch, he's also gonna die. And then he's like, I I'm done. But then he realizes there's a little fruit just just uh coming off of the branch as well. Uh let's say it's a strawberry, and he notices it and he eats it. And it's like the most beautiful fruit he ever tasted, like most beautiful thing. He just gets the full uh pleasure of it, right? And then the guy says, just eat that fruit. You know, don't start focused on oh this is this is yes, things are gonna end, yes. So but you know what, there's this good thing, let's just you know, enjoy it.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:03

And if you can't do that, it's gonna be much more, you know, enjoyable.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:07

Exactly. It's you know all about perspective. You can at any given time. Granted, there's some times where th life is l legitimately shitty and there's no good way about it. But most of the time, most of the time, it can be how you're looking at things.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:20

Exactly. And here's the other thing of the other part of it. It might be a doji movie, you know, because it's very mainstream. Rocky movies, Silvia Stallone, you know. Of you know, it's mainstream, blah blah blah. A lot of times it's doesn't mean it's bad. But there's one quote in it. I mean, I would expect to see this quote maybe from something much deeper than I've seen in the Rocky movie. He says the life is not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. Life is not a beautiful place, he says. And then that's so nice. That's that's true. Who says that in the movie? Rocky Balboa says it to his son because his son is just so underwhelmed, he's angry with his dad because everybody has this great expectation of his son, and he gets uh overrun, blah blah butt that that's what he says to his son, and then they end up having a great relationship again, blah blah blah. But that's the truth, you know. Everybody thinks that oh, I get so depressed, I have this problem, I had that problem, and they look at other examples and they think like they only have they have this problem. No, we all have these problems, we all have crazy things for another lives, but we just keep moving forward. Exactly. That's how it is. People look at me and oh man, you know, so I wish you were strong as you. Number one, you don't know anything. I'm not strong at all. Okay, maybe compared to a guy who never trains, maybe, but the thing is, every time I compete, I'm one of the weaker guys in my division against people I'm competing against. And then, man, I you don't know how I was born. I was wearing special shoes and stuff, so I don't look deformed, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:45

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:46

And even now I have still some problems, like I don't want to go into detail one by one, but that's how I built up like in 15 years, I was able to build up something that holds up, you know. And then people think like, oh man, the end result. No, you don't know the challenges I've been through. Yeah, and just like all of us, we all have these things, but you're so focused on the what other people have, and oh, I have a small issue with my life, so life sucks. No, it's about that's when we see if you're really strong and you deserve anything good or not.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:16

One of my dearest friends has this theory, like she had some health issues when she was younger, and she's like, anything can happen now. Yeah. She's like, because I grew up expecting things to fall apart constantly. She's like, she grew up, you know, kind of learning how to deal with constant chronic pain and and different issues and stuff like that, and she's like, anything. She says when she meets people who don't have health problems until they're older, yeah, she she's like, Oh my gosh, I can't handle them. Because they just completely fall apart in two seconds. Exactly. One tiny problem, and they're like, I don't know what to do with my life. And she's like, Well, you just keep going and you just learn to ground it, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:52

Exactly. Maybe because I do martial arts, I'm a bit rougher than that. Sometimes I'm like, Do you have a problem? Good. That's when you get stronger. You know, man up, yeah. Man up and take it like a man and just keep moving forward, you know. So, and that's how it is. Like uh people again, sometimes I say, Oh, you know, my friend uh died and stuff. Yes, that's gonna happen, man. Just in two years, my grandma, my grandfather, another grandfather, uh, my uh my friend, my uncle um uh got cancer and died. They they were all cancer by the way, except one or two, I think. And my mom and dad also got cancer, kind of beat them after surgeries and stuff. What am I gonna do now?

SPEAKER_11 1:10:29

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:30

Should I cry? Or no, look, Yunus, this is a reminder, spend more time with your loved ones. Yeah. You know what I mean? You better stop focusing on them now because nothing is really permanent.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:39

Those are true words from Eunice. Nothing is permanent. Appreciate where you are and what you're doing. I cannot think of anything more accurately mindful than that, whether you're on or offline. Another wise person I know, Brendan Davis, of the How China Works podcast, and if I knew you better, has some words about China that has a podcast about China that is also incredibly wise. Let's have a listen to what he has to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

Hi there, I'm Brendan Davis coming to you from Beijing, and I'm the co-host with Ying Lee of the podcast How China Works. Since you like Steph's show, we thought you might like our show too, so I want to tell you about it really fast. Our first season was designed as a crash course in China for foreigners and to help a young Chinese audience who's going global. Those shows are heavily researched to give insights into the most critical situations you'll need to understand, regardless of whether you're coming or going from China. This year we switched gears to an interview format. We talked to leading China players from around the world, people who are actively engaged in shaping, changing, or navigating this fast-changing dynamic. We've had some truly amazing guests join us, so we would be honored if you would join us to check us out online or at one of our live events we're doing around Beijing now. You can find How China Works in All Podcatchers or visit us online at how ChinaWorkspodcast.com to learn more.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:59

