Welcome to Virtual Expat, where we investigate the interplay between living overseas and living online. What happens to our online presence, our online persona when we change countries? Does anything happen? Does one support the other? Does one conflict with the other? I don't know, but I wanted to find out, so I'm going to interview a lot of expats in order to get to the heart of this question. Is there interplay between our online selves and our geographically varied selves? I am very pleased to have Amazon as an affiliate for this podcast. I've lived in the middle of nowhere in the US, and I've lived in big cities in the US. And in both cases, there are times and situations where I found it really, really useful to use their services. I also have Audible with I'm a huge audiobook person, and I'm guessing if you're listening to podcasts, you probably are too. But with the affiliate program, all you do is shop normally with my affiliate link, and I get a small click with whatever you buy. That's it, it's that simple. You can either go to the show notes to find the link, or you can go to defutos f ucc I oebly w e-b l y dot com. Down at the bottom is a button, and you can just press that and go over to my Amazon affiliate page. Whatever you do, whatever you buy, I appreciate you supporting the podcast with this link. May from Angus. That's the best answer I can come up with. She's amazing! Okay, she's Egyptian. She's studying in the UK. She studies philosophy. She learns languages. She does uh book reviews online. She talks about philosophy online. She has live streams where people engage about philosophical ideas online. And she's also started to do some videos in Arabic online too. And all of this is just mind-blowing. It's mind, isn't mind-blowing? I don't know. I I still think of YouTube in its early days with uh cat videos, galore, and not much else. And I started to pay attention to YouTube when it became very music-heavy. I would put YouTube on in the background and just listen to it for music. And then I discovered all kinds of things about two years ago. The language learning bloggers, the polyglots, and then I discovered a bunch of experts that were putting like their lectures or speeches or things like that online, and it just took snowballs from them. Never in a million years did I think I would be totally completely addicted, which I anime, to a channel about philosophy and language learning and books. Now, two of those three I'm not very surprised with, but philosophy has been something that's been interesting, but I'm more interested in sociology than philosophy. However, watching how Mae deals with these conundrums that philosophy dredges up is really, really fascinating. And watching, more importantly, the community that she's building and the people that are interested in it convert on her channel during live streams and just in general in the comment section is really impressive. I never in a million years, when YouTube first started, thought that it would grow into something so interesting and so forward-moving. May's channel Intellect Grime was recommended on Ophelia Burt's channel, her language learning channel. She is also an amazing YouTuber to check out. I feel like it's female power moment. But anyway, so I checked it out and I was super impressed. And thank you, Ophelia, again for recommending another amazing YouTuber. A couple of more things I want to mention is that May is now the proud co-creator of the VRL acronym, and you'll hear what that is, but if I say IRL, VRL, I think you might get an idea. I think it's a term that needs to exist. So I'm going to use it from here on out. And I strongly encourage the rest of you to do so. Two things I want to mention has nothing to do with Mei, although I do hope she participates in this. I have a new YouTube channel called Tube to Pod, and what I want to do in this channel is have micro videos of people answering three questions about podcasts. My goal for this channel is to bridge people from YouTube over to podcasts. Not to replace their YouTube viewing, but to supplement it with podcasts. A lot of people apparently still are not listening to podcasts, still are unaware of what they are, what they can do with them, what they can learn from them, that kind of thing. So the three questions are, one, where do you listen to podcasts? Two, why do you listen to podcasts? And three, what is your favorite podcast at the moment? Now, if you're interested in participating in this, you can either post a video under two minutes on Instagram with the hashtag tube to pod t-e t-o-p-o-d. Or you can email me your video and I'll post it on the YouTube channel. If you put it on Instagram, I'll record it, copy it over onto the channel. If you send it to me via email, I'll post it over onto the channel. And if you are more tech savvy than clearly I am, and you know a better way how to get other people's videos onto YouTube, please let me know. Because right now I'm doing a copy and paste kind of thing. I'll also put the link to the new channel in the show notes below, and hopefully by the time you get there, it'll be flooded with videos from folks. And if it isn't, help me do that. Thank you so much. Let's listen to what May has to say about this IRL VRL interplay when expats change locations. Thank you so much, Mai, for joining us on Virtual Expat. Can you introduce yourself? Thank you.
SPEAKER_02My name is Mei. Uh, if you can't pronounce that in Arabic, you can call me May. And I'm from Cairo, Egypt, born and raised here for 17 years, and then I moved to the UK for the last few years. So I've been there for about two years, going into my third to study at university.
SPEAKER_03And we're we're clearly taking a very broad approach to the term expat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it was interesting for me to hear like the term expat, and I never thought of myself as an expat, but I guess I would be considered one because I've lived abroad from like not my home country, I guess.
SPEAKER_03So and my form of expat isn't even the traditional form where I'm like in a country for a few years and then I intentionally go to a different country. So there's again the umbrella expat.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because living somewhere outside of your passport country just was not really user-friendly. So let's get started. Living outside of your uh your home country is Egypt, correct? Yes, yeah. So living outside of there, is it just the UK so far, or have you lived in other places as well?
SPEAKER_02So I did a course briefly in the US. Uh I was living there for like a month and a half. I don't really count as having lived there. The UK is the first place that I've like moved long term, I would say.
SPEAKER_03Gotcha, gotcha. Just out of curiosity, where were you in the US?
SPEAKER_02I was in Boston.
SPEAKER_03Oh that's a good place to end up. That is, yeah. That's pretty true. What did you think?
SPEAKER_02I love the community there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, I was taking a class at Harvard and it was just like a summer course about sociology, anthropology, that kind of stuff. Like stuff that I don't really get to cover in philosophy, which is a much more refined discipline than I thought it was gonna be when I entered, and so I decided to broaden a bit. But um, yeah, it was true.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. Yeah, that's a really nice place to end up. A lot of times when I talk to international students, they're like, they mention places in states that I've heard of, but cities or towns that I've never heard of, like in the middle of nowhere. And I'm like, uh, okay. Awesome. Nice, nice. And you're studying philosophy, right? Yes. So we're basically gonna kind of do kind of like a chronological snapshot of what you've done online your entire life. Are you ready? Oh, okay, yeah. So when did you first do stuff online? Like how old? Okay. Um, I was maybe 13, I want to say.
SPEAKER_02For sure. I've when I first like got a Facebook account. I really just liked it to be honest. I'm not a fan of Facebook and I've I got it for like God knows why, and I still have it for unknown reasons. But uh that was like, yeah, my the first time I had an online presence, I guess you could say.
SPEAKER_03Sure, sure, sure. Were you using email before Facebook or after Facebook?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I actually yeah, I did use email before that. I didn't know that counted because it it's not you don't think of it as a very like public thing. But yeah, I was using email. I had pen pals from the age of like nine, I think.
SPEAKER_03Wow, okay. That's it, that's an interesting point. Yeah, it's public versus private because social media would definitely be online. Websites would be something that you're huh. I'm still working these questions.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, because I haven't no, they're great questions, honestly. It's this very interesting like theme to have for a podcast, I think. Like virtual excess.
SPEAKER_03Because I know the experiences that I've had in different places and how it's changed, but I wanted a space to pick other people's brains and kind of share that with the world too. But yeah, because emails between that one person or a few people, and then social media is definitely much wider, especially if you don't uh close off your account to certain people, and then websites are something you do that isn't necessarily seen by most people, although there are bots and things that can scrape that information. Oh, you're gonna make me rethink my questions. Okay. Um so Facebook was first at 13. What were you posting then?
SPEAKER_02I don't know, like profile pictures, uh edited profile pictures. Yeah, like just basically what people use Twitter for now was Facebook then. People would just like put in their like how they're doing that day or whatever, and like a random thought that kind of came up came about, but it definitely wasn't as active as it is now, or like you can find so many posts from so many different pages and then like repost them and share them with people. But yeah, I'm I'm kind of over the Facebook. I'm not not a fan anymore.
