Welcome back to the channel everybody in the winter sun Always this weird light. It's always coming in from side angles in the winter. We're doing some work right now trying to get our trailer lights to work. I ended up having to Get a whole new set. I got one set that were squares They didn't work. The set I was gonna do in the last video ran out of time. We were Going to help out mr. Riley, so I'm happy to report Got his first buck ever. Congratulations Riley. And since I got a little time this morning I'm going to replace these. The trailer lights have ground wires on them and then the trailer itself also has ground wires Running all the way back, which normally I think they're just grounded up front. The crispy collector is Crusty Look at that dangler there. You got to get this thing straight legal so we can go on some more adventures, so Let's step one of the day. Over here. We've got a grounded white a brown And a red so that white ground wire runs all the way to the front of the trailer And then we have another ground right here, which I'm gonna connect to the back half of this I guess it's gonna be double grounded. I don't know. Let's see if it makes any fires. Okay installed And The blinky We are good Both sides are working. I'm assuming brake brake brake lights are gonna work, too Crispy collector is road legal taking a break from fixing up the crispy right now. I've got the lights working I've got to put a little special golden crispy paint on there baby. Got those stencils I can use. I do have those stencils. Yeah, gonna need to borrow those OSG in her house shoes right now not camera ready something that I wanted to Put into the vlog today Was this roast because you were just talking to me downstairs. You're like, hey, honey, I got this roast I was like, oh my gosh the roast I forgot about it. Not just any roast deer roast Let's take a gander. This is a portion of the Back quarter of the deer. I'm not sure exactly of what the cut is is called top roast or I don't know top roast rump roast. I don't know. OSG is gonna throw it in this pot right here and Cook it all day till it's just fall off the bone No bone in there, but you get what I'm saying and then to follow that up We had some breakfast biscuits rosemary cream cheese deliciousness So we're saving some of those so you get the juices and then you stop that up with the juices and it is Wow, some of this is just gonna Come right off here What happened there? It might be easier after freezing it. What is the name for that? Do you know honey? I should know this. I used to know. I studied this. Yeah, I took biology You know dissected cats. I remember doing this for cats in the lab.  That sounds fancy. I don't remember So that right there is what we're gonna put in our mouth really Enjoy My dream is to be able to do all this very quickly You've got cowboys on your side cowboys and butchers. Yeah, literally my uncles Have a cattle business and then my my great-grandfather. Sorry my great-grandfather. He was the butcher, so Hey little girl Somebody's still in her PJs I mean we need to get dressed look at that hair She's like what are you guys doing in here without me? Trying to watch my movie And Wah-Bam we are back in the great outdoors y'all Real reason I even go out in the winter is to try to get a big bass. This is the time when the Female bass they start really filling up with eggs and that's a lot of species too.  What's going on is we have bass that are cruising a flat after balls of shad That's them right there Okay, I'm gonna fall down I'm gonna jig up a couple times and snag one of these babies Got him on the bottom. My goodness On the bottom.  Oh, there's another one gosh Dang they like it not moving very much. Oh White bass, okay. All right. This is good. This is good. There's nothing right here except There's a creek channel next to it. Oh here he is again Okay, we're on the juice pie right here white bass little white bass. Nope. We could even get a crappie Just don't know I love this type of fishing though Takes a lot of time on the graph but It's worth it when you find them and I've just got to get it really close to the bottom here Boy, they do not like it moving very much Got him Just waiting on that big hog to grab it Big largy. Oh gosh dang it's running good God these are magnums. These are magnums Holy moly that looks like a hybrid Whoo, if I didn't have to go To a meeting here in just like 30 minutes. I would keep these But golly Where are these crappies? Where's the crappies? You get a largy on the first drop and then everything else is a white bass Biggins I only saw like six or seven of them On the down imaging, but they were they were there. Whoo. Just got floated Oh, come on. There's a good one there. Oh, it's not him though Okay Y'all I love this type of fishing in the fall and winter when you can get on it.  You don't know what you're going to get Seriously, I've caught huge catfish. I've I've caught White bass obviously, you know, you catch strikers catch largemouth And then once you find the bait you can usually find fish like roaming around those parts and the largemouth it seems are Roaming more than these uh these other species like I really want to get on some crappie I'm using a little painted quarter ounce spoon Um, and actually this company sent me these I really like them They're they're made for uh crappie and bass or Beaks Beaks made by beaks Anyway, they uh, they have a nice they put a swivel on top, which is good And they have some pretty good paint jobs on them. They're made for vertical jigging And when they get stacked up like this and you can vertically jig I usually use a jig like this And there's also one made by 10 000 fish that I use a lot called death stalker And that thing is that's probably my favorite But I just switched up to this because I want to try out these spoons. It seems to be working pretty good This is totally not how I wanted to catch them. Gosh I wanted to catch them on the bank with a jig but I love doing this too. I'll do whatever it takes to catch them.  Oh, here we go Here we go y'all. This is it Yeah, I'm gonna hook up with something. Oh my hey take a peek at those electrodes. Oh, there he is Oh I hit you. Oh Well now What are you? Oh, you're just a big old my bad Yeah Lee I've gone from not catching anything on jigs on the bank to Doing a little graphing and catching Probably got like 15 20 fish here Every drop just work a little weight point here Okay, y'all I'm still getting smoked, but I have to go Like I have I have to I have to leave This is insane Outdoor greatness, baby from the woods to the water I like to do it all Hey little girl Okay, y'all through the magic of time and space we are Here at the end of the crock roast And it smells delicious or those sweet baby carrots with my little baby Know it gosh. I love a good sweet carrot my life.  I like that. All right. Are you ready to see that roast? I am pop up top that That's gone. You wrapped it up and everything That you told me to do that good So what all did you put in here?  Say no more. It's it's oh man. Okay. We got it. Let's get this thing out of here See it. See it break apart. Are you ready for this? Babe, I'm I'm ready. This is my first Dear roast Okay shrinkage I think you could eat this like you're so wow It was like twice as big it was It's convinced down Choking what's going on just excited Where's that cinnamon stick it like fully opened? This has been a some done right. Yes, it is done right All right. Let's try to open it. Hey, Amy's enjoying her new table by the way Let's see the tenderness. It should be fork. I mean this has been in there. How long uh seven hours seven hours It looks outstanding. Oh, it is I think it's going on here. It's what's happening Oh, I don't know. It's still oh what? I mean, it's definitely falling apart, but remember we had it all wrapped up Maybe we shouldn't have wrapped it up Still a little hard here. What if I were to like shred it and put it back in we might have made some jerky We might have made a little boo boo Amy did you just throw your first thing?  Wow What I was right or left handed I didn't catch that anybody see that by looking at her. I want to say it's all right Plus you let's see I don't know. Maybe we should like um separate it and then put it back in there for 30 minutes do it because that that looks dry That's not what a roast is supposed to be Steph is breaking it apart right now.  Oh my That is amazing If we stick this back in there. Oh my yeah. Yeah. Yeah, get it in those juices because those are Let's do it phenomenal There we go. Let's take out all of those things there just those Just need to go and they're just need to leave Hey, we're serving no purpose in the drawer. They need to be on the floor just compliments to the chef for cooking with Such distractions put it back in maybe about 30 minutes soak those up. It was a little sweet, but it wasn't like like a sweet meat like you think of Like an an asian short rib. You know what I mean? Okay. It wasn't like that. It was just like a good I don't know fall harvest flavor Outstanding I mean for a whitetail deer to taste like that. Yeah You guys got to try this. We're gonna write it down Uh, I'll put a link or not a link.  You just listed in the description. It's freaking great Just need to soak it in this juice a little bit They're just not got a couple of adjustments a couple of dial-ins. I think going backward I would have taken uh the cut off both the legs and did them at the same time and the juice Mm-hmm. Yeah, you wouldn't have done that. Amy. You wouldn't have done that Oh, that's a no-no drawer. That's all the spices That's a no-no drawer. Can you close that? No Full layout full floor mode. It is dinner time. Here we go. I got two gourmet mac and cheese over here I don't have any greens for you. That's fine. We don't need those. We got orange things Little carrot so many carbs and protein Would you just become rushing right there? What was that? So many carbs and protein. Jesus, who did I marry? I don't know The juices have soaked back in to the meat now I'm gonna try some of this because you are braving about this. I'm telling you You won't believe the flavor. You're gonna be like I taste the apple cider. I think that was a good Good choice on my part It goes for a while. You're like, ooh Give me another piece. I think I would have shredded it a little earlier and like kept it soaking for probably like two hours I'm just gonna enjoy the heck out of this. Wow Okay We'll leave the recipe down below. Let's move on to other outdoor things dad gum that deorosis good y'all and moving on We're gonna be working on the chicken coop knacks. I've also got a couple of clear water lakes that I'm gonna head up to We've got some changing conditions outside. Looks like Some rain is in the forecast and speaking of deer. I just checked the trailgams There's three does that are coming in the yard like every night. I love this time of year y'all It's a tiny fishy so many choices. So Fall along stay tuned. God bless and I'll see you right back here in the outdoors on the next one