A few more time-sensitive things about Brendan Davis and how China works. His WeChat moments, which is the equivalent of like a Facebook post, Facebook stream. I'm not even sure what it's called anymore. It says our next How China Works Live podcast event is with Jesse Appel on September 17th at the US China Comedy Center in Beijing. So if you're in Beijing, he wants you to tell friends and join them for a fun and funny night. So it's from 8 p.m. to 9 30 p.m. Tuesday, September 17th. Again, the US China Comedy Center. It is uh six dequoi in advance, 80 at the door. So that is some timely information. The podcast, however, how China works, is not time sensitive. You can listen to it anytime. That is the beauty of podcasts. And that's also true of uh Yunus's Doyun videos and also his Instagram videos. I want those of you living outside of China to know that you can also view some of Yunus's videos not just on his Doyun account if you download the app, but you can also watch some of them on Instagram. He does put them there and he does put them on YouTube. I'll put the links down in the show notes or at geopaths.podbean.com. You content, content, content. I am obsessed with content and you're listening to this. So in some way, shape, or form, I think you might be too. Let's get back to that content, and more importantly, the person behind the content we're investigating today, Eunice. Do you think that the internet has helped or hurt us more?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:34

A combination of two things because there's a nicer part of it as well. We get to know uh about people again, uh easier. We get uh how to say influence with people easier because we have the chance now. Uh we end up doing a lot of more donations and everything, maybe again because we hear about these things, and it's easier to do these things. You don't have to necessarily go to a bank and apply for certain things. I can easily just go on like just a few clicks, I can donate to people. Yeah, so here's the thing, man. Look, I there's the two sides again to everything, okay? I don't buy these photos, oh, people are zombies now, they look at the phones. Yeah, but what did they do when they do that? Exactly. You know what do you think here's the you know, if you remember, oh, because I transitioned from non-internet to internet. I was the last generation did that in Turkey. What do you think people were doing before internet? Do you think they were all socializing? Yeah, they were all like, hey man, how much you know how how are you doing? Let's socialize, let's talk, let's do something useful. I mean, I'm in the subway, let me try to find out this atomic particle. Right? No, they would just sit down there and do nothing.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:41

There's a beautiful photo of like night, I think it's 1950s or 1960s, New York City Metro, and you just see people with their newspapers up. Yes. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, guys, we didn't talk to each other on the subway before phones.

SPEAKER_09 1:14:53

Let me give you a secret. Let me give you a secret. They weren't even reading the newspapers, okay? They were reading the sports pages, yeah. They were reading the parts where there's a beautiful lady or handsome looking guy and stuff. Yeah, they wouldn't even read the long articles. So that's what it happened. Exactly. That's what was. But now we have the phones. I'm actually doing connecting with people now. Yes, but there's the other part of it. And I might sometimes get addicted to this. I can get more and more disconnected, but life is changing. It's about us analyzing the good and parts of the uh bad parts of this, and because we're in the transition phase, yes, we make a lot of mistakes. A lot of kids get addicted to this, but I think it's the transition.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:31

How or when do we get out of this transition phase?

SPEAKER_09 1:15:34

Yeah, first of all, in order to like everything in our life, if I'm gonna solve a problem, I have to understand I have a problem first, and I have to analyze it. So we have to first be able to analyze this thing that we're talking about, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:15:45

Do you think that's done country by country, or do you think as a whole we'll kind of realize this?

SPEAKER_09 1:15:49

I think uh definitely it differs from country-country because not everybody is as well integrated as each other, right? Like for example, uh, if I talk about uh US, US changes just too fast in everything. So everything happens too fast and maybe uh too fast and the first maybe over there. And then it reflects the other countries, not always the same speed. Not necessarily about the technological level, but just some countries take it faster and slower, or some people take it totally different way, like China. We talk about censorship, blah, blah, blah but at the same time, China's ahead in many other countries.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:24

That's what I was gonna say. As far as the technological part, I feel like China's leading the way in some ways. I mean, look at look at digital payments.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:31

Yes, it's just papers have codes now, it's uh QR codes that you can scan and give it away. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:36

So it's yeah, it's very interesting. It'd be interesting to see. Like if we could look ahead twenty or thirty years.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:42

Yes. It's gonna be a totally different world, and I think someone stop here. That's the scary thing though. Because we have internet now, we are trying to understand and kind of adjust. By 30 years it's gonna be totally different. Maybe it's gonna be a lot of things are gonna be automatic. I'm gonna be doing be doing this with some other, I don't know, cybernetics or something. Who knows?

SPEAKER_06 1:17:00

I know, but you know what? When I was a kid, we always talked about flying cars and I'm still waiting. Yes. So I feel like we're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:05

But at the same time, yeah. Here's the funny thing. I think the concept is kind of there, but not the way we picture. Like, for example, how can we tell we're not cybers now, right? If you listen to Elon Musk, we are on the first like I mean, we are half cyber guys now. Uh well, we are connecting with uh cell phones, we kind of uh get our information by cell phones, like yes, cell phone is not connected, implemented in my body, but if you think about it, we are quite connected with the cell phone and it's uh leading I don't know uh tools of our lives. And I I I can know what your thoughts in a way by a cell phone, like you know what I mean communicating in any other way, right? Uh it just has to go a step maybe, yeah, it's not gonna be flying cars, but we have so advanced technology.

SPEAKER_08 1:17:55

Flying uh everywhere is much easier than before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:58

When I was a kid, flying was a luxury. No, I can just fly anywhere I want, I can just get it booked. Well, yeah, not necessarily flying cars, but again, you know, so it's really developed in a scary way, not just maybe science fiction movie-like, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:12

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if it's just scary. It depends on which which part of it at at what point.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:18

Yeah, I mean when I say scary, maybe I choose the wrong word, man. I mean maybe uh let's choose another word, but it's just um exciting, anyway. It's like uh breathtaking.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:27

Yeah, like what will it be? Do can we really predict right now what'll happen in the next 20 or 30 years?

