२२ डिसेंबर, २०२३

"Migration sells.... My public is a public that wants a dream."

Said Manuel Monterrosa, who "set out for the United States last year with his cellphone and a plan: He’d record his journey through the dangerous jungle known as the Darién Gap and post it on YouTube, warning other migrants of the perils they’d face."

I'm reading "Live from the Jungle: Migrants Become Influencers on Social Media/TikTok, Facebook and YouTube are transforming global migration, becoming tools of migrants and smugglers alike" (NYT).
In his six-part series, edited entirely on his phone along the way, he heads north with a backpack, leading viewers on a video-selfie play-by-play of his passage across rivers, muddy forests and a mountain known as the Hill of Death. He eventually made it to the United States. But to his surprise, his videos began attracting so many views and earning enough money from YouTube that he decided he no longer needed to live in America at all.

So, Mr. Monterrosa, a 35-year-old from Venezuela, returned to South America and now has a new plan altogether: trekking the Darién route again, this time in search of content and clicks, having learned how to make a living as a perpetual migrant....

The journey is everything. 

१५ टिप्पण्या:

Kevin म्हणाले...

The journey is everything.

In today's world, recording the journey and posting it online is everything.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

I'm hoping many of them hate winter.

I also hope the next president is not mob-crook CIA/FBI NBC Joe - and that person deports as many as possible.

wendybar म्हणाले...

We Americans want that dream too, unfortunately Joe Biden is giving our dream away to illegals.

Levi Starks म्हणाले...

It’s just like a modern version of the Oregon Trail

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Capitalism wins!

Jupiter म्हणाले...

Here's hoping he gets his ass waxed. On camera.

mikee म्हणाले...

My kids and I used to play Oregon Trail. I'd look forward to playing La Migra through the Darien Gap with my grandkids, if and when that game becomes available. Heck, let it be Spanish only, for the realism. We'll try to avoid kidnapping and gang rape by cartels, and if we load up with enough guns we can avoid the mordida, perhaps. It'd be a blockbuster of a game.

Lloyd W. Robertson म्हणाले...

Part of Covid time for me was exploring Los Angeles and area, and then beyond. Videos where you just see the driver's perspective as you drive the streets. Oddity Odysseys (Bethany and Drew) have shown some famous and not so famous tourist attractions, going into some history. Somehow I discovered German in Venice, who keeps weaving his personal story into what he is talking about. Growing up in Germany, playing gridiron football like an American, his room full of posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger and NFL players, he made it to LA to make a living. Other than his YouTube channel, I guess he sells some art at Venice Beach. There is a melancholy feel: his dreams didn't really come true, and he shows both highs and lows in LA.

I came across Adam the Woo/The Daily Woo, and again he tells personal stories while showing and telling various interesting things. He used to live in Hollywood, he moved to Florida but then made some substantial video trips back to CA.

Somehow I came across WonderHussey. She spends so much time in the California and Nevada desert, her videos almost feel like an immigrant story (despite her stars and stripes sun glasses). Military brat, her parents divorced after living in Germany for a while, her mom stayed with I think two girls who lived off base, but took the bus onto the base for school with kids they knew. Eventually to California for high school and college, then Las Vegas. Without having the build of a classic model, she got a kind of tourist photography gig, then various hostess/modelling/greeting gigs, then advertised to photographers that she knew the desert well, and was willing to pose nude with a backdrop of desert landscape, ghost towns, and so on. The American, repeatedly re-inventing herself.

I find this kind of thing more interesting than most podcasts.

Wa St Blogger म्हणाले...

Conservatives do themselves no favors with comments like the early ones here. You are justifying the accusation that you hate brown people and that they only answer to you genocidal hatred of non-whites is to vote for democrats, even pedophilic grifters with dementia.

I do not blame people for responding to the incentives given to them. In their shoes I might do exactly the same. I blame our government for making perverse incentives. If you want more immigration, make it legal and recruit from within their own country. Don't make them travel the Darien gap for a chance at a better life.

Iman म्हणाले...

Illegal Gimmigrants.

Old and slow म्हणाले...

My boys used to pay "Border Patrol" They would nominate one kid as the migrant and try to keep him out of the yard. Water hoses and sticks were used to prevent ingress. This was mostly to annoy the more woke members of my family...

n.n म्हणाले...

[Catastrophic] [Anthropogenic] Immigration Reform with problems left in their woke (SIC) is a forward-looking solution to democratic gerrymandering, taxable labor, and selective-child doctrine.

Josephbleau म्हणाले...

"earning enough money from YouTube that he decided he no longer needed to live in America at all."

Its all about money, If you don't need the US to feed and house you in relative luxury without working, you can go back to your native land in happiness, how attractive.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

Throw all illegals in a hell-hole prison before deporting their asses back to their hell-hole countries.

Will म्हणाले...

This is a classic case where asylum should not be granted. He is merely seeking to make more cash. He is not fleeing some repressive regime. And if he has the cash he is happy to stay home.

This is the crux of the issue. If people that live in "shitholes" come here solely for economic reasons their home county will NEVER improve. The brain drain, the hustle drain, will keep the shithole mired in shit.

They should stay home and fix their own broken country. This would improve the overall world.

We have the same issue here in the USA. If the smart people with a brain and gumption all move to Florida or Tennessee or Texas then what will become of our own shitholes like New York, Illinois and Wisconsin?

Instead of abandoning home to the shit, people have to stay and fight and resist. Improve things there. Strive for that more perfect union.

"We choose to go to the moon and do these other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard" - JFK