You can live in this world naked naked and you are good but you are living but imagine you are wearing clothes but you have no food to eat Agriculture means farmers of definitions and being farmers you are feeding the whole world I will call the whole world because every corner they have to eat so who is supposed to be very rich and not have these poverty issues is the farmers but look at what is there when you talk of a farmer you think of that poor person that you will come to the farm why should I come no come to the city come to the farm and when you come and you are like are you a farmer is that another farmer that have done this yes and I am proud of this and this is why I want to change farmers we are the best person or the best people in this world feeding the nation if someone ever told me that apples grows in Africa I would definitely not believe it but there is this woman out here in Kenya who is making the impossible possible Kate Wambugo the ambassador of Wambugo Apples I am a farmer and the farming that I am doing is Wambugo Apples here in Kenya and specifically like Kipia County we call it the county of Wanda but this is a woman born and raised in Africa making the impossible possible so we grew up we could see my father doing this it is what we saw my father doing and it really inspired us and before he started the apples the life was not good I am telling you he would struggle even to raise eating was a problem but right now we are somewhere we can say we are somewhere and this is where I want every farmer to be even higher Farmers of today raise V8 man I thought V8 were for politicians man are you a politician? No no I am a pure farmer pure farmer so this is where we do we have been doing a lot of apples here in Wai Kipia and we enjoy selling to other Kenyans because we are doing it locally so grateful that even Kenyans have embraced this which an apple that can do everywhere, every soil, every climate I can't even express how I feel right now I feel like crying you know I'm eating an apple made and produced in Africa by an African that indeed changing that narrative and I want you all to share this video right now can I ask you a question did you know that it's possible to grow apples in Africa don't lie to me let me know that in the comment section but before I dive into this video apple inspired your hair yes now you see the color I have to maintain here is a signature the apple ambassador when you see me that's the apple ambassador apple farmer do you know that you've done something that so many Africans think it's impossible how does that make you feel it feels nice that is one and I feel excited I've been the ambassador of Ambuco apples and I feel good seeing even you all the way you took a flight to come and crunch see how you are closing your eyes so it's amazing and I feel humbled to even mentor some farmers who didn't know that apples can do in Africa and especially here in Kenya West Africa so my question is do apple do you think apple can grow anywhere in Africa apples are growing right now the people have mentored they are growing in Africa so it is possible and it is 100% plus impossible why is it that we are told that apples don't grow in Africa then I have no idea but you have proven this wrong you can see them you are holding the apple this one is here I am not just holding you are eating talk of South Africa part of Botswana Mozambia, Namibia, Malawi Mozambique so they are growing they have fruits already go to Sierra Leone go to Gambia Ghana, Nigeria so this is a part of Africans so apple can do in Africa so what do apple need I mean what environment or conditions do apple need to survive in Africa then the most important thing for the apples is what you are feeding it because once you feed it is okay Botswana and Namibia they have sandy swell the swell people believe it can't grow anything but they are growing they only need manure and ensure that water length is done this part of Kenya no one would believe that apple can do but you have just picked from Raikipia here where are we right now this is Kenya, Raikipia county and this is where apple is doing very well this is called Gobit and let me tell you the weather here people knew that we can't grow anything here we can only do animals and all that but you see the apple is growing very very well another fruits that we have done here we have done and the apple are doing very quite okay so what we have done is ensure that the manure is done and we have done some water irrigation to ensure that this tree is getting water throughout and when you do that that tree will be fruiting every year every year and throughout the year so it doesn't you can't go to a tree and find there is no apples but there are those main seasons that we have but once you give it manure and water that's all so all the apple needs is manure and water that's all please can I get some seedlings I just can't believe it but I'm seeing it so I have to believe it by force I can't even touch it how does it taste by the way it's very succulent it tastes even better than the apples in the market very fresh fresh and juice I need to show them the juice this is not for my saliva this is the juice from the apple exactly how long have you been growing apples this apple my father have been doing it I am only taking over from what my father started the tree is the one he is the founder he propagated and it was called wambugu apples by the Kenyan it's called karo these are the people who deal with plants they named it after him that was back in 1985 when I was a very little girl when I found him doing this and I found him getting money then we got into it so for me I have been doing it since I knew myself after school I came to do this what did you learn in school I did agriculture but I didn't do it I didn't specialize so much because what we learned it was already in us it was a certificate for us to come and do this but I did agriculture just to ensure that you know how for a few things but for me it was in the blood because my father was doing it and we could see money what are we looking for in this world we are looking for money does it mean growing apple is profitable very profitable highly profitable how profitable one kilo of what you're holding and Maya since you harvested this fruit you're still eating so you can't even finish two one is enough so seven of them makes one kilo one kilo here we sell at $3 because it's around $300 so if seven fruits is $300 then if you have a farm like this one we have planted five acres and one tree can give you up to 200 pieces and 200 pieces you divide by seven so how much is a lot of money and you are getting this this tree will be here over 80 years wow and you are harvesting that's a lifespan 80 years is a disease resistance you don't have to so it's just growing water you're done that's the beauty of the apple so since the idea was started by your father what was your father doing before he came to growing of apples my father was a mechanic a mechanic was a cam farmer he was doing onion tomatoes and he had some cows so this time he went to Abadeya's mountain and he found this tree fruiting very well this is where the fighters were in the forest so he found this nice apple fruiting so so well and that's how he started propagating with some few apples he had in our home area so once he started propagating and grafting they brought these great apples you are seeing fruiting this huge and fruiting almost touching the ground and that's how my father started you mean he found a plant of the apple in the forest in the forest so which means apples were already growing yes they were touching down that's where he got attracted and that's how he started propagating kwa ni kipada kahawa kahawa ikaleta jida kwa jiri kahawa kwa tukiwuna kahawa kahawa ikaleta jida ni kangwa ni kaudoka kakawa sasa ni wakatili ni kwa ni kipada tirito mato na passion ni rikuwa ni kifuna gu ni yabiri tirito mato sasa ni ki edere aku peleka kwa soko na nyuki wakatili ni rikuwa na io matuda niki janali ni kuta ni ki tabika na matuda io matuda ni tirito matu na passion adini yabia ni kapewa oda ukomauti kenya sawarikirabu wakatili ni eda ni kapewa oda io oda waka ni kawa ni naigiri aipo maneno inaito aipo wajiri ni rikuwa ni kinunuwa iipo na Uzaafrika wakatili ni edere aika biyo ni chev ni ede ni odoka kwa kununuwa iyo ada Uzaafrika nika jivania yabu iiri kwa jiri iyo iikonadawa iyo ada Uzaafrika wazuguwa kakata iire ni kuta kwa musitu ni rikuwa ni katafutu kama ii iirikuwa kubuwa kama ii ukomu kwa musitu lakini iirikuwa yawale wa saye iirikuwa wana pigania uru wana iituwa maumahu lakini iirikuwa wajiri wajirikuwa na rodoa kwa musugu usiadiake waka pereka kwa musitu nika toa iyo michi nika pereka kwa gunyubani nika ansa nika toa iirikuwa kubuwa kama ii iirikuwa kuwata kilo waka tini iiruwa uko na nyuki setrasona nika pereka nika kutuwa musugu moja aka niya biwa wabogo wawana iituwa wabogo diyo asa iirikuwa iirikuwa urituwa api iirikuwa That's why the apple is named after him Exactly The apple in Kenya they couldn't believe it so they took the roots they took the leaves and they took the fruit to go and test Once they did that and it was amazing and they found it's the best in the whole world I'm not polishing it's the best which apple can do in every corner of Africa every corner of the world and then they had to name it wabogo apples just to have it a name because they couldn't even get another name to give it wabogo apples So this is wabogo apples Is your father still around? Yes he is I'm the first born Yes the power of the first born How does it feel knowing that your father has transferred his legacy I mean to you how does it feel It is sweet you know when you get blessing from your parents you can go miles and miles those blessings you cannot leave them you can't and being the first born I had to take it and be the ambassador of his what he found But I think you've propagated the name of wabogo apples to the world more than even what your father did your father discovered it but I believe that we all know you even more than your father but he gave me that blessings and I told him you know what I'm going to get it and he's seeing it happening I want to look at it this is a we have covered this because of the birds they like eating so wherever the fruits come we try to cover before we build the shed net for this place Is it like I'm just calculating 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 1 kilo just from there and you see other places now the flowers are coming up and this plant is around 14 months Is it capital intensity? No Once you have the land you just buy the trees because you have the land that is the most important and most of us we have our parents who have lands and idle lands so why don't we do this which is also bringing money to them at their old age and now my father is enjoying his life he's enjoying harvest so he can do it How long does it take 9 months start fruiting once you plant because we sell grafted trees once you plant like this within 9 months they start fruiting 9 months but they cannot give you much fruit because even you you have to control the fruiting sometimes you see like this this is one bunch with around 5 or 6 fruits so if you allow a 6 months I mean 9 months plant to have all the corners all the branches 6 6 6 can break the tree so what you do you pluck some of the flowers and leave like 10 10 of them so that the tree can also build the muscles to hold the fruits they said one apple keeps the doctor away here they keep even the witch doctors away but one thing that she's not telling us is that bunch of apples keeps poverty away exactly now let me clutch this one the ladness of this and it's organic so you don't have to go and wash you just pull it like this you see I don't know the apple that we all see in the market it's a bit like it's round but this one over that makes it the typical African we always have to be unique I mean sometimes I always tell Africans in your own way and you have to believe in