SPEAKER_09 1:18:32

Yeah, I think that'd be kind of we can guess again, but not necessarily right. Suddenly something happens. Um even a few years ago, just the touch the touch phones was crazy for me, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:45

I mean, just think about from when you started using the internet to Mao and how much has changed.

SPEAKER_11 1:18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:50

And how much you can do online now. I mean, it's just I grew up with b way before the internet and I'm just floored. Like going from from from going to libraries as a kid to just taking my phone out of my pocket.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:02

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:03

I mean, that's just crazy, like good crazy to me. I'm like, I can't believe how much stuff I can just find with two seconds of of searching.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:10

It's but for example, as a person who used to go to libraries, now uh we have a lot of fake knowledge as well. A lot of people go out, they think they know something, they have enough to make uh claims on certain things, but they don't know actually, because we don't have the habit of actually going to the library and studying certain things into depth.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:29

Ru. And I would I would argue with that that when I was growing up, a lot of the stuff in the libraries was very uh censored is the wrong word, but very massaged information that the people that published it wanted us to know about stuff.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:44

Certainly. But now I think it's even in a worse level right now though, because uh if you think about Wikipedia, anybody can write it or uh something there. Maybe with the books, again, like you said, uh some people might try to manage how you they want you to think about certain things. So you have to have the again habit of reading multiple sources and kind of have the final judgment about the Wikipedia. You just go to Wikipedia and maybe some guy, maybe Bob next door who doesn't know about certain things.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:12

There's been some interesting studies about Wikipedia and how fast bad information is changed by other people. And it's actually it's really, really promising on how quickly false information is changed. But uh because anybody can go in and read it and change and go, that's bullshit and change it back to quote unquote real information.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:29

But then again, uh here's the thing, I think there's still levels to that because at the end people okay, this is the right knowledge that's uh people think it's not wrong, but then you ask a historian about it. There's a real historian read this and say, What the fuck is this?

SPEAKER_06 1:20:43

I'm sorry, but what is this? Yeah, no, that's true, that's very true. It's like what is what is and on in so many different areas, what is right and what is wrong, what is true, what is false. These are all very slippery things. So it's yeah, it's it's all it's all about.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:57

I I guess it's a part of the change. Yeah, yeah. Because we cannot rely on all these turns forever. We have to have the you know Do you see these clouds? It's crazy, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:21:06

It's two listeners, it's it's 1 40 in the afternoon, and it has just absolutely gotten super dark outside.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:13

Uh for the again, for the listeners as well. I was coming in by my t-shirt, it was so hot, it was so sunny. Yeah, I was sweating. Yeah. And now it's all dark and so crazy.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:22

It's like as we're talking about the gloom and doom of the future, the sky is replicating our.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:29

Zeus is gonna punish us now. You shouldn't have talked too much about the technology.

SPEAKER_11 1:21:34

You make it so.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:37

It's on you. It's on these two people doing this podcast.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:42

I feel so responsible. Sorry, listeners. Actually, they probably won't even get this because we'll be gone.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:47

Okay, internet's a sin. Sorry, Zeus.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:52

Let's come let's come back to your specific projects. When you started doing your videos, who did you think you would be talking to, or who did you think would be viewing them?

SPEAKER_09 1:22:01

Oh well, very honestly, I was hoping I get maybe 10, 20 people who actually watches these things and can give me their ideas. So I have a small circle of people who actually uh appreciate this. So I had a kind of small internet friend circle, that's what I thought. And uh it grew much bigger than that, man. Oh boy, I was wrong. Especially here's the funny thing though. Uh I started putting out some good information and you know, I was hoping it would get appreciated, but it never grew, right? But then I started putting on funny things and just blew up.

SPEAKER_11 1:22:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:35

And uh another funny part to this uh is I was hoping my jujitsu videos would bring in more Jijitsu people into the sport, but no, it's actually the funny videos that I did, even actually sometimes making fun of Jujitsu, brought in more people to Jujitsu, and we're getting more inquiries or people coming into my academy, man Yunos, I love your videos, man. I want to try this sport. Again, you know. So it really blew uh grew up to something I never expected it to grow into, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:02

See, that's so funny because I tell I I'm starting to do beginning podcast advising, I guess you could say, or helping or mentoring or whatever, which I think is really funny because I'm still learning so much already. Still, I'm still learning so much still, but people keep saying I want to do this, and they're stuck in I want to do that, and I'm like, be fle the first six months at least, be really flexible because you don't know what your creation wants to be yet.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:24

Yeah, because though it sounds like that's also true for videos, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:28

You probably don't know much about yourself as well. Because here's the thing well, not that much for West, maybe, but when Chinese people look at me, okay, this hairy, bearded guy with tattoos and stuff, they expect me to be maybe rough and tough, and then they say, hey, this guy does funny things. How come? And then well, I wouldn't expect it to grow this much as well. So you're gonna discover some interesting things about yourself as well.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:54

Okay, so uh so your your audience is not who you expected, and it grew. It sounds like it grew bigger than you expected. Yes, also um so who are they? Who like demographically, if you were to say like what age group, what gender, what interests?

SPEAKER_09 1:24:09

Demographically speaking, I think it's everywhere. Because the especially for Doyin, it's everywhere. For B Liby, it's everywhere. Because they're everywhere in China? Everywhere in China. Okay, China.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:22

Because as you know, China is so big when we think about it, I'm thinking about regions. Yeah. Um, but for the age groups, I would say, for example, in Doyin, it goes, I think it's morely the younger circle, but then I uh occasionally I get uh a lot of comments from old people. I get comments from kids, actually, a lot of uh hardcore followers are actual kids like 10, 11 years old sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:47

I've heard you have some videos with some very small kids too.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:51

Like I I used to have some Jujitsu ones, yeah, but not necessarily interacting with them, not necessarily.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:57

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:24:58

But um yeah, for sure. And uh so what I mean is it's really a wide range of people now in Doe Yin. In Belaby though, I would assume from uh older teenagers to maybe 30, 40-ish in that age group, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:13

Oh, interesting. Why do you think there's such a difference from one platform to the other?

