Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don’t come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don’t really get upset by it IRL
I’ve been a vegetarian for 15 years. People IRL often do get offended if you tell them you don’t eat meat. I try my best to avoid saying it because it often leads to being lectured about proteins. Everyone suddenly becomes a nutritionist when you explain why you don’t eat meat.
Yeah. I try not to mention it to people if I can avoid it. I work construction and am surrounded by manly men tring to out man each other. I had one guy offer me bear jerkey and got bent out of shape when I declined. He wouldn’t stop. He just kept on me about why I didn’t eat meat. After about an hour of him asking again and again why I don’t eat meat I said “meat’s another word for dick and eating dick is gay”. As problematic as it was, it worked.
It never cases to amaze me that a 250pound dude with a 40oz soda in one hand and a mouthfull of gas station pizza thinks he has the responsibility to lecture me about nutrition.
“meat’s another word for dick and eating dick is gay”. As problematic as it was, it worked.
It’s both sad and hillarious that this worked. I wonder if you created a new vegetarian as well
Probably not but I like to think it’s created a feedback loop going on in his head endlessly. “Meat is manly. Meat is dick.'”
We need to take the small victories
As a life-long vegetarian, this has been my experience as well.
My dad always acts like i’m close to dying because i’m vegan. I work out every day, he eats meat 3 times a day and even his vegetables are unhealthy as fuck. He’s so overweight that getting into his car is super exhausting. Pretty weird if someone like that gives you tips on how to eat right.
I’m what I call “mostly vegetarian“ which means that I choose to not have meat, but will eat small portions on occasion. And boy does that just piss off people like no other. Worse is I get it from both sides, to either commit in full or just give in to my natural instincts and consume more red meat.
Sometimes I just want a salad. Sometimes I want some bacon crumbles on that salad. Sometimes I want 3oz of fish with a plate of veggies. But what I can tell you is 3/4 of my plate will have healthy veggies or fruit.
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Do-gooder derogation Basically, some people perceive others’ moral choices as criticism or as some kind of bragging.
Fascinating! Thank you for this article. It exactly describes what’s happening: “oh, you think you’re better than us? I’ll have another steak!”
This is really easy to test in fairly small social groups. The next time you’re in a group ordering pizza, say you want cheese, because you don’t eat meat. Now watch everyone else order, or change their order to, double meat supreme with bacon. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves. It’s hilarious how easy you can change other people’s behavior.
This is by far the most frustrating thing
And some just see those who militantly focus on attacking fellow individuals instead of the systems that are actually to blame (but which they otherwise support and/or benefit from, like capitalism, racism, and ableism) counterproductive, annoying, and hypocritical.
The militant vegans I have come across, and being vegan myself, it’s a lot, far too many (E: to the point I actively avoid vegan spaces), are almost exclusively drowning in so much privilege, they can’t see how ridiculous they’re being in their bizarre militancy of policing other people’s plates instead of the actual industries abusing animals (and humans, who these vegans rarely to never pay any thought to, not out loud or in their actions, anyway).
(before I even hit send: if you feel personally attacked by my comment - that’s a sign for you to think about it with yourself and ideally do something about it, not try and prove me wrong, inevitably proving me 100% right)
It’s the privilege thing that gets me every time. Not everyone can participate in your exclusive food club and be healthy and fulfilled. Let people do the best they can with what they have.
There’s another factor here. People who are vegan, sober, poly, don’t drive, and any number of choices are breaking societal norms. Most people don’t even think about these things as choices. They do the default. Realizing that there’s a choice, and that this person decided not to do the default, puts people off. It makes them uncomfortable. They begin to question things they’ve never had to evaluate.
I’ve never once in the last decade seen a single vegan post other than recipes. What I do see is constant posts about how “vegans are always throwing it my face/holier than thou”, “I’m gonna eat extra meat because vegans make me feel bad”. I really don’t think vegans are the problem, I think these fools fall for every single piece of beef industry propaganda that comes across their screens.