yourself because the whole world depends on Africa it's true see how you're working see Africa is a very natural I can't believe this man I'm just doing the way so that I can enjoy this one ah you want to call it a day I'm watching you what comes into your mind when you hear Africa wow when I hear Africa it's a great continent you know what we have the best swell in the world that you can even drop a seed like this to just grow naturally and the best thing with Africans that we are hard working we know how to do it and we don't look at whatever is happening we focus and we have a goal so that's how I love Africans how many countries you transfer your knowledge to in Africa so far so good we are up to 7 countries so far I've been working so many farmers in different countries and we have worked with them personally I've gone to their country I've gone to their farm so we go to their interior and I train them how to do it and I show them how to do it because most of them is like the way you are saying Maya so how do you grow this so have to be there and show them how to do it how to take care of it so I believe this flag that we are seeing represent the countries that wambugu is present so you mean you are growing in Ghana in Ghana kumasi akra hey and you guys are hiding pokuase you mean you are growing apples in Ghana and I didn't know you should know now if you are one of them send me a message let me come and see your product so gone so far so good and I'm proud of it I've never seen a farmer that moved from one country to another just to train people so that they also start growing what you grow what makes you do what you do you know Maya one thing is that when you find gold don't just hide it alone prosperity is not a caste that you have great houses you have but prosperity is when you lift someone somewhere and don't lift one, two or three that is prosperity you see someone shining making up in life and it is from you going around Africa and far away to Grenada and Jamaica that is the far that you have gone is seeing that that farmer who is down there being lifted and not just lifting but doing the right thing and leave that person enjoying life and not life the kidding of poverty and the family enjoying what we are enjoying here because here in Africa we are so many we keep healthy there are things that we need to eat for us to be healthy apple is number one and that's why even the alphabetical it starts with an ah and it starts with an apple that deserves a bite so that's what inspired me and I feel nice when I see people saying ah my fam is doing where Kate came and I was able to do the right thing and you see them harvesting what has been the biggest challenge bringing this farm together the greatest challenge was water and because here we we don't have any liver around so it was the greatest challenge being that is what the major unit for the apples so that was the biggest biggest challenge and we had to do the borehole it's not easy but you had to do it when you see a liver here it's a dream but with a borehole we have been able to manage this and that was the biggest biggest challenge but you were able to overkarnage whenever you come here and you see this even when I have stress I go around this place and you pick an apple and you see how they are you leave this place energetic I'm telling you the truth did you see this size Maya this size did you see what are you going to take to Ghana if it is not this or that I'm not even taking to Ghana I'm eating it here okay I'll take you to Ghana these are your seedlings yes these are our seedlings you don't have seed no we don't have seeds they have seeds but the quantity because we sell a lot of fruits so you know we cannot follow you Maya give us the seed so we propagate them and then we graft them so these ones are grafted and this is how the grafting is happening this is where the grafting happens so we join this and this this we call it rootstock rootstock is the mother to carry this tree will be there over 80 years once you plant like this so we don't sell rootstock we sell like this these ones will carry this one 80 years your father brought this from the bush yes this one was a tree grafted 4 times you get not just one tree and combining 4 times he grafted and then this one now will go for 80 years and fruiting massively that's incredible man but I guess this one is for sale yes how much is one US dollar or 80 euros or Kenya shilling or 10 CDs are you a millionaire? yes I am so you mean farming can make one a millionaire and even a billionaire I'm a good example and that's why I'm recruiting more to become millionaires it's not good and bad to enjoy money please I wanna be an apple farmer hallelujah someone should come and inspire you people I'm done no no you have to hold there no no no I'm done where will they see this we will fire you oh my goodness that's incredible so who are the people that you saw this to? no this one we some of this we are preparing for our farm some of them not just selling but for our farm we are doing a hundred acres so this is some of them from this part is for our farm but we also sell them you have five acres and now you are doing a hundred acres have you started already? no we already purchased the land so now we are preparing for them the money you used to purchase the hundred acres came from yes the fruits I feel like you are doing mixed farming over here because I am seeing fish spawn right over there yes for breakfast you take fillets what do you buy? salt what do you buy? no we buy lotion because I am here and I am seeing everything I don't know what this lady buys I am seeing pepper, tomato I am seeing catch fish do you have trapea? she brought the whole now to her village we maximise every space you have you maximise see I want to ask you a question yes sir so many Africans that really want to learn from you they don't have a farm here but they are looking for a way to come and learn from you you know what Maya? I wish you were spending here you could have tested the life of a farmer you have done cottages where you come we don't charge you and the reason we don't charge you we don't want to show you that it is hard to start this just come here in Kenya what you are eating is what I observe you in the dinner I mean for your lunch in the morning you have fish fillet so this is what is happening here you don't charge them when I come to your farm will you charge me sweeping in your house? I will charge them everything is money if you don't want to charge them let me charge them on your behalf then you have not become a farmer please actually a beautiful farm and the fact that you have employed so many people how many people do you have in here? we have more than 30 now wow and how many acres? this one is 5 acres fully on our flutes trees when you were growing up life was not that easy but after coming to your farm to see the number of lives that depends on you how do you feel anytime when you come to the farm let me say that everyone you are seeing here depends on us and we cannot make that mistake that whatever we are doing not to make it not only for my family but also for this life this guy you are seeing here this man 12 man we have been with him for several years he had two children that have been from secondary imagine we made that mistake and not work hard what about those kids? I believe this is what keeps you moving yes I have so many Africans that watches my videos they have a message for them what would that message be? the message is that it is possible to do farming farming is not being a farmer is not being like illiterate no being farmer is the best anything that can't grow is what you have not planted the what you think that no it can't grow in the sandy soil cannot grow in the hot areas it is only what you have not planted wambugu apple is one example let's do it Africa so it means it's possible to make it in Africa? it is possible Africa is beautiful the soil I really want to know as a farmer yourself what do you think can be done to improve the lives of farmers in Africa? one is the support manual support and financial support also because like us we had to pull up our resources as a family but if it is possible when maybe a certain community start doing such a thing it's good to give them that boost because it's not only helping that family but also other families this is how we can work it out together because like now we are drilling a borehole even in Ghana drilling a borehole it's not easy so this is why we need some boost even if it's the banks let everything be easy stop asking so many things it becomes so hard for farmers to do this they are banks that attach to their farming but for you to get that money it takes a whole year and that year you want to use it trust us as farmers please trust we need it is the government supporting farmers? they should be they should support because that's why we have the government that's why we vote for them and they will always use that as a campaign aspect but we never see them after that you be looking for them so let government support farmers because when you support us it's bringing also revenue to the government now I know that it's possible to grow apples in Africa do you also believe now do you have anything to tell them? it is possible to grow apples and not just apples wanbugu apples to accept any kind of soil climate and appreciate you let's change that narrative buy one seedling today plant it in your backyard and let the world come and see wanbugu apples your favorite village boy Mr. Gane baby please do me a favor subscribe to this youtube channel and please share this video because everyone in this world need to know that folks grows in Africa


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At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. Music is deeply ingrained into the heritage of eastern Kentucky. The area is rife with singers and musicians. One man recently had the opportunity of a lifetime when he recorded a music video in Nashville which is being broadcasted nationally. We recorded at Dark Horse Studios with Dolly Parton's manager, Mr. Kent Wells. It was a wonderful experience. I've never done anything like that. So for me, just performing here in Kentucky, mostly in West Virginia and Virginia some, that was a huge experience. Getting to sing out in Nashville and getting to meet all these people, musicians. With the help of colleague Bobby Cyrus, Bertrand was able to get his music video picked up by the country network. So as of a few days ago, that song is now on national TV and is playing everywhere. So I am super excited for the future and what's going to happen because we're just getting started. I really owe a lot to Bobby and Teddy Cyrus and all the people I've met along the way. It's a journey. Bertrand's main goal isn't success. His true heart's desire lies in helping other musicians throughout eastern Kentucky find their voice in a platform to perform. You can go up any holler, any back street and you'll meet a singer. I want to reach out to other singers and musicians and really see if they can come too. It's not a club you have to only be a certain member of. There are so many singers and musicians. And some great ones that we don't even know about. Birchit had many people to thank for his opportunity, one such being good friend Kenneth Birchit who passed away before the video could air. The music video for That's My Girl by Troy Carlos and Band can be viewed on YouTube as well as some TV networks. For Mountain Top News, I'm Kelsey Dean.


