Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / AUTISM: [Empower Yourself And Reach Your Goals]
Transcript
- 0:03Hey guys, this podcast was taken from a live event.
- 0:06I did for the national autistic Society Spectrum Ball, but they
- 0:10asked me to come on and talk about the work that I do so I
- 0:12did and yeah here is completely unedited just me on stage given
- 0:17about talking about what I do and I hope you enjoy this.
- 0:19I really enjoyed the talk. So yeah, check it out.
- 0:22Okay, honey, that's what a lot of people.
- 0:31How's it going? I'm done.
- 0:33Amanda said when I run a YouTube channel actually, so it's
- 0:36actually called vlogging vlogging.
- 0:38It's actually evolved and all the terminology.
- 0:40So your outdated dinosaurs doing jobs of kids.
- 0:44So anyway, I'm going to try and squash a I think it's like 20
- 0:46minutes half an hour's a minute. Just trying to squash it all
- 0:49into this. I have any CD's with this
- 0:50actually help when trying to convince an hour and a half
- 0:53talking to just half an hour. So it's going to be really
- 0:55really good. So if I really can't keep up
- 0:57just ask me a question and I should be able to answer it.
- 0:59Anyway, so whoa, I didn't did you it wasn't me?
- 1:03Yeah, I know. It's um, really professional
- 1:05somebody read my notes from my iPhone because that's how I do
- 1:07I'm also recording it for my actual video blog here and I'm
- 1:10actually recording it for my podcast.
- 1:12I have to stand still because this thing is going to break.
- 1:14So the ask me world is my brand name.
- 1:17My name is actually Daniel and actually true.
- 1:19What was I thinking because it's 20 I'm 32 years old.
- 1:22I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in HD in OCD and
- 1:25dyslexia. When I was 26 years old not from
- 1:29lack of trying just for like an opportunity because the 90s
- 1:31sucked so Moving forward I decided to research Stephanie in
- 1:36Sample aspect is enjoying. I couldn't find much at all
- 1:38actually pot from a national this excites website, which
- 1:40wasn't anyone like is now so I just found out there was nothing
- 1:44visually entertaining and I don't really read that well
- 1:46obviously dyslexia, hashtag Yolo.
- 1:48So I decided to make videos at blocking my life because I felt
- 1:53like it would be really fun to put videos out there about
- 1:56something quite interesting because for the simple fact that
- 1:59because I did see on the internet was really depressing
- 2:01and everyone is a died it was like I'm glad very senior
- 2:05everything sucks. I know so I wanted to do
- 2:07something really positive because I feel like there's a
- 2:09really good positive atmosphere for people who have an Autism
- 2:13Spectrum condition, but want to do something awesome with it.
- 2:15I was like, yeah, let's do the driving force and nobody was
- 2:17really doing it back. Then there's a bunch people now,
- 2:19which is totally awesome. So my YouTube channel won two
- 2:23awards won an award from YouTube itself, which called Next Step
- 2:25where they basically took all the channels between 1,000 and
- 2:29hundred thousand subscribers in the United Kingdom.
- 2:30Only pick the best 10. I want my I can always number
- 2:34one on and they basically like, you know, give me this award and
- 2:36he was a million dollars cool stuff and they win the dang near
- 2:38London. That was cool.
- 2:39But it was just nice to be recognized for the work.
- 2:41I was doing the other one was a blogger water was number nine or
- 2:4540 orders and blogs obviously in the house is number one, but I
- 2:48came up a number 9, which is pretty cool.
- 2:50And currently I am the UK's biggest autism Channel on
- 2:55YouTube. I have 82 thousand subscribers
- 2:57on my channel. I have over 5 million views,
- 2:59which is pretty dope because like there's a lot of people
- 3:01listen to what I have to say. So that's yeah, the power is
- 3:04crazy craziness, but I love it. And I love the fact that I get
- 3:08to do what I do because I feel like it's influential.
- 3:11And so what I do right now, one of the things I see that I do my
- 3:14channel and power people especially people on the
- 3:16Spectrum to be more aware of their creative side and how
- 3:20awesome they actually are because I feel like a lot of
- 3:22people get a bit of a background slap because they say, you know
- 3:25the gods and they think oh, you know because I'm autistic then I
- 3:28have restrictions on my life to stop me doing stuff, which I
- 3:31think is Tosh because there Other ways to do awesome things
- 3:35and I'll get on to what I can do right now.