As much as I’d like that to be true, I’ve definitely still seen vegan spaces online that are intensely alienating and hostile 😅 when I was using reddit, often anything from r/vegan that hit r/all was pretty hostile to anyone who hadn’t already decided it was an important issue for them and made big lifestyle changes accordingly, adopting veganism.
To be totally honest I’ve also never seen any beef industry propaganda encouraging people to hate vegans or resent veganism. If you can think of any examples off the top of your head I’d be curious to see them (if nothing comes to mind thats fine, I don’t intend that as a gotcha)
I’m not vegan (grew up with an eating disorder, not in any position to cut stuff out of my diet or make eating more complicated/difficult, though I have a lot of respect for vegan ethics) but I am a big nerd about open source stuff and linux, and I’ve observed similar things in that space. I have a friend who’s averse to open source stuff because folks have evangelized to her aggressively and with the same sort of superiority complex many folks perceive vegans as having. I’m grateful she’s excited to listen to me talk about the stuff I’m excited about anyway these days, but I’m careful not to make her feel pressured to drop proprietary software she’s using for open alternatives because I want her to feel respected even though she’s not invested in this thing I care about a whole lot
I think when you work hard to adopt a big change for reasons you’re proud of, it’s easy to view yourself as superior for having learned the thing, or made the dietary change
Back on reddit there were those who had alerts set every time the word came up across the site, then they’d brigade the fitness and health subreddits with their vegan crew to derail any conversations. It was really annoying. No clue if that’s still a problem because lolreddit
The very first vegan I ever knew talked at me for 10 minutes about how I should go vegan. It was the only 10 minutes I knew her. I was 15, still living with my parents, didn’t have a way to get around, and my family was fairly poor. Oh, and my mother didn’t cook so much as unboxed dinner, because the kitchen was always filthy. I definitely walked away from that interaction feeling like I’d been told I was a terrible human who deserves to suffer by a rude principal. So yes, they definitely exist.
I’ve never met a Vegetarian that wasn’t chill about it, though.
I’m sure there are plenty of chill vegans too, but some of them come off like an annoying televangelist, in my experience.
Holier than thou attitude from new vegans whose world view changed overnight and cognitive dissonance on the part of non vegan with the need to deflect than to make substantial changes.
Because of the trope that vegans are pretentious twats that publicly chastise anyone not vegan.
Like most things it’s one of those situations that’s blown out of proportion and the vast majority of us will never interact with a preachy vegan. I’ve encountered many vegans in the wild and they’ve most all been decent people, and I love picking their brains for decent vegan or vegetarian foods. I don’t mind vegan/vegetarianism, it’s just not easy to do well, so it helps to talk to people who do it for real. That said, I have encountered a few that are on the preachy side, but whatever. They’re no different than the tool who has the “eat tasty animals” bumper sticker and the like.
All the vegans and vegetarians I’ve met in real life were chill dudes and dudettes. One was an engineer and semi-pro skateboarder that was always making people feel good and happy. Another one was a solid rock climber always smiling.
I know more annoying people complaining about vegans, always grumpy and being proud of always eating meat. I also know this cool swing dance instructor girl who only eats meat, so it’s also good.
I actually know a vegan engineer and vegetarian rock climber, too! Had several great dinners and lunches with them both!
The same reason people hate leftists, feminists, trans athletes, “gamer girls”, people on welfare, blacks, etc. An image the right cultivated of the group, out of convenient easily-hateable annoying people in it that they could use to create a generalization/stereotype out of. It’s something that’s able to happen to any group, I could portray any hobbyist or activist in this way the same exact way as these “annoying” groups are portrayed, but the right is particularly willing to just flat out lie, slander, and cheat their way into making countercultural/anti-status-quo groups look as absurd as possible, to the point that the majority of the population falls for it (even those that don’t consider themselves to be conservative).