Okay, let's see. La la la la. Good. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. I am Moose Main and welcome to the Virtual Ability 2019 Mental Health Symposium. I am Moose Main. I am very new to this public speaking so if I tripping over my own two feet laugh. Eight years ago I had a stroke, aphasia, and epilepsy. I have been in second life for about 13 years. I enjoy being on beginner DJ so don't make me sing. In real life I have been a senior network engineer for Dell and a variety of Fortune 500 companies. Today I'd like to introduce Professor Nick Bowman. Nick Bowman has been an associate professor, part of the integration lab for the Department of Communication Studies, West Virginia University in the US. He's interested in how people, communications, difficulties affect the way we interact. In particular the impact of video games and social media. He views entertainment technology as a way for learning and community case discourse. Please hold your questions and comments to the end so as not to interrupt our presenter. Welcome Professor Bowman. The floor is yours. Alright thank you very much for having me today. So my presentation, as he said I'm a researcher who studies interactive media at West Virginia University and I'm going to cut through some of my details here. The presentation today is called How Do I Relate to Me and on the next slide I will share a abstract with you from the talk today. In most virtual environments users experience the generated digital world by means of a character or avatar that is under their control. As such avatars become the primary mediator and facilitator of the user's digital interactions both with the world itself as well as the people who populate that world. However, given that avatars occupy bodies distinct from their users there is an inherent dyadic relationship between user and avatar. As with any relationship this dyad can be remarkably complex and can involve several different mechanisms. This presentation will discuss at least six different mechanisms by which users can come to associate with understand their on-screen avatars and explain how these differences these different mechanisms might have very different emotional components and outcomes. During the presentation I'll ask you to share your experiences with your own avatars. Okay, so on the screen behind me you see a few of my avatars and you'll notice immediately that they're not all digital in the sense of being polygons right. If we start from top to left you've got a picture from my Facebook profile. During the 2008 World Cup when I was living in Germany and for a brief period of time I spent an amazing amount of money on a German soccer team jersey only to watch my team lose the very next day and I haven't worn that shirt since. You see my Twitter profile at Bowman Spartan where I've sent over 42,000 tweets which is just a little more than the real Donald Trump. Here I talk about academics I sometimes just complain about things and I share weird chats ongoing in my life. You see my pandarian warrior in World of Warcraft where I spend the majority of my time fishing in fact it drives my partner insane because she wants to beat the game and all I want to do is catch largemouth bass. You see my old aim account which is dead in fact aim was shut down but this was my first experience on the world wide web as an identifiable person. So even when I used ProdigyNet I didn't have a profile because I was too young. You see me in second life although my appearance has changed since two hours ago when I was completely new and three hours you know maybe an hour ago when I decided to put some clothes on and my character Niko from Fallout 76 where I've been researching since 2018 and as a professor at West Virginia University it's a very natural place for me to get engaged with the many people who are playing this. Me in the office during a recent Skype interview is a guest lecture for a class overseas. For sure when we start to exist in multiple spaces we start to take on multiple persona this is not a surprising thing. If we look at what an avatar is you know it comes from the the Sanskrit avatar a deity coming from earth to fulfill some purpose in a sense engaging digital worlds for a purpose requires an avatar right it requires the embodiments that all of us in this auditorium are in right now right for sure avatars become important because they represent our primary agency in digital worlds without our avatars we really have no way of existing in cyberspaces and as I say this I should note that an avatar doesn't necessarily have to be made of polygons you know at Bowman Spartan is a I think a perfectly robust avatar that exists on Twitter and yet doesn't have any real dimensionality to it other than whatever personality I choose to show that day just as Vishnu took on many different avatars I think we've got a couple other people here um just as Vishnu took on many different forms and engaged many different tasks we all have multiple identities that we engage in our lives and each one for a very different function for situation so for this it's not really so odd that we'd have at least one of these identities in the digital space and perhaps even more than one in the same space golfmen talks quite a bit about how audiences were communicating with and the audiences that were in front of play a very big role in the front stage so when I dressed today for for a second life I had a bit of a existential crisis of a sort that I didn't necessarily understand how I was going to be portrayed by the audience right if I wear a suit maybe they'll see me a square or if I come in and wear a goofy clown costume that may people wouldn't take me seriously or from this case I'm still employed by university and if I'm going to do this from my office today I someone said be a squirrel I should do this I my favorite is a cephalopod I ended up not doing it but I think I might later I chose a west virgin university shirt a pair of jeans and boots which isn't that far off what I wear every day part of that was because today I wanted to be in front of you as I am every day as a researcher of digital world who cares deeply about our experiences in there on the screen behind you see all of my other identities soon to be a Texan professor a partner a gamer very privileged in my socioeconomic status and I have to recognize this a mentor a multiracial child from Taiwan and the United States these are all things that I engage with every day and I say this to you now because if we can take that seriously and accept the fact that people simply have different versions of themselves that they share in different environments well then suddenly the idea of having an emotionally bound avatar in the digital space is no more strange or weird than me putting on a suit to go to work or putting on yard gloves to cut the yard most importantly each one of these identities is as relevant and authentic as all of the others it is not appropriate for someone to tell you that way you're dressed right now in the sojourner auditorium in front of me is somehow an inauthentic way of presenting yourself because that's not how identity works on the screen behind me we know that avatars also provide us with this on-screen agent that we can temporarily borrow attributes from and this works on several different dimensions the model behind me is some empirical results from research I've done but I'm going to go on the next slide and kind of explain how these different little dots and pieces all lead into this thing we call identity because later I'm going to talk about how those different identities might matter for other particulars so as I've said there are at least six different ways that we can come to feel a sense of identification with our avatar and to give you a few examples as to what do these mechanisms might look and feel like so there is the idea of value homophily that the avatar on screen shares many of the same beliefs that you do someone just posted that they don't always feel the same way about their avatar in many ways that's going to be my point today is that you don't always have to score highly on every single one of these dimensions that to me is what makes them so you can see values in your avatar being values you have and of course it can be the opposite you can take on a completely different value system I don't punch people in real life but you get me in a video game and I'm pretty violent because I like to win there is embodiment there's the idea of being transported into the avatar almost as like your dimensional meat stack in digital space right um the avatar in front of you today and maybe Michelle can back me up on this because we're friends and and sort of you know physical space as well looks a bit like me um he's a little thinner and a little more handsome but I think for the most part I dress this way more often than I like to admit so I would feel a high level of transportation to the avatar in front of you today I almost dressed like my avatar but it's too warm outside so I wore shorts we can look at physical similarity and this is the idea that it that it physically renders me and I physically resemble it so embodying it doesn't always have to be a look it can be a feeling so a vehicle in a video game you can be embodied into but physical similarity is sharing properties of the object in front of you and the object in front of the computer there's wishful identification and this is something that sandar may have just commented on sometimes you wish you could be more like the avatar on screen you might create a idealized version of yourself or just a different version of yourself or just some kind of vision or fantasy of a functional agent in a particular world that you might feel represent you in that space in pandaria I'm a hulking panda who carries an axe in one hand and a fishing pole in the other if I carried those two things here in West Virginia I would probably go to jail right it's it's more of a wishful thing for that particular scenario then we have the idea of perspective taking and sometimes what happens is that we see these avatars on screen and we want to kind of see what the world's like through their eyes to see how they see the world and if we can reconcile that and feel empathy for that and engage in these in these different types of interactions I'm loving some of the comments I think they speak to these different mechanisms and all of these have come you know I give my citation on the slide and the last presentation here has references for all this information but I should be clear that this is the research done from many many many other scholars in this field and in the including Tony and Michelle and then finally there's just liking the extent to which you have a positive affect towards your avatar not everybody does for any number of reasons and so I submit these six different mechanisms to you is ways to sort of not treat identification as a unidimensional and monolithic and singular thing it's not just that you either are or you aren't your avatar it is far more complex than that and that's what makes so much of this experience so interesting because not all of us have the same dimensions of identity with our avatars as other people sitting in the same room have with their avatar and that adds a layer to these social interactions that is fantastic to me and I think to many of you so I suspect that if each of you thought about your avatar that you're occupying right now you might agree with the mechanisms and you might disagree with others so something interesting about avatars is that as we engage them and as we engage other people who also have avatars we can actually see this as a bit of a quartet that there's a conversation that takes place in a sense we see four people we see the avatars mine and yours and then there's the people behind those avatars me and them this is something that my partner Jamie Banks has researched with her colleagues that when we're talking about these interactions the user's avatar is also relating to another user's avatar and I would only submit that that's a lot of communication and it's what makes online spaces fascinating and sometimes very confusing and maybe not the kinds of things that we necessarily know how to cope with or handle because to some extent we may not have these things in our physical space although I might contest that because certainly when I talk to my boss and