SPEAKER_03Why did did anything happen or just kind of just doesn't attract your interest anymore?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's just not inspired by the platform. It's it's very like it makes you feel like you should be on it because there's so much information on it. There's so many people that are connected through it, but I don't know. I just did a bit disillusioned, but I don't have really like uh a solid reason. I guess I never even wanted an account. Like after having Facebook for a couple years, I think I actually deactivated my account for a couple more years, and then I was actually forced back into it because my GCT music class like really needed to get in touch with me through like a platform everyone was on, and Facebook was that platform. I feel like a lot of people have that experience with Facebook where they are forced to use the platform because so many other people are participating in it. Yeah. Um but yeah, like I just I want to get out as soon as possible because as well, like the fact that they have all of our information and they're like giving it to companies, and it's just it feels really icky, and like I don't want to be able to be tracked on Facebook because not that what I do on there is anything controversial, it's just simply like I don't I don't need all my information to be on there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Now I'm noticing a lot of people go on and off the platform a lot. Like that kind of back and forth of well, I want the information, but I don't want all the other stuff, and I like looking at what people are doing, but it seems like my life sucks, or there's this kind of like different stuff. Yeah, for me it was more of I felt like people that I barely knew suddenly had access to really intimate details of my life. And even if I didn't share that stuff, they would share theirs, and I'm like, but I just met you, or I haven't seen you for 20 years, and it was just really like a sense of intimacy. I was like, nah, I don't know. So I've been on for a while, but my husband's still on, so occasionally he'll like turn his phone around and go, look at this, and I'll be like, No, I'll be like, I'm trying not to get sucked in, damn it. I don't want to know what I'm missing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's a good rule of thumb for sure. Um yeah, my my boyfriend's off of Facebook. I think I for a year now he's not been on it. He's very much like addicted to it and like in the comments, like just arguing with people and not getting anywhere. Um, but yeah, like I barely use it. The thing is, I don't think I'm active on Facebook. Like I barely, barely use it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so after Facebook, what did you what else do you generally do online? Social media or websites or anything.
SPEAKER_02So I tried to get into the like blogging thing, I think, from a young age, but I don't think it really took off. I didn't know like what platform to use that was like the ideal like blogging platform where I could find cool blogs, but also like have my own blog, and so that was a very much like a short fleeting moment um in my online presence, like attempting blogging and then like retracting.
SPEAKER_03And did you start like a few posts and then just kind of abandon it or?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think so. I mean, I I don't even remember because it was so fleeting, but I remember everyone being on about like, oh, I have this blog, or like some people online just having all their information on this blog, and it seemed like a really cool idea. It was just not something that I couldn't personally engage with in the way that say YouTube completely changed my life. How like when I got on YouTube and the amount of influence like different YouTubers had on my personal development, and and then me like aspiring to do that, and then eventually being able to do that. Like YouTube is revolutionary and I love it, but uh like blogging just was never the same for me.
SPEAKER_03No, no, I'm uh we'll just pretend a hair older than you, and so I blogged because there wasn't anything else online yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, this is what I mean. It's also it was a very big thing people who oh it was because there wasn't even social media.
SPEAKER_03I mean, that was that was it. It was websites which were really clunky and ugly, and then there were blogs which were a little prettier, albeit not that pretty for a while, and so yeah, so it ended up being, and when when videos got to be on blogs, it was like, Oh, oh my god, this is gonna change the world, and it did, and then they went off of blogs and onto places like YouTube, and then I'm still amazed when I meet people who are still blogging. I'm like, oh cool, okay, that still exists because it's so it feels like it's so rare these days.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Wow, wow, wow. Do you uh did you ever get into reading any specific blogs?
SPEAKER_02No, I think most of the blogs that I interacted with were from YouTube because I am from a much younger like generation. I like found out about blogging almost through YouTube, which is kind of a reversal anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay, wait. When you started YouTube, how old were you then?
SPEAKER_02A year ago, I was 18.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Oh my gosh. You're seriously 19 years old. You are in that a lot.
SPEAKER_02I get that from my friends. They're like, what? How like what I can't really comprehend it, but yes, I'm 19. I'm gonna turn 20 very soon, so no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_03It's so not an insult at all. You're just so damn articulate. I I seriously wish I could form things coming out of my mouth the way that you did when I was eight, nineteen, or twenty years old. Oh, thank you. Damn, no, you're welcome. Sorry, I didn't I didn't mean that condescending at all. Oh no, I didn't speak it that way.
SPEAKER_02It's just a bit like of an awkward topic because what even is age like after certain points when you reach like a certain consciousness, conscious state, like like numbers are nothing, like yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, people seem to react to age no matter what the age is. When I tell people I'm like approaching 47, they're like, oh my god, and like every age that I've been in my life, there's always been a oh my god, something moment, and I'm like, when is that gonna end? When I'm 60, please stop caring what comes out of my mouth when I say how old I am. Yeah, so I'm gonna take it personally. I think people just feel the need to have an opinion, myself included, apparently. Anyway, okay, so YouTube was a year ago. So wait, when did you start your channel? A year ago?
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, literally a year ago, like August 20th. Whoa, okay. The end of the summer, yeah, after my first year of university was over, and I was like doing this camp thing with a bunch of people that was really cool. Um, and then in my on on in my downtime, I was like thinking a lot about like I really want to do like a creative project, I've been wanting to do one all year, and like philosophy really just expanded my mind in a very short period of time, especially in first year because you got to cover like so many different topics. So I was like, I felt ready, but I was really underconfident, and I was like, oh my god, just like break because there's so much stigma around YouTube, I feel, as well. Like, as much as it's awesome and the people who are on it really love it. There are a lot of people who have a very particular view of like what it means to be a YouTuber, yeah, and like the the judgment or like the shame that kind of goes into the idea that maybe you want to be seen or heard, and like how maybe that's a bit like self-inflated, and like how like self-involved, and I don't I'm I don't want to be associated with that in any way, but I do want to have an influence on people and like share my ideas and get some feedback and like have discourse. So it was really like difficult to like you know step or like think past that, but I'm so glad I did it. Like in one year, I'm so so glad that you know I've met people like you and so many other people. Like awesome.
SPEAKER_03I could not agree with you more. I honestly I used YouTube for years as a very passive person, just like watching videos, mostly music videos. I had no idea there was like this intelligent side to YouTube. I was like, I just need something to you know kind of empty my brain out at the end of a stressful day. And then when I started studying Chinese last year, I started looking for like videos explaining things in Chinese, not in Chinese, about the language, and I ended up running across a bunch of language, uh language learning bloggers, and then the avalanche happened, and then I met people like Ophelia Birds and all these people, and I was like, Oh, people are talking about this, people are watching their channel. Wait, there's an audience for talking about language? Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah, yeah. So then it led me to all kinds of different stuff that was on the not just fun side of YouTube, but on the like intelligent brain scratching side, and I just went, Oh my god, seriously, it's crazy how much is out there. And I'm really glad you're doing it because it seems like there are mostly men doing it. And so I'm glad I don't like doing the men versus women thing, but there's so few of us out there. So I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think, yeah, for each like topic or like big theme where there's a community surrounding it, a lot of the time there are like just some really big names, and a lot of them are men, and you don't really see, especially like non-white women as well. I feel like a lot it's very dominated by like just the Caucasian populace, which is super chill, but like at the same time, I just don't see that many quote unquote people of color like just talking about the same things because it's not like we have different, completely different experiences that we can't contribute to the same discussions, it's just we don't have the confidence, I feel, or like the social encouragement to do these things.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, right. No, that's a really, really good point. I mean, because there's different there's different languages on YouTube, different languages used, and so there really wouldn't be a reason other than not feeling like it's a platform that is meant to have folks outside of us pasty white folks. So why god, I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder because I've looked up like gender-wise, I've seen stuff on like the stats of the male versus female viewership and that kind of thing, and I've seen like age demographics, but I haven't really seen ethnicity demographics or even necessarily country demographics. That would be interesting. Ugh, thank you. You've just given me some research to do.
SPEAKER_02Please let me know how it like that research turns out because I just from my own experience, I just have barely seen any Arab women like on YouTube. And so it's very like it was just such a bigger deal than in my br in my head, like it was such a bigger deal than it was to actually just start a channel because I just never seen Arab women on YouTube. And then ever since like being on the platform, because I was also a very passive viewer for like years and years and years. And at first, yeah, YouTube was like I didn't watch anything intelligent on there, and then I discovered like BookTube, and then I discovered BookTube. There's such a like or they're like, yeah, there's a really big like community of readers on YouTube that just share the books and like find out about this stuff.