SPEAKER_09 1:25:17

Uh because I think the is too big, so it can't s it starts slowly spreading to more and more people. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:23

Do you feel like there's a a press since you started making the videos, do you feel like there's a pressure to keep making them?

SPEAKER_09 1:25:29

Well, I not not necessarily well, it's a combination of two things. Number one, I can't enjoy it, so I feel like I'm just gonna keep doing it. Because I enjoy doing it. But again, from time to time, for example, maybe I feel like creating a certain kind of content. I don't feel like creating maybe, I don't know, jujitsu stuff, or I don't feel like creating the funny stuff, it's just not in there. But I'm like, hey, hold on, you know, you haven't been sharing a lot of things over there. You kind of owe it to this guy, so think about it. So maybe a bit of motivation, not necessarily pressure. Because I think if you're really feeling pressure, you're probably enjoying it.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:07

Yeah, I I agree. Yeah. It's like you have to do it instead of you want to do it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:12

So but that does not mean maybe because I don't want to discourage anybody. It might it might be that you haven't found out what you want to create. You know what I mean? There might be certain things, maybe you never thought about it, you have been doing a lot of fitness stuff, but actually your passion is in cooking. Why not try to try that, you know? And then you can relate it to fitness, you can make it healthy, and then you suddenly realize, hey, I enjoy doing this.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:35

Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. I I forgot, I don't I haven't actually used Doyen very much.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:40

You have to use your phone.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:41

For for you have you do have to use your phone.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:43

You have to use your phone. Uh if you want, I can show some stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:46

No, no, I'm just wondering for the listeners. Um, we have a about half of the listeners are in the US at this point.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:52

Um so I'm wondering they would have to download the app in order to use it.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:56

Yes, and even then they might have a hard time opening uh the videos, so it might be very slow. Uh it's not gonna be blocked, but it's gonna be very slow. Okay. In reverse, though, it's gonna be blocked. Like we cannot actually watch TikTok without a VPN. Right. Uh not that I know about anything about it. I don't use it. I don't know what a VPN is, but I heard.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:12

Well, they would be in the US though, so they wouldn't need they wouldn't need such a device.

SPEAKER_09 1:27:17

Just in case.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:18

So I'm just trying to think what if they wanted to see your videos, they would go to TikTok, right?

SPEAKER_09 1:27:23

They'll need to go to Doin. But if they want to be different than TikTok. If they are lazy and they they're like, you man, I don't want to really look in Do Yin. However, I want to see what it is like, then you can just open the TikTok.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:35

Okay, gotcha. When they go to TikTok, apparently I have it on my phone. I didn't realize that. What would they I don't want app info, I want to go into the app. What would they search for? Would they search for your name or do you have a different thing?

SPEAKER_09 1:27:48

Yeah, I think there are a lot of unuses around in uh China as well. Yes, because uh it might be two reasons. Number one, there it's British people for sure. And Doyen has huge Huge users, you know, it's crazy millions.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:02

So it's asking me users sounds hashtags.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:05

Yes. This is TikTok?

SPEAKER_06 1:28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:07

I don't have TikTok. Oh. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:09

But it's so it's not exactly the same thing. So you're innocent. I thought not.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:12

Oh no, no, not the same thing. It's in uh it's the same sort of app. It's almost the same app. It's in even their logos are very similar. Right. And they kind of Chinese people apparently one by one straight copied it or something.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:25

So it's like Shimalaya and Himalaya.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:27

Uh maybe. Maybe it's like Facebook and Ren-Ren.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:30

Oh, okay. So they are two different platforms with very similar stuff. Okay, so Doyun's like D-O-U-Y-I-N, is that right?

SPEAKER_09 1:28:38

D-O-U-Y-I-N, correct.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:40

Yeah. That's not coming up either. But I'm looking in the Play Store. Have you ever read AI Superpower by Kai Fu Lee?

SPEAKER_09 1:28:48

Not that.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:49

He's from Taiwan and he studied uh partially in the US, partially in Asia, and he worked for big tech companies. Yes. And so he taught he goes through the the history of technology from a China perspective. And he talks about the Chinese internet and the international internet.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:08

And it's really interesting. And he it there's terminology that he uses that's very, very helpful for talking about the differences between the two and the history of the two and why it's going to continue being two separate things.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:20

Okay, okay. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:21

And this is this is what I think of when I can't find an app in the Google Play Store.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:27

I have to go to uh anything if it's an Android phone, they shouldn't have a store app already in it. Is an Android phone?

SPEAKER_11 1:29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:35

That it should have an app in it already that uh helps you download a lot of the apps.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the Google Play Store. But it doesn't have to be a good one.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:42

No, no, no, that should be a Chinese. Oh hold on. You you got your phone in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong?