and and she's wearing a power suit it's very different than when I see her at the grocery store simply you know wearing sweatpants and buying milk to go a little further in the model shown behind me we can also recognize going from left to right four different player avatar relationships and different types and these have happened in several studies from our own research lab and also from my colleagues here at West Virginia including my partner Jamie so for example we can see the avatar as object in which I see my avatar is a tool or a game piece that's it it's just a functional object to get me to do something so when I first engaged this second life invitation I didn't think that I was going to put a lot of time into my avatar not because I wanted to disrespect the audience but I simply saw it is I have to have something for people to look at in order for them to understand that somebody's talking and it was very much just like a object and then like many of you in the auditorium I started playing around I started walking around I started feeling out my avatar and developing a little bit of personality and suddenly I found myself shifting into the next category the avatar as me in which we see our avatar is an extension or a representation of ourselves in that digital space we focused on social and ritual interaction we focused on the fact that this could be fun to play with right and we shift but the funny thing is that's not where it stops I think many scholars stop there it's either an object or it's me somebody does reference google gobble and I'm laughing right now inside because that's one of my favorite skits in any movie the point of this model however is there's even more to it than that it doesn't have to be an object and it doesn't have to be a me so another one is the symbiote in which people see themselves as and their avatar as part of each other one thing that ends up happening is that you might create a authentic social other because maybe you're not comfortable with what's happening in your life right now but you also don't want to abandon who you are so the symbiotic relationship this is the third one over what we've often seen are people dealing with intense socio-emotional pain will go online to experiment with other sides of themselves they didn't realize they had a lot of people who have been abused people who have gone through divorces or people who have had fundamental life changes have engaged this symbiotic relationship quite a bit and the last one we'll talk about is the avatar as another and this is the idea in which a person tends to see their avatar someone mentioned trans people and that is definitely an area where we saw the avatar symbiote the avatar is other we start to see the avatar as a completely separate social agent in other words your avatar is not you it's another thing that you communicate with and you talk with almost as if it were an external social interaction and this is something that we're seeing more and more of in our research where people in the beginning of our studies we saw almost entirely object and me relationships but just like lin just said the way authors talk about their characters some people differentiate between themselves as the creator and their avatars as social agents and the key here if you look at the arrows on this chart is that in the avatar is other relationship the avatar has its own agency its own needs its own desires and you as the sort of puppet master are really there to take care of it there's still a lot of self differentiation for like the object and the other but as i was kind of saying earlier in the panel they serve very different functions this also tends to be a very intimate relationship what is particularly interesting about these is that we see some distinctions between them and a few quick examples people who play video games like an object where they treat their avatar is an object they see their avatar is really just something that they have control over that's really it it's a chess piece it's the pawn they move from space to space in order to accomplish a goal it's no different than a piece of tape or a screen people who see their avatars as an other tend to see it as a separate thing but they feel a lot of intimacy they feel like it has its own agency i've kind of said a little bit of this already and they're probably more likely to use personal pronouns we see people who see their avatar as an other refer to he she they names whereas object players talk about it this is kind of an interesting thing in our research me people folks who see the avatars themselves tend to be very low in self differentiation of course they don't distinguish between themselves in their chair or in front of their computer and themselves on the screen they maintain the control and then the avatar is basically a vehicle for the player's experience but it doesn't exist on its own when they log out the avatar is dead when they log back in the avatars i didn't prepare uh notes for this one for the tell the prompter and i apologize but all i'm showing you here is i took my avatars from earlier and i were to put them on this screen on this chart i probably say my fallout avatar even though he looks really really handsome it's an object i go into fallout and all i do in there is eat berries and make guns and build houses and go hunting i really don't feel an attachment the character he's probably died 50 times because i've knocked him off of ledges and i don't pay much attention and i get frustrated because it means i wasn't playing very well the twitter accounts and perhaps my my avatar in front of you now these are my me players this is me i am on twitter i am in second life i'm sitting in my desk it's a one-to-one relationship and i think both my german fantasy as well as the player above him you see a baseball player his last name is mangosteen that's my alter ego when i play mlb the show he's a first baseman for the hartford yard dogs that is another player another human and my job is to raise him through the minor leagues to the major leagues to win the world series but he is not me it's a separate social being really quick on this chart behind us it's a bit hard to see but the short version is that when we look at how people rates the human-like connectedness that they have with their avatar as well as their agreement with different adjectives that they use to describe their avatar we see some cool things we see that when folks use words like toy tool puppet object they tend to have very low levels of human-like connectedness someone asked about the slides i'm happy to share the entire deck with anybody who asked that's no problem whatsoever as people have higher scores on this idea of human-like connectedness you start seeing folks use avatar of adjectives extension representation peace of me mirror identity all of these things talk about an avatar as me and then finally the highest levels of this notion of having a human-like connectedness with your avatar these are folks who use adjectives like person partner they're very much using language that distinguishes them from their avatar so here i've suggested just a couple of different scenarios that could happen in a digital world in which our emotional reactions might change quite a bit depending on the relationship that we have with our avatar these are speculative and they're not perfect but there are a few examples if a person were to fail in a digital world maybe they lose a video game or they die in a fight in the game an object player would probably be frustrated or angry because they lost and it was a barrier to winning a me person might be disappointed or self-loathing or they might see the failure as an ego threat it's a very different reaction and the other player might feel sorrow or grief because they just watched something die and they were responsible for it of course remember you know these people do not feel as if they have any control over the avatar but they feel an intense connection with it like a pet or a loved one of course where it gets tricky is when folks are engaging the same virtual world or digital world but they have different sorts of relationships with their avatar and as a result they feel very different emotions in a way of course this may not be so different than first life as a professor i see lots of students reacting to things very different it kind of speed things along a little bit how we relate to our avatars can also impact our behaviors when we're in those avatars so i've done some research just to give one example if we don't see our avatar is real or if we don't feel responsible for our actions we tend to be more antisocial so folks who might see their avatar as fake tend to be more aggressive online however if we feel like we're in control of the avatar we might be more pro-social and that's a finding from a video game but there's a lot of work on this called the Proteus Effect and i've put a link in the transcript for later when folks use avatars in digital worlds they can take on attributes and properties of those avatars that can spill over to digital physical space and a point i want to make a critical a critical aspect of all of this we don't engage digital worlds separately from physical worlds our emotions online impact our emotions offline and this is something that i think gets forgotten quite often when we talk about studying second life or living in second life it's not that things can't be different it's that humans themselves don't fundamentally change when they go from one space to the next one of the most dramatic examples of this is a rape in cyberspace i don't know how many people here have read this article i've shared the link here and i would heavily encourage you to read this story i'm going to read you an excerpt from the opening paragraph they say he raped him that night they say he did it with a cunning little doll fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make him them do whatever he desired they say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with each other and do other things and horrible brutal things to give their own bodies and though i wasn't there that night i think i can assure you that what they say is true because it all happened right in the living room right there amid the well stocked bookcases and sofas in the fireplace the house i came for a time think of as my second home for those you who have not read the rape in cyberspace this was a story from an early chat room in the 80s where one user of the chat room found a script that forced other users to do whatever he wanted to do this wasn't a polygon environment it was text only and in all of that text what we ended up finding is that um in this experience people felt raped because they could not control their actions and when they interviewed the guy who did it when they investigated his response was essentially i was just having fun it's just a game whereas the other users who sought out this place for solace and comfort and community engagement felt as if there is a pedophile in their midst and it's a great example of what can happen when one person has an avatar as an object and other people have an avatar as a me or as an other and when those things mix and combine some very dark things so for a takeaway to offer a few takeaways avatars mediate our experiences online and represent us in many different ways as we interact with other avatars those interactions trigger authentic emotional re experiences that are influenced by the user avatar relationship that's what i have now i would love to chat more and i really hope we could spend the next 10 to 15 minutes talking about some of this boy that's a lot to think about but there have been several things that have occurred in the chat i'm going to call your attention back to them let me see if i can find them real quick here we go yeah please lots lots of applause this was amazing okay sandar said way back when i am sandar now nick you're a researcher how do you as a researcher determine who i is when you get responses like sandars sure so the shortest possible answer is we use a lot of multi methodologies a lot of mixed methods so we've developed some some self-response scales where folks can fill out different questionnaires and we can take the pattern of those answers and kind of hone in on what it is they're talking about we also pair that with a lot of open into discussion of what it is the person is