 I have to poo. Do you? I just said that after hitting the record. I'm glad. And I forgot to pick up the poo-peri. Well, you know, that's your mistake. Is it? Is it on? You're going to invite me over? It is not. Ah. Welcome to my home. Welcome, guys. Hello, people. Hello. People, guys, girls, cisgender men, women, and everybody, really. This is my good friend, Carl Schmidt. Oh, I've been elevated to good friend because we're in my house. Tell them about you. It's kind of my house, really. We're working on it. I'm not living with him. He's my partner in crime. He's going to kick him out. Do you know, it's funny. I've never had such professional lighting when I've made a video in my house. It's normally a lot darker, and that's more shaky. Do you have the, like, night vision? That's a good idea. Everything's green and black? Yeah, but sometimes I worry about what that special lighting can show up. About me. I'm Carl Schmidt, and I'm a television presenter, and I live here in Los Angeles. Born in Australia, European parents, two older brothers, lived all over the world, grew up in Fiji, in New Zealand, lived in England, Europe, and I was diagnosed HIV positive in 2007, just after I turned 27. So I've been HIV positive for 11 years. And last year, I guess, I got a little bit of, I don't know, with a notoriety is the right word. I sort of got a little bit of traction in who I am because I talked about my HIV status in a Facebook and Instagram post for the AIDS Memorial, which is a really cool Instagram feed, and if you don't follow it, I'm going to say what all vloggers say. Just like, look there. Is that what I'm doing? You'll put the hashtag. Hashtag, what is remembered lips? I'll put the page and the hashtag. What is remembered lips? It's a great Instagram page and feed that celebrates and remembers all of the people lost to HIV. And so what this page does is it honors them, it remembers them, you post a picture of somebody you love, care about, or knew, and then you write a story. And so I'd seen this page, but I didn't have an uncle or somebody I knew, and you can buy these t-shirts. I bought a t-shirt and I decided to tell my story. And I'd been kind of wanting to tell my story for a while. I work in television. Sometimes I'm in front of the camera. But I've been advised not to talk about it because it could be damaging to my career at HIV. Yeah, you don't want to be known as the guy with AIDS. So, are you all right? Please take yourself at home. Feel free to do that poo that you said you needed to do. Anyway, so I posted and it went viral around the world. And so suddenly I became known as the HIV-positive guy from TV. And you know what? I'm happy with that. So we're here today because there is a infamous commercial that you didn't know about. That I didn't know about. Most people, I guarantee you most people watching this have no idea. Well, I think anybody living in America has no idea. If you talk to anybody in Australia and you say the three letters HIV or AID, yes, that's four. Anyway, one of the first reactions people have is, oh my God, the Grim Reaper commercial. And this was a commercial that was commissioned by the Australian government to run for a certain amount of time back in the late 80s. I think it was 1987 when HIV... Just after I was born. By two years. And who looks younger? By the way, I've had no work done. None. Wow. That's low. All natural and very bright. But I'll tell you this. I was seven years old and my dad took me to see an afternoon screening of a movie called Harry and the Henderson's at the Grady Union Cinema on Russell Street. And the fact that I can still remember now as a almost 39 year old man, the name of the cinema complex, I can remember what the weather was like. And it's all down to this famous commercial, the Grim Reaper Act. So before I say any more about it, should we watch it together? Yeah. Let's watch it together. I need my drink for this. Very family-friendly. The music in itself. At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS. That's us. But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it. The fact is, over 50,000 men, women and children now carry the AIDS virus. But in three years, nearly 2,000 of us will be dead. But if not stopped, it could kill more Australians than World War II. I can't remember. More Australians than World War II could be. But gods can be stopped and you can help stop it. If you have sex, have just one safe partner. Just one safe partner. It was safe? They said safe? Really? So they're telling you... We'll call that number on the screen. One safe partner. Now, okay. Now get this. It was 1987. I was seven years old. So as I said earlier, the fact that I can remember that I was at the Greater Union Cinema on Russell Street in Melbourne on a Saturday afternoon going to see Harry and the Andersons is because of that film. And that short... So what happened was the Australian government pulled it off the air. It created such an outrage. And it was yanked off the air. And yet, here we are 30 years later. So people were not okay with it? People weren't okay with it. For gay people, they felt like everyone was now looking at them like a grim reaper. So for a community that had already been stigmatized enough just for being homosexual, we were now being seen as devils of death. So look, it's a very... I've said this quite a bit. We had to do something in 1987 and no one knew what was going on. And the president of the United States at the time certainly didn't even say the word AIDS. And Australia