Ranier from LLAG Media on Accountability in Male Podcast Culture

0:04 Hey, everyone. So welcome to the Bunmi Chronicles podcast. I am your host, Randy Kim, and I'm here with a friend, Rainier Maningding. He is a Filipino-American copywriter, brand strategist, and founder of LAG Media. um a strategic communications and content production agent built for progressive brands and organizations so for over a decade he's been writing political and cultural commentary on the intersection of race propaganda geopolitics and pop he is also the host of seasoned fighters a podcast series highlighting the uncrowned champions of social and political change so i was on your show more recently like earlier this year and i really appreciated our conversation and i've been following you for quite some time like i gotta say it's like before pandemic and i have followed your work on love life of an asian guy which is lag um and i've been following your journey and resonate with a lot of the progressive viewpoints that you have shared and and you know being on your podcast season fighters i mean it was a great discussion that we had on grief the political and social climate among others and i'm honored to have you on my show but also to you know hear your side of the coin too in the in the work that you've been doing for the past decade great i mean it's it's an honor to be here i know that we've talked uh on and off for several years even you know jumping on each other's podcast so it's fun that we actually finally got

1:36 to do it this year yeah absolutely and you know well i want to start by asking like you know how we're halfway through this year and what have you observed about yourself in the way you approach your work and personal care uh you know i think i've learned over the years um you know when i first started creating content i had in my head that i was going to post multiple times every single day um and this is when i was in my mid-20s and i just had a a very aggressive posting schedule and i was working a full-time job and you know i think content creation you you realize how much uh work it takes to to produce work to engage with your audience um and in my younger years i was so eager to uh rally around my community and soak up praise and be engaged and involved and i still value all of that but i think as i've gotten older i've also greatly appreciated my alone time to just sit with certain topics and allow certain subjects to marinate a little bit longer as opposed to feeling like i need to get them out right away and so I've I've learned to strike that balance because there is a lot of content that I do that needs to be posted consistently especially when it comes to news and politics I mean Trump is doing something every hour it seems and I try

3:13 to balance that by doing things that are a little bit slower I mean whether it's my garden content or you know talking about pop culture music music and movies and so i think having that balance has been really healthy for me to be able to just feed the different sides of uh myself as a writer as a creator as an activist um yeah i think having that balance is really important creatively yeah because i think like when you create content it also feels very and i see this with content creators in general like there's this need to like get everything like immediately to react like constantly but instead but also like we instead of reacting like we forget to uh respond i think that there is a sense of like how do we let things manifest and let things develop and so that gives us time to kind of process where we are at because i do think that there's there is value in being able to share things in real time but there's also times when we need to be in real time kind of like understanding what this all means right no exactly i mean um when i first started to talk about the iran war or when i first started talking about palestine i remember how daunting it felt because i i didn't really uh know enough about palestine or israel or iran um but

4:45 then there's also this urgency to you know do my homework and realize that sure there are certain conversations that i can marinate and spend time and feel like i need to wait a long time to get a perfect understanding but then there's also times when uh we don't always have the luxury of doing that there could be a tragedy it could be COVID and there are times when people need your voice and so that's also something that I had to learn which is that even though I do appreciate the slowness of certain forms of content there is also that important role of being a voice in the community and whether it's talking about rick chow and cyrus car mcbelton or ice there are some things that you have to almost convey your confusion with other people and and let them know that you know things are happening and maybe i'm still processing my feelings or maybe we don't even know what's going on but i'm here with you experiencing it with you and we'll be able to talk it talk through it together yeah i think that's a good framework that you just brought up because it's like we can't always be the experts on everything minute by minute and i think that i think one of the things that we have to acknowledge and i think this is something i've shared with other folks is that we have to acknowledge where we fall short of or where we don't have the full understanding

6:15 of and it's okay to convey that like because i do think that there is this sense of how social media runs like like we need to get like you know people are waiting for us to react people are waiting for us for a response you know like or celebrity to respond like okay like this person like tragically passed away what is this person thinking of like in the next hour and I feel like well we kind of have to be very mindful about I think our own expectations of what is considered a timely response and I think that sometimes I think it's okay to be like look I have a lot to think about I right now my heart goes out to such and such but at this moment I am trying to process the shock that everyone else is feeling right now and what this is mean afterwards you know so i i think that that's something that i kind of like marinate in you know kind of like oscillate between that word of like having to have a a timely response but also understanding that not all fast responses are the most effective ways of doing it because there's a risk of misinformation there's a risk of like losing some of the nuance that we um that we forget about and i am very curious about like when you started lag media the love life of an asian guy what was your approach then when you were starting out i'd say i'd say it was about a decade ago is

