SPEAKER_03 0:07

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? What can I say about Ronald? Okay, let me set the scene, because there needs to be a story for this introduction. I started to listen to Ronald's new podcast, Creativity very recently, and I had it on my calendar to actually contact him once I completed all five episodes that he already had out in the world. But for some reason, I woke up on the day that this podcast was recorded, and I thought, that's it. I'm not gonna wait till I listen to all five episodes. I'm so inspired by what he's doing and his presence. Let's contact him. So I sent him a quick message via WeChat, and lo and behold, he lives in Nanjing, and he was on his way to Shanghai where I live. Fast forward a few hours, and I was able to interview Ronald that same evening. How in the world that happened? Just feels like fate. And the two hours that we talked feels like it could have been tripled and I wouldn't even have noticed. He is such an intelligent, interesting, creative, sensitive person, and I am so happy that whatever it was in the universe that kicked my butt that day into not waiting until it felt like just the right time that I was completely prepared for this conversation. I'm so glad I had this conversation when I did, and I am really thankful that he had a flexible enough schedule to squeeze me in that day. So thank you, Ronald, and thank you to everybody that's gonna make it through the two hours of our conversation. If you do, I think you will really, really thank yourself. Well, thank you, Ronald, for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

No, thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Yay! Alright, so what we normally do in the beginning is the super awkward. You have 30 seconds, introduce yourself to our audience.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, I hate that part. No, it's okay. I'm Ronald Paredes. I'm a graphic designer and an artist from Caracas, Venezuela. Uh I've been in China for 12 years. And uh I have been very lucky actually because since I came to China I have been doing the exact same thing that I was doing in my country, just doing design and doing uh art. So I haven't been, you know, in in the necessity of teaching English or something like that that I wouldn't do anyway.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

You lucky duck. Where have you lived in China? I know you're in Nanjing now.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, always in Nanjing. Always in Nanjing?

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I never moved, only visited uh other places, but always in Nanjing.

unknown 3:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 3:24

Okay then.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I because I I got a job there, yeah, and uh my family is there and my my my kids and uh so I I toyed with the idea of moving to other places but never really happened.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

That was doing okay there.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Wow. Is China the only place that you've lived outside of Venezuela?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Uh no, I I was in Europe. I was I lived in England for like a year, almost a year. Then uh for some circumstances uh I moved to Italy. It is funny.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

You're smiling like there's a woman involved, and I don't want to get too personal, but you know, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

He was a fat guy. He was the no, it was the immigration officer who refused me and sent me back to Italy during some holidays.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Oh jeez.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Deported, actually.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Oh joy.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

He just didn't believe that I have the the you know the means to support myself.

SPEAKER_04 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

And he just took me back with the with the excuse that uh you could ask the visa in Italy, and when I got to Italy, they told me no, you cannot. So I didn't want to stay illegal in England, I didn't want to stay illegal in Italy, so I stayed in Italy the three months that we get. Yeah, and uh then I went back to my country. That was in 2003.

SPEAKER_04 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

But living in other countries other than that, no. Okay, just visited other places.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those are two, they're very different, three very different areas China, Italy, and England.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Those are quite different.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

It was an experience, yeah, tragic.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

I bet. Oh no, no, you had to stay three months in Italy. Oh, torture.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

You know what? Because the it was funny because the officer told me that I could ask the visa in Italy. I just packed the bag for like a couple of weeks. Yeah. And all my life was back in England. So I couldn't get back to England to pick up my books and my music and my clothes and all everything.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

It was in England.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

This is one of my worst nightmares, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

This is horrible.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Every time I don't do visa runs anymore because I'm too old to do the jobs where you would work for a month while they do your visa and then you get your real visa. I don't do that anymore. But I used to, and sometimes it would happen the second year. Like you'd have that awkward period where you're like, Am I staying? Am I going? I'm gonna go into this country and then come back. And I was always like, What if I can't get back in?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Yeah. It always was in my mind. It hasn't happened yet, but okay, do I have wood? There we go. But it could still happen, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

But oh so you just carry your valuables, your valuable thresholds with you everywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, which is usually like my computer, important documents, and my shoes.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

For me's books.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Yeah. Well, those I can buy again. But I've I've found that most places in the world have really crappy walking shoes. So yeah. But yeah, no, I would carry books if I had more space, but yeah, it's a difficult. Yeah, and I hate it.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

It was a good lesson on detachment from material things.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Yeah. Did you ever get your stuff back?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Uh my CDs?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

All the stuff that was in England that you didn't have to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Uh just my CDs and some books. My best friend who was keeping my stuff in there. He moved to Spain, and then I went to visit him after 10 years.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

Well, we couldn't ask him to keep it for 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yeah, but he was a good friend and he kept the stuff. He still kept some stuff in there.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Yeah, yeah. Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so we're gonna go back to 2003. What were you doing online, if anything? It's still pretty early in the internet games.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

There was nothing to do online.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Nothing to do online. When did you start do when do you remember starting to do stuff online? Even just email or anything?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

You know, the first thing that the the first um let's say relevant thing that I made online or that I did online was to find my first wife. And that's why I came to China.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Oh, okay. So that was through a website, like a dating website?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

That was the name. That it was that website existed. Uh I think that that that website got absorbed by Friendster.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Oh, I remember Friendster.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Is that still around?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

But Friendster got absorbed no high five got absorbed by Friendster before it was uh uh two different websites. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where I met my first wife.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

Oh, okay. And um And so you were doing dating websites before even email.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Uh yeah, but you know the funny thing is that that wasn't a uh dating website, was it like a just friendship?

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Ah, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

And uh I always have to think for Chinese girls, and I found this gorgeous Chinese girl in that question. I just talked to her.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

And uh we started just like online dating, it was between High Five and Skype.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

That happened, that was in the year 2005.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

That's still pretty early on in the the online sphere. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

And uh I was working in an advertising agency and I was getting paid for talking to my wife.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Good job, check.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Let's go backwards. Right now you've got a podcast and a website.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

The podcast the first what was the website. When I came to to China, I was already building websites by myself. I was uh programming in HTML, very basic stuff. Uh I did study in in HTML and Flash back in my country. And at the time you will, you know, people would build the entire website in Flash.

SPEAKER_05 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

It was very heavy and very complicated. I never learned uh XML, that was the language for Flash because it's super complicated, and with new version, you will have to learn then the the language like from scratch.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Basically, was Flash pre-CSS or has CSS existed?

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Previous.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Previous to yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

It was previous. Actually, I I discovered CSS or I started using CSS once I was in China. But I that there is a website, actually, there is a website from that time that is still online, one of my clients. What he haven't updated yet.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

From 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah.

unknown 10:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Ten years.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

10 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

From 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And I made that website in in HTML completely.

SPEAKER_04 10:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

And he's still he's not using it really because now the website, the the clients they they require that they can update the website and they can you know add stuff by themselves. So I don't do that anymore. That's why I I stopped offering web design.

SPEAKER_04 10:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

But at the beginning, yeah, we'll you know put all the website together in HTML.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

And but I wasn't there was not really a lot of activity to do. There was um I I had my what was this there was this website with the little the the three people the local the very popular it's like the first platform for friends.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Oh gosh. Let me think. If I reach reach far far far back, I remember MySpace Hotmail MySpace.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

My space.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

MySpace has three people in the local.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, it's like a three little people in the three you would remember those.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

You do graphics design. Yeah. I remember I remember like really wanting the music to be better than it was, just hitting play all the time, going no, no, no, no, no. Huh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

So yeah, uh, yeah, I have my my space, yeah, like everybody did. But I wasn't really focused on on online media. I remember when YouTube was created because being in the in the in the agency, my creative director, he's also a filmmaker.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

He was so excited about YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Yeah. They used to have a like a five-minute limit or something, didn't they?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Yeah, thank God.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

It wasn't at the very beginning, but it was in the news everywhere. This is YouTube, this is a new platform. And I I really didn't understand what it was about. Uh he he tried to explain to me what YouTube was about, but uh he was excited because for the first time you can produce videos, short videos, and you can put them on and you can have your channel and that kind of stuff. I do remember when that happened. Yeah, but I I wasn't doing anything. Uh I was focused on on coming to China.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

Yeah, yeah. So when did you start to do stuff other than work online?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

That would be you know, honestly, my presence online, yeah, like my my a presence online that I would maintain was in 2008 when with Facebook.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

Yeah, so a good decade. That's a pretty decent amount of time to be online, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah, uh 2008. It was at the beginning, probably late 2000 2007.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about when I left Facebook.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Well about time. And it was funny because uh I was working in a school. Uh I was doing design for a school, and uh the boss of the school was the one who introduced me to Facebook. But because it was supposed to be a platform for uh schools, for the universities, uh, and this lady she wanted to uh work with universities in the US to to educate the kids in her school to to go study in in the US. Yeah. So she mentioned Facebook and and I got I I got you know hooked in the in the Facebook thing.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

Oh my god, I was so addicted.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

And it was yeah, it was like a good year putting stuff in there.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

2004. My magic information boxes with Facebook existed in 2004.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Wow, yeah, no, I wasn't on.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Being in China, uh that was like the big boom.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And it happened that we had the Olympics in Beijing.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

And everything was wonderful until the Olympics were over.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Until they were over? Yeah. So you had Facebook during that the Beijing Olympics.

unknown 14:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

It wasn't there wasn't the firewall there.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Just when the the No they couldn't block it because it would be very controversial to have to block in all the platforms, all the social media while the the media have all the eyes on China. So they have to wait until the Olympics were over and all the fuss was over to do their thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Which is kind of the opposite of what happens now. Because when there's a big event now in China.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Now they don't care.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Now the firewall gets stronger and you have to wait for the event to be over at the end.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

We're about to hit that now. Between now and between August, uh September, October, yeah, is the time that things start getting difficult in China.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

What is what is somebody was talking about a conference that's coming to China soon. What is that conference?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

The the the CCCP the C BBB Gorman.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Is that the one that happens twice a year or something?