SPEAKER_06 1:29:47

Yeah, exactly.

unknown 1:29:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:49

That should be Waza. What you should do then, uh you go to Chinese way uh just trying to find out what Chinese apps are available, go to their website, download the APK file, put it in your phone, exactly, and then you have the Chinese store. And don't get surprised, a lot of apps, a lot of paid apps in the US you can find there for free. That does not necessarily mean illegal. It just they uh kind of shape it for Chinese users.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:17

It's either cheaper.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:18

Oh, here's the APK. So, listeners, if you go to Douy N.com and you hit on Android or I mentioned App Store, yeah, you can they have two different buttons. And then you can download the APK, and then I'm guessing you can put that file on your phone. Wow, that is quite a way to do it.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:36

And another advice for people in the US if you're interested in Chinese uh website or social media and everything, you're gonna find out oftentimes it's uh it's blocked, you cannot use uh, for example, video calls and that sort of thing, or it's gonna be too slow. What you can do is download a VPN specifically for that purpose that gives you a Chinese IP from US. If you use that, everything should be much faster.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:00

Yep, yeah, yeah. And there are some free VPNs that you can use without doing like a yearly commitment or anything like that. I've heard about these creatures, VPNs. So yeah, sorry, it's just that so much, so much of the audience is not in China that I like to give them a little bit of how to find stuff. Because I imagine, I don't know, I think of I think of podcasting as what do I do as a listener? If I hear something interesting, I want to go to the show notes and find it and watch it or listen to it or that kind of thing. So I imagine they'll want to see your videos.

SPEAKER_09 1:31:30

So this is I'd be happy, yeah. Look, uh tell me if it's funny.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:35

Yeah, yeah. And I'll try to download this app and figure out how to use it. And I mean, who knows, maybe I'll actually put instructions.

SPEAKER_09 1:31:41

A lot of videos also uh my social uh Chinese social media videos are often in Chinese though, just so you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:46

That's fine. In addition to this, two others, because I'm a crazy person, and one of them is on learning Chinese, and a fair number of people I talk to in those conversations are putting stuff on social media in Chinese, and a fair number of the uh I thought I was going to actually uh connect with other people learning Chinese. And what's happened similar to your project is I a lot of people who are already fluent are following me, which confuses the heck out of me, but I love that they're there. But it was a very different audience than I had intended. And they're always looking for more things in Chinese to help practice their higher level of Chinese. So that would be a good thing for them.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:22

That's pretty interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:23

So yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, totally different. Yeah. It would be like who you think you're gonna talk to and who you end up talking to. Let's do a hypothetical. If you were still in Turkey, do you think you would have would have started to to make these videos, these funny jujitsu videos?

SPEAKER_09 1:32:37

Well, it's very hard to say, first of all, if I would be doing jujitsu at all or because here's the thing. Many uh people in China, like as foreigners, they come to China to find out maybe purchase some new uh jobs or new lifestyles and that sort of thing. Now, when I came to China, I just wanted to have some overseas experience. I already have, even to this day, I have very good connections in Turkey. I would have had a very good life if I'm just specifically talking about economics.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:08

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:08

I have very good connections. I have always had better opportunities than I had in China if I had to choose my old profession and like if I stayed in Turkey. Uh I'm originally an industrial engineer, which is a very social engineering uh type. It's not necessarily with machines. We study machines, but we end up managing things. Right. And um I uh invested a lot of time in business development even in China, so that's what I would be doing. And I would I would, I think, I'm guessing, think like social media thing is maybe a waste of time or something like that. I would just definitely be a corporate guy, working for money only, trying to, you know, get uh uh how to say objects. That's that would be my focus, I think. Staying here and ignoring all these advantages I had, maybe I lost most of them now, uh, was like I mean, maybe a different person. It made uh it uh made a different unus come out and like totally like if you would tell me my units, you're gonna be a martial arts guy who is teaching in China, I would laugh at you really bad, and I would make fun of you too. You know, that's like so uh so unexpected. So unexpected.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:18

It's one of the things I've been trying to tease out in this podcast is what is it that changed us more? Is it the progression of the stuff happening online or is it us changing countries and having different opportunities?

SPEAKER_09 1:34:30

I think that more because social media thing is the end result of what happened to me overall. First of all, China doesn't look like anything else around the world. Okay, you you're coming from the West, man. Don't expect to find anything that you expect. What Maya was expecting to see Kung Fu people there who ride, dragons flying in the sky, that kind of stuff. And you know, people eating bugs every day. Hey, what you eat for lunch, you know, some cockroaches, you know, even maybe some butterflies, that kind of thing. But uh what happened at the end was it's a totally different world, like not even explainable, you know, because it was such out of my expectation. But then it exposes you, it makes you feel like you're suddenly in this place you don't know anything about, and you have to rediscover everything. When you start rediscovering things, you discover yourself as well. You discover your limitations, totally different uh human uh interactions, uh human habits, the way like the the house you live in is so different. You know, I'm I'm used to being living in big homes, sorry. You know, in Turkey we have big houses, uh house intellect like uh interior design and everything, and suddenly you live in a totally different world. And now again, you you restart your life in a way. And then I think that's one of the things if you're kind of a person who would be interested in social media, maybe, you're not free to pursue that. Maybe in the US, if you did that, or like uh maybe in another country, you start to do this, you already have a certain friends that gotta be like, ha, you have to look at this guy trying to be famous, trying to be no-it all, like pa, you look at this wannabe, you know, like you're gonna be pulled down because you're not raised in that certain environment, maybe who knows. But now you're totally developing a very different stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:15

Oh, like you have no idea. Yeah, it's so true, it's so true. And I've been trying to t to tease this out because I've met so many people who, when they move to a different country, yeah, they just they develop in ways they didn't expect. Exactly. And a different part of their personality comes out, different opportunities show up, and they go completely in a different direction.