describing so we can usually see if they're describing a certain avatar and they're describing themselves in this they want a certain way and then maybe we actually have a photograph of the avatar some of the pronouns that are used we can sometimes get at whether or not they're talking about the avatar or themselves at the same time it's not always that relevant right and what i mean by that is we don't always necessarily care who is behind the screen because one of the things we don't have to assume is that that necessarily matters if you're in a community in second life and in that community you're a particular person we want to know who you are in that space we don't always need to assume that there's a discrepancy between the person on the screen and the person in their computer no more than if i went to a workplace and i interviewed employees about you know their feelings about the workplace that i have to know what they do what they're in their home space and i point that out because it's something that i think we struggle with as humans that we assume there is a true self now there are many researchers who would agree there is a true self i'm not one of those researchers i take very much an Irving Goffman approach that suggests that the self is a collection of the faces we want to provide to the people in front of us based on the context and it's no more inauthentic to be you know sandar in second life than it is to be somebody else at the grocery store there are just different types of interactions but it's a bit of i guess it was a long answer and i'm happy to share the scales and the past data with you but usually it's the combination of conversations and scale responses and Lynn had a comment he said in second life if you do not like your avatar you have many options to change and some people wear different avatars depending on their mood and so i want to know what is the impact of this mutability on a sense of self so it's i guess it depends on whether or not you see it as an expression or you see it as something that's influencing you right because in a way i wear different clothes to represent who i am right i wore a hockey jersey yesterday because the blues were beaten the dallas stars and i wear collared shirts but i'm feeling confident and i wear slummy clothes when i'm feeling lazy i don't know if it reverse impacts my long term sense of who i am however what i would say is one of the things we could study is how the people respond to the way you present and that could impact who you are right you try on a new avatar and for some reason everybody likes that one and not the one that you feel represents who you are it's natural that you would take those experiences back into your worldview and from there probably make some alterations and decisions um it is a fascinating thing in second life that we can expose people to given off cues that are impossible to replicate in physical space right maybe i could wear a mood ring like you know back in the 70s but i can actually just grow an extra tentacle in here if i want to show you how i feel about things so i guess for me it's really just like i said in the panel earlier it's kind of same song second verse the difference being the extent to which the second life community or the community and the virtual the digital space how do they make sense of those cues because that's the part that's going to impact you it's going to be you know communication is not intention oftentimes we communicate unintentional those things often are more powerful than what we think we're saying okay i'm going to ask you to comment on this interpretation of authenticity anna is saying that they have a controversy in the virtual church world they want to talk about whether non-human avatars can take a leading role in worship because they are somehow role playing or inauthentic anna i absolutely love this question so years ago i gave a presentation to a group of clergy in north carolina about whether or not you can authentically have any sort of church service online and we had a discussion about the sacrament and what it means to you know our our and i'll use catholicism for a moment you know um is that the physical embodiment of the objects themselves in the relics that matters you know sort of a traditional view of religion being from st louis a lot of my neighbors went to catholic they went to latin mass because if you didn't do it in latin it wasn't authentic they saw the english language short versions of mass as being inauthentic and exactly your language and so it's amazing to think that there'd be a debate that because you're a horse you can't receive communion and i get your point they see that as somebody who's goofing around they see it as it's some dumb kid who wants to come to service this sunday and they somehow want to move off in this virtual world and that is sort of exactly what i am driving at it really gets into a miscommunication someone said may between how just because i see my avatar is me doesn't mean other people don't also see their avatar is them you might need a authentic one to one high fidelity embodiment to express yourself but it doesn't mean that other person needs an authentic one to one embodiment to represent themselves i'm going to go back a moment to see if i can get the slides to render this is where i think our model is so important uh this one here hopefully it's rendering for you all all six of those different slices of identity all of them can make somebody feel as if they have a high level of identification with their avatar so one person's embodiment could be another person's wishful identification but i think what i would say to that that congregation is to be careful because you are now telling people they can't be spiritual unless they do it a certain way of course ironically that is how many physical churches work if you don't wear a certain outfit you cannot worship your god and if you go back and read luther that was one of his big gripes at the end of the day which is why i often say that the issues we're facing digitally are not new issues they just look different someone wrote it's better to be a horse in virtual chores church than the horses rear end and then the other church and i would agree with that not any church i won't demean religion but i'd rather you be something gentle and nice online than not thank you um marley had a comment she said she's never had an interest in alts and she has always wanted her avatar to be as much like her out there self as possible her main message is she's an artistic person she loves creating outfits jewelry artistic environments and workshops using art processes how do you see the difference between changing your avatar appearance and making alt avatars marley that's a great question because it's something that scientists are horrendous at we don't define our terms very well so everybody in the room knows what an alt is except there is no definition of an alt right um some people might argue that the fact that my avatar on screen is wearing boots is an alt because i don't often wear boots when i'm walking around that's a really deep question i think it i think the answer would be an alt would be an avatar that falls outside of the avatar as me relationship so if we go back to that chart and hopefully it renders here in a moment it's less about the appearance of the avatar being authentic it's more about the extent to which you view that vehicle is an extension of yourself as an as a mirror as a me when that avatar starts becoming self-differentiated and starts having its own identity and its own agency that's when it becomes an alt if you go to the baseball player for example that player actually is fairly close in shape to me in the game he's five foot nine a hundred ninety pounds that's about me um and yet when i play that baseball game he's an avatar as other and there's one really big reason for that i can't hit a baseball to save my life nico mango steam can oh someone posted did we think we sometimes discover who me is when we perform via our avatar of course i think we don't know who we always are in fact even golfin would say this that there's a lot of our hidden self in our backstage that we're never quite familiar with and sometimes we don't trigger those things until the audience around us forces us to trigger them to use myself as an example um i never thought i'd be a good public speaker until i started teaching college classes i i ended up in a classroom not because of my speaking ability i ended up in the classroom because i was a researcher and part of being a researcher is also teaching and it wasn't until the audience in front of me triggered me to think more about how i present myself and how i make sure that communication is not about me it's about them i became a better speaker and so certainly exposing parts of our me through our avatars and assessing people's reactions to those slices of me and help us understand who we think we really are or more importantly who we think we want to be well and i think you're also going to want to talk to carlis question carlis says she met more than 15 sl friends after she knew them in sl in physical art and they are all exactly as she knew them in second life personality wise and she too is actually is that most of the case or not i don't know if i could speak to prevalence rates i do love that you focused on who they were people and not as physical persons because that is probably the thing that we're talking about in these social interactions that tony talked about and michelle talked about and our first speaker also talked about there's a common theme here of social presence that we're often not meeting objects we're meeting people and those people happen to exist in different objects and we can absolutely get to know who they are through the amount of time and care we spend with them i think that there's a bit of an assumption that because we're all digital we're always lying to each other and that's just not true um there's research showing that networks like this in which people have extreme levels of control over how they present themselves well you do and you don't if this entire group of people hung out every day for a year we would eventually recognize vocal patterns typing patterns we would see adjectives get used something that mook just said it's just less work to be yourself that's pretty much accurate we are motivated to engage with the folks around us and their reactions to our engagements shape our reactions to their reactions so because of that it's not surprising that when you meet somebody in real life and you met them in second life it's very much the case that you're likely to find people be relatively non-discrepant the shell just mentioned there's also a selection issue right we probably gravitate towards certain individuals in both spaces so for all of these reasons i think it speaks to the power of these environments to simply be treated as another way of talking and i guess for me it's just not that much different than going to the park it's just that i could have tentacles if i wanted well once again i'm forced to break off some wonderful conversation nick thank you for so many more different ways to look at ourselves and our avatars or maybe i should say to look at ourselves as our avatars i want to remind the audience to take the note card from the giver box by the podium before i take the giver box away and i want everyone to please stretch your legs go to the bathroom get another drink whatever you need be back at the top of the hour dr colacaris is going to present on video games social interactions and mental health i'll see you guys are back in about 10 minutes thank you so very much this was this was a real honor