7:45 that correct yeah so i started a well i started the love life of an asian guy as a blog when i was 18 so 15 years ago and i started it on wordpress with the premise that i felt like there wasn't enough representation for asian men and media i mean this is also when i was still single so i was very much interested in seeing like you know asian males as the lead role getting the girl like that was my that was my sort of goal um in terms of the type of representative representation i wanted to see um and so i figured like a great way to play my role is to document my own love life i mean that's why it was called the love life of an asian guy but um spoiler alert I met my wife when I was 21 so just like a mere two years into it and so I had my happy ending right it was almost like no need for the blog anymore but I was really interested in talking about initially the politics of being an Asian man dating and then I met my wife in an AMBW Asian men black women Facebook group and so that's when i really got my um toes into the waters of the politics of dating

9:17 and especially as conversations around black lives matter and police brutality were happening i started to notice that there were a lot of asian men who just they wanted to date black women and they're talking about how much they thought that black women were cute and blah blah blah but they just had no interest in the lived experiences of black women or black people or anti-blackness and that just irked me like it it maybe it's because i didn't realize i was in a group with a bunch of conservative asian dudes but it frustrated me that they didn't want to care about these subjects that like you know you want these women to care about the lack of representation for asian men how come you don't care about the way that black women are mistreated um and so that's what started it and it really just snowballed into me thinking about and caring about all the different social political Topics that revolve around being Asian around being black around being a person of color around capitalism around being an American and just started to branch out from there and Ten years or rather seven years into Me having the page at the same time I was working in marketing sales and advertising and and I just felt like I was leading this double life where on one hand my work my writing was all about social politics

10:48 and progressive politics but then I'm working for these industries that are very exploitive whether it is real estate or advertising and a lot of marketing advertising you know you only work with the biggest brands and oftentimes you're working with some unsavory people and so i started my agency as a way to kind of bridge that divide and say you know what i want to take the skills that i've developed within this field and i actually want to apply it to nonprofit organizations to small brands and small businesses uh because i think one of the most difficult things is to promote and sell good things you know it's easy to sell makeup in a casino and a two million dollar home and a luxury resort in bali but to promote that there is a community garden that provides uh you know a soup kitchen service every sunday it's a much different cell and i think from a marketing perspective i i i saw that as a challenge similar to when i first started the love life of an asian guy as a challenge to like you know there's this narrative that's being ignored or being told and i want to tell a different story and so uh i i charted that uh that different path uh for for marketing yeah i i think about like what that landscape has looked like especially when you are

12:20 in predominantly white spaces especially in the marketing and and in the agency uh field and what that really looks like and also having to to think about well what's is there a place for the conversations that i want to have especially regarding um anti-black racism and also the the very deep progressive or deep uh seated issues that are in our in our asian communities as a as a whole here and you know i i also i wonder because you know having to do like a facebook page and then you're doing the social media work that you build a community in a sense and it's almost kind of like i don't want to say it's accidental but it's also something that we kind of forget like all of a sudden like wow you know there's a community but they're also making friends with one another you know they're learning from each other they're bringing in points of views that you're kind of like okay I never would have thought that and and then all of a sudden becomes this responsibility because I remember a couple of years ago I think you had a situation where you were just really struggling with trying to navigate this and and having to work with moderators you know that that had to volunteer that volunteered themselves and how much of a full-time job that is and sometimes this is why i wouldn't do a discord because or like my own you know facebook group for that because

13:51 because i just don't have the time to like you know get into the back and forth and that's not how i my mind works you know i would rather do this in person and have a conversation rather than having to you know spend half of my day you know having to think about my responses and and feeling like i have to be pressured into responding as i mentioned earlier so i wonder about how do you navigate like you know this community aspect of your own work oh i mean that's a very very difficult thing to balance because like you said um you know when you end up with the community it is both by design and also by accident you know you design it in the sense that i'm creating content that i want to rally people around to have these conversations and break bread and and debate and you know connect with one another and i to my surprise a lot of people came to my community and a lot of people joined and you know by the time i was 26 i was you know my facebook page had a quarter of a million followers um and at that time facebook had announced their facebook groups feature and they were like hey you know you can make groups and me at the time i was i was such i i had unchecked people pleaser energy where i was just like yes i was just saying yes to anything to any opportunity to to

15:23 to grow the community to make friends online um and so a lot of people were like hey you know create this group all right cool so i created a facebook group called lag fam and then a lot of people were like well we want a group for foodies and we want a group for nerds and we want i saw that yeah i remembered yeah and so we ended up with 13 facebook groups but I did it under the premise that this is everybody's spot this isn't just my space it's for anybody to use it to promote to talk about whatever to just use it almost as a community center to do whatever it is that you'd like but in doing so I brought on a bunch of moderators who all had their own personalities and different agendas one of which ended up scamming people through GoFundMe campaigns and so that was a whole ordeal and so my role on the page shifted dramatically you know I was once just this single blogger in college writing about dating and then here I am managing thousands of people online plus thousands of people on these private Facebook groups and combined with my politics there was also this concern of like people are doing labor people are this is a lot of work to moderate to