I’ll make a comparison. Conservative/“anti-sjw” thumbnails often have a picture of some angry-looking rainbow haired woman, usually the same few, in order to be like “look how irrational and crazy these feminazis are, she must hate men so much” and like 4 out of 5 of those times it’s a picture of a woman that was protesting a literal neo-nazi gathering or something, not some sort of radical crazy man-hating feminist. But the internet has conditioned the average person to look at someone like that and immediately think they’re an irrational “feminazi”, and conservatives showing these pictures everywhere and making 100 videos on the same person makes people subconsciously believe they’re rampant and have a massive (and bad) grip on society.
Same kind of thing happens with vegans, you have the same 10 or so internet vegans people use to portray veganism that conditions people to think poorly of the concept “vegan”, and when these influencers are confronted about it they say “I don’t hate veganism, I just hate the annoying vegans” then they go onto Twitter to complain about the vegans and how they’re irrational for not eating meat and their brains must be de-evolving or something. They know what they’re doing, but they can hide behind plausible deniability, and the majority of viewers fall for it.
This is so frustrating. People saying “Oh I just don’t like those self-righteous vegans”. Thing is, it doesn’t really matter what vegans say or how reasonable/logically sound it is, the knee-jerk reaction is always the same.
Because the experience of the loud-mouth preacher vegan has become the stereotype of that movement. It might be frustrating for the rest, but it even more frustrating for the recipients of this preaching.
Thanks for the example of exactly what I mean.
If you’d like to break the stereotype of insufferable vegans, you might consider starting that process by not being one.
And another example.
Speaking as a life-long lacto-ovo vegetarian who did a ten year stint as a vegan (I’m 30), it’s because there is a subset of the vegan population that’s very gung-ho about their diet and wants to proselytize about it, and no one likes being told what they should eat. When you remark on people’s diets, people tend to get annoyed and defensive about it.
I grew up being told that my food looked yucky, how I can’t call something meatballs since it doesn’t contain meat, how since I don’t eat protein I’ll die, so on, so forth. It got annoying fast, so now I don’t generally discuss my diet unless it makes a contextual sense. e.g. when planning a restaurant outing with people - though to be frank I often just avoid social situations where food plays a role.
I think where the big clashes really happen is when someone has made veganism/eating meat a core part of their identity, having that criticised, however gently that might be, will cause friction and often cause people to double-down on it; even though they may know on some level that the criticism might even be valid. You can see this in the fat pride movement as well.
Bingo!
It’s the “identity” thing that fouls up so much today.
“You have to accept everything do because it’s my identity”.
Um, no, I don’t have to “accept” anything about you. Nor do you have to “accept” anything about me. Hell, I figured this out when I was five. Fine, you don’t like something about me? Then I won’t waste my time with you. Thanks for making it clear.
I don’t think we view this quite the same way. I don’t see a problem with something being a defining part of someone’s identity, because it’s not up to me to decide how other people ought identify. We all have identities so on some level everyone identifies with something. Just because say, you and I don’t get how diet can be an significant part of someone’s identity, doesn’t invalidate it being significant for someone else. It just means that we haven’t lived the same life and that’s fine.
In a way we do have to accept other people’s identities, because what else can we do? We can’t force change on others, all we can really do is acknowledge the situation and then choose whether or not we want to continue interacting with them.
It doesn’t really get problematic until you have someone that does try to force things on others. My mother was one of those militant vegans, and she lost a lot of friends for it. She’s the reason I am vegetarian, and the reason I was vegan for a long time. Back then I never had much choice in either regard.
Being vegan wasn’t even really a defining part of her identity. Her trying to force it on others was also less about trying to change others, and more about trying to place herself in some sort of morally superior position to them. She pretended to care about their health and the environment - hell on some level maybe she genuinely did care - but it really was more about making herself look and feel better about herself because she was (and is) a deeply insecure person pretending to be otherwise.