SPEAKER_01 15:53

I think that is once a year. Every year, yeah. Okay. That it's uh the the whole uh uh communist party has the conference. Yes. And uh in that time we are completely isolated, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

That's when the new season's coming out. Yay! Listeners, yay! Oh my gosh, I timed this badly.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

So it's like everybody's backing up with two and three VPNs and then they all get blocked and Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

That's I'll definitely be working on my Chinese language skills then, yeah. But it happens actually they only block uh they're only blocking mobile because on computers you can you can still honestly though, a huge portion of what I do is on my phone.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

So you should get prepared.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Yeah. If it's for a short time, I don't care because it it keeps it's I've been back a year and a half and it's been happening on and off.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, half is like yeah, it's like two months. But it's funny because uh during those two months then they start the the rumors that now in from January it's completely you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Do you remember last year when they were like in January they're gonna completely shut down everything? No VPN's gonna work. Here we sit, I'm I'm totally gonna jinx this now. But here we sit in what August 2018, eight months after it was supposed to happen. And so far. Okay-ish.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah, no, actually the government they sent a uh communication, they said it they're not gonna block anything. It's not gonna happen, it's just rumored that's not the official government of possibility. Well there's said that.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

There's also a rumor that Google is working on a China approved web or uh browser. Browser, no, searching. Yeah. And they were interviewing, I listened to a podcast today, funny that. And they were talking, they were interviewing Chinese people, and they were saying, you know, I kinda got out of the habit because it hasn't been uh readily available, so now I'm so used to Baidu. If Google comes back, yeah, why do I need it?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

And actually uh Baidu was making claims that they were saying that it doesn't matter if Google comes by with all functionality, yeah, full functionality, then would they would beat them anyway.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Yeah, I doubt they would I doubt The thing is if Google comes back with the Chinese version, is it going to be as accurate or usable as what they're already used to with Baidu?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

That's the thing.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

Yeah, so that's the thing. If you if they cut if Google comes back to the internet, yeah, if is it going to be good enough to be usable for that audience? Because it's it's not it wouldn't be for the foreigners, it would be for the giant 1.4 billion Chinese population.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

So I don't know. I don't know. I would rather just not need a VPN.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Exactly. I want to talk to my mom without the VPN.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Oh my gosh, yeah. Okay, okay, right. So Facebook in 2008. And um, and so that was was that just like keeping in touch with people, meeting people, like what kinds of things were you doing on the you know I was amazed.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

The the the the best thing about Facebook is that you could find people that you you didn't see in 15-20 years.

SPEAKER_05 19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

And that's you know, that's the most until now, I think it's amazing that you can keep in touch with people who probably you're never gonna see in your life again, but you somehow you're still in touch. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Uh especially with the situation that we have in my country. Uh the unfortunate situation that I was just listening to a podcast on the way here. They say that we have the the the migration of Venezuelans around the continent is the biggest in the history of the continent.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

And we have surpassed the Syrian migration.

SPEAKER_04 19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

So everybody now is a lot a lot of Venezuelan people that are using social media and doing a lot of work online, not only to raise awareness about what's going on in my country, but to keep in touch with our families and friends.

SPEAKER_04 20:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Now it's essential for us for Venezuelan people, it's essential. You cannot be out of social media.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

You gotta stay in touch no matter what happens, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

All friends, family, you know, everybody's on social media now, and everybody's making videos, everybody's posting on Instagram, uh, Facebook. It's it's a big WhatsApp. It's major for us in Venezuela. What's up is essential.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

It is when did that get so popular? Because about two or three years ago I started really hearing everybody talking about WhatsApp, but I don't remember when it first came onto the scene. Do you remember when you started using it?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

I there was a gap, actually. There was a gap because yeah, it started I don't really remember. I think it was in 2000 before it was definitely before 2010. And I even deleted it from my phone because I never used it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then when this situation started happening in my country, yeah, uh we started using WhatsApp again. Yeah, and it's been five years probably. And my sister is my sister is in Mexico.

SPEAKER_04 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

We have a group in WhatsApp, yeah. And then it's my sister in Mexico, my brother in Peru, my mom in Caracas, and me in China. So we have the group with all the four flags.

SPEAKER_04 21:34

Oh my gosh.

unknown 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

And the Southwick conference and yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Do you think your mom will stay through whatever happens next?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Or do you think she'll go and live with one of your siblings or uh it is complicated, but we are trying to get her to to come to Mexico or Peru.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

For sure. The inflation, they were talking about the inflation being like kind of a wheelbarrow-esque kind.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

It's projected to hit the 1 million% at the end of a year.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

How is that possible? I can't even think of what that means from one day to the next as far as buying something.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

That's insane. Actually, many places you you cannot find the price because from the moment you grab it from the the stand to the moment you're gonna pay have changed the price already. Oh my goodness. So it is it it is absolutely ridiculous and then it doesn't seem to stop.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

But yeah, the the WhatsApp has been our way to be connected.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

That's amazing. That's amazing. And a lot of people are using WhatsApp for that kind of thing to keep connected.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

And uh you know it's not to be grim and and and tragic, but uh I found out about by that passing because of Facebook last year. Almost yeah, exactly one year ago. I was going to bed and like everybody does, yeah, checking Facebook before going to bed. Of course, and and I see one one of my posts, one of my cousins, yeah. Oh Paredes, he was a good man, and uh you know you can imagine my my heart dropped, and he was jumping to WhatsApp. Yeah, and uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Being so far, it's just horrible that's the most horrible thing that can happen. Right. You know, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

That's just like do you do you reply? Do you contact others?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Like what do you just yeah, no, I just contacted my my my sister and and my my my my close family and at the same time I had another cousin calling me in WhatsApp, yeah. But I I didn't want to talk to anybody, yeah, actually. I never answered the phone, yeah. But yeah, it was it was horrible. It was horrible. And then using exactly the same WhatsApp to talk to a very close friend in Spain, yeah, and another close friend in Italy. Yeah, it's just it's so unbelievable, and it's so sad that it's now banned in China, you know.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

They banned Reddit last week too.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

They did, yeah. I don't use Reddit a lot.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

No, I don't either, but it seemed like the most unassuming site with like not very controversial stuff. I thought. Like I've only been on a few times and been like, uh, not really my thing. But I was like, really that? What what's left?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

What is it? That's uh controversial. I don't know what's left for the rest.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

I really didn't think so. So it sounds like you use the internet mostly for communication.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah, until I started taking well, there was a three years ago, I was working with a uh a friend, American guy. We were working on a social venture uh company, we were trying to do a company to give support to people in uh impoverished countries, and uh we used a lot of social media that was that's when we got serious about using Twitter and uh Facebook and YouTube. But we we always are very we're very focused on on uh on the social media that we use because a lot of people have it it is a lot of work to maintain social media. It's a pain. It's it's difficult. It is and uh if you don't do it well, you just waste the time. You know, if you don't focus and on not all the social media, people make a mistake, not all the social media uh work the same. They are very specific and they have a very specific target and a very specific purpose. So you use for example, uh right now I don't use Twitter because I don't really need it. As a visual artist, Twitter uh is not really my platform, sure, but I'm an avid user of Instagram because it's completely visual.

SPEAKER_05 26:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

So that those are my platforms, but at the time we needed to raise awareness about what we were doing, so we have to have a strategy to use Twitter, a strategy to use uh YouTube, and you have to plan the the post that you're gonna make, and uh you have to uh accordingly to the the time and the zone that you want to hit, and it's it's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

It's a lot of work. Did you guys use one of those planners where you could like we did? Yeah, yeah. Which one did you use?

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Well, there was another uh my my my business partner, he was in charge of that. He was the savvy on that aspect. My my work was to produce the content in in terms of uh the design, sometimes even writing. But he was the one posting and then he he but we yeah, we did some of this platform to use this platform to to program the post because otherwise doing it by yourself by hand, it just it gets messy.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we get busy during the day. Yeah, as much as you're like, okay, every day or every afternoon or every evening I have to do this, other stuff happens.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Well, it is uh it is a new department in most companies, you know. You have a social media department because it takes so much of your time. You need to have people dedicated to just do that. Yep, just do that. Yeah, so that was the the time of when I was really learning how to use the the the on the social media and how you can use your post to influence.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

So I don't want to time that I was getting in touch with podcasting.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Uh because we would also podcast you started that in 2016, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

So wait, can we back up? What social what what is a social venture?

