Nomadic Fanatic

Francesca Knowles wrote:
So as it turns out, it IS about the money. Somebody evidently outed him to College financial aid folks, so now he's being looked at. No surprise there! I have to admit that the taxpayer side of me approves of such scrutiny.

Interestingly, he doesn't admit to having taken down the site- just makes some oblique references to having been "hacked". Puh-leeze. Sure managed to get it all back up lickety-split once all the scrubbed-up ducks were back in the row.

And speaking of duck-scrubbing:

A fellow on another channel did an interview with Eric back in February.

Weirdly, sometime in the last day or two that vid has been altered so that the bulk of the "interview" is GONE-???? Now, except for a few seconds at the beginning and end, it's just the channel owner, Chris, talking about himself. With a link to ol' Nomadic Fanatic's resurrected site onscreen the whole time. Makes Chris the poor schmo look like an idiot!

Anybody have a clue as to what that might be about? Was there something in that interview that NF needed to hide, or what???

Francesca,

I think from Eric's perspective it's mostly about the realization that he never should have revealed so many personal details about himself to the general public in the first place. Not because he really did anything wrong but because he left himself vulnerable to unwarranted attacks in the process. The video he posted explains what was hacked and how the information gained from that attack was used in an attempt to damage his reputation, derail (at least temporarily) his educational plans and how it even harmed some of his other friends and family members. His references to being hacked are both specific and direct. There's nothing "oblique" about them.

Eric never stated or implied that anyone but him was responsible for shutting down his YT channel. Others may have wondered if that's what happened but he doesn't have to specifically respond to every ridiculous theory someone else proposes. When you shut down a channel it doesn't all get instantly deleted off of the YT servers. It's all still sitting there waiting to be instantly reactivated for at least a few days before it truly gets purged. Besides, if you listen to what he actually says, it's pretty obvious that he shut it down himself and why he did it.

The Van Life interview on the Chris Travels channel and on the Nomadic Fanatic channel are identical except for the additional lead-in that Chris added to the instance he has posted on his channel. As far as I can tell, these are not newly "altered" versions of the interview. They still have the same original upload dates and Eric appears on camera in both instances of the video (in the scene where he and Chris are having lunch together at a diner). That video is consistent with another interview video he did with a full time van dweller named "Chad". He edits out the parts where he's asking a question and just pieces together the responses. It's a pretty commonly used technique for interviews that are meant to be incorporated later into a documentary film. Acclaimed documentary film maker Ken Burns uses it a lot. For example, see his "New York" documentary series.

Eric freely admits that he's bending some rules when he "boondocks" his RV overnight in places you're not supposed to. Chris Penn and at least a dozen others have YT videos showing the same thing. The thing they all emphasize is that you shouldn't make it obvious to others that you're inside; that you shouldn't push things by staying two, three days or longer in the same place and that you should always be respectful of your surroundings (e.g., don't run the generator at 3 am, don't park your RV in a neighborhood where its presence is likely to cause security concerns for residents or businesses, and so on.) But otherwise, chances are often good that no one will mess with you if you're not causing a problem for anyone and aren't drawing attention to yourself. Following the exact letter of the law at every opportunity is certainly admirable. But I'd be willing to bet that most people who've ever come back to find their parking meter has expired but haven't gotten a ticket don't put any more coins in the meter to cover the additional time and I doubt anyone has ever turned themselves into the local police for speeding or running a stop sign when no one else was around to bust 'em for it. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Also, one of Eric's earlier videos is specifically devoted to explaining why he felt it was economically advantageous to take out loans and enroll in school at that point in his life rather than continue working dead-end, part-time jobs that pay only minimum wage or don't provide a steady number of hours. He's preparing himself to eventually make a better income and bear a larger portion of the tax burden. He's only borrowing money from the taxpayers that *must* be paid back. I've seen small business owners use their SBA loans to help them afford the cost of buying motorcycles, boats, new siding for their homes -- all sorts of stuff -- then discharge it all through bankruptcy and start over under a new corporation name. You can't do it forever but you can get away with it for a while. Government subsidized student loans, on the other hand, have lifetime limits on award amounts and they're directly tied to academic performance and achievement. They can't be discharged through bankruptcy either. I wish the private business sector were as closely scrutinized and held to account as college students like Eric are.