SPEAKER_03Sorry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're really into like book hauls, and it's really big in like young adult fiction. So when I was like reading a lot of young adult fiction, most of my recommendations were coming from YouTube.
SPEAKER_04That's so cool. There are so many different communities that are amazing.
SPEAKER_02And discovering the language community was what like like did it for me. I was like, okay, it's time, like this is active, it's young, it's fresh, it's happening now. I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna crawl in there.
SPEAKER_03Bookstagram on Instagram. Are you on that thingy?
SPEAKER_02So recently, yeah, I have been using my story to share like my books and stuff, but the one that Intellect Grime, like my artistic account, doesn't have any book posts. Like I don't take pictures of books I've gotten and just make a post about that particular book, just because I I want to share art and poetry and stuff. So I've been using my story to share books, which is cool. Yeah, like I didn't even I didn't know about Bookstagram until I realized like the booktubers usually also have an Instagram and they probably also share books on there. So that's basically I feel what Bookstagram is. It's just the the Instagram version of BookTube.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, and I didn't realize that Bookstagram was a thing until I was doing a live stream and Tom Reeds or Tom Reed, I think that's his name. Yeah, he was mentioning it just as part of a sentence. And I'm like, stop. What is Bookstagram? We need to talk. What, why, what, yeah, and study gram and all these things. And I'm like, wait, there are people taking pictures of what they're studying and posting it online. That is so up my mind. I can do that. It's like bullet journal heaven on there. Yeah, I don't do a bullet journal, I do lists, but I appreciate that people put them on there because at some point I may venture over. It could happen. It could happen. So you mentioned that you have an Intellect Grime Instagram account and then a personal account.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I do have a personal account that I'm I've been very unactive on. Inactive on. I just don't I don't really use it very much because I don't like posting selfies, and so I only ever post like cool like photographs or whatever, and now I put most of that on Intellect Grimes, so I'm really inactive on my personal account. What was your intention in having the two? What did you say? So I started my Instagram really late to the game, like so many people had Instagram way before I had Instagram, and I was not a really big fan of the idea of it or anything, and then when I finally got it, I was like, okay, I kind of see the appeal, and like okay, I might try it. And it's more to like watch the people that I know like what they're up to and on their stories and like personal events and stuff, and like like their photos, and if they've graduated, they'll post something or something like that. But then I I started Intellect Grime. I'm not sure honestly if I started it right before my YouTube channel started or right after, but they were very much like related to each other because I I knew that I wanted to post poetry. Um, I knew that I wanted to pair it with some sort of art or film related thing, and yeah, they were just kind of connected in that way. Yeah. And I I I knew I wanted to be somewhat anonymous. I didn't want people to like know my last name or anything, be able to like look me up on Facebook, those people probably so yeah, yeah, Facebook stress.
SPEAKER_03Let's let's go back and put some places on this. So the the Facebook at 13 years old, that was clearly in Egypt. The blog moment was clearly in Egypt, but the YouTube that was after your first year in the UK, is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. When I was reading your questions, I found it really interesting because I never correlated my own like online presence and like my confidence to do that with the fact that I had moved. I always correlated just with the fact that I built confidence and like got a bit older at university and my experiences at university, but sure, sure, sure. That was also had to do with my location, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Right. It may or may not. I'm totally taking a stab of the dark with this the intersection of living somewhere else and our online list. There may not be any effect at all, and I could, you know, disband the sucker in a couple of months. Um I don't know. I don't know. Oh, please don't.
SPEAKER_02It seems like it's gonna come out with like some really interesting um conversations with people.
SPEAKER_03Well, it is now, clearly. But well, do you if there was an effect that being in the UK and studying there for a year would have had or might have had on your competence level to do the YouTube channel, what would it have been? My god, that was the longest question in the world.
SPEAKER_02But it was well put grammatically correct. I'm not I'm not sure what it would have been, honestly. Like, I guess just being where I mean there is somewhat of a correlation because in Egypt we don't really have the best internet connections and we don't really have the best just like access to online things. Actually, there are lots of websites recently. We found out that Ezira is like blocked in Egypt, like you can't access the news, like one of the most reliable sources of news about like the Middle East and stuff in this country, and that's insane. But I feel like a lot of people are demotivated by that, and by the fact that they don't see a lot of like Egyptian YouTubers doing it from Egypt or like in Arabic or anything. I feel like it's it's a bit yeah, demotivating to not see representation, and then also to have like bad internet connection, not be able to do the stuff as easily and have access to technology, and uh yeah, it's mostly about access. I think when I saw the you know, the internet connection, the UK is amazing, and people are like all there are a lot of big YouTubers that live in London or near London, and I was like very motivated by the fact that hey, I'm near London, like I could do this, you know, it's it's closer to me. I feel like the accessibility was it was more present there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I get that. I live in I live in China. I I live by my VPN until it gets really strict, like half the country's online doing stuff they shouldn't, I think. At least well in a tier one city like Shanghai, Beijing, that kind of thing, a lot of people have VPNs a lot. I can't speak for like outside of those cities, and definitely not in the countryside. I think the internet's not as good, but definitely in those cities, it's so common, it's ridiculously common. I have low conversations with locals about which VPNs we're using at the current moment and what works best. It's like, wait, this is illegal. Why are we having this conversation?
SPEAKER_02No, but it makes sense when there's something to access, people want to access it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And there's a lot of Chinese young people in their 20s and 30s who have already been abroad and came back and they know what they're missing and they want to keep in touch with the stuff that they started using when they were overseas.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so YouTube and so Instagram was fairly recent then.
SPEAKER_02You said you were a late Yeah, also pretty recently. Like, probably I've only been on Instagram for a year using the Intellect Gram account, and then before that, maybe two years or three years on Instagram.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I deleted the app several times. Not my account, but the app because it's very addicting. Yeah. It's not good for you. And like it's it's just social media. Like there's there's this good side of it where it's like you're connected to people and you get feedback and you get conversations and really interesting stuff happening, really interesting information being shared, but then you get addicted and you get just like you feel bad and you compare yourself to other people who are doing like better than you with like the numbers and the statistics and all that stuff. And it's always the question of is it worth it? And yeah, I'll only keep going as long as it's worth it, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. How do you measure that that word? How do you measure if it's adding more to your IRL than than your online life? Wait, IRL's in real life. Do we have an acronym for online life? Damn it, we need an acronym. Yeah. Wait, IRL online real life. ORL? I think we've got to start with ORL. So how do you balance your IRL and your ORL? Um, that's a good question.
SPEAKER_02How do I balance it? I mean, recently I've been using an app called Moment, and it tells me how many times I picked up my phone that day and how many minutes I've been on my phone that day. And the other day, actually, like maybe a few days ago, uh, I was on my phone for five hours. Five hours. And the average human checks their average person with a smartphone, yeah, will check their smartphone 150 times a day. 150 times. And so, like that day with the five hours, I probably checked it around a hundred times. But ever since then, like ever since that day, I've just been like staying away from my phone and um under an hour each day, and like not picking it up well, trying not to pick it up more than like twice an hour because there are all these micro distractions that like stop us from doing stuff IRL, like you were saying. So I don't know how to measure its worth, to be honest. I have no idea.
SPEAKER_03I just need a note to myself to look at at that app.
SPEAKER_02Moment, it's great. It's really, really great.
SPEAKER_03Is it a paid app or a free app?
SPEAKER_02Because I'm a free app. I think it's I think it's free, yeah. And then it'll just I can show you, it'll just like show you right here. Cool. Oh, oh no, it's all but it'll sell it'll tell me like I've been on my phone for 37 minutes and I picked up 21 signs today.
SPEAKER_03Um so that way I can like just keep myself in check. Yeah, I knew there were apps that could like block out the internet or could stop you from using certain things for certain periods of time, like you could set it to stop that, especially on computers. I knew those existed, but I didn't realize there were stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean those are really useful tools, and I feel like we it's just the companies that are making these apps are completely, completely oblivious, or maybe they're actually intentionally trying to get people addicted, but they're oblivious to like the greater impact that this like has on society. We're all stuck to our phones, and it's almost like a virtual reality we're participating in. And then how are we gonna get out of it if and and it the fact that it can influence like stuff like elections, and we've seen that happen a couple years ago, and it it's mean, like like our technology should not have that kind of power over us, and so I'm trying to just make sure it doesn't have that kind of power over me individually.