Hey there, so this week is basically Conspiracy Week and I wanted to remind you that if you haven't seen our other videos that go along with this one, The Secrets of Hollow Earth, and The Conspiracy Theory of Everything, make sure to go check those out right after watching this one. Countless cultures have myths about a subterranean world where advanced beings and keepers of knowledge live. In parallel with, but hidden from, us topside dwellers. Even in Japan, as secluded as it is beyond the East China Sea, has mythologies of Yomi, the underworld where souls reside deep under the earth. And like anywhere, it has tales of gods and heroes descending down into the underworld, oftentimes to bring someone back or discover ancient mystic knowledge. Now to coincide with our Spirit Science episode about Hollow Earth, we thought that we'd ask the question. Outside of the obvious journey to the center of the earth, are there any movies that actually talk about the Hollow Earth story? Yes indeed, because this whole idea of journeying to the underground is probably best shown in this little known anime movie, The Children Who Chase Lost Voices, or as it's sometimes known in Japanese, The Journey to Agartha. And best of all, not only is it free to watch right here on YouTube, but it's full of spiritual wisdom about our acceptance of death, rebirth, and the quest for knowledge.  You've been warned. The Children Who Chase Lost Voices follows your typical anime girl protagonist, Asuna, as she hears a mysterious yet hauntingly beautiful song on her handmade crystal radio. By using a crystal given to her by her father, who is actually implied to be from Agartha himself, in classic anime loner fashion, she sits on a cliffside looking all moody and begins to hear a beautiful song that inspires curiosity and wonder. What a strange melody. As fate would have it, one thing leads to another and she ends up getting attacked on a bridge by a monster that would otherwise fit right into Spirited Away. Which isn't a bad thing. The art style and animation in this movie is gorgeous. And so she is saved by the mysterious Shun, a boy from the underworld of Agartha, and so of course they instantly become best friends. Now if you saw our spirit science about Hollow Earth, you'll remember that Agartha is another name for the supposed kingdom in the Hollow Earth. Which is populated either by ancient humans, extraterrestrials, or ascended masters, depending on who you ask. Coming from the 19th century French occultist Alexandre Saint Yves, who published the first reliable account of Agartha in Europe, he argued that it was a place that not only actually exists, but was situated in the Himalayas in Tibet. An idea that seems to correlate very well with the Buddhist concepts of Shambhala and Agarti, which were located around the same place. Wait a second. Agartha and Agarti? Coincidence? Yeah, maybe. In The Real Life Legends, Agartha was supposedly this place of great knowledge, wealth, and spiritual wisdom that would one day reveal itself to us when we were ready as a society. It might have even been like Atlantis before the fall. In fact, this whole thing is even mentioned in the movie, as Asuna's teacher Morisaki tells her that not only does Agartha possess the knowledge to bring souls back to life, or in our case, reincarnate without that pesky memory loss, but it is also a place guarded by what he calls Ketsukautals. Ketsukautal was a Nahatal version of the feathered serpent in Mesoamerican mythology, the boundary guardian between the realms of sky and earth, spirit and matter, and was one of the major creator deities. In the movie though, they're a little different. In this movie, there's a wide array of these monsters or mythological creatures who act as guardians of knowledge in Agartha. After hearing that Shun died, Asuna visits her teacher later that evening after learning about Agartha in class. Morisaki then recounts to her the story of Agartha and the Guardians. In classic ancient alien style, he gives her a book on Sumerian religion that shows images of fabulous beasts and monsters, one of which is similar to the creature that attacked her. He tells her that once there were gods like this all around the world, and they were guiding the path of humanity when we were still in our infancy. But eventually, humanity grew up and we didn't need gods anymore, so they hid themselves under the earth as keepers of knowledge, taking a small group of humans with them. While this might sound simply like some kind of narrative plot, it's actually very similar to the events of Atlantis that we've talked about before in our original human history movie. This idea that many of these ancient gods were actually ascended masters who had attained new levels of enlightenment beyond the rest of humanity. After the great fall of consciousness, we hit rock bottom on the consciousness ladder, having to rediscover the world for the first time. Many of the ascended masters, such as Thoth and Ra, stayed behind to help guide us on this new path, helping to found the mystery schools that would eventually lead us back to unity consciousness. While they didn't necessarily retreat into inner earth once the mystery schools were founded, many of them did choose to ascend into higher dimensions, which are sometimes described much like how Agartha is depicted in the movie. As far as ascended masters go, it would seem that they naturally interact with us at different times to grant us knowledge when we are ready for it, and act as the gatekeepers of wisdom, much like the Quetzalcoatl's do in the movie. Now the rest of the movie is kind of your typical hero's journey kind of thing, in that Asuna meets a new guide, Shin, who takes her to Agartha, crossing the threshold of adventure and going through different challenges in this new spiritual world, while on a quest to fulfill lost wishes and come back with a new sense of deeper understanding of her place in the world. It's a long, weird journey in which they travel across very different lands, meet different people, shadow creatures, and all along the way, Asuna is trying to figure out exactly why she's there and what she really wants, with Morisaki almost blindly determined to see through his mission to the end. Ironically, despite all of the shortcomings and weird behavior Morisaki shows, Asuna still calls him teacher regardless. Perhaps there's a lesson here that we can see anything as a teacher, even the bad things, if we simply choose to learn from them. Interestingly, it seems like many of the beings in Agartha have a place, a meaning, and to fulfill their purpose is to complete their lives in something similar to the Lion King's circle of life. Even Mimi, Asuna's stray cat, is shown later on as passing away once it's fulfilled its purpose of being her friend and stopping her from being lonely. While it might seem a bit morbid to think that once we fulfill our purpose, we die and move on, but I don't think that's the message here. Instead, think of it like completing a level. Everything and everyone has a purpose to fulfill in their life, and once that purpose is complete, we are given a new one to pursue that is even more in line with our soul's journey. Eventually, when we have learned everything we need to, we can ascend into higher dimensions of love and wisdom. In that, the biggest hidden spiritual truth of this movie lies in its subject matter. It's not something touched upon in anime very much, but this movie is more of a treaty on death, loss, and regret. The loneliness the characters of this movie feel isn't due to romantic entanglements gone south, but hearts broken over those who have died. And it tells a very human story of coming to terms with death by gaining new knowledge of what death actually is. The best example of this is Mimi, like we mentioned earlier. After the cat comes to the end of its path, we see it swallowed up by an ancient ketsukado, but it's not really like eating the way that we know it today. In the movie, it retains its cycle of life's significance. This consuming is kind of like becoming a part of the greater body and continuing act of life, moving into new dimensions. And in that way, it becomes part of an even larger part of the cycle of life. Later on, that same ketsukado carries Asuna and Shin the same way before regurgitating them at the gate of life and death. And while it's gross, there does seem to be the implication that everything is connected and existing together in harmony. Everything leads to everything else and perpetuates existence. Now, remember earlier we said that Asuna's father is implied to be from Agartha? Well, that is its own interesting side story. See, right from the outset, Asuna has this crystal, which we later on find out is called a clavus, these crystal things that are worn by Agarthans to give them power, longevity, and open special doors. Which kind of seems like they're copying Disney's Atlantis. But of course, we of all people don't need to explain the spiritual significance of crystals, but suffice to say, even the name for them in the movie is steeped in history and spiritual lore. The Agarthans call them the clavus, which is a name taken from Frederick Hockley's The Rosicrucian Seer, which are a series of works on crystal magic and occultism. In fact, the influence of occultism on this movie is pretty huge in itself. Even Agartha is the interpretation of Hollow Earth that's used in many occult circles. Of course, reminiscent of HP Lovecraft, the idea of forbidden knowledge or the misuse of spiritual knowledge is something very common in the occult, and is also very present in this movie. The reason why Agartha is shrouded in mystery in the film is that its residents remember times that top-siders visited in the past to rate it of its resources and the genocide that ensued. The Elder of the Village even tells us that top-siders need Agartha's knowledge and treasure to rule over the surface. But what they brought in return were countless wars. And this is undoubtedly a warning to us. If knowledge of Agartha was revealed, how would our world react? The Elder tells us that kings and empires throughout history came to claim Agartha's knowledge, and one of the dictators shown is actually Hitler. It's no secret that Nazi Aryan ideology was rooted in the occult principles of root races, and Hitler himself did actually search for Agartha because he believed it was inhabited by perfect Aryans. There's even a story that Hitler went to India to gain more information and spiritual wisdom on Agartha, and was told he was mad and not worthy of such knowledge. When you really take the time to watch this movie, you'll see that almost all of the protagonists are on a journey. They're changing, showing sides of themselves, dealing with their motivations and feelings. Some journeys end, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, though it doesn't excuse the ways in which they die or pass on. Pain, hope, renewal, loss, acceptance, and movement in general really paced this film and its characters. The whole story seems like a metaphor for the grieving process to some extent, our own journey from denial and loneliness to eventual acceptance. And of course, this brings us to our epic finale. Once they reach their final destination, Mr. Morasaki is greeted by a giant, living, um, eye god? I mean, it started as a boat and then becomes this four-limbed thing with enough eyes to even make Alex Grey proud, and has a similar feeling not to just all of our favorite DMT paintings, but also the great door from Full Metal Alchemist that God is infinite awareness, represented by all these eyes. Morasaki asks for his dead wife to return, and almost uses Asuna's body to do so. One of the core ideas that I took from this was the suffering we can impose on others when we want what we want. Morasaki wanted his wife back, but he never stopped to really consider what the others around him wanted, or even what the spirit of his wife would have wanted. When his wife returns for just the moment, she tells him what she wants, for him to find his happiness. All in all, throughout this story, we see Asuna, a lonely girl who lost her father, Morasaki, a lonely dude who lost his wife, and both Shun and Shin are evidently lonely, searching for greater meaning by coming to the surface.  And even though there isn't an overt religious message in the movie, I think the creator somehow tapped into that vein of truth that goes deeper than our physical understanding. There are no real saviors in this movie. Everyone seems fairly equally needed, and there are no dying and rising gods, but there are places beyond our limitations and worlds even beyond them that we can't see or touch. For Asuna, we see a longing for home beyond the four walls where she sleeps. No one watching children who chase lost voices will be given the solutions to life's eternal mysteries, but they may start asking the right questions. And if that's where you're at, and you want to ask some even bigger questions, click the link below to get access to our private conspiracy content for free, and see where the red pill really takes you. See you there.