16:57 to manage the content that is being produced onto these platforms and i really did have like a breakdown of just like this is too much i i was just exhausted and worn thin and i i still had a full-time job and so i was i felt like i was juggling six different things you know speaking events and i was posting every single day multiple times a day and i was doing a podcast like it just it was so much um but i think i i learned to just pare down all the things that i had been working on and just distill it into like okay if i had to trim everything and just leave like the top 15% of the things that I think I'm strongest at or I want to pursue and that's sort of where I am right now where I'm just it's a lot more bare bones but I'm actually in the process of developing things a little bit more adding a little bit more onto my plate now that my agency is at sort of a different stage but yeah I mean I think starting community becoming an influencer or becoming the face of your page um it's a lot of pressure it's a lot of pressure and i and i try to tell my clients uh who've you know whether they are just starting off or whether they have a platform they want to grow the platform i tell them

18:29 that being uh an influencer having a personal brand having a a large brand in general a social media presence it's almost akin to being an athlete like there is a there is a certain uh mental spiritual physical fitness that is required to consistently show up you know even just i mean i i know you know just recording and sometimes just making sure that physically i look okay i feel okay i'm like checked in mentally into the conversation um that's difficult you know and it's it's like i mean it is a performance you know and and you start to have a fond appreciation for people who perform because you're like when I hit the record button I have to be on you know I have to be tuned in and so you know I went through the valleys of you know being a nobody having the page crawling back into obscurity finding my way out to you know show up again and so it's been it's been a fun journey oh wow i really appreciate you sharing this because i do i do think this is a precautionary tale about how do we learn to say no to things that don't align with us and this guilt that we sometimes carry for saying no or hesitating on that

19:59 because we're like okay this seems like it's a great opportunity how what i how could i be this silly to just turn this down and yeah i think that there comes a point where like the quality of your content but then the quality of your own life it's like you have to be in this mental framework like I need like the reason why I cannot do more than two interviews in a day if I do a recording is because i need to be able to really process the conversation that i'm going to have i like to give myself like an hour to kind of like okay man to get myself into this framework okay like the the intentionality that i have about these conversations that i want to bring in and and go going back to the why of it you know and and and i think that kind of grounds me but i do think that i think as we get older we we have to give ourselves that permission to step back and reflect because i do see a lot of podcasters and i do see a lot of content creators burn out very quickly um to the point where it's like they just disappear like like that and it's sad it's it's sad for me to watch that it breaks my heart because i really do believe in their work and i also not to say that they aren't doing anything impactful outside of it i just think that sometimes i'm like okay what about the sustainability of what um what does it mean when we have to like you know um give ourselves a little bit of break a little but of a breathing room so it does not affect our own mental

21:32 and physical capacity um i'm curious because i know that uh since covid there's been a growing number of content creators whether they are tick tockers podcasters redditors youtubers and it has been replacing a lot of the traditional media outlets these days and and of course you go throw in ai and then how has this current landscape changed the way you approach your work and and the responsibilities that you now have as a content creator you know i think um the concerns that people have of ai replacing humans and especially ai influencers replacing human influencers um i think there's definitely a segment of the of the content creator market which is a multi-billion dollar industry uh there is a segment that is more promotional and sales based that is more subject to being replaced and you can just you know draft up an ai model to look however you want and they'll you know sell these these sneakers um but the one thing that ai really can't do is things like this like actually having a human to human conversation you know they can't replace the questions that you would ask me that only you would ask only me um they can't replace you know if something is happening in the news trump does something uh there is a emergency uh news story that breaks out um our ability

23:08 to take our human experiences and and expertise um and use as the filter through which we communicate this story and share it um that's something that ai will never be able to do sure ai can draft good copy and and you can teach it to respond to this particular news story um but i think as ai develops so will our um radar against ai and we'll start to notice when things are created by ai and we'll start to crave as we are now craving more human to human experiences craving more in person experiences craving things that don't look polished uh because they have that human element of human error or you know it's the people are preferring um a post that is a handwritten doodle um or handwritten note as opposed to something that is like this polished 3d ai uh look and so for me the way that it's changed my creation um is really um spending more time like i said before and marinating on uh different subjects um you know i'm working i'm always constantly working on different topics that i want to write about make videos about um and i think one of the things that ai just does not have will never be able to compare with humans is our ability to make

24:40 connections and to draw conclusions between things that are totally different like i could write an article and talk about hey you know um here are some patterns between k-pop and michael jackson like ai just won't want to create that content on its own um you have to be able to to pull that out um and so whether you're talking about politics or or movies um i think for me i'm just trying to be more grounded in consuming more art and creating more art yeah i think that you hit it on the point because there are people there's a growing number of people that are very wary of ai especially when you see ai slap but art and and how it just isn't good i mean it's also just like it's stolen art too on top of it it's stolen work and i think that there is value in like yes there's some value with ai in terms of like okay workflow in terms of let's say um if i need to get captioning you know for those who are hard of hearing and deaf it's like okay this does save me a lot of time on the other hand it's like i also need my voice like it has to sound like my voice it has to be my voice it can only come from me because you know i've been doing this for a while now too and it's hard for me to want to let to surrender that autonomy

