ASIAN AMERICANS ON THE CORONAVIRUS #stayhome

This is something that's going to sit in our history books forever. And how do you want to be remembered? And how do you want to remember how you reacted during this? Maybe generation lit, it's going to become generation grit. What's going on, everybody? Fun Bros here, David and Andrew. What up? We are in the car right now, maintaining some social distancings. We have been receiving a lot of DMs, calls, emails, from different people asking us to speak out about the current coronavirus situation in America, the quarantining. And how it pertains to Asians? Obviously, a lot of things like on social media, discrimination going on against Asian people and just the comment sections of every YouTube video that are talking about being Asian or Chinese are going crazy right now. And we just wanted to give our thoughts on it. Yeah, what we wanted to do is share personal stories on how it's affected us and affected our business. And also some advice that might be helpful. That was a burp, by the way. I think a lot of people just saw me go like that. That was a burp. We got the news and can't take this through. Totally a burp. I smell it. 100% it was a burp. I really wanted to let my thoughts develop, and I'm glad that I did. Start with number one. The number one point that I have personally taken away is to cherish your family. Cherish time with your parents. I mean, this is a time that if you happen to be quarantined with your parents, you know, stay at home and really do stay at home and obviously try not to put them at risk by going out there and stuff like that. I think that when you're younger, all you want to do is be that apple that rolls as far away as possible from the tree to go develop on your own. And that's human. And that's actually not even wrong. But at times like this, especially when you get older, all you want to do is be close to your parents, especially when it's a situation like this where older people are in more danger. Yeah. Now is not the time to be thinking about like, oh, my life's not lit. Or, oh, I'm bored. Or like, oh, I'm trying to get do this on social media. I mean, there's I can't have the endorphin release that I'm used to. If I get Corona, I get Corona. At the end of the day, I'm not going to let it stop me from party. Trust me, you're going to want to cherish time with your parents right now. Hey, but what are some things that people can do with their parents? Obviously, if you are with them, you can you can watch movies. You can learn how to cook. You can play a variety of different games. You can learn your mother tongue better. I don't know who knows a bunch of different things. Take time to ask about your family background. What was grandpa like? What was grandma like? What was the old world like? Get to know them. Yeah. Get to know them and ask the questions. You would always want to ask if if time was getting shorter. Hey, man, like I know growing up with immigrant parents, it wasn't always easy to kind of talk to them and get to know them personally. And now that everybody's older, you're kind of more more of a peer. Of course, you're still their child, but you're an adult now. So you can have adult conversations. And I think that stuff has been really valuable. And David, what about point number two? Point number two is that this is going to have a huge impact on the economy and especially people who work in the service or hospitality industry. Some people estimate that's anywhere from 18 to 25 percent of the economy are people who work on hourly wages, whether or not it's in no hotels or restaurants or any of those interconnected industries that are directly within that that industry's radius. Personally, we know a lot of people who own small businesses, own restaurants, cafes, bars. And to be honest, it does hurt to see them hurting because they either have to close down temporarily. Some of them have closed permanently and so many others, you know, that maybe will it will happen, you know, and that's so sad to say. Yeah, they say 20 to 30 percent of small businesses are going to shut it forever because only 70 percent had the cash reserves to be able to make it through this time. And even though there are some stimulus packages coming off, it's not going to be able to reach all 500000 small businesses impacted. Advice for people who obviously are not in the situation where they can work from home, they're still making money. They still have things to do. I mean, I think the best thing that I can tell you is to find something productive to do in this time. Pick up a book, learn something, pick up a hobby. Some people lost their jobs. And I feel for them because I know some people who did. But the truth is right now, I guess the bright on the bright side, you could try to find something to do that you always wanted to do. Hey, I mean, I got to say personally, it has affected our business and how we run our channel, because typically we'd probably be at a restaurant filming this video, but we can't go into restaurants. So that's just a little inconvenience. I'm not saying we've really been heavily super impacted the most, you know, so I don't really got a sob story for that. But obviously, I feel for all of our other friends who are small business owners had to lay off people and people who got laid off right now. But I do want to give a shout out to all the professional health care workers who are out there risking their lives. We are going to be donating all the