SPEAKER_03But takes pets and geopats, what do you do with the annoying paper mail that you get to your old addresses in your home country? For a few years I'd have all of my mail forwarded to one friend, and then I'd feel guilty for bothering them so much. So then I'd have a family member um deal with my mail and so on and so forth. And I did this for about like what 12, 13 years. And it got annoying, and let's face it, I missed the mail because people have better things to do than look after my paper correspondence. So I finally broke down and got a service from traveling mailboxes. They would literally do mail, you get a US address, you get the fixed city that it's in, and you receive mail, and they'll let you know when the mail comes in. They'll open it, scan it for you so you can read it. If you really need to, they'll forward it to you for fee. You can also get packages delivered as well. And so there's like a variety of different services that you can have where you don't have to keep bugging your friends and family to deal with your paper mail. So if you go to defucio.weebly.com, it's S T E P H F U C C I O F dot Weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y.com. If you go to the bottom, you'll see the blue ad on the right, traveling mailbox, click on that. I am now an affiliate program with them, so if you join their services, we both end up very, very happy campers. And you never have to ask your friends or family to receive your mail again. It's truly a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_02So many people, like I've been chilling with my cousin who's going off to university for the first time, like um abroad this in the next few weeks, and always on her phone. Like basically 90% of her waking hours during the summer, at least when she has nothing else to do, right? She's on her phone. And it's just scrolling, it's not even like it's just too much information. We're just scrolling and scrolling, and like allowing our phones to just come out with whatever is online at the moment. And then how does that affect your psychology? And how does that affect just other facets of your life and the things that you're not like pursuing because you're on your phone, like watching other people and how they've been doing, and it's just it's so hard.
SPEAKER_03See the pro yeah, oh gosh, it's so hard because I I want to be a defender of technology because I think the tiny computers we have in our pockets now are amazing. I I grew up without computers, I didn't have my first laptop until like my mid-20s. I had a beeper, that's how much of this trajectory I've been on. And I want to believe that we can be smart digital citizens, and then I see what most people are doing. And my sometimes myself I see what I'm doing, and I'm like, uh the excuse is I have my audio recordings for studying Chinese on my phone, so I have to turn it on, and I ignore those notifications.
SPEAKER_02It's good to just turn all the notifications off, I think. Notifications are probably the devil, like they just pop up and like they seem like they're important, but they're not.
SPEAKER_03Like, I truly believe the real world, the IRL, is just so much more important than the online, and even though the online can can can contribute so much and can affect people so much in a positive way, and like I obviously believe in it enough to like be contributing to some of the online noise, but I just feel like there's so much of it, it's just a bit too overpopulated, it's so much, and you can't process that much information in a day, and so it's good to limit that the biggest app that I use in China is this app called WeChat, and it's basically like Facebook on steroids, but everybody uses it for work, for fun, for groups, like everything's on there, and a lot of the people I meet in person communicate via this app, so it's it's like I have to check it to make sure that this person's gonna show up at this time at this place, or that this group is meeting next week, or like there's an in-person thing that's directly connected to it. So I have to constantly be checking it. It's hard, but I do think as of right now, I think that the positive stuff that comes from it is better for me personally than the negative stuff that comes from it. But there it is very easy to slip into just our ORLs. I know why this is not an acronym, it's too hard to say.
SPEAKER_02I don't think the R makes sense because it's like real. It's not real, it's like VRL, like virtual reality life.
SPEAKER_03Like, oh, there you go. That's much easier to say, too. The RL, VRL. Okay, good. Thank you. So, yeah, so I don't I don't even know what I was saying, but that is a much better one.
SPEAKER_02No, I mean it's I think it's like so important that it's valuable for you, like as long as you're getting some value out of it individually. I think socially it's problematic, but because of like the the IRL things being controlled by the VRL, I actually really like this new acronym now.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna start using it. So with okay, with Intellect Grime, the YouTube channel, why did you start it? Who did who were you hoping to talk to?
SPEAKER_02Ooh, that's a great question. Who was I hoping to talk to? I mean, I obviously I share the dream for me was to share my poetry, and like I it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but like I yeah, I I really care about my poetry, and I think that um I would love to one day like publish a collection of poetry or something, but I also had like a lot of other things I wanted to do from inspired by a lot of other people on YouTube that I saw and I I was just like taken away by, and I was like, I could do something like that, or maybe just not as good, but I'll just do more and it'll be fine. I obviously wanted to talk to the language community because I found that they were just so young, so vibrant, so vibrant. I was I just starting to learn a new language for the first time, and I was like taking it very seriously. I found Polywat Progress, I found Ophelia there, and they just inspired me so much to just go for it and to learn as much as possible and like just you know keep keep at it. And so I wanted to talk to them and and and just like the people in their communities, but I also wanted to talk to just anybody who cared more about like thinking than they cared about not thinking. Like, I there are a lot of people who are willing to be just like passive throughout life and just you know be on their phones all the time without really thinking about what they're absorbing, and and people who are willing to just like I don't know how to put it this is a really difficult question, actually.
SPEAKER_03No, no, I think you're I think you're being very, very articulate about this. I keep hearing the word awake in social media for like being conscious of what we're experiencing, what we're doing, why we're doing it, that kind of thing. And I don't know because I'm so far from the folks that are using it in the US that I don't know if that's their intention, but I like that idea of what that means. Yeah, no, yeah, it's a good term to use, I think. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. But yeah, I know what you mean. You wanted to have conversations that matter, you wanted to talk about stuff that is worth thinking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. That's definitely what I wanted. And I looked up to so many different people who are doing that, and I was like, these people are amazing, but I would always see the channels that were doing the like mindless things were so much more successful. So actually working hard and producing really, really, really good quality things. Yeah, they just had such a smaller following, and I was like, you know, it doesn't matter about as long as there are more people doing that, the more people are likely to find it. That's what's important. We just have to like do more of what we want to see. Yeah. So I I just want to see more thought-provoking stuff. I want to see more people interested in talking about books and talking about like progressing themselves as people and growing and and doing their best and evolving and like learning.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's kind of who you thought you were talking to. Who did it end up being? Have you had a lot of interaction with your audience so far? Great.
SPEAKER_02I have your I just ended up being the most wonderful like collection of people. Like, we're basically like 200 people now, which is amazing. And and like all of them are just so lovely and sweet and are just really, really, really interesting. They all have like really interesting things to contribute to the discussion. I always like read through a comment, and I'm like, wow, I could not have put that any better, and like that just added so much to my like the value of my conversation, the fact that other people are actually engaging with it. Yeah, so I'm just like really pleased with who's found my channel and decided to stick around. And I'm very surprised about the fact that there are so fewer trolls on YouTube. Yeah, whenever I would because I obviously the first people you see on YouTube are the most popular ones because those are the ones you have access to the quickest. They are always complaining about trolls and like people who don't really care about their videos, people who just comment like garbage, and I didn't want that, and I was like so nervous, and it like disincentivized me from making a channel for so long. But I'm so thankful to like all the people who have engaged, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I had a full on stalker when I vlogged, so I was really hesitant to to even enable comments on YouTube when I started. But it's gotten way easier to deal with folks. Like I've only had two comments that I thought were kind of crap and needed to not exist. And you can delete them as the person that owns the channel. You just delete them and it's done. You don't need to ask the person to go, you know, whatever with themselves or anything. You just delete them and they're gone. And they don't they haven't come back to do any other thing. Then I'm just like, cool. That is so much better than a friggin' stalker that lives in the same city. Oh my god. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's yeah. The stalker thing is a bit creepy. I was offline for a really long time after that. Well, offline except for email, because that's more of the private part of it all. But yeah, I I took a lot of stuff offline because it was just it was not good. But it was early on during all of this stuff, and I don't think people understood how bad things could be when you have that kind of access. And I feel like although bullying and stuff happens, and and there are situations like that still, I think it's gotten a lot better than it used to be.