26:14 of my own work and and and and the disservice that it does to my own audience um i also think about like what um sources are they pulling from like you know let's say for gemini for example if i am expected to like you know ask questions i need to know where the sources is coming from because i see some of them coming from reddit and i'm like yeah not exactly the best source you know and and and so i think if anything you know with the with the advent of ai and how it's being used and how quickly it's been like multiplying in in terms of sophistication and intelligence um what can we do to make sure that we don't lose sight of the information that's critical that we're missing you know and also the human element in our own voices so it's something i really think about quite a bit and especially with in this day and age do you see um because i know that a lot of people are not as are consuming news to social media and i know that i think that there's this this underlying responsibility like okay i didn't really sign up to be a news source like i didn't for me i didn't think i'd sign up to be in that as like a reporter you know reporting on ice on ice threats or whatever but like but does

27:49 that does that change the way you have to like um approach the news to an audience that has been shifting away from the traditional media landscapes yeah i mean that's a good question uh you know i i think what's really interesting about media and and journalism you know i i was the i i started off news very early like in high school i was in journalism i was the editor-in-chief of my uh high school newspaper and so I always had an interest in magazines and newspapers whether it's just the overall design production of it or just being in the space of talking about things that are happening in the world and as we've seen over the last 10-15 years legacy media has changed from you know no one buys any physical papers to people were all going on buzzfeed and reading all their news uh online to now a lot of people don't even go to those websites anymore because the headlines are clipped and turned into tech talks and and uh carousels and so uh there's always going to be a hunger and a thirst for the news and and things that are happening um but one of the elements that has changed and has provided a real opportunity for a lot of people is the role of being a reporter and being somebody who has

29:21 a unique beat several years ago when I first started writing there were specific writers that I would follow because they talked about race and politics and because you just didn't see that quite often in newspapers but nowadays there's plenty of people who have pages dedicated to these more niche topics and I think that is the role that a lot of folks like you and I play into which is you know we're we're not going to be able to compete with actual journalists who like this is their day in day out job they're they're in person uh going to city hall getting these papers to report on things and doing really complex deep work uh but then there's also a lot of things that are swept under the table and and issues that you know maybe the community that you're serving you know maybe you are in the uh long beach california neighborhood and you are reporting on asian and black communities like that is a specific specific niche that unfortunately you're you're not going to see funding for that position in the at the la times um and so that is a role that a lot of independent creators um can fill and you're seeing that with a lot more youtube channels and people

30:51 who are citizen journalists i mean unfortunately we're also seeing this on the right uh you know whether it's like people like nick shirley uh who is you know basically a republican op um who broke broke the story and and made that story about um minnesota uh daycares run by run by somalians he is the one who made that story go viral but that is an example of the type of industry and the environment that we are in you know in a world where some 20 something year old uh connected to the republican party can get exclusive access to an ice detention center to make content we on the progressive left have to think well what are we doing to advance the stories that are underground that need to be seen and so anybody who has an inkling that like hey there's a story that's going on or there's this thing that happened in my in my town that people aren't talking about and that there's this grave injustice that needs to be brought to light and i think that if you feel that way i think that you should follow those instincts um especially if you are well-intentioned and you and you believe that um you know you're speaking up for marginalized people um

32:24 because journalism has been heavily defunded for years and you know with trump coming back into office with the defunding of pbs um with the takeover of cbs and cnn um and the per in the acquisition of a lot of these media companies by you know the larry and david ellison uh dynamic duo uh buying out tiktok buying out um legacy media we really have to ask ourselves well who is going to report on the news then if all this news is being filtered through this oligarch epstein class lens then how do we talk about the epstein files how do we talk about police brutality how do we talk about trump um and so whether that is people like us doing our own work on the side or uplifting other journalists who are still doing that work um there is always going to be a need and um and a role that needs to be filled mm-hmm and with that said we also talked about the mental spirit in podcasting when i was on your show and how often male podcasters like the joe rogans and your tates of the world create this whole platform to suit the needs of men who are feeling this loneliness epidemic and i'm very i'm very curious to know how you feel as a male podcaster and the responsibility you have

33:56 with your platform and how you go about it because this is something that i definitely think about quite a bit especially when i was coming back to it you know and and what does my own male privilege mean you know as a podcaster and and also the fact that there are people that are taking it seriously and then there are people that are very turned off by the manosphere you know justifiably so um i'm curious about how that affects you in in that space yeah i mean when i when the manosphere first showed up on my timeline and i started to see the content from people like andrew tate or the fresh and fit podcast or the guys who were going to thailand the philippines as passport bros um my gut reaction was like frustration and ick and like i wanted to just like fight everybody because I mean I've always been against I mean even when I started talking about dating I always approached it from a from a more humanistic perspective of like hey as men you can meet other women by just being a good person by being an interesting and interested person you don't have to like the the whole pickup artist here's the trick here's this one you know magic bullet that will like get all the women to to want you um i i had always