- 3:37So I left school with no qualifications at all because in
- 3:40school I was in the special education programs, but the
- 3:42maybe Circle tennis rackets instead of like actually doing
- 3:46like maths and stuff because they didn't understand my
- 3:48learning type which is very important now since then now I
- 3:52have a degree in chemistry. I am an international
- 3:54best-selling author and three languages and also released a
- 3:59number a released an album in Japan with my boundary.
- 4:01What's number five in the heat? MV charge, which is crazy right
- 4:04where I left school with no qualifications my YouTube
- 4:06channel the biggest one in the UK for autism awareness.
- 4:09And yeah 82 thousand subscribers.
- 4:11So for somebody who had no complications of pretty decent
- 4:14because I realized my potential of the things that every office
- 4:17thought was like, you know, not potential when you're in school.
- 4:19So I decided that making a YouTube channel blogging these
- 4:22things would help encourage other people to do the same
- 4:25thing. I thought I was super super
- 4:26awesome. So enough of blowing my own
- 4:29trumpet. So what I'm trying to do is I
- 4:31want all these things. Can I say like, Every could do
- 4:33something amazing. So one of the things I like to
- 4:35do is encourage younger people who are watching my videos to
- 4:39pick up something awesome. So people say to me all the time
- 4:41that you know that you know, you don't hear talking rubbish all
- 4:44the time on the internet you make a living from X as my job
- 4:46full-time. If I do full times when we're
- 4:48calling all this stuff, you know, and they say how you know,
- 4:51how you how you doing so well because I'm obsessed I'm
- 4:53stupidly obsessed with search engine optimization.
- 4:56I love I love I love the Google smart brain.
- 4:58I didn't realize I wasn't algorithm so much until I did a
- 5:00degree in chemistry and then it became like this thing.
- 5:02He's like my best friend. So I decided and this is this
- 5:05this is true story. My YouTube channel was rubbish
- 5:07at like movie 10,000 subscribers and in November of 2017 and I
- 5:13decided I wanted to really supercharge it.
- 5:14So I thought well, I'm a good I'm good at focusing hyper
- 5:17focusing double down and something very interesting and I
- 5:20just love the Google algorithm. It's amazing.
- 5:22It's called Google smart brain is just phenomenal.
- 5:24Anyway, I know boring right so SEO search engine optimization
- 5:28so that nobody really cares about algorithms are we talking
- 5:30about so I used to watch all these All except late at night
- 5:34watching only channels will go from because you go to bed.
- 5:36I'm like no, I'm gonna stuff the research and it's totally me and
- 5:39I resent all this stuff and I was watching YouTube channel
- 5:41called video influencers huge Channel talking about all these
- 5:44experts you do that channel, you know remarkably well and all
- 5:47these hacks and these experts and I was like, well, these guys
- 5:49are gods and this is a true story in June of two thousand
- 5:54eighteen. Actually when I was in America
- 5:55to a video conference called VidCon, which is biggest one in
- 5:58the world there. I was interviewed by video
- 6:00influencers on my ability to grow my you YouTube channel and
- 6:03I became one of those experts I just like months earlier had
- 6:06been watching in a link at night, which is crazy.
- 6:08So I say to these people who messaged me say Donna, you know,
- 6:11I just I've got Asperger's Syndrome or whatever and I feel
- 6:14like I'm not going to do anything.
- 6:15I said what you're into Pokemon awesome.
- 6:17So my but you could be the biggest Pokemon Blondie in the
- 6:21world and there's nothing wrong with that like and so I kind of
- 6:25encourages people to think like the things that you may seem
- 6:28pointless like playing rocket League until all hours and light
- 6:30beings number one person to play, you know, Other rocket
- 6:33legal Minecraft in the world and being an expert at it could
- 6:36really pay off and that's an amazing skill.