SPEAKER_10 1:36:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:36

And it's it's interesting. So, and this is one thing that I've been trying to tease out too, is you you just my facial expressions just went kind of blank because I was like, oh my god, you finally hit like it's taken me like 20 episodes to get here, but I think you finally hit on something like gigantic I've been trying to figure out. I think that the expats I'm talking to about this, that balance between online life and offline life. Yeah, I feel like because expats have to keep recreating themselves when they change locations, that they're kind of better at balancing these things because they're so used to recreating and recalibrating and reinventing themselves that I feel like they're better at balancing it so they never really get as addicted as other other people do or get kind of off kilter or just you know? But I don't know if that's true. That's it's completely ethereal.

SPEAKER_09 1:37:24

I think I think it's true. It's just sometimes not everybody's capable of doing this. That's what I believe. Of course, yeah. Because some of the people, as you also know, when they ki come here, especially if they have a good paying job and everything, they isolate themselves from everything. Sure. They only uh interact with people who are like themselves, they live in locations that's uh surrounded by themselves again, and they don't even try to get out of the circle, they just they know they're here just for a few years, and they're already looking forward to it and making money meanwhile. I think these people don't really go that path too much.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:59

Well, let's be completely honest. China is a very distinct culture, and there is a very real place for foreigners in China that locals and foreigners are kind of comfortable with. Yes so it takes a lot of effort to break out of the city.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:16

I totally agree. And when I say that, I definitely don't uh judge anybody, don't you know? Yeah, that's how I came in. Yeah, you know, I wasn't interested in integrating that much, yeah, especially like a country like China. No matter how well you integrate here, you speak the good language, you understand the culture, blah blah, everything you're totally living like a Chinese person, 100%, while you look still look like a foreigner. So we're not there yet. Even Japan is not there yet. Japan has many Japanese people who look like foreigners, they are beyond that, they already had one or two generations, maybe. But um, there are even some joking, funny videos about it, right? Like uh they go to a restaurant, all these foreigners, there's one black guy, there's one white guy, and there's this Asian guy lady, and the way to keep speaking talking to the Asian lady, and then the uh the other guy's like, Look, we're Japanese, you know, and they have pretty listen to me, like I want to order this, and they're like, Ah, they want hamburgers? Yeah, that's like uh so funny. And similar things happen to me in China as well. Sometimes I take my wife to somewhere else, and I know the place better than her, but they look at me and for it.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:19

This happened in the US. We were subletting to our apartment to a friend uh one summer, and our very, very white older landlord was meeting her to approve the lease, and she's she's Asian American, she looks very Asian. She grew up in the US, born and raised in the US, and he said, you know, where are you from to her? And she answered, you know, so the place she was from in California, and he said, No, no, but where are you really from?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:43

And she's like, Where are you from?

SPEAKER_06 1:39:45

From California. I grew up in Southern California.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:48

Yeah, yeah, but where do you want to from?

SPEAKER_06 1:39:51

He really wanted to distinguish how she wasn't American and she was very American. I'm like, what are you? I'm like, oh man, if I didn't need the money, I'd be like, never mind, we're leaving, we're never gonna live here again from.

SPEAKER_09 1:40:02

Where's your grandmother from? Oh, you see, you're Korean.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:40:06

But then when we asked that question to you, you're probably like, what? You're Irish? Like, where are you like what Spanish?

SPEAKER_06 1:40:12

Yeah, and if I was her, I probably would have been like, where are you from? Where are you no, no, really, where are you from?

SPEAKER_09 1:40:17

There's a funny video about that. I suggested a check online in YouTube. I'm sure you can find this uh the uh there's this lady, Asian lady, and there's uh white citizen there running. She running, yes, yes, yes, she starts making fun of her like you're being British and everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:31

Oh, I'm so putting that in the show notes, listeners. You have to see that. It's really, really funny. Yeah, so my point is not just that people are uh inherently racist everywhere, but that there's this very, very tribal thinking in a lot of places. So speaking of people who challenge our cultural stereotypes, I think it's time that we have a quick listen to Eva Yu, a Korean woman who has defied so many stereotypes as she works, lives, and bicycles around the world.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:03

Hello everyone, I'm Eva Yu. I was a tech journalist in Israel, Silicon Valley, South Korea, and China for five years. And last year I left my job and I started a cycling journey from Shanghai to London, interviewing the tech entrepreneurs on the ancient Silk Road. Currently, I'm writing a book about the cycling trip, and I plan to donate the proceeds from the book to Turkey. So if you want to get in touch with me, my email is evauratgmail.com. So it's e-v-a-y-o-o-ar-e at gmail.com. And my YouTube channel is Seekrode, which is S-E-E-K-R-O-A-D. And my website is secroad.co. So it's not.com, it's C-O. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:52

And one more quick note about Eva before we get back to Eunice's story. She was also a guest on the Virtual Expats show on the Geopats podcast. The podcast website is a bit under construction right now. So the best way to find her is go into the show notes and I will have the link to her episode here for you as well. Let's get back to Eunice's virtual expat story. If the internet went down tomorrow and didn't come back, what would your reaction be?

SPEAKER_09 1:42:20

Well, I would get pissed, probably. I use my phone is my life. That's why I always try to get the best model available if I can, because it's basically my life. I manage my everything there. I even do my office files there. If I write something, I can use my phone. The technology now is amazing. However, then again I'm a jujitsu guy. I can just go live in the academy at least and do something fun. I don't need it to live my life. Maybe to live my life efficiently, I understand, but not uh really uh you know I I can have fun, I can go on with my life without it as well.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:42:58

I think uh there's a good balance there.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:01

And keeping in mind that we interview uh anybody that lives outside their home country or used to live outside their home country and kind of try to figure out if their place changing place affects what they do online. What other questions should I ask people in the future?