35:30 placed my foot firmly in the opposite direction so when the madness fear came in I was just like oh great like this thing is getting rehashed so I had made quite a few and I still make a lot of posts talking about men who have these types of ideologies because unfortunately like you said this industry is huge there are a lot of people there is an infinite amount of people who are using ai to create non-stop manosphere content red peel content to drag down other young men uh impressionable young men and i know i had been criticized a couple times for being so harsh and just straight up saying like you guys are creepy you guys are losers this shit doesn't work you need to stop and also more unsavory ways of coming at them but i look at it from the perspective of like i'm not gonna handle if you guys are going to advertise yourselves as like big and bad and you don't give a shit and you're gonna like manhandle women and and try to assert your dominance then there's no reason why i need to handle you with kid gloves and i never understood this tendency to be like don't say anything to the men because like you're gonna make the the lonely men and angry men even more lonely and angry but i'm like that is a problem like we can't we can't treat it as if it is this quirky personality difference um

37:05 we're talking about people with who have been indoctrinated to have this fundamentally flawed violent mindset and whether you were applying that to destroy the women in your lives women in other countries or you're using it to break down yourself and you're falling into a pit of depression and then dragging other vulnerable men because you also feel lonely and you need the companionship of other you know upset men you know I have also contemplated about like well you know do i post enough encouraging things to men do i post enough things that are that are more gentle for men because sure you know like as much as i i want to match fire with fire with a lot of these manosphere men i know that there are a lot of young men who have good intentions and maybe they just got sucked into it you know similar to the way that a lot of young men get sucked into uh gangs which function a lot like cults um and they get recruited very young because they don't have um uh positive role models um people who they can learn from and so that is something that i'm also

38:36 actively working on and and trying to think through but also contemplating about whether or not that is my role uh whether or not my role is to is to uh uh speak on it in in that way and so this is something that i have in ongoing dialogue with myself uh but for now i i think that because there's so much endless amounts of horrible manosphere people i i feel like right now at least um i have to match that fire i have to be able to call it out as it is um but i also believe that there are a lot there are plenty of men who can find inspiration and um and guidance through the people who aren't straight cis males like i've always been of the belief that like the best some of the best role models for men are women are gay and trans people like i i think having this idea that men need another burly macho man to be like you know the father figure is ridiculous um and i think that what men need is more diverse um uh role models so yeah yeah i really i really appreciate you for bringing this up because i know

40:08 that this is an ongoing discussion i think about like the idea of like okay these folks are gonna fuck around and find out you know or or you know cool or for me to go scorch earth or use my sense of humor to like you know to be very unserious because i i don't spend a lot of time like really engaging but i will you know have my smart ass comments here and there but at the same time i also like think of okay well how do i want to model myself to to undo the toxic masculinity that i've inherited or had to learn and now i'm trying to like unlearn and really rethink reshape the way i view my own cis um cis male uh cis masculinity and and what does it look like when I'm sharing my own vulnerability my own honesty you know that's basically for myself first and also how I envision the world to look like if we continue to use healthier practices and build better relationships with people who are very different from us and what does that look like what does creating boundaries look like what does saying no look like and uh yeah i i know i was thinking more recently because i know that um unfortunately we had the the verdict uh the not the not guilty verdict of rick chow an asian american man older gentleman who was cleared of all charges in

41:42 the murder of 14 year old cyrus carmack belton who is a black kid and was killed unfortunately when rick chased him out of his store and you know this really goes back to the deja vu of what happened 35 years ago with the shooting death of 15 year old latasha harlins by korean american store owner soon jadu in la which preceded the la riots um why do you feel that anti-black racism anti-blackness has such a legacy chokehold on asian communities across the board uh anti-blackness plays a pivotal role for a lot of asian people and i say asian people because it's not just asian americans whether it's asian australians or you know people in asia korea philippines wherever um it plays a pivotal role because of their relationship with whiteness uh with colonization you know a lot of times people try to say oh i i don't care about race um you might not care about race but your government has politics care about race and i think for i think for a lot of asian people i mean oftentimes there's this conversation about like oh asian people want to be white and i think a lot

43:12 of asian people do want to be white but i also think that even beyond just wanting to be white I think they just see white people and what they attribute with whiteness whether it is wealth whether it is prestige whether it is attractiveness people automatically associate these markers with whiteness and with happiness with all these ridiculous things that they assume unpackaged with being in that space being of that race and through that narrative a lot of Asian people see black people as characters within their story that they can exploit to advance that story and whether that is seeing black people as underneath you whether that is seeing black people as your enemy whether that is seeing black people as a group of people to humiliate i think a lot of asian people have adopted whether consciously or subconsciously this white supremacist view of looking at black people as subhuman as looking at black people as if they are like garden tools and things that can be used that can be mined

