Hey YouTube, coming to you from Bali.
I know it's been a while and I appreciate everybody's patience in regards to my lack of uploads.
I left the Philippines a few days ago and there's a lot of reasons for that.
I may get into some of that uh in this video, but anyway, yeah, if you want to catch up with me a bit, stay tuned.
You'll find out what my next plans are and where I'm headed.
So, why did I leave the Philippines?
Well, big reason I left was due to the expat trash in the Philippines.
Oh, oh, I'm okay.
And you might be wondering, what do I mean by expat trash in the Philippines?
It's not the Filipinos.
I get along beautifully with the vast vast majority of Filipino people that I met, interacted with.
I think there's a lot of lovely Filipino people in the Philippines, but due to deceptive vloggers telling these guys, look, you may be quasimoto in the west, but you come here and you can have a beautiful girlfriend.
This attracts guys like this Vitali guy who's in trouble.
And I know some of you may be thinking, he doesn't represent all of us.
There's a lot of guys just like Vitali.
They might not be so over the top, but they have the same entitled attitude.
They have similar behavior patterns.
I've encountered guys acting just like Vitali uh in Dumagueti.
It's not a rare experience at all.
And in effect, they ruin what could otherwise be a very positive experience.
Like I said, I had many, many great times with Filipino people.
Uh, and I met some wonderful expats, but there's a lot of guys that they see these videos.
Oh man, it doesn't matter how poor your character is.
It doesn't matter that you have bad hygiene.
It doesn't matter that you can't get a girlfriend.
Uh, in the West, you just come here and all your problems will be solved.
And so when these guys see this kind of content and attention from the opposite gender is the primary motivating factor in their life, they're going to drop everything and get on a plane.
And that's where you're going to see more of these Vitali guys in the future.
Um, and I get a lot of push back and flack for this.
People get angry, oh, you hate expats and oh, you're drama, this and that.
I think a lot of these people just haven't been to the Philippines.
Um, the guys I know that live in the Philippines, guys that I'm friends with, validate that.
Yeah.
Like there's unfortunately a lot of problem behavior.
In fact, Dumagedi has a council made up of eight Filipinos and two foreigners specifically to discuss and handle problem behavior from expats.
That's their objective.
That's the objective of getting that group together is, "Okay, guys, we're running into so many problems with these people.
uh how do we address it?
You know, how do we figure it out?
How do we try to mitigate it?
And realistically, like I don't know if there are too many ways to solve the issue.
I hope that this Vitali guys experience serves as a lesson or a warning to trash expats.
But I also know that there's a subset of the male populations in the Western democracies that in effect they will never be able to have a relationship.
And uh there's a lot of reasons for that.
But when these guys, they realize, wow, I'm going to go the rest of my life without any attention from women.
And then the vloggers promise, hey, you just come here, you'll get all the attention you want.
That's what ends up happening is uh you get people like Vitali that they want attention at any cost.
He's willing to insult, degrade, mistreat the Filipino people.
just to get attention.
I know money is a side effect of the attention that he gets, but that's just what ends up happening a large part due to the vloggers.
Uh some, let me be clear here, some of the vloggers in the Philippines, not all.
There's some awesome vloggers I've collaborated with.
There's just this subset that they tell these people uh what they want to hear.
And that's where people get upset with me because I don't go on here and pander to my audience.
Oh, it doesn't matter that you're uh it doesn't matter that you're you've got some major issues.
Um you're still like the prize, right?
Guys like Vitali are not the prize.
If he was the prize, he would not be in the Philippines harassing Filipino people for clicks and dollars.
is if he was the prize, he would be engaging in pro-social behavior uh in a western democracy.
I'm not saying that the Philippines will tolerate it.
Obviously, they're not tolerating his behavior.
He's in a lot of legal issues, but I can't tell you how many times I've met these guys.
I come to the Philippines for the submissive Filipino women, and uh you know, I think more and more people are going to learn the hard way.
It's like their whole life is directed at this goal and and anyone who suggests otherwise is the enemy.
Um, and I'm starting to pick up on that.