SPEAKER_09 1:43:20

Well, you can ask them if they want to try out Jiju so if they want to, they can come stay focused, please.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:28

About this topic. Oh, I can ask them that as well. If they're in China, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:43:37

There are a lot of questions the asking, oh what do you think about the food? Blah blah blah. The real key point here is the actual transition. You know, if they had the transition here, what did you expect and what had really happened? You know, or like uh how well do you think you have transitioned into this lifestyle? What did you give up on? Or after your transition has ended, what changes happen to you?

SPEAKER_06 1:44:00

Okay, there's a lot of questions there. Yes. Which one do you want me to?

SPEAKER_09 1:44:05

Overall, I will leave it to you as a mastery as well, right? But I mean, for example, let me give you why I believe this is an important topic. Um if you I would claim, of course, not very strongly, but I would claim Chinese people are kind of often more passive to the West. Um and even if you look at the history, you can see a lot of times some conquerors coming in China and getting China-fied themselves in the long term. So a lot of people are like me too, they come over here, they just here for a year or two, and then they end up being again almost fully integrated. When I go back, like we said at the beginning, when I go to back to Turkey, I have so many habits, it just changed beyond recognition. I mean, uh I feel weird when I go to Turkey in many aspects. Of course I'm Turkish, I love my country. Sure. I feel I represent my country, but then again, some of the things are not that Turkish anymore. So there's a huge transition if you go that way, and nobody's even trying. Here's the funny thing, nobody's even trying to uh impose this on me. Here's the funny thing. I end up going this way. Now, there are people who don't do that, there are people who resist against that, willingly or unwillingly, and that sort of thing. So, if it's a person who never been here, I would ask them, what do you expect to find out there if you ever go there? Or if you they're not even planning to come over here, what do you think if you go there it would happen to you? Or if they have been here, okay, you're a worst center, what has changed in your life? You know, what kind of things you have gotten from China? Or if they have been back then, well, did you have a retransition period when you go back to country again?

SPEAKER_06 1:45:49

That reverse culture shock is is hard. It's worse than the initial culture shocks. Exactly. Because at least there's a honeymoon period when you first go abroad, but when you go back home, oh that's just painful.

SPEAKER_09 1:46:00

Because everybody talks about ah, they like Chinese food, yeah, I like it, they like hot pot, yeah. But everybody talks about these stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:05

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, but going back what was the what was the hardest uh thing to realize when you went back to Turkey?

SPEAKER_09 1:46:14

Well it's it's very hard to say the basic human interactions is different. Just walking around talking to people is really different, you know. How so? How so? Look at this, choose one. Um well, you're trying to make a point by being circular sometimes, and I think I'm a direct person. A lot of Chinese people find me too direct. But then I go back to Turkey and like I'm mentioning something and they don't get it. I'm like, you know, you could make this again. Let's say this. You give me the coffee and I love the coffee, but just this was in front of me. And you know, I told you. I I told you I like black black coffee. But let's say I like milky coffee instead. And I'll tell you, you know what, you could even put some milk in this. In Chinese language, this means this is lacking milk. It does not really mean you should put some milk in it, it means it's lacking milk. And without realizing I do this sometimes, but when I go back to Turkey, you know what I mean? In Turkey, I would say, like, look, look, you know what, next time add this much milk. I like milky coffee, bro.

SPEAKER_11 1:47:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:47:19

But if I say this to a Chinese person, it's an insult. You're like, you cannot do this, you have to put this much. Like, I mean, I really didn't like this. Yeah. It's two steps ahead. Instead, I would say, you know what, uh, you can add some milk, and they get it. Oh, okay, this guy likes milk and coffee. He kindly told me this now.

SPEAKER_11 1:47:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_09 1:47:36

So you know, again, Chinese people think I'm too direct, yeah, still, and I like to stay direct, but again, it affects you in a way.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:44

See, and that's the thing, is that outside of China people think Chinese people are very direct and very blunt.

SPEAKER_10 1:47:51

But not really, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:52

But with the exactly, but once you know a little bit about the Chinese language and the the vagueness of the language, it's like, oh no, if anything, it's very ambiguous.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:00

Let me give you an example. Again, for Chinese words this time, uh you're waiting for your food and you you tell them, oh, I'm really hungry, you know, uh is coming still. Masha? It's like it means on top of horse. And something like immediately. Immediately, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that does not mean immediately, just so you know, it means like, yeah, you're gonna get it.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:20

It just case says it means immediately.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:23

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, here's the funny thing, right? Yeah. Again, literally means immediately, but it does not mean immediately.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:28

Well, you when you do directly translate the characters, it means something different.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:32

I want to tell this immediately. So it's work for take some time, and I can't really tell you what.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:36

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:37

It can be immediately in two minutes. It can be immediately in ten minutes.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:40

Yeah. Okay, so so far I've got for your question to to to circle us back.

SPEAKER_11 1:48:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:46

Um, how did your host country change you? When did you notice? When you went home or when you were living there?

SPEAKER_09 1:48:53

Oh man.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:53

I don't think that's what you said, but that's I don't think so many things.

SPEAKER_09 1:48:57

It's about lifestyle, the way I talk, the way I act, because it's easy to say, it's more than 10 years, but it's like one third of my life.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:05

Do you think that the real li in real life culture and the online culture have both from China have both changed you?