- 6:38So my YouTube channel is taking people from being a feeling like
- 6:41down about their condition to being like empowered and being
- 6:45awesome. Now my YouTube channel also does
- 6:47two things. Well, it empowers people on the
- 6:50Spectrum to say like look, I'm doing it.
- 6:53Look at this at the stuff I've managed to do right?
- 6:55I'm dyslexic. I got a best-selling book one.
- 6:57This is going on. You know what I mean?
- 6:59Ig's so I say to these people if I can do it anybody can do it
- 7:03like there's enough. There's nothing stopping anyone
- 7:05just like the awesome story this lady with performing about the
- 7:07you know, changing the way the club works.
- 7:09It's just phenomenal, you know, I mean, it's just amazing.
- 7:11It's all down to focus and one of the things that people on the
- 7:15Spectrum are really into this hyper-focus.
- 7:17I love it. I love I love learning about
- 7:18aliens and stuff like that. But hyper-focus is kind of like
- 7:21when we were like walking miracle for walk down the
- 7:23street, but I don't like to do because you know people in the
- 7:25street, so we're walking on the street and then I'll pass
- 7:27something like wow. What's this like a piece of
- 7:30electronic equipment? I'm standing on her face.
- 7:32She's like come on down. I'm like, no, it could be and I
- 7:34just wonder where it's from. I wonder what it's doing.
- 7:36How did it get here who made this one if I could change I
- 7:38wonder if I back engineer, I can probably do something else, but
- 7:41actually I can make a piece of out of it.
- 7:42No, I'm going to blog and she said we're just doing and I'm
- 7:45like thinking of how the most amazing things in the world
- 7:47because that's how my brain works and I feel like if I
- 7:49encourage people to do that, then we'll have more amazing
- 7:52things in the world. I feel like without people on
- 7:54the Spectrum doing crazy cool things.
- 7:57We wouldn't have like Apple. Ah behind Stein or anybody cool
- 8:00like that, right? So that's one of things I
- 8:02Empower young people to Old anybody really on the Spectrum
- 8:05to really be themselves and do something amazing because I just
- 8:08love that stuff. And the other thing that my
- 8:10channel does is it educates people who are neurotypical
- 8:15which is a weird expressional term, but you know what I'm
- 8:17talking about people who are not on the Spectrum in the daily
- 8:21life for me like how I do things how people I interview other
- 8:25people's not just me talking about my experience because yes,
- 8:27I'm an individual and everybody on.
- 8:28Spectrum is an individual which we should never forget.
- 8:31So I interview other people on the channel and I am actually
- 8:34top of the world talking to the people and that's kind of cool
- 8:36and I love sharing the stories and the diversity of the
- 8:39community so that people watching that to digest
- 8:41information for educational academic purposes feel like
- 8:45whoa, I can actually digest information a lot wanting to
- 8:47kill myself. So that's kind of cool and that
- 8:53jobs aren't you? I don't know.
- 8:55So yeah, so I talk about my experiences.
- 8:58This has on a great understanding and I help
- 9:01promote. The change in society is one of
- 9:03the things I'm really big on is this changing the way our
- 9:05society looks at people because grown up everyone's like when
- 9:08they say I just want you freaking out I went to VidCon.
- 9:11Yeah, I was doing I was doing a show at VidCon.
- 9:13I play I play music as well. I'm a multi musician and I play
- 9:15a lot of different instruments that self-taught because you
- 9:18know bored so I decided to learn instruments and I ended up
- 9:21playing in a band with this guy who is on a he's a movie star
- 9:25from America is an American Pie anything like that is one of the
- 9:27main actors. That means good friend.
- 9:28He decided hey don't play in Obama's it.
- 9:30Yes, I went to the comic Comics the bad idea here wrexham
- 9:33actually and it was the biggest thing I've ever attended to my
- 9:35wife. And then like I just like
- 9:37freaked out of his crazy meltdown now people saying oh
- 9:39why what's wrong with you? Well, that seemed wrong with me.
- 9:42I want to Spectrum to say, you know train man like what so my
- 9:45idea seriously like you said something like oh, yeah, so I'm
- 9:49inspector was like man, I want cystic person and they go.
- 9:52Well, you know, I dream man like my kid my friends kid is like
- 9:56this and you're not like them and I'm like, yeah.