Behind me, Italian landing team Marines of the 31st Mu, move out to conduct their final live-fire exercise following the conclusion of Exercise Hamel 2012. As a culminating event for the skills learned from weeks in a woodland environment, the Marines execute live-fire platoon maneuvers against enemy encampments in unique terrain, contrasting years of desert operations. So many Marines have been concentrated on Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of urban techniques leading back to the roots of patrolling fundamentals, patrol-based operations and things like that that Marines haven't had a chance to necessarily concentrate on in the last five to ten years. While these Marines may not find themselves in such terrain in the Middle East, they nevertheless add critical skills to their overall tactics, techniques and procedures, making them all the more ready for the future. Corporal Jonathan Wright reporting.


I mean lights aren't plugged in My it has been a hot spicy minute Hasn't it I haven't even shot a video like this since I moved into the new house So we've been here like a month, which means I haven't just sat here and Talk to you guys for like a freaking month talk talk talk is cheap talk is not what we're gonna be doing today Well, we are a lot actually but mostly looking and reacting and breaking things down I woke up this morning to my Twitter It's a partner it's a partner showcase and that's another partner showcase. I like partner directs. I think they're fun Interestingly, I haven't watched this yet because I wanted to react to a live. It's 4 p.m I just YouTube Nintendo to go to their YouTube page and find the direct and the first thing that comes up It's two spoilers one. I don't really care about. I'm sorry and the other one what the heck Control ultimate edition cloud version come in the switch, but with 63 percent like it's got like like almost half of its dislikes What's wrong with that, but not only the direct I want to talk about a bunch of things actually because the new Xbox and PlayStation is coming out very soon And as you know a lot of your favorite youtubers and tech reviewers are getting the consoles early, and I'm happy to say I Got it. I got a bottle to nothing. I got I didn't not not even an email I know I mostly do Nintendo subs, so it's not really a surprise to me It would have been nice though because I am extremely excited for these consoles However, I had to scrape and claw my way through the pre-orders like everyone else And I'll be waiting and hoping that my order doesn't get cancelled before release day But I am very very excited. All right. Well, that's enough. It's enough of that We got we got it. We got a we got a direct to watch. It's 18 minutes long Nobody told me it was 18 minutes long. Oh my god. I have to make a snack or something Why is it so long? I had a whole video planned with like a bunch of things I wanted to talk about There's no time. There's no time to talk about halo. I was gonna talk about halo screw halo I was gonna talk about how much fun I've been having playing the Pokemon DLC and maybe even do a little mini review There's no time for that now I've been playing it on Twitch a bunch though even with Austin John play So if you want to come hang out and watch me on Twitch, I'm probably gonna be playing a lot more of the Pokemon DLC, but there's no time for me to talk about that now. I'm not mad that it's so long It's actually really cool that it's so long Okay, hold on I gotta I gotta open it in the opera or something Chrome sucks Rome I don't know. Can someone tell me why Chrome is so laggy. It's better be good So I'm calling out Nintendo on Twitter Okay Give me give me give me the good stuff Nintendo Nintendo direct mini partner showcase of the year Last one, huh? Oh, finally. I thought this game had disappeared this year. Was this supposed to be out already? You gotta love the sad ones Huh oh That that okay, that looks good right there. I'm not gonna lie It it looks rough in some spots and really good in other parts It kind of it's kind of giving me Octopath Traveler vibes like heavy Octopath Traveler vibes What's with the voice acting though that background looks awful But then the the enemy designs look great the clothing looks pretty good. Look at that snake Some parts look so good and then other parts look so bad And finally Ravly default 2 will launch on February 26th, 2021. So not this year anymore. I'm not saying I'm not Excited for this game But I'm also not saying That I can Now this on the other hand looked very intriguing that looks interesting. Is it single player multiplayer co-op online? Oh never heard of it. Oh, I think I've heard of this one Here and here in there. Oh, this is the first time I'm seeing switch. This is switch gameplay right here. It looks good That don't that don't look bad at all. Well, they did a nice job with that Yeah, if you don't know I got two videos on my channel now with me playing this game early Wow, that is a lot of horses um Become the ultimate champion in Bakugan What is this? I like the art style. Oh, it's a card game I like card games. Is it a card game? It is a card game It looks Oh on switch, this is what I don't understand what how is this going to work on switch? Together What what where's my switch wait hold on what's he gonna say? No more heroes three don't care hold on Sorry, so if I go to my e shop right now could not connect to the end. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much God forbid my internet It's the Wi-Fi off I Kid you not I have spent the last hour trying to get my Wi-Fi to work I'm so on edge now Like I I didn't even think I was gonna bother finishing this video because I'm so stressed out everything Well, I've been watching the direct on my computer because it's plugged into the router But my Wi-Fi nothing with the Wi-Fi wasn't working So I'm trying to fix the Wi-Fi because obviously I think there's a problem with the frickin Wi-Fi And then I call AT&T they put me on hold for tech support for like forever. Just finally tell me Oh, you know how I've been living here for a month already like I said Yeah, apparently they didn't put our bill in autopay so we were passed through and they cancelled the account and apparently Canceling the account means that the internet still works, but just not the Wi-Fi So I paid my bill and I'm finally very Going to check the e-shop now To do what I can't even remember control wasn't it look? I even have like friggin Nintendo support forums open on my cuz I was like, is it the switches to me? Is it the Wi-Fi? What's going on free download? Why is it free? You can only download a free launcher application to test the game for a limited amount of time This game uses streaming technology pricing can be found later on the e-shop page Once you finish the fight it won't tell you the price till you've played five minutes of the game What kind of trickery is that? All right, can we continue this bloody thing? I'm over it Honestly, man, what a nightmare if my mood is it anyway negative towards this direct now Just know it's it's nothing to do with the direct But it's even more awesome if you play the pre-quest first. I'll give you a little kiss. I Would love today is not my day man. It's not my day. I just go back to bed I It's not panning out for me Why did this video get put on private as I was watching it? I'm in the middle of watching it I'm in the mmm They reuploaded it They reuploaded it. I wonder what they took they must have changed something or took something out But they just did it because this version went live one minute ago fact. It's so early. Oh, no I can't do first. I gotta do first anyway Original hilarious What the heck? I wonder what they changed They would they they said the it's even better if you play the prequels Maybe if we had a way to play them without having a owner we which you know I do but are they gonna give us the prequels to tie us over. I would love that I Knew it as soon as they said it. I mean I didn't really know it Wait later today was that later today both the number heroes games. Oh, well, that's that's made my day a little better actually Wow, okay, that's cool. Well, this direct took a shop left turn there at the end Kind of not as exciting as the previous later today announcement. However Hello Well, I did know about this because it was kind of ruined I haven't seen any of the other trailers for this game by the way I'm trying to not have things ruined, which is why I'm actually talking over whatever that was I don't want to know. Okay. I'm you know what? I'm gonna skip. I'm gonna skip. I don't need to know I don't need to know I want to be surprised. I want to be surprised This is just ruining so much of it for me a demo will be available today demo today It's live right now. I believe I could play it right now. I don't see it I don't know. I'm always weird with these kinds of things. I Don't know if I want to play the demo. Oh Okay, yeah, we'll play the get we'll play the demo saves carry over. That's the best. I love when saves carry over It's so close though. It's like three weeks away. Do I really want to hmm? Oh my god, why was that so hard for me to get through? Um, I really I mean it was great Yeah, it was great. It was really long all in all fun direct nightmare for me to try and sit through it I hope you guys had a good time. Hey, leave some kind of comment down below I appreciate you guys watching. I don't freaking know. I I'm done today. I'm done. I can't I my vibes are ruined I need to go lie down. I'm so stressed out. Okay. Bye