SPEAKER_01 28:19

The idea was to create a company that it will make money, like any other corporation. Yeah. But we will have we will have a a top to our salaries. All our salary will be tapped. Gasp.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

And it will be to uh what we consider a reasonable salary to live a decent life a year, yeah. And whatever it comes over that, it will be dedicated to support uh people in in other areas. Like for example, uh we will create a team. I would do, I had a background in advertising and marketing and of course graphic design.

SPEAKER_05 29:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

So that would be my area. There was another guy uh in education, there was another guy in business and management. So for example, uh you you know this uh concept of micro loans?

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Well, it was something like that. You come to us and you say, Well, I wanna I want to open an organic coffee shop and we will give you the resources not only financially, but also you know, the supporting marketing, advertising, management.

SPEAKER_04 29:31

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

And that money, when once you start running, some of that money will go back to the company, gotcha, and that money will the the overhead will be used to support somebody else. It will be become a chain, and it will be used to lift people out of poverty, basically. So, for example, uh an idea that I had back then, a big issue that we have in India is people are dying because they basically they don't have the culture of washing their hands before eating, which is a very simple stuff, yeah, but it's happening and it shouldn't be happening. And I thought, well, what if we we take uh uh some women or some people in some village in India and we teach them how to produce soap, cosmetic soaps. You know this this brand of soaps like uh Lush, yeah, yeah. They have this beautiful soap and and you know the bath products.

SPEAKER_05 30:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

You can have those produced in India with natural products, yeah. And at the same time you use that platform to educate people about the importance of hygiene, yeah. And you you help them to produce money and give them education about that. So it's that kind of stuff that we were trying to do.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Is that still going on? You started 2015.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Uh no, it was very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Uh it is a battle, you know. Uh people people find it uh like funny, uh like a co like a conspiracy theory, but it there is a system that is really hard to to to battle when you're working in this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

I believe it.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

And there are people who don't do not want to take people out of poverty.

SPEAKER_05 31:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

There is a lot of people who need people oppressed. So it gets difficult. Sometimes it gets difficult to to produce this kind of work.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Did you when you were hitting those walls with people, did you get a a very clear no, or do people just try to make things difficult to move forward?

SPEAKER_01 31:46

There was not really an entity or a person or a group of persons trying to to make things difficult for us.

SPEAKER_05 31:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

It's more of a system that is established. So it gets difficult to get resources, it gets difficult to reach certain areas, it gets difficult to find the support from some people. So everything is everything has to be done like hand to hand, you know, and sometimes if you don't have the money to start, it can be very steep.

SPEAKER_05 32:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

So but you know, it it is possible and we still we still think it's possible. We're not working on that together anymore. But for example, that the cost of the cost of uh and homelessness in the US, for example, yeah, it's not that high. It's not that high, and you can do it in a year.

SPEAKER_03 32:45

Ah, if you were there to put the people in there.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

They said that if you take a quarter of what people spend in in corporate uh trips and in corporate parties and that kind of stuff, you can you allocate that money into and and are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding?

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at Steph Fuccio S T E P H F U C C I O at Gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Fuccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Out into the world. Let's do it. That's the thing that hurts my head, is I know this money is out there, and yet we don't do anything.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Well, there is some mix of what I was telling you before that some people need these other people being in those conditions, and there is a lot of unawareness, and there is a lot of people not simply not caring.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

There is you know, there is a big misconception, and and I'm I know we're taking a big tangent here, but there is a big misconception that people think that for you to do good, you need to have a lot of money and a lot of time to volunteer. And and most people say, Well, yeah, I would like to do something for the poor people, but I don't have the time. I I I have my hands full with my kids and my work, and but you don't really need a lot of time or a lot of money, you know. You just need a little bit of time, yeah. And uh sometimes these people don't even want money.

SPEAKER_04 34:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

I have a friend, she wanted to start a website about uh socks for homeless people. Yeah, and most people don't know this, but uh homeless people they sometimes they don't even want food, they need socks. Socks is the item that they they you know they need the most. So she wanted to start, and there is a company, there is a website that that does this.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

You buy socks and they donate another pair to the home of that side pompas. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

It's a company they produce socks.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

We're gonna put that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Yeah, really, really cool. Pompas.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Just wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

They're doing that.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

So our idea that what I wanted to do with her is just to create uh put artwork in the socks and having artists putting their their art in socks.

SPEAKER_04 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

And basically the same concept. Because producing socks in China is very cheap.

SPEAKER_04 35:43

Very, very cheap.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Doesn't drive me crazy how how much resources we waste here in China.

SPEAKER_05 35:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

I the other day I saw a documentary uh I saw a man in Africa who saved a year and a half of money to buy a bicycle so he can take his products to the next village to to sell and how much his life changed after he got the bicycle.

SPEAKER_03 36:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

How many bicycles will you see dumping the street here in China?

SPEAKER_03 36:08

Piles of shared bicycles.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

It's unbelievable. Then I think I always think how many life could be changed if those uh bicycles were chipped to Africa, for example.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

There really isn't a lack of stuff in the world, it's a lack of getting it to the right people. And that's the thing. The more I go to other to new countries and see different situations, I realize there's no scarcity. It's a matter of people kind of holding back and saying, but I might need it later. Nobody needs as many bicycles. We don't. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

No, but every anybody they're available now online. You can see that the the bicycles dumped from space. Yeah. From the space from drones. You see the drones and the piles of the biggest.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah, sorry, for the folks who are not living in China, just some. There's been a I know there were shared bikes in Portland and I think maybe somewhere on the East Coast in the US, and some I saw some in London actually, too. So there were a ton of them, like Moe bike and Ofo, and what were some of the other blue bike and uh green ones, I think.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

The mobikes are the orange one, olfo?

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Yeah, orange and yellow ones.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Yeah, those are the two ones that are international.

SPEAKER_03 37:21

Those are the two, yeah. I rode a Moabike in Thailand last month.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

With my app from China, it actually worked over there. It's just amazing, but they overproduced them. Apparently, the companies that made them made the money with the grants that came in, and then they didn't maintain the bikes. Yeah. Even though on the app you can like report things and sometimes maybe they do fix them, but apparently there's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

But it's cheaper to produce the bike than replace it or or or uh fix it.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

That's the problem. But when you have the biggest population in the world and you're producing things for that population and you make waste, it's really destructive.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Even here when you see that they're coming they become a nuisance because you're walking on the path and the pathway and it's cross the street and yeah, yeah, and they've started to have like there's have you seen the signs that say like no shared bikes beyond this point?

SPEAKER_03 38:13

So they're starting to ban them in certain places. When I was down in Dalian last year for work in the in the center of the city, you couldn't ride a motorcycle, an e-bike, or bicycle. They were just like, forget it, just no. Too many accidents, too much is happening, it's not gonna happen in downtown.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

I see I see those bicycles abandoned in the most ridiculous place. Yeah, in the middle of the highway.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

You can see that it's crazy. They should just got there in the first place. I don't know. Ridiculous. In top of trees.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

They just ride to places and just leave them there, and it's like, okay, I know you're that's that's the whole thing with shared bikes, but somewhere where somebody would actually pick it up, please.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah, that's the thing. There are the places that people shouldn't even be riding bicycles to begin with. I know.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

I know. Somebody was describing the path to a place yesterday to me, and they said, but you're only on the highway for a little while. And I'm like, no, that's not a bicycle trip. In no world. Like by like highways here are even bigger than highways in Los Angeles, folks. They're like what six, eight, ten, twelve lanes across. It's they're huge. I would never be on a bicycle on that place.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Some people do, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Okay, we gotta go back online.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Well, that's an online business, actually.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Right? It really is. It really, yeah, they should they should start selling them to someplace else. That could be a side because they already got the funding for the initial start. Now they need to get rid of the products that are just cluttering up everywhere here. Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so as far as social media in China, how how is your how are your language skills? And no judgment, mine suck.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Oh, my Chinese is terrible.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Is it terrible?

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Is it terrible?

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Okay, can you read like are you on any social media in China?

