“3 Musketeers” is an unauthorized but persistent social media brand name by three principal dancers from Shen Yun Performing Arts: William, Sam (Pu), and Jisung (Kim). Let me explain why they are completely wrong to make social media where they showcase themselves like this. They aren’t saying, “Here is what we did today. See our photos and videos of the places we visited. You can also ask us questions.” I don’t see a problem with that. They are instead saying, “Here is everything we are as dancers, our lives, our views, and how Shen Yun works, everything about it, etc.” all without permission, over and over for years. There is the obvious problem with this which is it is them pursuing fame at the expense of Shen Yun’s name with their online personalities that are often off-putting and don’t have any connection to an experience of the show. Their personalities and the things they put in their videos are actually often very bad. They don’t speak during the performance, after all, and their desire to talk about themselves online is entirely out of attachment to fame.

Master Li Hongzhi has also emphasized repeatedly in lectures that anyone collecting funds for any project must get permission. No, they haven’t done this, because it isn’t possible anyone would be granted permission to collect money in front of Shen Yun, as there is official merchandise and ticket sales.

Yet they have been setting up paid subscription on YouTube, riding off of the Shen Yun brand, making money off of it, and making the excuse that they are helping expose the CCP. They believe that by making videos and talking about their lives and experiences the world will better understand the show and the people who work for it. That is something they are not allowed to do because it interferes with attendance of the show. In actuality what they do is try to address every single baseless slanderous remark said by saboteurs as if the attacks are ever possibly coming from anyone except adversaries of the show. They treat attacks from saboteurs as things that need to be addressed as real misunderstandings, because they are cowards. They can’t stand the slightest amount of pressure like that and rush to make videos to make sure no one feels anything negative about them. But really the remarks are isolated and stem from CCP agents, not anything people in the West would care about or believe. Their talking on social media was never necessary. The show was a global success before they ever made any videos. The world understands Shen Yun by seeing it, not having three cowardly performers talking about themselves and reveal all of its operations without permission (“See, we’re all regular people. See, this is how Shen Yun works, it’s actually really regular people doing it. We’re OK.”).

They are paid a salary, and if they collect money online, apart from it being greedy, they can give some people the false impression that they are struggling to get by while working for the show. They don’t have college debt because their tuition was free at Fei Tian. They also dance in the most renowned show in the world. Yet they are saying they would like someone to buy them a bubble tea– as if they are so poor they are beggars on the street. They are not only trying to get $5/month subscriptions from viewers on YouTube by making videos with privileged information about Shen Yun and putting in their “Members Only” section, they are also asking for bubble tea donations. So, it is rather serious in terms of maintaining the reputation of the show, since they are adequately provided for.

Since this is the case, and these three individuals work at Dragon Springs– necessarily in close proximity to Master Li since they teach, practice dance, and perform in the show– how come Master Li hasn’t told them to stop doing social media in person? They should know not to do this is the answer. No one gets the privilege of being guided directly by Master Li when the principles are taught in the books and lectures. If you don’t want to follow what they say, that is something separate from saying you need guidance. Next, not telling people they are doing something bad is how Master Li works since the principles for what you should do have already been explained. He has other ways to deal with what you are doing wrong besides asking you to stop upfront and it quite often involves you finding out very late– after years of you doing the thing and self-deceiving that you weren’t doing something bad the whole time. Along the way, various practitioners like me will warn you so that at the end you have no excuse in the least. You won’t be able to say, “But no one even told me they didn’t think I should do it!”. Then in this case it is even worse because they have been blocking me repeatedly on social media and refusing to communicate even once.

They are doing what they want to do secretly and trying to play the well-known game (with themselves only) to “ask for forgiveness, not permission,” which means they’ll try a little more all the time to test it out and then pretty soon they have a full-blown social media presence with paid subscription, and it can’t be wrong because Master Li never told them. I have covered that ground for them, for sure, explaining every reason why it is completely bad for them to step in front of the Shen Yun name online. When you all at “3 Musketeers” find out late, it also helps you improve in cultivation practice. It helps you realize that no one is responsible for your cultivation but you in Falun Dafa, and if you don’t guard your character no one will do it for you on any length of time. There are 100 million practitioners worldwide. No one gets special treatment, including me. Special treatment cannot help you get any further in practicing Falun Dafa. If you are told when you are doing something wrong at every step, that is meaningless and isn’t you correcting yourself.

We can’t have this kind of YouTube channel associated with or representing the show, directly or indirectly. You can see the video thumbnail below, but William has not quit Shen Yun and he still works at the campus, so why does this YouTube thumbnail say this? To deceive you in a small way so that you click the video. It is a big deal for us and maybe not to other people, because clickbait is deception.