SPEAKER_02I think yeah, but we I mean I still don't think we've developed an online etiquette in any way. Like we have no idea what's acceptable. Like people are still oversharing, people are still like expecting a lot from the people that have shared anything at all. And like it's really difficult because we have very clear like social etiquettes that in each culture we just agree upon the certain things. This is acceptable, this is unacceptable. Sometimes there's a great area, but online, like like first of all, all these cultures are mashed up together, and so there's that conflict, but then there's just there's no way to like we don't want censorship, but we want people to be respectful, and it's a difficult like balance, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that this is this keeps coming up again and again and again, and I think it's part of the messiness of the internet still, is that we don't we're still kind of we're kind of drunk on the opportunity, but we haven't really agreed on what we're doing yet with all of this. Like, what is that what does that look like? Like it is it like a course or a training session, a weekend, a day, an hour? Like, do you need before you sign online for the first time, whatever that may be, wherever that is, do you have to like click through a bunch of I agree not to be an idiot, I agree not to harass someone, I agree, not to post pictures of my X, Y, and Z, you know, I mean, just like different things, what we agree not to do to each other online.
SPEAKER_02Do you listen to a lot of podcasts? I don't really listen to that many podcasts. I used to listen to a lot more. First of all, my auditory skills are my worst sense, I'm pretty sure. Like, but also it's really difficult for me to process information that I just hear. I I need to like see something. I'm very much a visual learner, so I prefer video, but I think it's an amazing, amazing, amazing like format because I think it's just because dialogue is just captured exactly the way it was said, and then other people have access to that, and then there's almost like an internal dialogue going on, responding to every single point made. You know, like podcasts are amazing. I just don't have I don't also have the time to like play them because I feel like I need to sit down and listen to one like really. No, I know a lot of people are like, I'll just put on a podcast and like do my dishes or like my place.
SPEAKER_03Well, this is not meant to be good podcast guilt, absolutely not. The reason why I asked that is because no shame. I do multiple medium because it fits into different parts of my life during the day. Because we're talking about this VRL etiquette. VRL etiquette, which is almost going to turn into a YouTube channel that we'll have to do together, apparently. There's this podcast called, and you think I'm kidding. There's a podcast called Conversations with People Who Hate Me by this wonderful gentleman called Dylan Marin. And it came up accidentally in this podcast brunch group that I'm in. And yes, I am in a brunch group that for podcasts, like with podcasts. And what he basically does is when people harass each other online, he gets the person that was harassed, the person that did the harassing, and he gets them to talk to each other in the podcast. Oh, that's so interesting. I nearly screamed and like ran out and like flew to where he was to hug him. I was like, I didn't even realize this needed to exist until I heard him doing it. And I was like, oh, but it's it's part of that thing of he oh, he has this phrase like, remember, there's always a person on the other side of that computer. Like you're talking about person, and yeah, that's part of that unless it's a robot. Sometimes they're robots, bots like typing stuff. But generally when the people get aggressive and say mean things, it's towards somebody who's being vulnerable and open in some way, and and the bots don't do that as much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. That's so interesting, and I yeah, I love how innovative people are being with their podcasts because you can just it's just like a a small like topic or like a specialized thing that you're really interested in, and then you get to explore like so much of it over like weeks and weeks, uh sometimes years, and it's really cool. Yeah, it's really interesting. Check that one out.
SPEAKER_03Conversations with I will email it to you. You were doing Instagram before you went to the UK.
SPEAKER_02The general area. I don't want to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_03No, don't the greater London area.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So you were doing YouTube about then, and you're in Egypt for the summer now, right? Are you keeping up with your YouTube subscriptions while you're there?
SPEAKER_02What do you mean by that? Am I still making videos and like editing and posting and stuff?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and also watching the stuff that you generally watch.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I yeah, I'm definitely like active as a consumer, as a like as an audience member on YouTube. I have been for so long, and like it's just I love finding new channels as well. Like, I really appreciate when I find just like this new human who has made so many things over uh several years. And usually when I when I get into interested in a topic, I'll like look it up on YouTube and I'll find so many videos of people who are also interested in that topic. So my most recent obsession has been minimalism. I read like three books, yes, and they were all like eye-opening and inspiring and stuff, and and then I just like went on YouTube and saw like where the minimalists at, and they are amazing, they're just like there, you know, sharing their ideology and and their philosophy, and you know, just like creating these communities of people that they can they can share ideas with, and so no matter what the topic is, yeah, there's gonna be like hundreds of videos about it, which I love. I love doing that, and I love like finding the specific personalities that I want to continue to follow, and like you know, turn on that notification bell and then like turn off my subscription button.
SPEAKER_03I love it when my subscription button lights up. I'm like, time for a new video. Let's go. But yeah, minimalism. Somebody just recommended a minimal minimalist podcast to me last week, and I listened to the first episode today, and it's awesome. But it was like three hours long, and I kept staring at the podcast, going, okay, an hour I'm used to 45 minutes is easy, three hours is a commitment. I may have to come back a few times. But I don't I didn't expect to see if every episode that they have is three hours, but that particular one was. But it was so interesting. I'll probably actually finish at least that episode.
unknownCool.
SPEAKER_03But on the minimalist side, I'm addicted to, and this is such a guilty pleasure, tiny apartments and tiny houses. Oh tiny houses, yeah. More so the apartments and the houses, but I do appreciate the houses. And there are some pretty amazing tiny apartments around the world. Tokyo and Paris seem to have the more kind of really, really smart interior design where there's everything just super condensed. Yeah. I love watching it. I saw one in New York City last week where the guy had his arms on both both walls, and that was the uh width of the apartment. And it still had everything. I would be like, I would rent that. If I was a single person in New York City, I would rent that in a heartbeat. Amazing.
SPEAKER_02That's so cool. Like that's tiny, like that's way tinier than I would expect, though, like to be able to fit all of the essentials. I mean, I'm about minimalism, but I feel like minimalism is is a bit like more nuanced where it doesn't have to be tiny, it just has to be like enough for the person. Yeah, so it depends on the person, but also especially in like New York and Tokyo and Paris and like just really big cities, it just saves a lot on rent. Like you really don't need that many things, you really don't need that much space as long as you're comfortable, yeah, and you have the things that you do need, like save money on rent. Like you don't have to get the bigger house just because you have a bigger income, like exactly on travel or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I am totally that. Oh, I think in I think in tickets, I think in uh flight tickets. Wait, you spend that much on rent? You could pay half of that and then take a flight every three months. I mean, what what are you doing? Yeah, that's a vacation. What? How long have you been living in Shanghai? Um this time around, it's about a year and a half. But we I've lived overseas for the majority of the past 15 years in different countries. Um it's it is what it is. I was too restless to be at home. My parents put me on a plane when I was four, and it kind of wrecks you. I couldn't, I couldn't really stay in America after that. I was like, yeah, we're the best place on earth. Sure. But I know that place is over there, and I think there's more. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02What have been your favorite like countries that you've lived in?
SPEAKER_03Ah, that's so hard because there's like different things that I like about different places.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Food and because I taught for a long time. So the food and my students, definitely Vietnam, hands down, a million times in the north, not south. People are preferential. But definitely for opportunities and innovation, China. This is the place that has absolutely the most. Most places I've been to, especially in Asia, the opportunities have been within the tiny um area of education or even smaller teaching English. But China right now is so bursting at the seams with literally everything that there's so many opportunities outside of all that that it's just it's just ridiculous. Like I should be looking for a new job right now, and I'm not, because I know I'll start getting very distracted and stop studying, and I've got another test in December, and I'm like, I have to focus. But it's just, it's just ridiculous how bursting this place is right now. For general quality of life and people and the gorgeousness of men pre-marriage, uh, pick your location in Latin America. I hate to sound so stereotypical, but just slower, more friendly, just very laid back and very in front of you, at least back then when I went to a few different countries. Nothing's ever gonna top that.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's awesome. I really want to travel through Latin America, but I need to learn some Spanish. Like, I can't I can't go and not be able to speak their language. Like, I just yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom is learning Spanish at the moment, and so she's like, she's an amazing language learner, by the way. I don't think I mentioned it enough on my channel, but she's really such an inspiration. Like, she's um like C1, yeah, French, yeah, and then uh that because that's basically her first language, and then she can't obviously very fluent in English and Arabic, yeah. But then also she's learned Spanish, she's learned Dutch, she's learned a bit of German, just so so many languages. Wow, she's actually really excited to learn Mandarin soon. So recommend your channel to her.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, we want her to to like want to do it, not just watching her and so inspiring though.
SPEAKER_02Like you already are going into like HSK three or four, and it's amazing.