SPEAKER_01 39:56

In China no, other than we chats.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

But the thing is the the funny because the kind of art that I do, uh Chinese people don't seem to like anymore. Well ever.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

They they don't Chinese people are very traditional in in their taste. So for a China unless you are in a big city like Shanghai where the probably the market is more the people are more uh educated, and I don't uh it I don't mean that in the in the wrong way. Uh it doesn't mean that but people have a like a a wider perspective. Sure. And uh yeah, other than that, uh people seem to like more traditional stuff, you know, the landscape, the portrait, and the very, very traditional, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

The very traditional thousands of years ago kind of art. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

So uh what I do is it's not at all like that. Yeah, uh it's very experimental, yeah. It's not abstract, but it's it's very different. And a lot of people don't like so I never I never it China is not really my market.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

That's why I use Instagram, you know, even when it's blocked, yes, it's banned in China. Yeah, uh Instagram to me is still very big. And uh I I have a website that I honestly I never maintained. Yeah, I never yeah. Now that I'm doing the podcast, that I I I rescued the podcast the podcast, I'm gonna tell you why I had the idea of the podcast. I was thinking, what can I do other than design that can satisfy the need that I have to to help and can help me to to diversify my activities in China. And then I said, well, I like I I I'm a designer, I'm an artist, that's creative work. I do like uh I love psychology also.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

That comes through loud and clear. Yeah, yeah, and uh I think when I listen to your podcast, if I can interrupt, which I am, uh I think of you like a a creativity psychologist. Yes. Or a creativity philosopher. But you're you're much more pragmatic, so I I lean on the psychology.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Exactly, and that's that's the pragmatism that I try to be very uh emphatic because I don't believe in in being positive for the sake of being positive. Yeah, you know, and I don't like when people tell me, oh you if you have a blockage in your mind, just go for a walk and take a bath. It works. Yeah, but I I want people to understand why it works. What is the process behind that? What is happening? Yeah, because we have too many creative coaches, and who goes to these people? It's the people who already is in a creative career.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Wait, do we have a lot of creative coaches? This is a thing. In the world.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Yeah, we do a lot.

SPEAKER_03 42:48

I had no idea there was such a thing as creative coaches.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

But that's the thing that a lot of people Yeah, because a lot of people they take the same the same idea of I'm gonna tell you how to be creative. Yeah. Uh just relax, take a walk, you know, sing a song, laugh.

SPEAKER_03 43:07

Oh, that kind of thing. So they're not actually helping them find their probably they do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

But they're not going to the court.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

And another thing is what happened with the people who what happened with the people who are not or they don't consider themselves creative. What happened with the accountant? Or what happened with the lady who killed the streets, you know? We all we are all creative. So these people have this ability, naturally we're wired to be creative. We just we don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

We don't know how to access that ability.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

We push it away pretty early on in a lot of societies, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

From the school, especially in China. And being in China, that was my my biggest drive. Because uh, in the Chinese education system, creativity is completely shut down from very very early age and education is based on repetition, memorization, and you don't you're not allowed to analyze. I I remember I was shocked by a friend who told me in the university that they would be given a text to analyze but once they were finished reading the text the teacher will give them the conclusions. And my friend would say but yeah but I have a different no no no no these are the conclusions and this is what it is at a university level and I found that so tragic you know and it's not that a lot of people think that the Chinese people are not creative and and that's not true. They're not being allowed to be creative. It's not true because in so many other parts of society the creativity just absolutely comes out in huge waves getting around because it's like water you know that's what people don't understand creativity it is is a basic human necessity and I in in one of my podcasts I talk about that it is actually in the Maslow pyramid of human needs.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

Yeah at the top actually so when you're not when you stop being creative you lose connection with who you are it's like you you force people to stop breathing or stop eating you know it's a human necessity I think a lot of people think okay if I'm not in a creative profession and I'm not producing something creatively I'm not creative but it's so much more than that that is the misconception that I want to debunk.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Yeah I I don't I want people to understand that to be creative you don't have to be painting or writing or making music. Yeah you can be doing any kind of work and being creative doing that.

SPEAKER_03 45:51

Now is a good time to remind them of the name of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Ah the podcast is called the Creativity Roots podcast.

SPEAKER_03 45:58

Now I have a confession to make because I haven't actually been to your website yet but you talk about going to the website from the podcast and now I'm that listener who hasn't done my homework.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Well the the idea the idea of having a website because I'm I mean I'm inviting people to send me their creations yeah because I want to encourage people to to do creative work. So for example you the the you're not a writer or you're not a musician but suddenly you felt the the urge to write something I want you to send it over to me. Yeah and I will show the this work without any judgment and I want to find a way to people for people to feel comfortable creating. So for example if somebody sent me a a picture or a drawing or a painting I need a platform where to show this work.

SPEAKER_03 46:51

I'm gonna show it in the in the podcast obviously so I need a website yeah but I'm not there yet because you have read poems and you have played music of some of your listeners but yeah you can't show pages exactly so I need a platform where I can show people uh visual work.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

What I do is for example if you're a painter I will ask you to record uh probably one minute or two minutes you're introducing yourself introducing your work and then I will put I will post that in the podcast okay and then invite you to see the work in the website. Very right okay so is it mostly just that it's just displaying other people's it's for displaying the the the the people's work yeah now I know you're a graphic designer for work but do you do any do you produce anything for fun other than the podcast like anything visual I yeah for example um two years ago I I wrote a book for my my son I should have brought one for you I only what's the story what's the story it's a it's a well because uh at the time when I brought the book I was separated I wasn't living with my son I would come to stay with him on the weekends and I would put him to bed yeah so it's a bedtime bedtime story that we met up together those are the best and you did pictures in it and stuff so yeah so because my son was born in the year of the rabbit and he has pretty big feet and his favorite color was the the green color now he changed. Yeah so it's the rabbit with the big shoes and the shoes are green. Yeah so it's the story it's a it's a little bit um an analogy of the situation in China with the pollution and the situation I was going through personally. Yeah yeah yeah so the the story is like uh this rabbit has a farm where he grows broccoli and carrots and the there there are these black clouds they come into the garden and they ruin the the the plantation and then he goes into searching for the the the the rain yeah yeah so at the end he makes friends he finds the rain I'm not gonna spoil it for you but yeah is a happy ending yeah it is a happy ending at the end they they they make it rain that's awesome okay I know you made your fear for specific purpose but are you thinking of ever kind of mass producing it or like selling it online or doing anything like that? I did I did I did self-publishing actually printed the book yeah uh it is difficult if you don't have the platform to sell Amazon I I don't know why I never made it I couldn't make it work from China for me uh but that's another thing that if you're in China as a foreigner you can have a credit card and if you don't have a credit card there is a a lot of uh things that you cannot do online and that's a big issue even with Alipay and WeChat pay I don't think Amazon the Chinese Amazon does yeah but I don't know I couldn't make it work even even to book the the the Airbnb yeah I I get in difficulties to do it with the Alipay sometimes it does I said man oh man oh man yeah we started getting issued like national ID cards do you have one of those newfangled things?

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Oh it's great it's a little ID card it has a QR code you can scan it and see all the information that everybody else can see when they scan your card can't use it for anything not a thing can't use it at the bank can't use it at any company to open or close any accounts or do anything can't use it when I come in and out of the country it's completely useless. It's just another idea I carry around.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

What's the point?

SPEAKER_03 50:46

I don't know I don't know if in the future it's gonna replace the passport I don't know I don't know because they can't put that kind of thing in foreign passports like they can't damage them that way. So I guess they wanted their own card to do stuff. But when I've had this kind of card in other countries I could use it for things. But this one I've taken it everywhere and pretended not to have my passport and I'm like and they're like no this doesn't mean anything.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Like why do I have this but it exists so who knows maybe in the future it'll be something it is it is a big uh problem we if you don't have a credit card uh in China you it gets very difficult to do stuff as a foreigner you can have a credit card yeah yeah yeah so it it it makes things hard for me but going back to the the things that I do for phone as a designer there was a time that I was producing uh clothed t-shirts yeah also yeah yeah yeah actually that's the dream you know to make design for myself yeah uh but you don't make a lot of money with that so it it it gets difficult yeah my idea with the podcast uh that I'm hoping that is to to express the idea that everybody can be creative because it it is true everybody can be creative yeah and I want the people who think they're not creative to have have access to this information. And I think the best way is to make people understand how things work. When you like for example with a car when you break it down and you see how every piece works you understand better how the car works. So it's the same with the brain with the with the creative process yeah when you break it down yes taking a walk in the park works but why yeah but when you relax your brain the ideas flow and then you can access memories and you can but there is a process there is a physiological and psychological process that happens in there in the US that is my base right there are a certain population of people that think if I'm creative I'm vulnerable I'd rather just go make money and turn all of that off it's it's too hard to be that tapped into that thing I can't control. Yeah what do you say to those folks you know I I have an episode coming that is about yeah creativity is the creativity been the biggest act act of rebellion that anybody can have you reveal against society sometimes even against yourself and there is a reason for that I I'm gonna explain it in the episode but basically when you are creative there is a lot of things that are telling you not to do that not to be vulnerable not to be ridiculous not to be different where in the world in your head in in the world and in your head you you you you get these ideas implanted in your head from early in the school because when you're a kid you go for it you know and you you paint the sky orange and the world's gonna tell you you have to be very mean to tell a two year old kid that sky is not orange you are an idiot you know you have to paint in the lines yeah the tree cannot be bigger than the picture yeah so there is a point where it's cute but when I stop being cute and stop and start being wrong that's when we start losing the not not the creativity we start losing the confidence because of course you're gonna know at some point that you cannot make the the house bigger than the tree.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yeah but it is a process that you every person has to go through so in the school I explained this in in another episode in the school you have to perform you have to excel in a short period of time you have one semester to excel you're not allowed to make mistakes which are very important to learn yeah you're not allowed to ridicule yourself you're not allowed to be unfit you have to have behavior you have to have performance you have to you have to fulfill a lot of things that restrain you from being creative or from being free basically so tragic you did an episode on failure yeah and I was kind of giggling the whole way through going yes thank god yes like you have to fail you just have to failure is like a sign that you're doing it yeah the more you fail the closer you get to well maybe success and maybe not but I mean at least it means you're doing something but a lot of people are so fear so afraid of fear uh of failure that they don't even attempt. But you can't not fail in life I know that's a double negative but I'm sticking to it you can't you can't go through your entire life and never fail at anything every yeah yeah we I mean just try learning to walk we fail a trillion times before we can do it like every you have to fail.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