As a final aside; what I’ve written above is what I consciously believe, but I’m obviously not an infallible person. I’m an extremely cynical, nihilistic, and definitely a judgmental person. I try my best not to be, and to see things from the perspective of others, but some days I succeed better than others.
The meat and dairy industries have been pumping out propaganda for years, mostly aimed at right-wing dudes. It’s just kind of part of right-wing culture at this point to kneejerk react to veganism with tired old tropes and stereotypes.
It was worse back in the 90s and early 2000s.
I don’t hate veganism. It’s a dietary choice and that’s fine. What I hate is vegans. They’re always pushy and judgmental and hateful and sometimes even destructive in their activism. They’re an annoying group of people and I just don’t want to have to deal with them.
Unfortunately this is a topic like abortion.
Vegans and pro life folks see what “others” are doing as murder/evil. So naturally, since they view the behavior as absolutely inappropriate, their discussion of the topic is always very energetic.
I am not advocating for any dietary path, or abortion position in this comment. I’m only describing people’s behavior. Do not misrepresent me.
Veganism is not a dietary choice it’s a lifestyle choice. Diet is just a big part of it but not the whole thing.
I think plant-based is the diet choice and veganism is the lifestyle. I got corrected by someone who was plant based. They didn’t want to associate with vegans
Then what would we call someone who makes the dietary choice but none of the other lifestyle choices? How would they identify in a restaurant setting? The answer is “vegan”. In the same way that I’m vegetarian but don’t care if I wear leather shoes.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying that English lacks the words that would let you be precise. We need a word for people who are vegan in diet, and don’t care to bother the rest of the world about it. That’s why OPs question keeps coming up.
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Do people say that in restaurants? I’ve actually never heard it.
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No. They are being pendantic.
The answer is “plant-based diet”
Do people say that in restaurants? I’ve actually never heard it.
I came here to say the thing that you said in better words. I’m on a diet for health reasons that closely resembles the vegan diet, so to keep it simple, I’ll say to people that I’m vegan. Most wait staff don’t care if I ask if a menu item can be made vegan, but family or people I’m dining with will either send hate vibes or go into a long thing about some distant vegan relative who died from malnutrition.
Yes, some people being pushy and judgemental is the real travesty. Not animals having their autonomy and lives taken. I didn’t realize we were supposed to coddle people who we see partaking in grave abuses.
My son used to tell this joke - little less relevant now that the giant hand sized vapes are less common.
If you vape, you’re vegan, and you’re a musician; which one do you talk about first?
Instead of whimsy anecdotes, how about something with a bit more science behind it: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation
People don’t hate veganism as much as they don’t appreciate being judged for their choices and chastised by other adults for beliefs that they don’t share.
Personally I have no problem respecting the beliefs of people who are vegan due to their personal morals. Until they start disrespecting the beliefs of others who don’t agree with them with regards to meat, then they become annoying.
Eh, it’s hard for me to respect someones beliefs when they use those beliefs to justify causing harm. And if someone believes that experiencing a good taste in their mouth justifies killing, I don’t respect that at all
Everyone, the answer to the thread is right here.
Not all beliefs are good. Veganism seems to minimize suffering for a group of life on this planet that has traditionally been at the whims of humans.
But as another commenter pointed out, people’s egos can’t usually take the claims that they are making bad choices and should change. This kind of pressure shows up in exercise, for example.
Animals dying don’t care about egos though. On the one hand, entire beings seize to exist, while on the other the top predator remains to exist and satiate their taste buds with a steak or pork chop.
If you are concerned about moral behavior in this world, then you can’t not extend that consideration to animals. If you can’t, then you’re morally inconsistent.
You are absolutely free to believe that not all beliefs are good or correct according to your own morals, and plenty of people will agree with you. Similar to going to a middle eastern country and telling them that women should have rights and shouldn’t have to cover up, don’t expect to be well liked for telling people that their beliefs are deficient or immoral.