wanted to get on top of this. Now, I will say this about my country. Australia is now one of, if not, the leading countries in HIV research, treatment and with things like PrEP. Melbourne, my home city is one of the top fast-track cities in the world. Up there with Amsterdam who had the World AIDS Conference. So I can very proudly say as an Australian, we are doing a hell of a lot and have come a long way since that commercial. But what that commercial did was put the fear of God in people. And in some degree, maybe that had to happen in 1987. But what Simon Reynolds did was so genius that here we are in 2019, 32 years later, people are still referencing that commercial. That's what people think of when they think of HIV in Australia and England and around the world. I agree. I think there was some level of that that needed to happen. Straight fear because I feel like sexual liberation was such a huge big deal for the LGBT community at that time. And that was their claim that was theirs and nobody can take that away from you. So for gay guys to restrict that, I missed this disease was... Well, you're right. It was a very interesting time. I mean, you had sort of the end of the 60s and the whole free love thing and suddenly being gay in countries like America and Australia, while it was still an issue, they weren't nearly as an issue as they were in the 50s and 60s. So yeah, you have this liberation of men finally feeling like that they could step out of their closets and live their lives freely. And then you had this thing that just started devastating people at an alarming rate and nobody quite knew what to do with it. And, you know, you and I are lucky. I mean, I was kind of a kid. You weren't really born. But, you know, I remember 1987. Even when I moved away from home and lived in London in 1999, it was still... And I was a gay man. I was a gay 19-year-old. But it was still... Look, I didn't know about U Equals U until last year when I came out publicly about my HIV status. So this is such an important message. Sorry to ram my agenda down. It's good. Vlogs throw it. It's funny. Because if you're HIV positive, you kind of know about U Equals U now. But there's a whole lot of people in the LGBTQI community. They don't know about U Equals U. Most people still think the Grim Reaper. There's actually... I talk to gay people who don't know about U Equals U. Right. Who have HIV also. Let's just say I only learned about it a year ago. Me too. So these conversations are so important. And it is now, as I've said many times elsewhere, scientifically... I mean, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the UK, Australia, everywhere is getting on board with this. If you are healthy and undetectable, there is zero risk of sexual transmission of HIV. I'm not advocating that everyone go out and start having bareback sex. There's lots of other things out there. But I am saying be responsible for your own sexual health. And have that conversation with sexual partners. Or if you're going to engage in common with sex, then know what you're up against. But HIV transmission, if you're having common with sex with somebody who's HIV positive and undetectable, there's no risk. But in the dating world, I found it harder to disclose my HIV status than I did to come out of the closet. Because you never knew how people would react. I've had drinks thrown in my face. I've had people burst into tears. I've been called... Really? I've been told I deserved it. So I had all kinds. And the anxiety and the stress of it. I just thought, you know what? It's just easy enough to... And if I want to have sex, and you know, I know you get uncomfortable about talking about sex. I do. I have a video about sex. No, I know. I just don't want to hear all the raunchy details. I'm not going to give you the raunchy... Expoints. Yes, you do. No, I really don't. No, but if I wanted to have sex, I could have sex. The grinder or whatever. I could go online and I could find all of that. And you do that and then you go, okay, fine. But you know what? That's kind of unhealthy too, getting into that mindset. But for the better part of 10 years, that's... I just gave up on the day. I just stopped trying. And if I needed to have sex, I would do that. Or, you know, make out for myself. I've always been incredibly hopeless romantic. Yes. So I couldn't imagine like 10 years not dating. But I have to say, maybe it's a result of the fact that I was diagnosed later than you. I was diagnosed in 2012. So a lot of things had progressed in those five years, including the medicine. And the stigma, especially here in West Hollywood, there's so many people who are... I think millennials are a lot smarter. But I think people kind of aged mid-30s up are the ones that were around just at the end of when HIV AIDS was terrifying. So they were exposed to that. So they were exposed to that. And then that's kind of where it stayed. Because we haven't had a proper campaign. We haven't had people talking about it. Good role models. Like us. By the way, I am not a role model. You just said like us. Retraction. I'm a person to talk about it. I've done a lot of stupid, stupid things in my past. For which I'm embarrassed about, but some I'm not. But if you are being transparent and honest about your life and you show your hardships as well, other people don't have the power to gloat over your misfortune because you've already owned it. And you're saying, look, this is my life. I'm flawed and this is how I learned from it. Very flawed. Can you put a flashing