proceeds from this video to making sure that health care workers get anything that they need to continue to stay safe at their job. So just to let you guys know, all the proceeds from this video will be going to making sure that health care workers can continue to do their jobs and save everybody else's life. Point number three, Andrew, this is probably the reason we made the video. There has been an uptick in anti-Asian discrimination, microaggressions and just flat out racism and even in some cases, hardcore violence. There's a lot of stigma around looking Asian, being Asian. Obviously, some parts of the country more than others. I'm not saying everywhere is the same. Different environments are different. People can't make this stuff. We are going to flash up just some of the news clips. I think, first of all, it's terrible to hear. Second of all, we already knew that Asians were always a target for a lot of things. But I think that now it's really showing that a lot of frustrated people, people who are probably not in a good position themselves, everybody's getting it, whether it's verbal or physical abuse and harassment. It's just it's really sad to see. And I do think it's important to make people aware of it. I do think that this brings up questions at three different levels. Guys, we call a micro, mid and a macro. Macro being more big picture. I think at a micro level, Asians need to support each other. I think we need to increase our sociality radius in terms of being aware of our surroundings and being aware of like how people in that certain surroundings may perceive us. We already in this past two months have had people move away from us in the airport. Yeah, we get a lot of side eye look. And I think that is the most common one on a mid level. This is your immediate, you know, 30 to 50 people around you. You don't text each other. Make sure it's a port system so you guys can kind of share your experiences together, definitely have that conversation with people. And I do think for a lot of Asians, this might be their first time really experiencing harsh racism personally. I think you've always heard about it, but maybe you've seen videos for people from other situations. And now you're kind of thinking, oh, man, I never thought I would feel it. I never thought like people would really like this. You know, Bobby Hundreds had a great tweet about it, saying this is the first time that a lot of his Asian friends who grew up in Southern California experience blatant racism or comments or things being yelled at them. And he said, you know, this was our benefit for a while in SoCal. There's a certain situation that Asians are in. They tend to have a little bit more, I guess, fluidity, a little bit of an escape from that. But now, you know, welcome to what some other people from other environments have seen their whole lives. And to be honest, me and Andrew, not being from SoCal, I can tell you that I've seen it throughout my life. So to be honest, I had a different reaction that people who might have been seeing it for the first time. I'll just directly address one case. The thing with the cans and there was an old elderly man that was being picked on. I saw that all the time growing up, essentially stuff like that. I had stuff like that happen to me. I had stuff like that happen to my mom. It's not right. It is wrong. It's undeserving. It's unwarranted. And this is even before coronavirus. It's unfair. Yeah. That brings us to the macro. Basically, it is true that Asians in Western society typically have to take more of like the poodle to a Rottweiler role. We are a target amongst other people. Generally, when people want an easy target, they tend to pick on Asians. That's for a number of reasons. That's a whole nother video. There was a bowl of food and then there was different breeds of dogs. I'm assuming that the poodle is going to get pushed out from getting that bowl of food. That's the macro. And one thing I want to caution against is, first of all, everything's wrong, but I don't want to shift the macro too quick because I think that that's just not how a ship turns. You don't take a cruise ship and hit a 90 degree angle on a cruise ship. A cruise ship is the macro big picture. Trust me, guys. Seeing all that stuff makes my blood boil, too. I don't like seeing that stuff. It makes me angry. It makes me at a time for a moment. I was like, yo, we got to go do something, you know, like, I don't know what that meant, but you just felt that way. At the end of the day, you know, racism and negativity, fighting that with more racism and negativity is actually not going to help. Looking on the bright side, and I know that there's really not a lot of bright sides to it, is I guess that this is kind of one of those experiences that Asians are kind of experiencing altogether. So I don't know if Asians are going to be more united after this, but that could be a byproduct. And unfortunately, sometimes it takes crises like this to kind of bring people together. I guess that's the silver lining to it. The only thing I could say is, you guys, this is time to be to come together as humanity. Things absolutely deserve to be noted, but don't be overly reactive. And especially let's not try to take a hard right turn on a cruise ship. And I think that going on the offensive doesn't necessarily mean going on the offensive with negativity. I think it means going on the offensive with positivity. You can still be proactive without being reactive. I