- 9:58Well, so my idea of people the society sees people certain way
- 10:02and not a bad condition to be in on the way people see autistic
- 10:07individuals. So I'm trying to do is change
- 10:08that perspective to being a bit little bit more diverse people
- 10:11like understanding and accepting that people aren't going to be
- 10:14Coco copy paste, which is a difficult task.
- 10:18Now one of the other things are doing our campaign for change in
- 10:20things. Like I can't stand going to test
- 10:22off two reasons, right? So because it sounds good.
- 10:26No, that's just a given but then Horizontally going to test those
- 10:29I go to Tesco and I go okay. I love I'm obsessed with silly I
- 10:33things like organic food a living such that touch with
- 10:35great organic grain to the know why it's important, but I
- 10:37thought to mention it. So I'm going to say right the
- 10:39organic apples are here this aisle.
- 10:40They're having to go in there. Boom organic apples go to the
- 10:43till happy damn, but then I go on them like eggs.
- 10:46What the hell's going on? Why are the eggs here where the
- 10:48apples are here? Just go and I like and it just
- 10:51break. It freaks me out because they
- 10:53change things. So rapidly I'm thinking what is
- 10:55going on now they are doing it because they're trying to make a
- 10:58buck and Changing things around but it really destroys my
- 11:00partner of my day, which is a true star like and my whole day
- 11:04get stronger as task or move the apples and it's true stories
- 11:07have many many occasions we can stay here.
- 11:11It will have on many occasions and because of that I want to be
- 11:13able to change the way the world at last people access its data
- 11:18and data comes in different formats Daisy like processing
- 11:20food and going through Supermarket.
- 11:22How do we process across it in your occipital World?
- 11:24It doesn't work so tough. No need to stop changing things
- 11:27and we're going to like really Not so good for that.
- 11:30I'm like, thank you. I've almost indefinitely world
- 11:34or someone has weakened the autism our which is great.
- 11:36Why is one hour or were allocated goodness me.
- 11:39So that's another change here. Thank you.
- 11:42So what I became for that, there's one reasons why I'm
- 11:44growing my channel to 100,000 subscribers before we move
- 11:47forward politically because hundred thousand is a lot of
- 11:48people to take forward for political change.
- 11:51And the other thing and I want to go to Tesco is lighting the
- 11:54subject so they never really Never really do anything to help
- 12:00people on the special now. We'll turn the lights down turn
- 12:02the music off of one hour this one day year.
- 12:04It's like oh, thanks a lot. So that doesn't really work and
- 12:07which is great. It's a good start and I was
- 12:09saying it's rubbish and just saying it's a good start but we
- 12:11need more of it. So that's what I'm trying to do
- 12:13the channels Advocate more of that don't look at my notes Here
- 12:16Talk Amongst yourselves. Not really I know what I'm
- 12:20doing. So, why did I choose you to be
- 12:22the platform of my choice my okay with time?
- 12:24Yeah, we're going to be because YouTube is a freedom of speech
- 12:27platform lighting. Just inspiration and I love
- 12:30that. I love being inspired you watch
- 12:32those things like those inspirational movies.
- 12:34You have to be like, yeah, I'm gonna go and like Tara Buck
- 12:36enough because you feel so pumped.
- 12:37I love that. I want to be part of that change
- 12:39want to be a part of the inspiration of other people.
- 12:41I love that. The second thing is that it's a
- 12:42creative message now people on the Spectrum a super creative,
- 12:45right? I don't know if I'm a moment
- 12:46anybody else but we've not creative and I love it
- 12:49creativity is like, I don't know it give birth to all kinds of
- 12:52crazy stuff and I love it like the bridges skyscrapers airplane
- 12:55science. Everything is creating.
- 12:57I love it. So YouTube is creative and I
- 12:59love being able to being apart from that encourages creativity.
- 13:03And the other one is that it makes people focus because when
- 13:05you watching each of you have to really dedicate yourself to
- 13:07watching it right now when you're watching TV, like how
- 13:09Adele Farms on and just kind of sit back and we make Appetit but
- 13:13when you watching YouTubers you really have to watch it.
