00:00 I think we felt it was big when, I think every day,
00:03 like after the first day,
00:05 and people actually started adding people
00:07 that we didn't know into the group.
00:09 And then when they started seeing
00:10 like how many people there were,
00:12 went from 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 to a million,
00:15 it's like really unreal to like see those people
00:20 that you've been looking up to on the big screens
00:23 and doing so many different amazing things
00:26 to acknowledge our group and even know of our group
00:30 in the first place.
00:31 So this is Subtle Asian Trades.
00:33 This is a Facebook group.
00:34 These are Asian people.
00:35 Do you know what memes are?
00:38 Not really, you can explain.
00:39 Do you know what memes are?
00:41 No.
00:42 Okay.
00:43 So my name is Kathleen.
00:47 I'm 22 years old and one of the original founders.
00:50 I started this group in late 2018.
00:54 Sat originally was founded by nine of us,
00:58 which were myself, Tony, Annie, Anne, Lydia,
01:05 Kerry, Angela, Brendan and Darren.
01:08 - Hi everyone.
01:09 - Can I take an order for my phone?
01:11 - It wasn't like we had started this with a plan to get big.
01:16 So it kind of sounds cliche,
01:18 but it's just like starting a business with your friends.
01:22 It's, at the end of the day, it is a Facebook group,
01:24 but it's also a community.
01:26 But then all these different amazing people
01:28 have also been in the group and interacted with the group.
01:31 Now I think before Subtle Asian Trades,
01:33 I didn't really think much of like being Asian.
01:36 I never really had a good thought on, you know,
01:39 how different it's been for me to grow up as an Asian
01:43 in a society where we're sort of like a minority.
01:46 - And because we met so many other people
01:50 that are similar to us,
01:52 we sort of learnt about our culture
01:54 and learnt that it's something that you should be proud of
01:57 rather than something that you want to hide.
01:59 So I think my childhood was a very typical Asian childhood.
02:06 I sort of struggled with my, I guess,
02:11 identity while I was younger.
02:13 Why am I Chinese?
02:14 I don't want to be Chinese.
02:16 I hate being Chinese.
02:17 Why can't I just be normal,
02:19 like everyone else?
02:21 - A Subtle Asian Trade to be.
02:29 - Taking off your shoes when you get into the house.
02:32 - I think a lot of Asians have organisation within.
02:35 I think that's something that, you know,
02:37 correlates to me.
02:38 - I think what SAPP provides
02:42 is a place that is lighthearted, that is fun.
02:46 The reason why we were so successful
02:49 was because of humour, like, period.
02:52 - We're controlling the kind of narrative that we have.
02:58 We're being ourselves,
02:59 we're being authentically ourselves.
03:01 So humour is a way to keep people engaged
03:03 because nobody wants to read a thousand words
03:06 in a Facebook group every day.
03:08 But sometimes when you grow into such a large group
03:11 and you encounter these big problems,
03:13 being too casual and friendly sometimes
03:15 can present its problems on its own.
03:17 And I think what a lot of people don't realise
03:19 is that it's also mentally exhausting
03:23 to sort of moderate the group and approve those posts
03:26 because there is some stuff that people,
03:30 I guess, submit that can be quite heavy.
03:35 Like the topics, the conversations that people wanna have
03:38 can be very intense.
03:40 I guess starting off SAPP as,
03:43 I guess, young adults or like teenagers
03:46 just finishing high school,
03:47 there are a lot of things we didn't know about.
03:50 And it's not an excuse,
03:53 but it's just something that we've never been exposed to.
03:56 - At a certain point, we would wake up in the morning
03:59 and our phone would be filled with notifications
04:02 from the group, from people messaging us
04:04 about problematic posts, comments,
04:08 different things that had happened in the group.
04:09 - We suddenly had all these people come to us
04:11 and be like, "Why are you only representing
04:15 the Chinese culture?
04:16 Like, why is there not more representation
04:18 on like other ethnicities?"
04:22 And we obviously had the best intentions,
04:28 but we're learning and we're, I guess,
04:32 proactively trying to read up on those topics,
04:37 do our research, talk to people
04:39 in order to, I guess, build a better space.
04:42 Like, it can always be better, right?
04:45 Yeah, well, I think a big part of our team
04:54 is that we try not to make ourselves the main part of it.
04:59 - 'Cause we're just a bunch of normal kind of Asian people
05:05 that just happened to start a Facebook group
05:09 that people thought was cool.
05:12 We try to facilitate that and make sure
05:14 that the members can have a good relationship
05:16 with the group rather than a good relationship with us.
05:18 (upbeat music)
05:21 (upbeat music)
05:24 (upbeat music)
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