SPEAKER_09 1:49:14

I don't have to be honest, I don't think online life changed me too much in China. It's more like daily interaction interactions because I'm more active in social media. I oftentimes uh express my own way. But of course, I get some slangs from there, I learn a a lot about street life stuff from there, for sure. But it's the daily life more and I'm telling this as a person who's very active on social media.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:38

So well that sounds like a really good balance. That sounds like a really good balance. If it if the online stuff was changing you too much in comparison to the real life stuff, it would seem off balance.

SPEAKER_09 1:49:51

I think so. Yeah. I think so. I think a lot of young people are getting it much more online, and they come to me with certain slangs and stuff, sometimes I don't. Or I get I get what you mean, but it just doesn't make sense in this particular uh environment. Yeah. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:08

So you mentioned that you want you don't want to be a discussing person anymore, you want to be a doing person. What what is the doing stuff you want to do online?

SPEAKER_09 1:50:17

Okay, let's just um create more content, creating more content that's not a copy of others, my original content. Right. Um that would be yeah, just trying out new stuff, failing a lot, I'm not scared of that a lot, fail a lot, and keep trying again, find out what doesn't work so I can do a better thing that works. And that's how come you come up with the original content as well, I think. And just um getting more attention, positive or negative. Not attention is like, look at me, you know, not that kind of look, but what I mean is uh getting connected with more people. I would say more of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:55

Are you on any Western Western outside of China's social media that the Well, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, but not really I'm there.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:04

Okay. Um what happened with my Instagram? I had much many more followers, even though I wasn't trying that hard. I I tried hard for a period, and I came up to the 67,000 followers, but I didn't realize again uh I don't think it's very high, but it was in a short while. So I think it was good.

SPEAKER_06 1:51:22

You have integrated into China more than you think. That's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:25

But what happened is I uh I blocked unblocked them, like I made them unfollow me. Most of them, a lot of them. Uh if they were not active enough. Because you know, there are a lot of dead followers there, and then they don't really follow what you do. Yeah, you can block and unblock them.

SPEAKER_06 1:51:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:42

So what happens is they're not your follower anymore. And then uh I'd like to just connect it because I'm thinking like this. Man, look, I really don't spend that much time for for social media.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:51

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:51

Let me have a small amount of people that actually follow me. You know what I mean? Yeah. And uh because there are a lot of dodgy ways to get a lot of books for I tried that and at the end I realized that's dishonest.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:02

So bad.

SPEAKER_09 1:52:03

Buying is really bad. But what you can do, I tried, I tried everything. You follow unfollow people, which at the end I realized this is dishonest. It is the guy sees you and he's like, oh, he follows you. And then at the end, if he is so easily connected with you, either he you lied to him, or another thing is he is not that into Instagram, he just came in first time. Yeah, he just followed some guys and he doesn't use it anymore. I'm gonna connect some more real people, more organic, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_09 1:52:31

So I just have uh list of all followers now same on Facebook.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:36

How do they find you on Instagram?

SPEAKER_09 1:52:38

Just you uh check my name. Yunus uh Yunus Emre, he's my first and middle name. Actually, in Turkey it's not the first and middle name, it's my two first names. You can find me on uh on Facebook as well, just search for a full name because it's a page. I don't spend that much time on it, I just occasionally share it when I'm there. I'm gonna check it. I have some YouTube videos again, same way. I have some videos. Occasionally I upload some stuff there. But not full uh not really.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:05

We'll put all that in the show notes, folks. Just in case you don't go through the uh the Doyen download and stuff, although hey, why not?

SPEAKER_09 1:53:14

If you want to connect me, you can always use these. I check it. I just don't take it too how to say, I'm not too aggressive on it. I don't share this.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:22

No, I get that. I mean you're in China, you're in China, you're you're and you do these things in China. I get that you're on the Chinese social media platforms. But I will read it.

SPEAKER_09 1:53:30

If you write me something, I will read it, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:32

Fair enough. Did you hear that? He wants to hear from you. I'd love to Well, thank you so much, Eunice, for coming on this. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much to our guest, Eunice, for sharing his virtual expat story with us. For more Geopaths podcasts, including the other shows, bookish expats changing scripts, and all of the ones that are gonna happen in 2020, go to stefuccio.com, it's S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, or just search for Geopaths don't forget the yes, in your podcast app. If you can't find us where you listen to podcasts, do let me know. I will make sure that we get their ASAP. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or to volunteer to be a guest on the show. My handle is Steph Fuccio, literally everywhere online, and it's also my Gmail account. As promised, Damon Castillo's song, Sometime Guy, again, DamonCastillo.com is where you can find the rest of his music.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:31

I've been wasting all of my time standing at the back of your eye, trying not to lose my mind Yeah, when all I'll ever be is your some type guy I've been waiting for my moment I've been howlin' at the moon, I've been living with this torment, cause there's nothing else my heart can do. Well I've been wasting all of my time standing at the back of your life, trying not to lose my mind All I'll ever be's your sometime, your sometime kind. Oh yeah, yeah, you're sometime kind. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Will I put my foot down like the man I am? You gold stream make me dance. I can't believe the shape you got me in. All these thoughts could drop me back. Well, I've been wasting all of my time Standin' at the back of your eye And trying to lose my mind Well I'll have fun bees you're so if they want me something coming back to Lord I've been wasting all of my time standing up the back before I trying not to put my song Oh I'll ever be here's your sometime Oh I'll never be yours sometime at Pluralsight they believe everyone should have the opportunity to create progress through technology.

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