- 13:14So you digest information in the totally different way and our
- 13:16partners amazing fascinates the hell out of me, but actually we
- 13:19right now might be moving into podcasting as well because
- 13:22people want to come to my YouTube channel, which is 20
- 13:23minutes my video but societies sucks at the moment.
- 13:26Someone has to work stupid hours to pay for Just the bare
- 13:29necessities to get through life, but they want us to take
- 13:31content. So I say OK fine print on a
- 13:33podcast and run to work drive to work whatever listen to it on
- 13:36the goal, which is amazing. I just thought I'd mention I
- 13:38have a podcast in case some reason trusted listening to it.
- 13:40You can just type in autism or Asperger's and to any podcast
- 13:43Network. Can you find me?
- 13:44It's like another one one. So that's kind of cool.
- 13:46So I did my talk all the last year on autism is a superpower
- 13:51because I feel like people have again if you double down on that
- 13:54potential like a to use like obsessed in Minecraft a Power
- 13:56Rangers could really double down and Sighs the fact that they
- 13:59love Power Rangers like what you know about Power Rangers
- 14:01everything there's nothing I don't know about find great make
- 14:04a YouTube channel be the biggest Power Ranger blog in the world
- 14:06because there's billions of people out there who would love
- 14:08to see Power Rangers. Look for instance.
- 14:10There are 300 know there's 1 billion 300 million active users
- 14:14on YouTube. That's a lot of people so you
- 14:16have eyeballs over and I love that and the superpower I want
- 14:19to like this is where I mean by what I do and my channel is
- 14:23Walking the things that I do like, how is that somebody who's
- 14:26dyslexic? I can barely spell my own name.
- 14:28How did I get a number one bestselling book in the US on
- 14:31the UK, right? And how is it in like three
- 14:33languages and blah blah blah and there's ways around everything.
- 14:36I actually used a Ghostwriter and dictated and hopefully
- 14:38you'll feel like I spoke and the sorry The Ghostwriter kind of
- 14:43just dictated that down into kind of a written form, which is
- 14:46amazing. And I know it was able to edit
- 14:47it with them in real time, which is a means to an end, which is
- 14:49an amazing thing because that shows that there was no blockade
- 14:52like somebody who's like, you know dyslexic or maybe don't
- 14:54even have fingers to write a walk right those sit down and
- 14:58pain. Or type things they can dictate
- 14:59to some of these dudes. There's always ways around that
- 15:01the same with the way I did a degree in chemistry.
- 15:03I would never have been able to do a degree in chemistry without
- 15:06the support from disability student Wales, which is
- 15:09basically they had a program within the University of bangle
- 15:12which where I went to help me actually go through different
- 15:15kind of classes and we reasonable adjustments
- 15:17phenomenal absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, there are not
- 15:20funding which is abysmal job I should offer live and so anyway,
- 15:25they run our funding and they can't do anymore.
- 15:27But without it we Beyond see my degree but it's showing the
- 15:30people who watch my videos that like somebody who's left school
- 15:33with no education was able to actually do something quite
- 15:37interesting. I'm a scientist and doing
- 15:38chemistry. Why didn't know getting into it.
- 15:40So the bloody hard to subject to do so I enjoyed it.
- 15:43I loved it in a problem is I felt like they can be a little
- 15:46time to do what I wanted to do because I got obsessed with
- 15:48things and I'm certainly looking one thing like this is cool
- 15:50isn't it and then like move on next thing?
- 15:52Oh my God shoot like but that was that you know, that's this
- 15:55is a university for yellow anyway.
- 15:58But yeah, you know writing my book again and then building the
- 16:01YouTube channel building the YouTube channel from nothing
- 16:04from the ground up was interesting hard work, but it
- 16:07was amazing and I loved every second of it now with YouTube
- 16:10specifically don't want to talk about the so the statistics in
- 16:13America has 160 people who are on the Spectrum right in here
- 16:16currently is 1 in 100 people on the Spectrum like mirror
- 16:19diversity hits those people probably been more.