44:49 and extracted for value for pleasure for entertainment for ideas and a lot of asian people and non-black people see black people as just that um and it's it's really frustrating um because like you said this is a mirror uh a very similar situation with rick chow uh to what happened 35 years ago with uh sunday and latasha harlins and knowing how much time has elapsed knowing how many conversations about race we've had over the last 10 years 15, 25, 35 years and seeing that we're repeating the same mistakes it is just a reminder that like I said before even though you might think that you were checked out of politics these politicized events continue to happen because we don't learn from our mistakes unfortunately a lot of Asian people don't care about actually interrogating what it means to be asian to be asian american to be white to be black and i think for for too long asian people have convinced themselves that they can do what white people do which is not think about race and to to to whitewash the the racialized identity that has been pushed upon them because

46:26 I mean you see this a lot with like Midwestern Asian people for example who grew up in Texas and all their friends are white and you talk to them and they have like this southern accent and you're like hey how does it feel to be Asian American Asian American I'm American I'm Texas I'm Texan first and then I'm American and you just see with like this bold conviction that like they don't see it you know they even though you know that their friends know their friends call him hey like whether it's whether they call him the chinese guy because because he's asian even though he's filipino or korean it's like they've grown up in this highly racist or racialized world but because they aspire to be white because they want to be adjacent to whiteness they think that they can live by not thinking about race by not thinking about politics even though they think about race heavily when it comes to black people um and so i think it's a very multifaceted very complicated ongoing issue um that is always changing you know there are people who are who are trying to do the good work who are asian asian americans uh who are unpacking what it means to be asian what it means to be white um and it's unfortunate it is unfortunate that we still have these problems it is unfortunate that there's

47:57 a growing MAGA Asian community it is unfortunate that there are so many Asians who are in the manosphere and I think the only thing that a lot of us can do is consistently show up as the landscape of media changes as these political conversations ebb and flow I think one of the most important things is to be a voice that will always be there to talk about these things and maybe you post every day maybe you post every week I think if you have a voice if you have an opinion and you're in this space I almost see it like at this point whether you're an Asian person talking about anti-blackness or whether you are an American talking about what is happening to Palestinians or to people in Congo it is I feel like it is your duty I almost feel like it's like there is an active information war being waged on all of us by the billionaire class by the epstein class by capitalism by the military industrial complex that wants us to believe certain things and if they are spending billions and trillions of dollars advancing these narratives the only way that

49:29 people can actually combat that is to see in themselves that they are a lighthouse that they can be a voice and they don't have to have a million billion dollars but if there are millions of us using our collective smaller voices then we can have one giant megaphone to talk about these things and i think going back on anti-blackness within the asian community i just hope more asian people who are waking up are actively speaking up about it whether it is a short little post whether it is creating more consistent content whether it is showing up on people's podcasts to just say hey i'm asian and you know fuck anti-blackness like i think that is really important however you want to show up i think showing up is the most important part yeah no i really appreciate this discussion because it is clearly ongoing i mean you know like how do we bridge the gap between asian and black asian latin a and what other marginalized communities and the intersections of it and and and also like you know we see a lot of distrust from black communities uh with asian folks because i mean it's not just the racism that they've experienced from asian folks but also the displacement of black neighborhoods to make room for uh for asian americans for asian communities because they weren't welcome

50:59 in white spaces which you forget that and i think that there is this value of like being able to show where but asian and black solidarity has happened you know with the grace lee boggs of the world or what malcolm max and yuri kochiyama did but um but i also think that there is like um also what we forget about is the blasian community that's also growing too because that isn't that is a particular demograph that does get ignored quite a bit i mean i know we are hearing a lot about the wasians but i do think that that also opens up the conversation what about black asians or asian latina um asian indigenous you know the or the or the different intersections of asian identities whether you're like palestinian and chinese you know we are a mounting pod and i do think that there comes this this very different layers of narrative and what we need to think about and and address in the room that you know we're not all very monolithic um and certainly we're not homogenize separately in a way because we are also blending in so that's that's like a thought that comes to mind too oh yeah a hundred percent i mean i i have been a huge advocate um of i mean when i first started writing i was a really strong advocate of of saying that Asian people aren't just East Asians Asia isn't just China,

52:33 Japan and Korea and I have always pushed and advocated to expand that identity so people can understand that Southeast and South Asians exist but over the last 10-5 years I've really started to advocate more for i mean we need to also look at people in palestine and iraq as like they're also asians they experience a very different racialized version of of of what that uh what that is but if you are somebody who is outraged about things that are happening to asian people um whether it is in the united states or uh through you know i think it's imperative that we see the plight of palestinians and folks in um west asia as our people they might not look like me or you but they are still our people um and like you said asia is a melting pot i mean i'm i'm also uh an advocate for for looking at um a lot of folks in russia and north asia who are also asian i mean a lot of them just they look straight up asian um but i think that for