mean, obviously, if somebody is attacking you and you're in the reactive mindset, the first reaction is going to be to be negative. Right. But if you're being proactive about positivity, you can just shoot positivity and highlight things and say this and say that. How about this? Here's a suggestion. I don't know if you guys want to make content or put things out there, but if you guys are going to do something positive as Asians, put it out there. I think that's the kind of stuff that's going to bridge cultures and bridge gaps. For example, we're going to be doing a video where we auction off all of our hype items. It's going to be hard to part with some of them. But in the face of the situation we're in, we're talking about a Supreme. We are going and then we are going to be donating the profits to a variety of different charities that help solve this issue in America, whether it's getting N95 masks for health care workers or getting hand sanitizer or just different free lunches to people who are obviously now kicked out of school so they can't get the governmental support system for lunch. Last point of the video is that this is a monumental event in world history and it's going to be on us to see how we react to this opportunity. You could be on Netflix all day. You could be on TikTok all day or you could be doing something edifying. You know what I mean? Or split it and balance your time. And it's on us to not only social distance, but support each other. I don't want to be overly reflective, Andrew, because I know that we're still in the storm. So I don't want to look back and analyze the storm like the storm has passed. We're in the storm. We're going to be in the storm. But these are just some thoughts that I had. Andrew, you remember when Kobe Bryant tragically passed? To me, it had such a big impact on the world. If you look at it, the last time somebody's death that really was, I guess, in the top ten most famous people in the world and beloved people in the world at the time was Princess Diana. 1997, Biggie, Tupac, gunned down in 97. Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, about 20 year span. Here, the last thing that I've seen sort of rock America to its core, 9-11, also 20 years ago, give or take. So I just think that these are just these events that are multigenerational. There will be a long tail impact. And I think that as humanity, this is just like our time to really like, you know, we're going to read and react. And the key is, you know, what adjustments are we going to make and what are we going to do on a day to day basis? I realized and it took me a while to get to this point that I want to have a positive impact on the way people are reacting to the stimulus. Yeah, I think that our generation is often called the most spoiled generation. Have a lot of student loan debt. They think that we're spending all our time on the most vacations, most vacations, most parties, most festivals, all these things like. But really, now is your time to show the world what you can do and how you can make a positive impact, because this is something that's going to sit in our history books forever. And how do you want to be remembered? And how do you want to remember how you reacted during this? The millennial generation is a very powerful generation. We are able bodies. We're not the ones that are the first at risk. So how are we going to make a positive impact? Maybe generation lit. It's going to become generation grit. All I can do is be responsible for my life, tell the people around me. But Andrew, we as the Fun Brothers, David, Andrew, we do have a responsibility to use our platform to say what we feel like is going to ultimately be the best for society and humanity on multiple levels. They always say that a lot of different people and character and integrity is tested in tough times. Smooth seas cover up a lot of flaws and we are entering very choppy waters. Time you're riding a bike up a mountain and you hit a big ditch, you got to pick a direction and you got to hunker down and you're going to get out of that ditch and you're going to continue on your journey back up the mountain. Some people, you know, if we don't have the right mindsets and we don't have the right coaching, we're going to stay in the ditch or we're going to stay in the ditch too long or we're going to inch out of the ditch or we're going to call for help to get us out of the ditch. But there are if we want to continue up that mountain, we're going to have to dig deep and power through that ditch. And that's going to take a lot of self-discipline, a lot of teamwork, a lot of putting certain things aside. Now that you know what I mean for the moment and just working forward. And we got this. We got it. I think we got it. You guys, thank you so much for watching that video on our thoughts on the coronavirus. I know a lot of people have been asking us to make this video. We do have a platform and did feel that responsibility in the comment section below. Number one, make sure you let us know what you thought about each of our points. And number two, please let us know any other thoughts that you had about coronavirus in the quarantine period, because I know a lot of you guys out there are really smart and you guys have a lot of thoughts. So go ahead. Use it as a sounding board. Leave a comment and let other people read it. Some of the best thoughts. We might gather them together and do a follow up video. So everybody stay safe and stay clean out there. Peace.