- 16:21Actually, we're just gonna statistics tool statistical
- 16:23data. We actually can get a Hands-On
- 16:24which is crazy crazy amounts. So I VidCon which is a huge
- 16:29conference, right and actually attend something like summer in
- 16:31the city here in the UK. There's a lot of different
- 16:33conferences for these kids who are watching YouTube videos who
- 16:35probably you know, one in 60 them in America 100 here are on
- 16:39the Spectrum and they go to these places expecting to see
- 16:41people that they can relate to because it's a safe environment,
- 16:44but it go there and then there's nobody there because these
- 16:46places don't put on panel talks or any any kind of activity that
- 16:51relates to the YouTube. It's in that panel.
- 16:53They have a disability panel, but it's always physical
- 16:55disability in is nothing wrong with that.
- 16:56That's great, but they never think about near diverse.
- 16:58Unity or like all mental health disabilities and ever think
- 17:01about those things. So I was like this sucks.
- 17:03Like I really it really bugged the heck outta me and I went to
- 17:05VidCon last year in America now and my YouTube manager was like
- 17:09don't access to the party that you the bid compact your Vicki's
- 17:12party all the celebrities and everyone YouTube you can think
- 17:14of the big ones in the kids. Watch out.
- 17:16I was hanging out with all those people but I was like, yeah, I'm
- 17:18going to do it don't like going to parties from doing this once
- 17:20I went there to hook right up to the guy you want them kind of
- 17:22like it's like Hank. It's a yellow so you don't
- 17:25believe you're going to I was like listen buddy, you know one
- 17:28and 60 kids at 160 kids on that don't get access to that Heroes
- 17:32all the people that they want to see with an awesome selection
- 17:34condition. We need to change and he's like,
- 17:36okay. So I teamed up to a girl called
- 17:37Jack's from a channel called how to ADHD and we got on really
- 17:41really well, but she's got a big channel so she had a huge
- 17:43influence. So we managed to persuade them
- 17:45in VidCon to actually allow is it has a year of but constantly
- 17:49battling took two hours to do a new diverse panel this year in
- 17:53America, which is incredible first one ever in the world the
- 17:56biggest video conference ever in the world, which is Nuts so this
- 17:59is kind of like, you know all the last year I was saying that
- 18:01I wanted to do this and I were actually doing analysis Phase 1
- 18:04and Phase 2 is going to be rolling this out to every video
- 18:06conference in the UK in the US, but then it can be wrong all to
- 18:09every conference because I feel like we're always left out which
- 18:12really sucks and that annoys me but doing this I just love it.
- 18:16I love I go buy me something like right.
- 18:17How are we going to kick butt change the world today and
- 18:19that's amazing. So I love I love doing those
- 18:21things. And that is the kind of future
- 18:22of what we're doing. We're changing how organizations
- 18:25have big conferences and things where people are actually
- 18:28Sensing it how do they have access to it?
- 18:29Because you know, if you go back to like well the 40s and 30s
- 18:32wheelchair access for wheelchair users with like nothing and
- 18:34there was no legal restrictions on it.
- 18:36You could just eat without stuff like, you know, you will change
- 18:38is good. It's like what but now it's like
- 18:40legal statue, you know, that's a serious offense if you don't but
- 18:44when somebody is Artistic and they say I can go to Tesco
- 18:46because it freaks me out and as many times I've got some
- 18:48familiar and I'm not going in there.
- 18:49I'll post like look I wanted to go and see busted in concert.
- 18:52I don't know. I'm stupid and I also suggest
- 18:54another one second and and I was like, yeah crash the wedding and
- 18:57then I was like we can Thought I was like getting really nervous,
- 19:00you know sweating and like the day comes in my car.
- 19:02I sold my tickets. I did the first game back from
- 19:05what I dunno what 15 years versus didn't get another stole
- 19:07my tickets. Why because I was anxious about
- 19:09going somewhere what didn't are commonly minor diverse needs
- 19:13which I felt like, you know, I thought it was a pain like, you
- 19:16know accessible for me but no I was like it should be accessible
- 19:19formation because for everybody isn't that what we our society
- 19:22of inclusive people, so no, that's where I'm going.
- 19:24That's all my channels doing. This is why I'm doing what I do,
- 19:27and I love it. It and I'm going to stop talking
- 19:29now. So thanks so much for listening
- 19:30to me guys. And there's nothing nothing.