 Are you ready? You're against a certain group. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who said that? That's a crazy. And you carry a knife, then you're being racist. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I am Asian. Oh! Hell, no, we are not on that train. If people don't feel safe, I don't think anybody can make a change. I'm Asian, but I'm also American. And I do want to be validated by white people. So I'm just going to throw the entire Asian community under the bus. Dude, that's a good plan, man. I like it. Welcome, everybody, to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. And NYMag has just dropped a viral article about Asian hate, but a lot of Asians on the internet kind of hate it. Yeah, man. I'm talking about Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera, man. People do not like this article. And everything from the misguided cover art to just the article itself to just the copywriting. People are like, yo, yo, yo, NYMag, you guys are supposed to be liberal white people. Why does it feel like you guys are attacking Asians for feeling scared for their own safety? This is crazy. Yeah, guys, this was a really pointless article. But we are going to summarize it. We'll tell you how we feel. And then we'll also talk about why we just keep getting these articles and why you can even get a team of five or six educated Asian-Americans. And they'll still put out something that is just not effective and not anything that the community actually wants to hear. So if you're excited about this video, please hit that Like button and let's get into it. All right, David, starting off with the micro. Let's give it a quick summary and also talk about what are the points of controversy here. OK, so NYMag is a New York-based magazine that is like kind of for liberal white people, right? They basically found a couple Asian female authors. The main one's called Esther Wang. And they wanted her to write about Asian hate, OK? So she's kind of like detailing her history about like being from the whole boba liberal kind of intersectional Asian where they're just like trying to build alliances. And then she kind of gets embedded in the community. And then I guess she really kind of ends up at a 50-50 point where she's like, yeah, I realized that I thought Asians were just being anti-black. But actually, they're just trying to be safe and not get attacked. And actually, it's just more about crime and safety. And now I'm torn between my old AOC, Nancy Pelosi self and my new ASEAN having empathy for these poor Asians living in poor inner city self. And here I'm just at the middle point. Thank you for your revelation, Esther. It was incredibly mind-blowing. Riveting. And then not only that, Andrew, it just came with this crazy cover art. I think really the thing to piss people off was the cover art. If somebody just wrote an article that said, you know, I had my old like hyper left self, and then I realized the reality on the ground was way more complicated and now I feel torn, I don't think people would really get mad. Look at this cover art, Andrew. What is going on here? All right, I look at the cover art guys. First of all, I don't even know what's going on. This lady has a whole bunch of different pepper sprays, knives, all these alarms. And then she's getting her six vaccine booster shot in her arm at the same time she's wearing a mask inside her home. And then she has the Feng Shui mirror in the background, you know, to let everybody know that she is Chinese. Right, she's 20 years old and she's 80 years old. Is this lady like Frida Kahlo mixed with Rick and Morty, mixed with like Helga from Hey Arnold? Like why does this thing look so weird? Yeah, it's just weird cover art. And then that combined with the negative wording of crime obsessed, desperate and confused. Those are all negative words. These guys are writers. They understand the English language better than even, you know, we do. So I'm saying they know what they were doing. And I'm not saying that Esther Wang picked this headline. Maybe it was the editor, whoever else it was. But there was like six educated Asian people involved in this and it was just pointless and stupid. And that's why people are mad. Cause they're just like, okay, look at these people with platforms and they give us this crap. What is this? Yo, that was an insane click bait way. Like if it was a white copyright editor and he just wanted to make it go viral. He was like, you know, any publicity is good publicity. I literally think NYMAG may need to redact or issue an apology for this next week. Like that's the level that I think it's on depending on like how, you know, the Asian community is not very happy. And you know us, we always try to stay balanced. We try to consider multiple angles because that's just how life is. Is there any point to the fact that Asians might be crime obsessed? All right, so let's break this down. Confused, I don't think they're confused. I think Asians want safety desperate. I do think at a time Asians were desperate for some answers. They were desperate for safety as they should be. You know, a lot of the people who are getting targeted were Asian women and elderly, also Asian men as well. I mean, all types of Asians, but mostly Asian women, which is funny because somebody left a comment and was like, hey, considering Asian females are usually the target of these attacks a lot. They sure do write articles that don't really sympathize with the Asian women victims. So I don't know. It's like a weird imbalance. And then I would say crime obsessed. Yes, I do have some friends that are staying on the Citizen app a little bit more often. But, you know, I mean, it's just when you feel unsafe, of course you're gonna be a little bit more obsessed with keeping in tune with the crimes. You know, the weird thing is it's like, I feel like for Esther Wang, this is probably like the most militant article she ever wrote. Cause you know, coming from the world she comes from where they're just like all about all these progressive hyper liberal left wing things. She probably was like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling like Malcolm X. Like when she was, our finger was probably like shaking when she submitted this article. She was like, it's 50-50 from where I'm coming from. She was like, oh, revolution's coming guys. This is gonna be a paradigm shift. Are you ready? Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes to show you like how whitewash you can be and how much of these like hyper liberal left perspectives you have. And then it's almost like you're a tourist in your own community being like, yeah, I do have some opinions that are almost like dissimilar to a poor immigrants. I am shocked that I feel this within myself. I am Asian. Oh! I mean, moving on to the mid Andrew, there is such a big disconnect between like the writers that have access to a liberal white publication like NYMAG and just the experiences of a everyday enclave Asian or somebody who grew up in the Asian community or anybody who even grew up in a low income suburb let alone the inner city. I do not think these writers come from the inner city. I do not think they've ever lived a day in their life. Yeah, maybe they went and God had a gentrified cafe or a coffee or maybe try to mom and pop restaurant in a hood. But literally they have no idea what it's like on a day to day basis being an Asian person living in a high risk exposure environment. I mean, I think a lot of people out there are wondering, right? Like why do these writers get a platform? Like who is this freelance writer who also writes about fishing and a bunch of other stuff? By the way, she has written about being Asian in other articles. But at the end of the day, like when you're a writer, right? You probably went to school, you were possibly an English major, right? You have good command of the English language. Oh, you've been around so many white people of your English major, like liberal white, you know. And you're out there writing a whole bunch of articles and then you're like, oh my gosh, like I can write an article about being Asian and now I have to do a bunch of research to figure out what it even means and how Asian people are feeling on the ground. So that's why it's always disconnected because these writers aren't coming from the same world. And because there's a discrepancy between the people who have the skill to write and the platform and the desire to be in this journalism world and then the people who have the heart and the voice and the people with the heart and the voice that are on the ground don't have the skills. Let's be honest, a lot of people that grow up in Chinatown, they don't become writers. Yeah, I mean, even me and you, Andrew, we are not writers on the tier like word for word verbatim that Esther Wang is, you know, I'm not that good at putting words down on a page. I feel more comfortable talking and you know, I'll tell you this, man, listen, if you're really from a high risk exposure environment, I'm not saying I'm from like the hood of the hood. We came from a pretty blue collar part of Seattle. We went to a Chinese church in South King County. I'll tell you this, there is some of the craziest stories that happen to everybody at our church. Everybody at our church try to keep their head down, try to be real docile, meek. I mean, you could even say weak to be honest. And if we're talking about people getting beat up, bullied, assaulted, somebody at our church, I don't even like to get into it. I don't even like to tell this story got murdered when we were like 16. This is not something that is new. Like Asian hate or violence against Chinese people or Asian newly arrived immigrants has been going on for a hundred years. Our dad got robbed in Chicago the first year he arrived in America like multiple times. Nobody was trying to politicize it back then. And I'll tell you this, right now, here is the harsh truth, Andrew. Both the right and the left that are both run by white people try to use Asian pain for their own political gain. I do not truly think that either of these groups deep, deep, deep down layers, layers, layers below actually care that Asians are getting attacked. They are more looking at things that happen to minorities and stimulus that happen to minorities and how to jujitsu it to benefit their own platforms. Yeah, I mean, exactly how I feel sometimes is that like white people feel guilt for something that, you know, their ancestors did or that America did to a certain group. And then now they're just being like, hey Asians, hey, you guys tend to do well in this country. So you guys feel this guilt too. Come on, hop on our train and help us make everybody feel better. Everybody's kinda doing good, feeling guilt guys. This is the guilt train. Yeah, it might be at the expense of some of you guys but you guys are on our team, right? And I'm like, dude, like at some point. Hell no, hell no, hell no. Any real agent will tell you hell no. Esther Wang won't tell you that. The women involved with this article or whoever else was involved in the article will not tell you that. Hell no, we are not on that train. All right, everybody, we're gonna get into the macro and why does it feel like these articles represent how behind Asians are in media? Man, long story short, I said it before, it's the same thing with Hollywood, it's the same thing with journalism. We're still unfortunately in our Sammy Davis Jr. phase. You know how Sammy Davis Jr. was like, kinda like, yeah, I'm fighting for the blacks but kinda not, I'm me. And that's kind of like still the representation we have both in Hollywood and in journalism. It's people that are like, yeah, like I said, this is probably the most militant thing Esther Wang ever wrote in her life. She's probably like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling like a Asian thug, you know, like relative to her spectrum of experience and what she's been through and the feelings she felt, who she's been around. So it's like, basically, it's this crazy problem, like you said, Andrew, not only do you have not a lot of Asians pursuing media, Andrew, so there's very few Asians out of medium or high level in media. Second of all, the ones that are there are like a little bit of like the white Asians or the whitewashed Asians or the ones that are like willing to do whatever it takes to advance their career and get a cover story and kinda be like opportunistic. I'm not really questioning their heart. Maybe their heart is in the right place but at the end of the day, it's still like coming from a very narrow set of experiences and it's opportunistic. So now, it's just like so many layers. I just don't know how to fix it. Along with the fact that a lot of people who have the skill right and the access to the publication, their heart is not with the community necessarily. I don't think it's against the community but I think they're just writing from their own perspective and I think it's very selfish. But I also just think that a lot of people get like safety and solidarity confused, I think in a way where it feels like that they're mutually exclusive. Like you can't be a little tough on crime but also have solidarity with other groups. I mean, who likes crime? I mean, I talk to my friends around the area who are non-Asian all the time and they're like, yo, we have a ton of black and Latino, like Dominican friends in New York City and they're like, yo, I hate crime. I hate criminals. Yeah, they hate criminals too. So I'm just like, hey guys, can we just handle this crime thing? For me- That's being like hyper reductive of an incredibly complex and nuanced issue from like people on the left, being like, yeah, if you're tough on crime, you're against a certain group. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said that? That's a crazy reach on your guys' part. How they kind of made it sound was like, hey, if you buy all the pepper spray and pepper gel guns and the Kublatons and you carry a knife then you're being racist. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Guys, I think there's either a middle point or they're not mutually exclusive. It's really not that simple, guys. We can think of a better solution. So that's to me in the macro, what people have to understand is that those things are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, that's like stupid to draw that conclusion for them to feel that way and possibly even racist for them to call self-defense racist. Long story short, man. And I think NYMAG probably is gonna be like, oh my goodness, I did not expect people to take this cover this way. But maybe as long as it's only the Asians care, who cares because my fan base is non-Asian people. Basically, man, I'm tired of these writers. I'm tired of these disconnected kind of out-of-touch writers who have to do- Yeah, well-intentioned as they may be. I'm not judging them as people in their heart. Of course, I think all these people meant well, but I'm just tired of these writers getting all these chances to write these things that are not helpful. Like, who did they write this article for? I feel like they wrote it for other people just like them who are going through this experience. And that's fine because I do think it's a trend that a lot of people are waking up a little bit and just finding that, hey, man, like I think the solution has actually a lot more complicated than I thought before. And Asians aren't wrong for wanting to just feel safe at all costs. Listen, no, I think that a lot of people are coming to this understanding, but I just hate that these are the only articles we get. Now it shows out to the world and then everybody's reading it. Non-Asians are like, wow, Asians, yeah, you sure are confused. Yeah, because they're like, oh yeah, why do you feel so torn about your community getting attacked? That's kind of weird. I would never feel that way of our community was getting attacked that same way. I mean, literally, look at it. And on a scale of negative 2.5 to zero to positive 2.5 in terms of how pro-Asian this article was, it probably was like a zero or a half a point. But for the writer, that's insane. Like we said, that's her at her most pro-Asian she can possibly be. But obviously there's no articles at the 1.5 or 2.5, let alone. I mean, listen, guys, I get it. People grow up in America. They get co-opted by the left or the right. And people want to balance their inner AOC and Nancy Pelosi with their inner Sun Yat Sen or their inner AZN person or whatever. I don't know. Andrew, like we said, this article totally off base, totally a swing for a home run and a absolute miss. What I will say just to be played my own's devil's advocate and give Esther Wang and her constituency like some points that I agree with, I wish it wasn't this way. And I do think the Asian-American community, the Chinese-American community has to bear some responsibility for this because if we've been getting attacked for a 100 years, 50 years, 30 years, 40 years, very badly in this country, I wish we could do something different, right? I wish there was a 100 hour required learning course that every immigrant, no matter what class they were had to take and it would teach you about taxes and safety and race relations and how to start a business and how to properly raise your kids. But at the end of the day, there is no 100 hour course for new immigrants and you can't force anybody to take it because this is America. And all we can do at this point is breathe practical, be pragmatic, be idealistic without illusions. That's what JFK said, be like Lee Kuan Yew because at the end of the day, Andrew, no one solution is gonna make everybody happy. You just gotta care about your safety right now. That is the paramount number one concern. Hey, without safety, I don't understand how anybody can feel comfortable doing anything. I don't even understand how society can run or that people can feel like there is the possibility of change without safety. Of course, we understand that these things are really complex, whether it's better funded public schools or better policing or whatever it is, listen, I get it, but at the end of the day, if people don't feel safe, I don't think anybody can make a change and I don't think anybody can do anything at that point. Anyways, guys, let us know in the comments down below what you think about this whole thing, about how we always get these disconnected writers or people who are well-intentioned but just are not hitting the mark. What can we do about it? And can we really have an actual conversation about safety and solidarity where it's like they're not mutually exclusive? You can have both at the same time instead of just having one or the other because how does that even make sense? You know what it kind of reminds me of, Andrew? When Jeremy Lin started dominating the NBA 10 years ago, for that brief moment, and the ESPN had zero Asians on staff, so then they were just freaking out and they got the one self-hating hop of Asian that literally just went on screen and just goes, yeah, you know, I always hated being Asian. I never felt accepted by them and I reject my Asian side. And I remember everybody at ESPN was like, whoa, that is not the quote we wanted, but literally that's what we ended up with because we pulled the one Asian guy from the mail room that was half Asian. At the end of the day, we all have the right to criticize the voices on the platform. So if you disagree with them, let them know and that's what we're doing in this video right here. But yeah, maybe some more of the real Asians should try to strive to get those platforms too, to be honest, that's the self-responsibility part. All right, everybody, let us know in the comments down below, please hit that like button and until next time, we out. Peace.