54:10 so long we have allowed the asian identity to be defined by europeans and white people um i mean even the fact that whether you're talking about namings such as Oriental or Far East Asia all these terms were created relative to the West it's called Far East because for a long time they didn't realize that Japan existed they thought that the end of the world was Jerusalem in the Middle East and so I deeply implore Asian people to really think about what it means to be Asian while also accepting the fact that Palestinians are Asians, that Indians are Asians, that Filipinos and North Asians are also Asian because i think that when we really look at ourselves that way i mean a lot of europeans a lot of white people they come from all different parts but they call themselves white um and yet for a lot of asians we want to have these monikers of you know jungle asian and fancy asian all this ridiculous shit um when i think the real conversation is um what happens when we realize

55:40 that all all these different asian people and their narratives and their struggles um and the ongoing wars that are happening over there uh what happens when we really ingest that as part of our people too yeah and also i know that there's been like this push to change the middle east to west asians and west asians and then central asians because um because middle east was like kind of like the moniker that um that europeans placed and i think that there is like this new way of trying to disrupt narratives that are um that are inconvenient but they're just not telling the nuance and the full aspect of you know the geographic but also the people that reside in these regions and and north africa that's another part of it too i mean you include egypt and morocco um yeah i mean it's a it's a whole different very different dynamic and and I think that's I think being able to frame that is incredibly vital and how we see ourselves as Asians and a lot of the alignments and the differences that we carry within us and most recently you you've launched season fighters and I was on your show earlier this year and what are you looking forward to do with this new platform and what can we expect

57:15 so i started season fighters because i had my previous podcast lag radio and i had run that for four years and i really enjoyed it i really just enjoyed the opportunity to give a lot of marginalized folks a lot of people of color an opportunity to just share their story but i actually wanted to start season fighters because i wanted to to make it even more special i wanted to do uh even more promotion around it i wanted to um expand it and allow it to be a standalone brand and so i have a sponsorship right now that i i'm working with a spirits company called swani spirits so they make carolina gold rice uh which is rice that was farmed by um africans in the rice coast and I wouldn't have been able to do that in my previous podcast simply because the branding was just different I think the branding really set the stage and allowed me some opportunities that I didn't have previously and so I want to do so many different things so whether it is doing more sponsorships and collaborations with brands owned and run by people of color uh but i also want to do some in-person uh stuff i want to actually go out

58:50 and meet people touch grass see people in arizona uh and see if i can do stuff in person um and you know i i seeing as its own separate brand um allows me to just branch off and do other mini projects so you know whether i I do merch or I create something separate underneath it like a more long form series you know I'm just excited to have another project that similar to what i was saying before you know on lag i talk a lot about politics a lot of things that happen at a more fast pace whereas seasoned fighters is a little bit more uh slow cooked uh it takes a little bit more time but i really enjoy that pace because i could do things like this you know i can i can have a conversation um that is more fleshed out that is a lot more nuanced um and it just gives me the space that i feel like the people on my on my podcast deserve um i think a lot of people of color unfortunately you know when we do get invited to podcasts and events sometimes we're treated as you know the side attraction or you know not given as much time um and i wanted i have always just believed in seeing my guests and wanting to roll out

1:00:20 the red carpet um in that sense and so i'm i'm just excited for the different possibilities i'm i'm open to so many different things and i just uh i can't wait i mean it's only been my first year first season doing this so i know that in doing my podcast for multiple seasons that it changes every single year and things get more refined and things get better your process gets better so i'm just loving the learning process right now yeah and what i really appreciated about being a guest on your show is like yeah you were very kind and very you know sincere but also like i loved your promos that you had on my episode you know and you put a lot of care to it like you know sharing the intricacies of cilantro which I would never have known about because I don't have the botany knowledge but I thought that was very great the way you were trying to build up the stories outside of what we're trying to capture like certain uh lens of that story and and put it to another different context or a whole new context and so that was something i really appreciated i did realize that people were really engaging very heavily with it you know and and of course you know there's always going to be people as you know and you and i know that when i would say something and i'm like you and i will shoot our mouths off you know at certain moments and you know we got a lot of blowback but i'm like okay well thanks for engaging with my content appreciate it I don't feel like I need

1:01:55 to read anymore I got a life I want to step outside and once I'm done recording and once I'm done creating something on Instagram reels or YouTube short I'm like okay I'm going to spend the next couple hours just kind of going to a park somewhere and just like really meditate because i have to remember myself like like we're all in this real world it's like we have a real world that we also can still live in you know without having to always be glued to the digital world 24 7 which our answers would never have dreamed of and would and we're not and we're our bodies and mind we're not built to process information 24 7 you know yeah yeah and anything else you're working on for this year besides the podcast um you know i i or for yourself in general you know i mean i'm more i'm working on a lot of different things um so i mean from the lag side of things um you know i've i've i've been reporting on the iran war uh since it started in february uh 28th and I think just in reporting on that topic alone has reminded me of the importance that I play the important role that I play in sharing the news and whether it is through a more digestible format such as memes or which I'm also working