Yeah and it's like I like like like I tell my wife um our our son he was well he now he walks now he runs but when he was learning to walk and he would fall yeah I would I tell my wife don't pick him up let him get up by himself yeah yeah don't go help him don't go cry my baby no let him you know if he cries you tell him don't cry it's okay get up yeah nothing happens yeah and now you he learns he falls down he get up and he keeps running he keeps playing but that doesn't happen and and that is another sign that that's why for me this this work that I'm that I'm doing is important because I want parents so to understand these these things. I want parents to even before you you you reach the school no give independence to your kids and talk to them like they're adults because they understand they they do know kids are so smart they're very smart they're so smart oh my gosh do you ever listen to the rapper I guess he's called Macklemore?

SPEAKER_03 57:23

No Oh man he did this um Riff story years and years ago that everybody knows it's really funny. He's this goofy tall white dude that does he's a really good rapper but he's he's goofy looking he's just goofy and but he's got like this really fun personality and so there's this YouTube channel that just showed up in my algorithm yesterday and it was these kids it's this whole channel where they have these like seven eight nine year old kids and they sit around with whatever one uh either actor or musician or whatever's in the room and they just ask them questions. And for nine minutes these really tiny children asked some of the most intelligent honest questions to this random rapper that they didn't even know because they're like not on the rap radar yet generally speaking they were like I don't know who you are but you sing okay well what about this what about this what about this and it was the coolest stuff and I was like adults would be too afraid to ask those questions.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

You know it's funny that you mentioned that because uh I find that a lot in China now people in China especially old people older people yeah they they grew up in a country that was closed and they keep that inquisitive curiosity that is very childlike. They're awesome so it it it wouldn't be you know you shouldn't be surprised if uh an old person comes to you and just touch your hair or just staring at you for you know and it's very uncomfortable but it's actually funny and cute yeah because they're so curious and they just go for it you know and just touch you and touch your skin yeah and touch your hair they're like kids yeah and this is this woman that's 60 50 something years old who's just curious and just grab you and touch you. Yeah that is you know we we shouldn't lose that I know of course we we have to be appropriate we're not gonna be touching people depends on what you're touching exactly but for me it's important for people to understand going back to your question that what we these folks should do understand that they're not at school anymore and when you're an adult you are capable of having more control of your life even when you probably you're in a job yeah that has the same restrictions you you have to perform well in a period of time and you and you have to reach some goals and but you you can allow yourself some freedom some flexibility because you are a big boy now or big woman now and uh you can find spots where you can be flexible with yourself and allow yourself to be ridiculous and to be free. Ridiculous is awesome yeah being ridiculous is awesome that there is a there is a campaign that I I I love from Diesel you know this this brand Diesel yeah and they say embrace the stupid yes and the commercial is so beautiful because it explain it is a goofy song and it's just very visual but explain how beautiful it is life when you're stupid. Yeah how you allow yourself to be stupid and you're free and and when you experience that at first hand when you allow yourself to be stupid and you laugh and then without fear of judgment.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

And that quote unquote stupidity and that kind of childish nature anywhere I've been in the world that's the thing that uses the least words and is understood by the most people all that and and love but yeah but I guess pretty much the same which is with all age ranges like that can like a a three year old will will get it and start giggling and an 80 or 90 year old will get it like the whole range like that's the thing that most people can can identify with and can communicate even without understanding exactly what you're saying. And you know you'll see it because now people are so concerned about uh hoarding possessions and hoarding fame now we're so worried about the likes and the uh the the the approval from other people people buy likes and followers now I was thinking about that this morning I think that is like this is a horrible analogy but it's it's like going to to to a hawker and ask her to love you you know and you're you're buying I hadn't done that analogy but yeah it's it is buying love because we feel that we get the same endorphins right when we get likes and stuff. Is that yeah yeah I I don't I don't like it I don't like it's weird like the first time I got an e because I started a YouTube channel last year and the first time I got an email from someone advertising how many followers they could get me I was like wait you can buy this stuff now?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:09

And then every s ever since then I'm looking at people's sites going okay you have 20 million people do you really have 20 million people?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

Who cares? And oh but a lot of people care but what what make what difference does it make you having for some people it's money. They do I can sell it in a company yeah and uh there are different ways to do that. If you work in advertising and you you're gonna find out there are companies that they build a a group of ambassadors that push for their brand that's different that's strategy.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:43

Yeah but for a personal for a for a for a person an individual to do that I but individuals are now their own brands so much weirdness going on that's another issue that I'm gonna touch on influencers is a weird weird world right now but we gotta get back online. Yeah we gotta get back online. So who's your audience then? Because it sounds like you want to reach some of the Chinese parents but your podcast is in English and I don't remember what your platform is doing you you said oh anchor. Anchor is that behind the firewall or is that accessible to them it's accessi it's still accessible for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

You could expect for yeah you could expect it give it a few months yeah give it a few months so who do you want to listen to? My audience is not Chinese unfortunately uh for me to have a Chinese audience I will have to do the podcast in Chinese honestly the the podcast is so new I have only five episodes on and uh I'm still building an audience. Yeah but who do you envision it to I know it could be very different than who ends up being your listener but who do you think might be interested I I would like to have uh teachers uh parents I would like to be parents and university graduates people who are just going for uh the world yeah leave in that academic bubble yeah yeah and break that you know that shell they come out of the school with yeah uh that at the age you know any any kind of age yeah so I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna reach that audience yeah if ever and uh how I'm gonna build uh a a group of people but I one of the reasons why I started this also is because I was looking information for myself yeah how to uh be more creative and how to work with creativity and most of the information that I found is very specific to the market it's very specific for artists and it's for uh managers and for you know people who that's a good point but for the common people you couldn't find anything because creativity is for creative people right it's in that compartmentalized box yeah and that's it is it's wrong to begin with because you shouldn't be the creative you should be you should call it the creator creative are everyone everyone is creative yeah it's like you want to to make a distinction between well these ones are humans and these ones are less human there are some people that do that yes some people do that and it's it's terrible so that that's the kind of thing that I want to avoid because I don't want to call the creative people the creative I want to make a distinction creative is everyone everyone is creative because everyone is capable of creativity. Those who make a living out of creativity they are creators because they produce work to make a living To live out of their work. So they are creators. But creative is everyone.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:05

And that's a distinction that we have to start making.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:07

That is really good. Right. So it's creatives and creators. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Because that the moment there was a moment in history where with we artists we kidnapped the term. And now creativity is for us.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:25

And you, lesser human, you don't have to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:29

Was it the artist or was it the people that wanted people to work and kind of turn off their fun and go be productive for the market's sake?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:36

I'm still trying to figure that out and I've been doing some research because there is a yeah, for example, in China, there was a very specific group of people who would write mandarin and read Mandarin. Not everybody would do it, could do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

Uh same thing in Europe. In the court, you will have somebody who would write.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:58

And in the church.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:59

And in the church in the Vatican, you will have the painter, and he's this like that's the guy who paints. And the rest is just, you know, the common people. Right. They just do whatever they do to keep living. So there was a moment, yes. And I believe there is also a point when we artists we start losing our importance in history. And we need to grasp that importance. And we need to keep we need to man we need to keep the how has the importance been lost? I think it happens when the when people are not getting commissions anymore from the courts or from the rich people to make a portrait, and you know you you have a mesenas or you have a patron that will support you.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

And and you are my artist, and I will pay you every month just to paint me and my family and my friends. And and and and you and there was at the time these people were very, very important. They have a very good life.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:05

You know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:06

Would artists nowadays want something like that? It feels like they at least Western artists, it feels like the ones that I've known wouldn't want that kind of dependency these days.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

Not that not the dependency, but the level of importance that we had at that time.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:24

I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

Because at that time the artist was doing something relevant.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

The artist at that time was recording history.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

It was a point of reference. If the artist wouldn't re uh wouldn't make his work, we wouldn't know. Well, probably happen with the the the the invention of photography.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:46