SPEAKER_03Three and very slowly. Oh my god. Although I can finally read. Thank God. My gosh. Yeah, this language is is a bit much. Yeah, it's crazy. That's really exciting, though. Was that like a hobby, or did she do it for like professional reasons or just no, it's purely a hobby, I think.
SPEAKER_02And like she's progressed in so like so much for something that was just a hobby, just for fun, just so that she can talk to who like if she hears somebody speak a language that she needs to speak.
SPEAKER_03Oh, hello there, like uh what's up? Well, hey, wait, since we're talking about language, is most of the stuff you do online in English, in Arabic, or is it mixed?
SPEAKER_02Actually, most of the stuff I do online is in English. Yeah. The Arabic online sphere, I feel like is really inaccessible, even to people who speak Arabic. I follow a few like YouTubers that do Arabic videos, and like those are probably the most accessible things because it's just someone speaking, like you can just listen and absorb information and then leave a comment or something. But in terms of like reading like our websites or anything, they're just like made really badly, I want to say. Like, maybe not, I just it's just not like it's just not very easy to like find that kind of stuff online in Arabic. I feel maybe it's because my Arabic is not as good as it should be, uh, which I'll admit it's definitely not. But also it's I just yeah, whenever I whenever I like encounter an Arabic website, it's just the layout is not user-produced. It's just it's it's very basic. It's it's very like 20 years ago, like when the internet was starting out, yeah. That's what that's what like the websites still look like when they're in Arabic. Usually, like usually that's what I find. Only like bilingual websites will be a bit better in terms of layout and like accessibility and stuff. Since I don't really engage in blogs in English, I don't in Arabic either. So but yeah, my online I really want to do more stuff in Arabic though, like especially videos, like really short thoughts in Arabic, because that'd be a good way to maintain it while I'm away.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What would can I ask what was your first language or languages?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so Egyptian Arabic was my first language, like that's the only language I spoke up to like the age of four. Okay. And then I went to school, an international school, and they taught me English. And so by the age of like six, I was just like talking in English to people who and my sister actually used to have like a really thick Egyptian accent when she spoke in English until I learned English, and then we started talking to each other. Yeah, and so that's how we kind of maintained our and progressed our languages together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel the same way about Chinese websites that you do about websites in Arabic. They're like you go to them and there's like 200 things hitting you at once. And I've gotten comfortable with the script, even if I can't read it now, like it doesn't freak me out anymore. Like I used to go to Chinese websites and just go no and shut them down because it was just so overwhelming, and that doesn't happen. But there's just they squeeze so much on a page, yeah. And Chinese is a more condensed language, you don't need as many words for the same meaning, like they have the characters actually hold a lot more meaning than words do. So why they're so busy with so many characters all over like every single place you could have a menu or a pop-up or a picture moving and something, it's it's just it's like Disneyland squished into an inch of space.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's just difficult to navigate. Like if you're not just so familiar with either that website already or like what you're looking for, yeah. You can't just like be browsing and like on the internet now in that language. It's it's very difficult. Yeah, like definitely English is the language of the internet. Most of the stuff going on in the internet is is going on in English.
SPEAKER_03Well, that brings up the question of exclusion though. Because for folks who don't who who can't navigate English yet or ever, are they completely locked out of all the stuff that makes us giddy when we find it online?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely not. Like most of the best websites that started in English, I feel like they've developed like other options. So you can you can choose like, I want this in German or I want this in Arabic, even, or I want this in French. And like you'll find the same website with the same layout, but it the its starting point was just an English language. Like maybe again, I haven't done the research. I'm not as versed in like the internet as as I feel like at least you are, but uh I just I don't, yeah, I don't think that it's necessarily exclusionary. It's kind of where things started in America, like with the internet, like literally. So when people were first starting out, they and the thing is English websites used to be just as difficult to navigate and kind of just ugly, like YouTube used to be unclear, and then it just it like it came together, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that I mean yeah, that is a good point. Because even just in China, there's there are a ton of video websites, like a ton of them. YouTube is blocked unless you have a VPN, but even some days it's a little tricky. So they have UQ and all these other ones I can't think of right now, but there are a bunch of them, and there's a bunch of newer ones that are just like kind of the video side of Instagram where it's just 10 and 15 second videos, like that's all it holds.
SPEAKER_02Okay, interesting. So it's like Vine almost.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. Vine.
SPEAKER_02What is mine just has Vine was awesome when it was a thing, it was like fantastic-second videos and usually like funny and just a bit meaningless, but just just for fun. People would do like gags and stuff and very short. I think I would have liked that.
SPEAKER_03Was that was that around for a long time? How did I miss that?
SPEAKER_02Ah, I mean, if you were living abroad, like I like I would understand as actually very active in the Arab community. Vines were big and there were a lot of Arab viners.
SPEAKER_03Viners! That's awesome. I'm a binder V R L. I love that VRL. I'm I'm sorry this is gonna be a thing. We have a few different ways that you can feedback. So if you go to stephpuccio.weebly.com forward slash contact. Let me do that a little slower. S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O dot W e E B L Y dot com forward slash contact. You'll see all kinds of ways you can contact me and let me know what you think of this podcast. I have email, we chat if you're in China, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my new favorite thing is SpeakPipe. Over on the right hand side of that page, you'll be able to leave a sound recording, basically a voice message. You just hit the start recording button that's in bright orange. I can also respond in a voice message there as well. It's a really, really cool feature. I can't believe they have this available for free, but until they get smarter about that, I'm gonna take advantage of it because it is such a cool feature. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of your input. When you're in England and when you're back in Egypt, do you find yourself still I know you're used to watching stuff passively, do you find yourself still kind of reaching out to folks in the same way on social media? Do you find yourself going to the same websites? I guess there are a big difference between what you do online.
SPEAKER_02I mean, when I'm in England, I'm at university, so I'm obviously like researching a lot more when I'm in England. But in terms of my engagement, I think just once I've started engaging for the first time, it was just like a floodgate that opened. Once I realized that I can leave a comment and the the person who made the video can actually read that comment and actually like it or heart it or then respond to me. Yeah, that just like changed my mindset entirely. And I was like, why was I being so passive for so long? I could have been active and people could have, you know, I you know considered my ideas as well through their videos and like, you know, I can give people compliments and they can like make their day or whatever and put a smile on their face. Like it was just such a like positive thing once I started being active online. And um, so I don't really stop when I come here, though I do get distracted, and so I try to spend less time online as well when I'm here. Sure, sure, sure. But that's it. I I don't think my websites really change very much between like locations or
SPEAKER_03No, that's a good point. I think there's a lot more people just watching and consuming um stuff online than actively participating in stuff. What can we do to increase their participation?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I mean, all the YouTubers are saying like, comment, subscribe, and then they just put the comment in the middle of the like and the subscribe. And I think the like and the subscribe is gonna happen anyway if they like and they want the subscribe. So they should just be like, you know, engage, you know, just I want to hear your thoughts. And that being the main thing that's emphasized. There's this amazing woman on YouTube. Her name is Julesy, or her channel is called Julzie. Uh-huh. She's African American and she talks a lot about like African-American issues, and she does like I guess she called her community this, or she has like a project that she she's named like Smart Brown Girl. Um, and her community is like Smart Brown Girls, whether or not they're girls or brown or smart, but like she just she wants engagement from her channel basically. And I feel like her engagement is so much higher than most channels, like at least from what I've seen of other channels of a similar size. Like, and the reason is maybe that she always starts the video as well by saying, you know, we're trying to get our engagement up, you know. Don't don't just watch and sit there passively, like go down into the comments and leave me something to think about. Like, what if like respond to what I'm saying? Don't just and she really, really emphasizes it. And I think we just need to emphasize that more if we want more engagement.
SPEAKER_03I am subscribed to her channel. I am subscribed to, yeah. There's I thought it was her, but I just I think I watched a video of hers last week on why more African American women don't go travel in Africa. I think that was her.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that sounds like her. She does so many different things about so many different topics.
SPEAKER_03And do you think a lot of creators want to get feedback? I know they might say, like, comment, subscribe, but do you think most of them want to go back?