And you notice like when these vloggers bring up the Philippines, it's never I want to learn the culture.
I want to learn the language.
I want to broaden my horizons.
What I see much more often is I want to reaffirm my ego.
I want to reassure myself that I've still got it.
I don't notice that singular focus on women uh in other Southeast Asian countries like I do in the Philippines.
And when people talk about, oh, go to the Philippines because your blog will take off.
Yeah.
That's cuz the Filipino people are gracious and willing to support media, but it's also because you have a lot of desperate men in the West.
And uh like I said, I don't care to pander.
I I could make a lot more money and have a lot bigger vlog if I just came in here and oh man, you're the prize and you're the catch and everything you do is amazing and there's you could do no wrong.
you go guy and like I don't care to do that.
I mean I don't think that's helpful for the Filipino people.
I think that that actually results in a lot of Filipino people.
You see these guys like Vitali, they've disrespected the Filipino people on international stage.
I mean his videos have been watched probably millions of times at this point and it's unfortunate right now.
I know people will say he's going to get punished and I fully support whatever kind of punishment he gets.
I hope some good comes out of this aside from whatever punishment he gets deservingly.
It really contradicts what a lot of these vloggers put out there.
Um because I think one thing that the vloggers do is they constantly talk about how nice the Filipino people are.
And I think at face value the Filipino people, they take them at their word.
But what they're really trying to put out there is these are submissive pushover Asian people.
You can come over here and treat them however you want because you're a rich man over here.
Uh and I just think that's very harmful.
And I think that we're going to continue to see people like Vitali try to do this because in spite of the punishments and no severity of potential punishment is going to stop them from trying to get attention.
One thing that annoys me is when some of these commenters say, "Oh, he's just a one-off.
He he's just like, you know, he's just one guy." Ever since my visit to the Philippines 5 years ago now, I have noticed the attitude toward foreigners cooling.
And that's part of why I headed out is I realized, man, can you really blame the Filipino people when you see the way that these guys act?
You see the way that they treat the people.
You see how they look down upon them.
No, I really don't blame the Filipinos.
Can't blame the Filipinos for not getting so excited about foreigners in their country.
Do I think that the Filipinos tend to treat foreigners better than the foreigners tend to treat Filipinos?
Yeah, on average, I would say so.
Uh I would say that the Filipino people tend to be having uh a different set of expectations historically where in my experience the foreigners go to the Philippines expecting the Philippines to fix their life and that's where the mismatch of expectations um really leads to some issues for some guys where uh they have a bad reputation back home.
They may have a criminal record.
They are just generally unlikable.
They've got some personality issues and they think, "Oh, the Filipino people are cheerful.
If I go to the Philippines, I'll be cheerful like them.
Oh, they seem to have strong family values.
Oh, if I go over there, I'll have strong family values." And you can't do things overnight.
I mean, it comes down to expectations.
And and the difference being that I think the Filipinos expect that Western people will be a bit more affluent.
And that's actually accurate.
I mean, if you have the money to fly to the Philippines, um, that's not a cheap plane ticket.
And to stay on top of your visas, not free to do so.
Uh, to rent a decent place to live, not cheap in the places that most foreigners want to live.
Um, so yeah, uh, overall, I think that the attitudes toward foreigners will continue to cool in the Philippines.
And I I'm not surprised after seeing things like this fatality incident really hit international news.
I mean, you see it on really big channels like A Toz and several others have covered it as well.
I had a lot of people asking me about my opinion about the Vitali situation, and I've told a lot of them, look, I'm not surprised.
I I'm kind of surprised we don't see more cases like that.
Maybe not as extreme like I said, but I mean if you've lived in the Philippines in any expat hot spot or even spent time in any of these places, you're going to meet a Vitali.
You're going to meet people that act this way.
And uh I don't really want to hang out with people like that.
I've found a lot of the foreigners that I encounter don't really respect the local culture in the Philippines.
um they they tend to complain about it a lot.
They tend to find fault in it.
They tend to not be charitable.
As an example, I've heard about guys telling their wives, "Look, we don't speak your language in this house.