Are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding? Me too. Hey, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at Steph Fuccio S-T-E-P-H F-U-C-C-I-O at gmail.com. Or you can hit me up on any of my social media platforms. I am Steph Fuccio on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. So contact me. Let's line this up. I would love to get your opinion into these questions. Out into the world. Let's do it. So I'm a huge fan of technology. When people diss technology for making us do blah, fill in the blank. Anything bad, it's oh it's the technology that did it. It's the technology that technology doesn't do shit. We do stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:39

But it sounds like part of the problem is that technology and tools to create art have gotten too much in the hands of the people, and everybody's doing it, so the artists aren't getting the attention they need. Is that part of what you're saying, or am I making changes?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:55

Yeah, uh yeah, well, for example, when when you have photography, why would you need an artist to record the history? It's not important anymore to make a record of history or you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

Is there such a thing as too many viewpoints on a historical event? Like if too many people are taking pictures of something really important that's happening, is that bad?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

Um no, even when you have photography, everybody everybody have their diff their own point of view and it's a different point of view.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

A lot of people think that taking a picture is just a click and but there is a lot that photographer puts in in his work when they're taking the picture.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

And uh you can you can see it when there is good photography, you can see that the you can actually identify the work of the specific photographer in his work.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:02

So with all of the if we stick with the photography example, with all of the photography amateur photography online, how do we sift through all of that and give credit to the people who have fine-tuned their craft? How is that happening now?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

Is it happening now? It is, but you see it now with with with Instagram, Instagram was a big hit. Because Instagram did what YouTube with video, Instagram made photography democratic, especially with with the filters. Yeah, you know, uh now a crappy picture can look professional. Yeah, but even with the filters, you can see style, you can see like a person will have a trend, and we have a a favorite filter that we use and that responds to something very personal that this person has.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:00

So it's like it's like the truth that there everybody's gonna give you a version of the truth, their own version.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:07

So it's just it's the same with even with photography, that is it's so mechanical that you just push a button and the picture is there. But that is the way you see things, it's the the angle and the colors that you use and uh the treatment that you give to the picture. So you're gonna find if you if you're careful, now it's got it's getting more difficult. There's some people so much people doing it, yeah. But you're gonna find there are specific things that make up photography very unique. Even if it's not professional.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:39

Yeah, because with the thing of trying to give the the people that put the most time and effort and skill into their craft, and there being so many photos out there, how do you balance those two things?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

It gets more difficult.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:52

There's just so much. I mean it's it's kind of a big problem with the internet in general, is we'll probably look back 20 or 30 years from now, if not 10, and go, man, that thing is was a mess. How could anybody find anything online? Yeah, because it it is a virtual mess. Yeah, it's it's an absolute and complete mess. If a library were organized like the internet, who would go? You can't find it. I mean, you can find stuff, but is it the stuff that you need, is it the stuff that you want? It's a mess.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:26

Yeah, I I don't even uh I I don't even know how you get any work done without the internet before. It was so well, I remember when I was working in when I just started working in advertising, yeah, that we will browse actual books for pictures.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:42

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:43

And you would go to the scanner with the with a pile of books and you will and then you expand the pictures and then you but we didn't have uh Google images and anything like that. Twenty years ago, I'm so old.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:57

I did oh you're old. I'm actually older than you, I haven't told you yet. But yeah, no, I worked in a lot of different kinds of offices in different industries before I moved overseas, and a significant amount of that was with typewriters and phones and paper. Yeah, paper and paper and paper and file and cabot rooms just with tons of paper.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:20

But you know that now that we're talking about technology, I think we're reaching a stage that is quite critical. Uh we are in a dark ages, I believe. Because we are so dependent on technology that we are people forget that we are still evolving. Yeah, we haven't stopped evolving, and all these habits that we're learning right now, and all this uh technology influencing the way we behave and the way we interact with ourselves and with other people, they are becoming treats that you're gonna inherit in the future. People don't believe you you remember the movie Wally?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:09

I didn't see it, but I have heard of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:11

Well, in that movie, they're supposed to be in the future, the planet is destroyed, and everybody's living in these huge uh spaceships. And you know how people live in those spaceships is they they sit, they are sitting in chairs, floating chairs, yeah, all bees, soaking uh a milkshake, a protein milkshake, yeah, and with a screen, they keep you blind all the time, and you're just going in circles. Yeah, and that is so that's depressing that is so accurate.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

What you think that's where we're headed, honestly?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

If we don't make a change, yes. People, for example, there wasn't uh uh survey uh recently here in Shanghai. Chinese people are forgetting their characters.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:04

They don't know how to write the characters.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

Why is that happening? Because we are writing only with the phone. We're losing the ability to handwrite.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:14

The literacy rate that is said to exist in China is pretty inflated. If you go to the countryside, you'll notice very quickly when you show things in Hanza characters, is no, no, no, the literacy rate is not 95 or whatever percent they say it is. Also, the characters are insane. Some of them have like 13-14 strokes per character, two to three characters per word. I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:44

Yeah, but we're talking about common use, daily use characters.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

No, it's not. No, no, no. I've watched those videos, they're not commonly used characters. No. And but this happens, I don't know if this happens in Spanish, but it happens in English all the time where you have to, even before computers, I had to look up some stuff in a freaking paper dictionary because I forgot where's the E, where's the whatever, where's it, does it have this or does it have that? How do you spell that? I don't think this is just technology. I think this is more mass information that we've got on and offline. We're consuming too much on and offline, but it's not just another factor, it's not just online.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:21

No, it's not because I think we're overloaded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:23

I think we do too much, we work too much, we don't have the sense of play that you could you're I think you're kind of talking about with the creativity stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:31

We've we've completely overloaded, we've gotten very serious, and we but we have we have people more more people that are depressed. And that comes from and isolated.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:42

Yeah, it's we get we get wealthy. You can see it with like wealthier nations, they get wealthy, they get wealthy people start living apart from each other, and the depression rate starts to skyrocket. Yeah, it's so horrible. It's so horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:54

So there are studies that say that we are in the golden age of civilization where we have absolutely everything we could need in terms of technology, and uh in yeah, it's well people say that we have a longer lifespan, yeah. The we have our our basic needs pretty much covered.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:19

For a lot of people, they don't. For a lot of people, fresh water is still an issue, sanitation is still an issue.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:25

Well, obviously, they are not taking into consideration, but there is access. Yeah, it's like you said before, we we don't have scarcity, yeah. It's just that all the resources are allocated in the wrong way.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:38

Yeah, very important.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:39

But there is no scarcity.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:40

There isn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:41

There's no there's no excuse for these people not having water or food or medicine.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:46

No, no, and the whole thing of oh, we're running out of land, the world population, we just can't sustain it. There's still patches of land that are very, very inhabitable.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:56

So I think that is the criteria that they're using to measure this, that we're in a in a stage and in an age where we have everything pretty much everything we need covered, and yet we are the most depressed, the most disconnected, the most isolated, the most miserable.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:19

Okay, so if we consider the technology that we're talking about just a tool, can we reach back in history? Well, let's do the thought experiment. Can we reach back in history and think of another time when there was kind of an explosion of information or tools or technology? Uh keep in mind, like pencils and paper was a technology at some point, it was a new technology. So is there any other time when there was such a surge in technology that it completely transformed how people lived?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:47

The Renaissance?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:50

I think yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:50

Oh the industrial revolution.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:52

Yeah. And look what a mess we made then.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:55

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:56

The pollution in London was horrible.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:58

Horrible. And the diseases that came from that, and yet there was, you know, there was that surge of bad crap that happened, and then it kind of pulled back. Are we gonna do that?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

So I I think we are in that the stage now.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:13

Yeah, the woman.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:15

The polluted, the convoluted, the the problematic stage that we have to pull back.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:22

But I do believe that that we the history be like moved in circles, in cycles.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

And we reached the same point, probably at a higher level, but we'll reach the same point once and again and again.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:35

And like you said, probably will be some moment for us to pull back.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:39

Yeah. Will we before it's too late? Because the earth will be fine. We'll destroy ourselves, if anything. The earth will go on. We're not gonna hurt it. We're hurting ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:51

You have to ask to Algorithm.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:54

What do you think about that? Because he's not very optimistic about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:59

No, no. So I don't know. So, what it what would pull back with this technology and the internet and all of our devices? What would that be? What would we do differently? So we don't end up in those chairs morbidly obese with screens instead of people around us.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:15

Well, there is a there there is um I think that there is a new movement of people realizing that they're spending too much time sitting. And I don't know if you have noticed that there is a lot of people now, uh more people walking and worrying, and then people are you know counting the steps, and I I think that is a little bit I I listen to this guy, uh another podcast that is great.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

Podcasters listen to so many podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:41

There is this podcast called Tangential Speaking, yeah, with Christopher Ryan. He's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:48

Because he's he's like the no bullshit podcast, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:52

Like it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:53

And he says, I don't like when people say working out. I don't like I don't want to work out. Yeah, I want to exercise. Yeah, I don't want to work out. And he said in America everybody's working, yeah. And uh the if you go to eat and uh you are halfway through your plates, and then the waiter comes and tells you that you're still working on that. I'm not working, I'm eating.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