SPEAKER_02I I can't speak for them to be honest, but I don't feel like most of them, if they're if they're not already making content that is thought-provoking, that that it like requires a lot of research, that requires a lot of hard work to like be put into it. If they're just making kind of surface level content, they might not want critical feedback to improve like the quality of their videos. They might just want feedback about like what the next video that they want, like that the audience wants to see is, or that kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay. So as the creator, do you feel any pressure to talk to your audience in multiple platforms to kind of be just like spread the information all around and keep up with all that stuff?
SPEAKER_02Yes, I feel so much pressure to do that. I literally made a Facebook page for intellect grime. Yeah, like for this reason, even though I don't like Facebook, even though I don't use Facebook, and even though like I know that it's not gonna be fun for me to do that. And I started off with just YouTube and Instagram, and to this day I've only really been active on those two platforms. I still put that link for Facebook on some of the like in some of the descriptions of my videos, and I still see that like oh Intellect Grimm has like a couple of new views today, but it's because I'm not active on there that people don't really stay around or actually like that page, but I feel the pressure to like be everywhere, like you said, and to like update everything. And I think it's so needless. Like, why if I'm just on this one platform, then people will know where to find me, it's just easier for them as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I'm like it's it's a bit much. I like the thing in Instagram when you post where you can check off different places and then it'll post it there for me because I think that takes care of a lot of it, but then they don't have some other places that I apparently have stuff. I don't even go to all the places that I post through Instagram. I just post, which I think is slightly irresponsible because I'm certainly not building a community there. I don't like Tumblr is one of the options. Apparently, at some point I signed up for Tumblr. I never go to Tumblr, I don't even know what Tumblr looks like. I'm posting over there, and occasionally I will get new followers, and I'm like, you poor thing, can you come over here where I actually communicate with people? Because I don't actually use Tumblr, I don't have its app, I just think I went a little at first and signed up for everything.
SPEAKER_02Because I yeah, I feel I definitely feel that pressure, and and you because you see so many creators, because they probably have people to take care of that for them, right? Like that's true, they're on so many different platforms, and when you they share a video, they also share it on Facebook and they also share it on Instagram, and then they have like a little like short version on their story of the video so that you can get like a stink preview and really want to go watch the video, and like I feel like all that stuff is for way later, like for for when you're gonna be trying to grow past like tens of thousands. Like, no, I'm I'm so tiny, and I don't know why I still feel so much pressure to do that. I actually gonna delete the Facebook page because I'm gonna deactivate my account. I'm gonna be like, guys, don't check this, and I'm gonna go back through all my delete that Facebook link and be like, why did I even try to do that?
SPEAKER_03It's just tricky because I do want, I don't want to get a lot of subscribers, I want to get people that are doing something similar. And in order to reach them, I feel like everybody has a social media area that they like the most. So I'm like, okay, if I just post everywhere, maybe they'll come over to here. And yeah, I don't know if that's true necessarily. I think people tend to stay in the social media area that they like, and then I'm just posting everywhere, just spending time doing it. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04It's very time consuming.
SPEAKER_03It is, and people keep talking about SEOs, you have to get your SEO right, and I'm like, I don't I know keywords, that's where my knowledge cuts off. And I think that's but I don't know, there's all this stuff. This is influencers, like influencers are a thing now. Apparently, if you have enough of a following, people will pay you to keep your following going and mention their stuff.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, like sponsorships and all of that.
SPEAKER_03But they have a name now, like it's a job now, influencer, and apparently they post 35 to 40 posts a day, and I'm exhausted just hearing that number.
unknownOh my goodness.
SPEAKER_03Just everywhere, anywhere, even just in one place.
SPEAKER_02I thought you need like at least two posts to make it on Instagram or something per day, and that's still a lot. Like, I have weeks where I don't use my Instagram because I'm just not inspired to put anything up there. I don't want to put up, you know, crap that I that is just gonna spam the people that follow me and make them less likely to want to continue to follow me. So I it's just like quality over quantity is in my attempt, but for sure to make it, and I I feel like you need to delegate all that to someone else. You need to be like, okay, your job is literally to post on this account for me. But and this, these are the intervals of time that like you're allowed to have to take it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's kind of like and there are programs that do that now too, but I refuse to do any of that right now. I just the like I walk down the street here and I could take, I'm in a visual part of Asia. I could take like 20 pictures in one hour, and they would all be interesting, not because of me, because of the place that I'm at. And I have to hold back because I refuse to post more than like what three or four a day, a day. Yeah, and I'm like 35 to 40 would even be hard where I am. Like, what do you what how like that is your day?
SPEAKER_02You are you have that 35 and every day just it's it's insanity, and also yeah, your online presence, I don't want it to overpower your real life presence. I don't want to not be present in my everyday life, which is why I don't like vlog in the traditional sense of like walking around with perhaps a friend or like when I go to lunch to film a bit of that or whatever, because that this is my time. Like I'm eating, I'm going out to see my friends. Like, I don't want to share that with people. I just want to share what I've like planned to share, and I have a very like clear boundary for myself where I don't I don't want it to take over my personal life. Like it's something that I almost keep a secret from certain people who are in that like boundary of you're a pretty good friend of mine, but you're not like really, really close to me, and it's really awkward for me to share with those people. Yeah, like if a stranger, that's fine. I can be like, yeah, I'm an artist, I'm a creator, I'm a language learner, I'm a philosopher, I'm a poet. Like, I can say all this stuff and not feel ashamed, and I can share and be vulnerable with the people who are really, really close to me. But it's that like that sphere in the middle that I feel like vloggers are really confident to like share with that sphere of people, and I just can't. I can't like subject that part of my life to something so personal and like and like online in public as well. Like it's it's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, okay, how did you get to this place? Did you make this decision before starting Intellect Grime, or did you kind of stumble and have to delete a few things because you went over the line?
SPEAKER_04How did you find the line?
SPEAKER_02I think I've always known that that was gonna be my line. Um, whenever I saw like a vlogger or a vlog or whatever, I would I would see it and I'd be like, you know, watching it, and it's fine for me to watch as an audience member because that's not my life. But I knew that that's the part of my life that I didn't want to share. It's literally like your journey to the doctor's office or you know, your chill time after work. Like, why would you take that time away from yourself and put it out into the world for the public? Like, if if like for you, for example, your channel, like if you're walking to a certain destination, you might find that as like a great opportunity to film a video, and that's fine because your videos are like you know, thematic. Like you're talking about your language learning, you're talking about the country that you're living in, and like trying to access it more.
SPEAKER_03I'm not just lazy, I'm educating. Oh, yeah, uh-huh. That's the excuse I use every time.
SPEAKER_04There's China behind me, folks. Hey, there you go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's like a great opportunity for you to like film a video. Whereas, like a lot of people, they maybe they wouldn't see it as an opportunity to film a video. They would be like, This is the video I'm gonna make. It's it's all of my personal time, basically, and like I'm gonna show people all of my personal time. Like it's as if you were to share like a night in with your husband or something, yeah. That's a very personal time to you, or like uh when you go out to your brunch group, you know, like that's something that you do for yourself, and it's not for the internet, but you would like share that on the internet. I just find that to be a bit too much, like that's just like a bit of a boundary crossed for me personally. I don't judge anybody who vlogs, but I I can't do that.
SPEAKER_03I'm smiling because I'm like guilty, totally guilty. The project that had a stalker. Oh, yeah, I literally had one because I was too personal. I did share the inner workings of my culture shock in my first country in Asia in 2003. And I did share very rarely, but I did share that I was dating uh X, Y, and Z person, not details, I never did details, but I did mention, oh, gotta go have a hot date or like something like that. And that experience, that blog that year was my stumble and fall, and let's just not put that online again kind of moment. I don't, I don't think I deserved the stalker because of that, but I definitely think I posted too much. Like in the town that I was in, people would meet me and they'd go, Oh, you're the blogger. And they were kind of hesitant to talk to me because they thought they'd end up in the blog, but I didn't describe people, I didn't use people's names, but they were like, What if? And then they all went on Facebook and had everything available for everybody else anyway. But whatever.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, it's really weird that like with Facebook, for some reason, oversharing is fine, but then when it comes to other platforms, oversharing will like subject you to a lot of like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, you've got a very, very clear personal private life thing online. What is something that people can ask themselves when they go online to kind of to kind of create or know where their line is? Like how which is there something they can ask themselves to get that boundary?