graphic that just says hashtag flawed? It's very self-deprecating. Well, no. No, because I kind of just like to keep it real. I have done stupid things and that's all fine and well. I am very proud though of who I have become out of the stupid things and beyond the stupid things. And I will say this, having disclosed my HIV status publicly last year, it's funny how that internalized stigma, banked stigma that I didn't realize I had, is now kind of flushing itself out of my system. I didn't realize how much internalized stigma I had. Look, I was HIV positive. I didn't talk about it in my professional life for numerous reasons. I didn't want to be kind of pitch and hold. I was warned that it would stall or break my career. There were lots of different reasons, but in my personal life, amongst my friends and family, I didn't hide it. I would make jokes. And genuinely, as you said back to the self-deprecating thing you just said about me, I would say this kind of stuff I thought to be funny. So someone would go, oh, you're really cute. Why aren't you dating? And I'd go, well, I'm HIV positive. Damaged goods. You don't want me. And I would make those kind of comments. There's a toss away. Oh, I've got HIV. You don't want this. You know, danger, danger. But I would say it in a way that I thought I was being funny. The reality is, and I've come to realize this over the last 12 months, somewhere in my head, I was believing that. I wasn't consciously believing it. And I discovered this thing called internalized stigma. I have a lot of internalized stigma still. So as glossy and as nice and as happy and as you go, oh, well, look at it. Let me tell you back to not being perfect. I still have those insecurities and it comes back to the Grim Reaper. I'd see how I pulled it all back. I was waiting for it. See what I've done there? I knew you were going there. It all comes back to having seen that video when I was seven years old. And that's a very hard thing to get out of the psyche. But what we need to do, people like you, people like me, people like you is we just need to talk about HIV. We need to talk about sex and we need to talk about facts and what the science says. Because the fear of mongering is no longer necessary. It's not necessary, but it still exists. And there are still a lot of people who are very uneducated who don't get it. The reality is we have a manageable chronic illness. That's what it is. You're not going to change the world overnight, but the more we can talk about it, the more we can say this is HIV positive. And showing commercials of a Grim Reaper with a thing and a bowling down and a child flying out of mother's arms. The first time I saw that I laughed so hard because it was so ridiculous. But it worked because here we are in 2019 still talking about Simon Reynolds commercial. And I'm going to say this, watch this space. I am going to set a challenge very publicly to the creator of that commercial to do something new and amazing and in a way have an opportunity to create something new that will hopefully erase the Grim Reaper and bring in something new. But I'm working on that. But I will, there's going to be something challenging. Simon Reynolds, I'm coming for you. And you just, that's your carpet, you just spilled it. Go in there. This is, this is paper towel. It's my carpet. Please enjoy. Just keep them occupied while I clean up this mess. Please enjoy the music while your party is reached. Some elevator music right now. Okay. Man. I'm more upset though. Can I tell you how privileged I am to see Rafe on his hands and knees on my floor? Out of here. Do you know how many people have been in the same position? This is the only time you will ever see me on my hands and knees. Thank you very much. Ben Shive and my side phone. And by the way, in the comments section, what do you think of what could be Rafe's new apartment? Hmm? Well, I want to hear what the viewers think. Should you move into this? I mean, this is my house right now, but it potentially could become Rafe's and we'll be announcing that. No. Why are you sitting in such a self work defensive? Because you're intruding on my personal space. My personal level. Okay. What I do want to hear comments about, not about this stupid apartment. It's the stupid apartment. I want to hear your reaction to the actual commercial that we watched. Yes. Topic of this video. The Grim Reaper. Dirty hands. I got to wash my face. Did you not see the mess I had in the bathroom? Yeah. It's exfoliating too, which is weird. Thank you. For a handsome. He has exfoliating handsome. You're welcome. Yeah, but I would love to hear you guys' comments below. Let us know and let me know if you would be supportive of trying to create a new HIV campaign involving the same man who created the Grim Reaper. So if you watch this and it affects you and you think I want to see something new that wipes, that bowls the ball over that one. And I think it would be interesting to see if Simon Reynolds, the original creator of the commercial, would come on board, comment and he'll send me a fax. I'll send you a fax. Maybe a Telex. Alright. Thanks guys. Please like this video if you liked it. I'll be sure to do more collabs like this. Carl's awesome, so hopefully we'll find more excuses to get together and talk about random, oh, you equals you as well. Subscribe if you're not subscribed already and share this with anybody who you think might find this useful. Follow me on social media too. Yeah. There's a lot going on below. Alright kids. See you soon.