That's so true. That's so true, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:20

Yeah, and he said, I I I don't go to gym, I don't hate I hate the gym.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:24

I don't want to go to gym, I have to be bulk. No, yeah. But I want to go to the park and you know and ride a bicycle in the mountain and exercise. You say that we're getting obsessed even at the point of doing that, of maintaining ourselves healthy, yeah, it's also an obsessive thing. Um but still good. I mean, the more people are hiking and going out for for walk, and and I see a resurgence of that happening.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:52

Great, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:53

Yeah, and I I I I that's one of the things that I want to encourage people, the same way they're trying to connect with nature, uh, because there's another doctor that says uh not not a doctor, he's a journalist. He made a he wrote a book called Um I owe you the name. It's not it's not in my mind right now. But he basically suggests that all the problems that we have with depression, anxiety, and all these problems that we have is because we have lost connection with who we are as humans.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:27

And each other.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:28

Because he himself suffered of depression, and he realized that the more pills he takes the less this pill works.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:39

So he was doing research into that and he found out that there is no reason to be for us to be taking pills. Yeah, we just have to find ourselves and reconnect with who we are.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:49

So he said that we we need that connection, that creativity is a very important part of that connection. That's what I'm hoping to to let people know that they have to reconnect with their grave side and things.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:07

I'm gonna make you cringe right now. So, do you know the book Eat Pre Love by Elizabeth Gilbert?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:13

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:14

Okay, good. Um it was a very, very popular book in a lot of places in the world, and it's very it's this uh travel book where she goes to different, it's mostly I think autobiographical. She went to Italy to learn about food and just relax and the joy of life, and then she went to India to do like self-reflection, and then she went to Indonesia to do something else. I forget the whole thing. It was a really, really popular book. The author is a really, really poignant, creative, interesting person that takes a really interesting view on creativity. The book itself, I'm not a huge fan of her writing style when it comes to that or fiction or some of the other things, but when she talks about creativity, it strikes a very big chord. She has a TED talk about writers and creativity and how writers have to like people have this idea that they have to sit alone and torture themselves to be, you know, to produce this great work of art. She's like, and this is when this shift happened to writers becoming a solitary, you know, like creator and responsible for the stuff that you know came out of them. That's when the writers started being like heavily addicted to all kinds of drugs and alcohol and committing suicide and all these other things because it just it got disconnected from everything. Instead of it being a communal thing or instead of it being connected to something greater, it became their responsibility to create this thing alone silently in this room by themselves.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:43

Anyway, I'll send you the TED Talk. It's really, really good. She also wrote a book called Big Magic, which is mostly okay except for chapter five, which focuses on it, reminds me a lot of your podcast. It focuses exclusively on getting comfortable with your creativity and the kind of the self-talk that we do with creativity and to cut it the hell out because it's it's not working. Like the one thing she says is don't think of your creations as your babies, because then you'll never change them. You'll never when it doesn't work, you'll feel like you are the failure, not that that just didn't work at that particular time and all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:18

Yeah, that's another exercise that I do with my students. Uh sometimes I I make them write something and I just make them rotate.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:28

And this word doesn't belong to you anymore.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:31

Two reasons. One is that that you you should not be attached to your creations, and second, you have to learn how to build from the creations of other people, yeah. Which is very important because the everybody that that's a concern that every artist has I'm original enough. There's no originality. Every single work that it's been done and it's gonna be done ever comes from somewhere else or somebody else. There's no originality, and people have to because that's another thing that gives you pressure, and that's another big factor in it that inhibits your your creativity.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:08

So don't worry about or being original.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:11

And Picasso said it. Picasso said uh great artists uh steal. I don't I don't know, I don't remember what I got, but it basically says that that good artists copy great artists steal. That's how it goes.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:25

It's so true, and to learn a craft, you have to learn the basics from someone first, and then your own style comes out of it, but you have to learn the basics first.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:35

So everything every single work of creativity of creation comes from somewhere, yeah, yeah, yeah. Influenced by somebody or copied by somebody, you're gonna take somebody somebody's work and you're gonna put your own your own poodle in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:53

Something yeah, and create something new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:56

And you change it as uh as much as possible until you make. It's yours. Yeah. But it's always gonna be like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:02

It seems like such a relief to think that because then it's not just you have to do everything by yourself all the time alone. It's why. What do we do? That's that isolated thing. We don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:14

That doesn't happen. Creativity doesn't happen, isolated doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:18

No, my most creative moments is when I'm walking somewhere. And that movement gets my mind thinking. Like I'll have just put down a book or I'll just listen to a podcast and I'll start walking somewhere and I'll go, ah, and then I'll break out my phone to write it down so I can work on it later.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:32

But it's like that's when you get influenced by somebody else or something else if you see this.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:37

Or when I see something on the street or something, something that's so okay. Before we wrap it up, so have you heard much from your audience yet? I know it's still a few episodes in.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:47

I haven't. What are you people doing? Just don't send me emails.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:52

It's a quiet medium.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

Yeah, I think I know it's gonna take time. I it's just picking up. I only have uh less than 300 listeners, and uh I'm I'm expecting probably after the 10 episodes that people are gonna start. I I I also think it's very difficult. I I I know it's gonna take a while for people to have the confidence to send me an email with with something they wrote or some piece of music they created. It's gonna take a while.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:27

I'm gonna still keep asking people and pushing for it until somebody I I I'm you know, the day when that happens that somebody send me something, somebody that who's not an artist send me something is gonna be a big celebration.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:42

It's so beautiful. I loved hearing that stuff on your podcast because so many podcasts are interview-focused, and so many podcasts bring in really big name folks, and I like just talking to people. I don't want to say everyday people because I'm not gonna like push away an artist or somebody that has done something I find really moving. That would be ridiculous. But just somebody who does something, anybody who produces something and is just like I've done this.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

Cool, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:10

Yeah, that's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:12

Don't yeah, that's just yeah, and just the the the the action of creating something. Don't worry about if it's pretty, if it's not pretty, if it's functional, if it's not if the neighbor likes it or not, or you love no. Yeah, only the fact that you move your hands and your brain to create something that makes it beautiful, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:33

What are you doing to attract people to the podcast? Where are you posting?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:39

Well, I'm I'm pushing uh yeah. Well, I'm using all the platforms trying to use all the platform available to post the podcast, and uh I'm using the website and Facebook, basically Facebook and Instagram to to push the podcasting. Yeah, I have a community of like 700 friends, 700, 800 friends, something like that, which is pretty decent, and I'm hoping that these people would do the pushing for me. Yeah, uh but um it doesn't I don't I don't see results right now, but it has to build up. You have to people have to get used to yeah, it takes time, people have to get used to even for me because you know uh English is not my my mother language, so for me to produce a podcast in English is very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:36

It's impressive, is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

Yeah, it's very difficult. It is awkward, you know, to be in front of a microphone talking to yourself is awkward. This is something that you have to break. And and you know, another thing that I want people to understand is that I'm going through the same process that the podcast is also helping me to grow and to break because I have my inhibitions and my my barriers to to break. Yeah, so this is a process that I want to do with people together. I want people to help me, yeah, and I want to help people that we do this together. I'm I'm I I don't want to be in the position of I'm the creative who knows all this stuff, and then you have to listen to me. No, no, not at all. Yeah, so I think that in a way the awkwardness that you hear in my podcast and and the the difficulties probably with the vocabulary or the language or the accent. Um I I'm so self-conscious on this stuff still.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:35

It's almost impossible not to be self-conscious when it's you in a room alone with the microphone. I often face actually outside. Like I'll put the desk here and I'll face outside, I'll stand up and face outside. So it at least kind of give me a sense that there's other people who might hear me so much. Because it just feels weird talking to a wall.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:55

Yeah, it is difficult.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:58

But uh I I I think this awkwardness reinforces this idea that I'm not an expert. I don't I don't want to be an expert. And that's another thing that I stress. I I don't like the expert position because when you assume that you're an expert, yeah, you should uh you shut down yourself and you you assume that there is nothing else for you to learn.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:19

And that is terrible.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:21

Which never happens. Never happens. It's impossible. Never happens. Things change, people change, situations change.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:28

Yeah. Now I laugh when some some places I've worked in the world, they'll have like um in Japan. When I worked in Japan, they had foreign language expert, and I'm just laughing, going, never. No matter how good I am at analyzing or teaching language, never would I call myself an expert. That just at work just.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

Although your resume is pretty impressive, so I'm checking. What's that? Your resume is pretty impressive, actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:50