We speak English only." Not wanting their wives to speak Bisaya or Tagalog, which is sad and gross.
It's not like we're in the United States.
Not to say that would justify it either.
But when you're in the Philippines, you have to be willing to meet the people halfway.
I just didn't experience that as much.
I know it's going to be an issue in any kind of expat hot spot, but I felt that it was especially pronounced there.
And it uh it got really tedious, got really tiring to see people move halfway around the world and expect things to be identical to where they came from.
In regards to the phrase, you are the prize, a much more accurate phrase is you have the leverage.
you were in a place where the average person makes like a hundred dollars a month, maybe.
It wasn't uncommon for me to see jobs posting for maids for like $100 a month, working full-time, perhaps more than full-time.
Um, so you could imagine somebody making $100 a month, working really hard, and you've got investments pulling in, I don't know, 1,500 a month.
Yeah.
You've got all the leverage.
I mean, it's not hard to imagine why somebody living in destitute poverty would tolerate a lot of, you know, issues in a relationship because dating a foreigner is a ticket out.
Anyway, wrapping that up cuz I could go on and on about that.
I could be a bit rambling or ranting.
Uh, I am going to be going back to United States here in about a month.
I'm here in Bali for the next month or so.
I'm going to spend some time in Korea.
I've managed to line up some opportunities back in the States to work.
Uh some of that is prompted by the market crash, which has not been fun.
And also just knowing like, hey, if the market's down, not a bad time to go make some money, throw it into my retirement accounts and uh you know, make some headway there.
But also, I had time in the Philippines to really focus on what I wanted to do next, figure out what I wanted to do next.
I'm not going to share this on this channel because uh you know, there's a lot of strange people that watch my channel.
Um there's a lot of crazy people that watch my channel and I don't particularly want them to have insight into uh some areas of my personal life.
For what it's worth, I'm enjoying Bali a lot.
I've been here for a few days, been out with friends, catching up with old friends, making new friends, and uh it's just been a great experience so far.
It's similar to the Philippines in a lot of ways.
Um, but far fewer Americans, fortunately, now that I'm out of what was turning into a toxic environment for myself, I'd like to get back into content creation more consistently.
Of course, being back in the States, I'll be working full-time, so I have to figure out what that looks like.
But, uh, you know, this channel is going to continue to evolve.
I would hope that at least some people would still be interested even if I'm not in Southeast Asia.
Uh now, if I am working a full-time job, I'll get vacation time and I'd like to spend some more time in uh some other parts of the world I haven't been to in a while.
Like, I'd like to go back to Latin America.
Argentina has been really high on my list for a long time.
I'd like to uh visit Buenoses and make it to Chile as well.
Um, so these are kind of uh top of mind for me.
Uh, once I get settled, once I get my job squared away, I will be doing some vlogs in America.
Some of what I've thought about doing is tackling economic topics.
It's a lot of work for one person, right?
So, I have to come up with my ideas.
I have to record, I have to edit, I do thumbnails, and it's not reasonable to outsource all that.
So anyway, let me know what you think down in the comments.
Will you keep watching?
If I'm vlogging from the US, I'm excited uh for my future opportunities.
You know, spending the last couple of years in Southeast Asia.
It's taught me a lot about appreciating the US and about being grateful and thankful for some of the opportunities I have that are unique as an American and not just always being negative.
You know, I I've complained a bit about the US and I get flack for that.
But that's part of what makes the United States an awesome country is that we have the freedom to critique and criticize.
Uh because when we confront our problems, we can attempt to start to fix them.
If you think about any kind of uh treatment program, they always say the first step of solving the problem is acknowledging you have a problem.
And so uh when people get so uh you could say nationalistic maybe is the right word that they cannot acknowledge flaws or problems then that leads to other problems.
There's no perfect world.
It's really about trade-offs.
I'd rather live in a world where we confront the problems we have in America so we could at least attempt to sort them out, figure them out, uh solve some of them at least.
That would be really good.
Anyway, if you enjoy this video, give us a thumbs up, comment down below, and subscribe to the channel.
We'll see you soon.
Thank you so much everyone for all of your support and your patience in my absence.