1:03:25 on is bringing back my news segment and my newsletter which is a lot of work but you know I I tested it out last year I started my newsletter lag bites and I really enjoyed it but it is a whole lot of work doing and so now I'm just sort of taking those experiences and thinking well if I reboot the new series how does that look how do I do that while still maintaining enough energy creative energy to do season fighters and to do memes and to do talking head videos and so on the lag side of things where i talk more about politics and culture um there's a lot that i want to do and i think the biggest thing really is to just try to show up more on camera i think a very underrated skill is being able to just like take your phone and like hey guys i have my thoughts about this thing like yeah i'm always like record delete uh i gotta like change it i know i've done that because i've i think like i'm starting to do more instagram or youtube shorts and like for a while it's like i i feel like i couldn't talk off the cuff and that was a struggle of mine and now i'm like okay i'm building the muscles i'm becoming more comfortable with what i'm saying and yes and i'm have to like you know understand how the algorithms affects it and how it pushes out that content so yeah i think

1:05:00 that there comes a point it's like okay you know I don't get too caught up in the full on production of it because like I think it's kind of a waste of time and and I just kind of want to be just show up as myself and and not waste so much of my time and energy trying to to recreate something to really please the masses you know and I think that that part of it like you know being you know in this work is to like disrupt certain norms that are that have been very harmful you know and you know i think um even like the idea of perfecting things is kind of like like a tool of capitalism and white supremacy you know which people were shocked when i said that because someone had said that perfection is a tool of white supremacy and like yes it makes sense because that because it feeds off of capitalism it feeds us it forces us to be perfect and and and to use our labor and i'm like yeah i think about trisha hersey and you know nap ministry and she's like yeah like no i'm not gonna do this we should not allow ourselves to to to uh do this hustle and grind and martyr ourselves in this work because i 100 it's not necessary but it's also that's what will eliminate us and uh yeah yeah i mean it's like and and i i totally agree i mean like I think that's why I wanted to really take on doing more just regular videos where I'm not I mean I have seasoned I had to remind myself

1:06:30 that I have seasoned fighters specifically for that if I wanted to be a perfectionist at least I can apply that to making my guests look perfect I don't have to to put that pressure on myself and so I just I had to learn to be more okay with you know what i got a pimple right here i gotta record the video so yeah it's like okay if i have a if i have like a bloody nose and okay maybe then i shouldn't yeah yeah you know yeah so i i've i've been doing that to to sort of feed that side um but i've also been working a lot uh on the agency side of things um you know we're transitioning the agency to uh align ourselves more so we can work with more non-profit organizations um i think the type of work that is required for non-profit is is very different they have very different marketing challenges so i brought on a couple people who uh are experts in the field who can help me out um so i'm working on that side on the agency side uh but then on my personal rear side um you know i'm a gardener i'm uh a video game fighting game nerd i'm a combat sports nerd so there's a lot of like niche little things that i want to do in terms of content or just things i wanted to do on my on my own self um but yeah i'm i'm firing on all cylinders i think this year um it's really about that comprehensive balance of making sure that side of me that is business is taking care of the side of me that is more political

1:08:04 and more focused on writing and activism is well fed and that the nerdy family cooking side of me also gets some love and attention yeah and last question is uh if you were to go back to yourself 15 years ago when you started this blog and to where it is now what would you say to that younger version ah you know i i as much as there's a part of me that would want to try to establish again like we were saying this perfectionism to try to tell like all right do this so things work out better or whatever i would just encourage my old self and say you know what i think you're doing great i think that um you have you have the right idea um you can say no you don't have to you don't have to accept every single project and anything that comes onto your onto your plate but you are enough and and and and the work that you're doing um it's perfectly fine you don't have to overexert yourself you don't have to punish yourself with productivity um which is something that i feel like i had had done before i was so eager to work and to feel like after the end of the day i was worked by by the stuff that i was doing um and that burned me out and it took me years years to refill that cup and

1:09:39 so i would just reassure myself that um you know take things take things at your own pace uh there's a lot that's gonna happen and you know as long as you're just committed to speaking up and you know you can take some times to touch grass and take a break but as long as you just show up that's important part yeah and where can people find your work i know that i encourage people to you know follow season fighters but yeah where else can people follow your work uh so i'm all over the place uh whether it's on facebook instagram um tiktok youtube uh you can find me at uh llag or the love life of an asian guy uh on youtube i'm over at lag media and yeah you'll you'll see me everywhere also on threads and yeah thank you so much for being on my show it's been a pleasure to have this wonderful conversation and you know all the best to you awesome it's it's honestly been great having you uh uh chat i mean even just our podcast last time and i know i definitely want to uh chat again so i'll probably invite you again