My what is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:51

Your resume.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:52

My resume. Oh, yeah, well, I'm glad it looks that way. It doesn't feel that way. What am I gonna do with all that education? I'm gonna go through these and forget about it. Yeah. It's actually coming back around slowly. If I can get the three podcasts going, I've got two more that I thought of last week. I I yeah, my brain is too many years in academia. My I was very, very methodical and putting all of my stuff into my students and into my research, and then like I left all of that mid-PHD program and came to China and was like, I'm gonna take six months off and just work. And then I couldn't. I couldn't. I think I lasted until April. We got her in January, and in April my brain just said, No, I have to do something, I have to create something, and then uh oh, everything just started. You can't keep the creativity out of the child and just know. Yeah, okay, one final thought. I know that your trajectory online and your trajectory in China are almost the same time period. Yes, and I'm realizing this now because I literally do a timeline, which you can see. So, one of my questions that I want to ask is has the way that you've used the online resources changed since you've lived overseas? But I don't know that that's a valid question anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:21

Yeah, that's the thing that when I was leaving, uh you know I I lost my virginity to social media in China.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:30

I was about to hit pause. I'm like, okay, I can edit, but okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:35

Yeah, I I that's thank you for the sound clip.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:40

That's awesome. Wait, what is that? 26, 25. Yeah. You realize that's gonna end up on Instagram as one of my teasers. Yeah, I hope so. Anyway, please explain.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:53

Well, yeah, in in China was probably because uh I've been living the longest in China.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:01

But also when I was living in my country, or when I left my country, uh like like I mentioned before, we just had YouTube, very new. I didn't know I didn't know about Facebook. I discovered all this stuff, all these tools in in China, and that's when I started using those. And also as a way, I think a lot of foreigners find it that it's a way to keep yourself connected to to reality in a way to your world, to your culture. It's a very important way to keep yourself connected with with your roots, with who you are.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:37

And so I in in that aspect is very important. Uh another one is that for work, uh if you don't if you're not an expert, and I use that horrible word, in in Chinese, it is very difficult. It's very difficult. In that aspect, China is for Chinese when it comes to social media. And and I'm not talking about the language, you could be an ex an expert again in Chinese, but there are these nuances, these cultural nuances, and the Chinese have a lot, you know, the way they they they say things that is very Chinese. Yeah, but you will get it in no time. You will get it.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:32

As a Westerner, do you think if a Chinese person came to Venezuela and was like dipping into the social media and like talking to folks that they met in person?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:39

Well, I'm using uh as a reference between, for example, somebody from Spain go to Venezuela, or somebody from Venezuela go to Chile.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:47

But it's happening a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:48

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:48

At the beginning, it's difficult, you have no idea what they were talking about, but then you get it.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:53

But from a foreigner coming to China, you have to spend I don't know, 15, 20 years here to get it, to understand what is it, how they speak, and why they say the things they say and the jokes and the and social media is a lot about that. It's a lot about you know the the memes and the trends, it's about the local culture, is it's it's so it's very it's it's it's difficult. It's interesting. If you're not local, it's very difficult in China.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:27

Yeah. If you don't get it, it one of my other podcasts talks to folks, both folks learning and using Chinese and both and folks who grew up with the language, and one of the gentlemen that I know that has gotten to such a high level that he's not only studying the language still after years and years, but he's studying Chinese script. Like that's how high a level, like he can read, he can function, he can talk, he can listen, he can carry on and all that. But he's actually looking at Chinese script, like just handwriting, like how to decipher that, because that's a whole other different creature. Like, that's how high level he is. He's like, I can't read Chinese newspapers. There's so many cultural references here and there and everywhere, and he's like, I can't. So he actually reads the New York Times Chinese version to keep his language reading skills up. Yeah, because that's like the most neutral that's like global kind of diaspora Chinese, so it's not just laced in this culture.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:20

Yeah, it's really so when we are not adding the the the dialects and the oh yeah, and the slang and oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just the the standard and in China that you have trends that that you know Chinese people consume trends, like it's it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:36

And well it's it's tricky because you've got like you've got English and you've got Spanish, which are used in multiple places in the world, and so you get used to the different versions of those languages, right? But then you've got Chinese and you've got like 5,000 years of history and language and culture, and then you've got strong periods of isolation. Yeah, it's just so hard to explain. It's very difficult, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:02

And that all influenced the the the social media in China, so it's very difficult to access that.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:08

So even you if you are well read or well you have a deep knowledge in Chinese culture and Chinese language, it's still difficult to be very active in Chinese social media.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's crazy. Like I started, like Li Chi is one of the podcasting sites in in China, and I put I got help getting it all set up and stuff, and I started to put like a couple episodes there, and I was like, ah, but thinking long term, I know there's a generation or two of folks that went overseas and came back and they're fluent and they could be my audience. It'd be interesting to have their perspective. But realistically, being able to navigate that site every time I have to upload stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:52

Even the way they design the websites is completely different. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:56

Yeah. You wouldn't know where to click or what to look at because it's it's it's it's so talk about being I I think they're rather messy. I think they're hard to navigate, they're not going to be able to do that. Yeah, well, I don't know if it does. That's a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:12

You see Tao Bao, already in the Chinese website. There are so many things flashing at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:17

So many ads.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:18

You don't know what to do with first, you don't there is no a criteria, there is no order.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:22

There's no but there's gotta be some order to there must be some way. That'd be a really good question to ask someone at some point. I gotta get that on recording somewhere. Is what's the what's the flow? Where you look when you go on there? Because I they're so overwhelming. Yeah, it was the same thing when I lived in Taiwan, and that was traditional characters, which is even worse.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:45

More difficult.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:45

Oh my gosh, and then the tiny font, like four and six font, and it's like, wait, I can't even read that when it's 20 font. It's so many strokes.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:53

They need that they need a size to fit all the stuff that they it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:58

It's so hard. And I'm certainly not saying that the entire world should switch to a language, whether it be Spanish or English or French or even Chinese.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:09

It's just it's just so challenging when you're moving to a different script and a different culture that's so it's the cultural thing that is yeah, even in in in online there is a culture.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:23

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:24

That's what works for them.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder what it takes to now you've got me thinking I have to find somebody who navigates an expedition. Navigates that system. I don't know about understand, but navigates it uh interacts in it, that kind of thing. Like I don't know many folks that do that, even though I do know a fair bit of folks that are functional in the language, if not rather high level.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:46

That would be interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:48

It would be. Like I've I've met I met one guy in particular who lives in Nanjing now, actually. And he reads like science fiction novels in Chinese. Right? I consider that like pretty damn high level, yeah. And I didn't actually ask him about mobile stuff. Or web stuff. Oh my gosh, okay. Well I've already interviewed him twice though, so I don't know if I couldn't do a third time. But anyway, yeah, that would be interesting an interesting thing too. To see, and then to find out from the Chinese perspective, what did they think of the English websites? Were they too boring?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:20

Or is it like a lot of things? Yeah, maybe they think there's nothing here.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:23

Yeah. Yeah, nothing's popping up, I don't know what to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:28

I just go to another websites and nothing's website's inactive.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:31

It's too planned. It's funny. My husband lived in Korea before we met. And have you been to Korea? No, apparently there's a lot of fluorescent signs. And he's like, Koreans are the only people that go to Las Vegas and are unimpressed. Because they're like, yeah, it's just a street. That's what that's what streets look like.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:51

I don't see the colors.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:54

So I really, really wonder what that would be like on both sides. Anyway. Thank you so much, Ronald. This has been so wonderful. Yay! Do you have any final thoughts on the evilness of the internet? How it connects to what you what your online presence might be if you ever left China. Would you keep doing what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:18

Exactly the same, yeah. I will be in the same places in the same platforms. Yeah. And my my suggestion or my final thought would be be cautious. Be cautious. Because this could be like a drug. You know, we get we get addicted to life, we get addicted to and it can be depressing. We don't need another another thing making us depressed.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:41

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:42

But be cautious. Use it be wise when use it. Use it as a tool.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:46

Don't get used by it, you use it.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:49

Absolutely. Yeah, it really, really is our choice. The two the tools are not doing it to us. We are we're kind of getting drunk on the newness of it, and hopefully that'll pull back at some point soon. I have heard people who are doing like mobile free weekends. Not in China, but in the US, some people would just put their phones away from the phone.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:07

Yeah, it's becoming a thing, and then it's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:10

I sometimes I d I do it because I I have to do it, I have to spend time with my family.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:14

I don't know if I could do a whole weekend. I do put my phone in other places and I do turn it off for periods of time.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:20

I don't turn it off, but I I just ignore people.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:22

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I've always been someone, even when I had like a pager and a beeper and all of those technologies, I was like, this is so that I can know if I want to. I'm not if it goes off, I don't have to reply right now. They don't know that I'm available or not. Yeah, so do you you have to make that conscious choice?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:39

And I'm so not perfect, I have gone down more rabbit holes than I'm gonna keep it on the bay, to keep it controlled.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So pull back time, that's what we're facing.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:52

Well, thank you so much, and I'll put in the show notes. Uh I'll put all of the links to the stuff that we talked about, as well as the website that Ronald's working on and all kinds of other stuff. 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. Death Puccio, 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.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:00

You know what's wrong with health and fitness? You weaponize it against yourself. Why didn't you go to the gym today? You're so lazy. Why did you do that? You have no self-control. It should be about loving yourself. Let us help you without all the judgment.