SPEAKER_02Like, would I be comfortable either if a complete stranger knew this thing, or would I be comfortable if my parents or my family or just someone that I don't share everything with were to know all this information? Like an uncle or a cousin or someone that you're not maybe not like super close to, but again, not completely like they know you, they already have a perception of you, and then you're adding to that perception. So, would you be comfortable if X, Y, or Z person saw this? Yeah, and if there is an answer where, like, no, I wouldn't be comfortable, ask yourself why? Why aren't you comfortable with that? Like, what is it about this piece of information that makes you uncomfortable about that? And then yeah, maybe find that line.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you just you just created another business. Oh, this is great. The in the top right-hand corner of computers, and maybe is this the what's it called? The screen when your phone's off, like when you first come on. Yeah, maybe screensaver or whatever it's called. You could have like a picture of someone, that person that you're talking about, and that could maybe remind people everything you do, pretend like they can see it. How would that make you feel? Yeah, that's that's good. I was interviewed by this local book group in Shanghai last year, and they said the best interview question ever at the end. She said, What else should I ask people in future interviews? And I'm like, Oh, I'm stealing that. What should I ask other people in future interviews? Again, kind of teasing out the the online the people's VRLs as uh someone living overseas and their IRL overseas life.
SPEAKER_02What have you learned from your online experience? Um and like, or have you ever taken like a break from your online experience for any reason?
SPEAKER_03And yeah, I have heard people doing oh my god, I can't believe that's not in this question. See, this is why this question is so brilliant. I give total and complete props to Wayney, who is the person who asked me that question a few months ago. Have you ever taken a break from your VRL? I'm putting it in the questions. Nice wait, what did you say that meant virtual virtual reality life? Like that was an idea. I'm telling you, this is a thing. It's awesome.
SPEAKER_02It makes so much sense to me because I do think that social media and all of the stuff that we engage with online is a virtual reality in the sense that if we didn't if we just ignored it, life wouldn't change. Like it life started from the point without all this online stuff.
SPEAKER_03It did. Well, okay. Oh, oh, you just brought up another thing. Okay, this is the real last question. You when people used to write about themselves, autobiographies and uh travelogues and anything kind of autobiographical, is that different than when we write about ourselves online?
SPEAKER_02I think you need just more time and more reflection and a wider scope to write something like an autobiography, or a memoir, even that's like supposed to be like uh at least a decade's worth of experience. I think you would write about in a memoir. Like, I don't see anyone writing a memoir at the age of like 20 unless they've been through some stuff. It it's interesting because we are documenting ourselves, we are documenting a lot of what goes on in our heads and just like in a very autobiographical way where we're sharing ourselves with others, which is what an autobiography is, but it's it's much more in the moment. Like I feel like online is is so immediate and instant, and you can just like like Twitter is a great example. Twitter is a platform I've almost never been on. Like again, it was fleeting, but it was a really interesting experience when I was on it because it was like people are sharing so much, but it's like a tiny like quantity, it's just 120 characters, but then they get to you know share as much as they want, like they can do several tweets if they want it, or like in the moment they can just be like, I have this thought, I'm gonna share it with people and like send, and then it's off. And yeah, I don't know. It's it's in it's an interesting question.
SPEAKER_03Um there's something about time retro retro, what the hell is the word I'm thinking of? Uh an introspection and time time, time, time, time. I keep thinking of time. Oh, okay. So here's another business opportunity.
SPEAKER_02If you were to create a social media app, I have lots of ideas that I hate making actually also you should you should like you sound very entrepreneurial, like you're like business idea. Here's another business idea.
SPEAKER_03The ideal situation for that is if I could sell my ideas. Like, as far as like through with all of the grunt work, I'm so not that person. So, listeners, sorry, one second. Listeners, if you uh if you want to follow through with any of the ideas, all I request is that you cite all of my projects. That's it. I don't need any financial feedback or anything. I just want credit. I just want credit. I just say, yeah, anyway. Anyway, so the opportunity. I know there's programs that exist where you can pre-schedule the tweets and the Instagram posts and those kinds of things in advance. But what if there was something you could put on your phone, not to block the internet or to tell you how many times you you started it, although I'm very intrigued by that app, but to intentionally, like every time you try to post, it waits a certain amount of time, whether it be a day, five days, a week, a month, or intentionally won't let you post immediately.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like how the real world works with like delayed gratification. Right? So you don't let it someone rethink a lot of the things we've posted. Because sometimes I look back at stuff I've made and I'm like, ah, cringe, you know. I know I wish I hadn't shared that so immediately. But then also the immediacy allows us to like bypass a lot of the confidence issues we have and stuff, because so many of us are like anxiety ridden or like we don't really believe in ourselves and stuff, as women as well, which is one of the reasons we're not the majority of people online, even though we're half of the population of the planet. But like we're so anxiety ridden and we wouldn't post unless it was immediate. And so maybe that that social media like app wouldn't be very successful because people just they've gotten used to instant gratification, and instant gratification in a lot of ways has uh has allowed people to to just share, you know, just like do it, get it over with, you don't have to think about it again. Who checks their Twitter accounts after they've posted something? Like I don't know. I don't know. I don't know who actually goes back like a year ago. What was I posting about? No idea. And it so it's not out of like Twitter, maybe not wouldn't shouldn't be considered an autobiographical thing because it's it's something that it just almost immediately like fades away. There is this like catalog of all the things that you've ever posted, like that you could potentially access, but almost no one does access it.
SPEAKER_03So it's we're starting to do that on one of my other podcasts, but yeah, other than that, generally speaking, no, no. Um, and it's interesting because I haven't, I've I've just I'm in this constant stream of now, now, now like things that are happening, people I want to communicate with now, like I don't even look back that much on my own posts, and uh but I feel like if I did, it would give me a sense of what was going what would be going on, even though I don't necessarily post super personal stuff anymore. I feel like the articles that I retweeted, uh the pictures of the locations or what I'm taking a picture of at that time might say something about where I was, what I was thinking. Yeah. I don't know. That's interesting. Okay, so the the delayed release app would only be for men because they're over.
SPEAKER_02No, I mean the most confident of people, I think, would would have the delayed. Um, either the most confident or the people with like just future thinking skills, like people who really know what they want to say and they still believe in the thing like two months later, and they don't just like want to say whatever they can say in the moment because they have access to the like they have an ability to say whatever they want. They turn it. It's just and it's it's a baby, it's still so young. And like, I always thought that I started YouTube way too late. I wish I was born like 10 years before I. Was so that I could be part of the like starting up of YouTube, but it we're still at such an early stage of the internet. It hasn't even been half a century since it like properly got started.
SPEAKER_03So and you missed a few years of kitchen videos. Like it was awful at first. It was really, really bad.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I like that content on YouTube.
SPEAKER_03But honestly, there's only so many kitten videos that need to be viewed any given day.
SPEAKER_02We post so many, I don't actually know the statistic for this, but how many like new like pieces of like digital files are posted online every single day? But it's probably in the billions, like there are so many people just posting stuff online and it's like it's there now, you know, and it's like it's so crazy.
SPEAKER_03Where is this gonna go? Where is this gonna go? Are we gonna continue at this pace? Or do you think we'll get bored with it?
SPEAKER_02I'm bored with it. I'm bored with some of it. I'm ready to like discontinue my Facebook uh Facebook like presence completely. I'm actually gonna react to the account like as soon as this podcast ends.
SPEAKER_03I'm just gonna be like going up and although May did not leave the internet or this conversation abruptly intentionally, we actually got disconnected right after that. I tried to piece together something and my internet did not work the day that we were scheduled to patch the the end of this puppy up. So I'm just going to leave this brief message thanking May for being on here and being very generous with her time and her ideas. I'm going to link all of the information that we talked about in the show notes, including May's YouTube channel, Intellect Grime, and I strongly, strongly suggest going over there and checking her out. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Virtual X Pat. And special thank you again to Damon Castillo for the music and to our special guest this time. If you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, just send me an email or contact me on social media in the show notes. You can find all my information, or you can just jot it down right now. Are you ready? You ready? Here we go. Steph Fuccio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr. There you go. Contact me. Oh, also LinkedIn too. You know what? I keep forgetting about that one. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to your questions, comments, feedback, any information, and volunteering to be on the podcast as well. Thank you so much and have a wonderful, wonderful day. On or offline.
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