Unfortunately for any minority group that seeks change within a group led by the majority, this is true. Perhaps the vitriol against vegans is part of the game of realizing change: there will always be resistance and tendency from some portion of the population to keep things the same as they always were, regardless of whether those things are good for the population itself.
I will always disrepect the beliefs of others who put animals through unnecessary harm.
Because I sat at a table for an hour with a work colleague lecturing me on veganism. I couldn’t care less if you don’t lecture me.
Usually it’s not veganism, itself. Rather, it’s the vegans.
Specifically the annoyingly loud, self-righteous, insists-everyone-must-join-them vegans.
Unfortunately, most people only really see this sort of vegan- rather than the more common, average sort of person who happens to also be vegan.
Specifically the annoyingly loud, self-righteous, insists-everyone-must-join-them vegans. Unfortunately, most people only really see this sort of vegan
On this note, I’d like to point to the Loud Minority problem; You have XYZ group, and within XYZ group there exists a minority that comes across as very “loud”. You can barely miss them, and because they state they’re a part of XYZ group, you start associating that group with the loud minority.
Happens with Vegans a lot, and usually people which have already associated a group with a minority within said group which annoys them do not want to learn that they are wrong, or will just refuse to accept they are wrong.
Precisely.
Personal anecdotes, there was a particular vegan at work. The smell of cooked meat made her feel sick.
Instead of doing the rational thing and taking lunch at her desk; she proceeded to insist that the break room be meat-free. It escalated into all manner of preaching, “shame on you,”- including signage, nasty emails. Shaming with “don’t you care about me?!” All sorts of victimization.
The reality was any attempt at accommodating her was met with “not enough”. The entire office in the end, according to her, needed to be a complete vegan zone.
She didn’t last long for other reasons, but none of those shenanigans really helped. (let’s just say the attitude didn’t stop at being a vegan.)
Yeah that was a wrong decision on the vegan’s part. Perhaps this sort of behavior might be acceptable in the public commons, but work is a private space where people join a company for specific purposes. Work and philosophy/politics should not intertwine.
And who knows: if she excluded herself from the breakroom during lunch without notifying others, maybe coworkers would notice and be more willing to hear her out out of a desire to socialize. It probably could have helped her effort to do this actually.
Vegans live and learn. We are part of a minority group, and with being a minority comes all of its benefits and detriments. We just need to learn that in situations like these, we often are the only vegan around people and so we need to carry our entire movement on our shoulders, whether we want to or not. Else, you get general, anecdotal sentiments the likes of which you see in this post.
I do think they are annoying but a necessary type of annoying that will help humanity progress. The same type of annoying as people who claimed women had rights and African Americans were not inferior.
Humans treat this planet like shit, we have zero respect for living beings and the ecosystems. Anyone who gets angry if someone calls them out for supporting animal abuse is just immature and selfish. Like they’ll just deny they are doing something wrong.
I’ll probably never stop eating meat until stuff like Beyond Meat becomes mainstream. But I won’t pretend I’m not a straight up asshole to these animals for supporting their torture and murder. The times I’ve been called out I’ve embraced it instead of denying the obvious.
In 150 years humans will look back in shame at what we did to those animals.
Pointing out the consequences; the climate damage, all that is one thing. Respectful conversation.
Actively tossing out people’s lunches isn’t going to convince anyone of anything, though. Suddenly that person is now the face of vegans for everyone in the office.
Protests, sure. But when it comes to interpersonal relationships…. Yeah. Doesn’t help.
Has someone ever tossed your lunch out?
Yes. It was a salad made with left over carnitas, dried cranberry and a homemade vinaigrette. (Yes, I’m a little vindictive about it.)
She also tossed the front desk guys rice and beans because he included some impossible bacon.
(That was like the day before she got fired for other reasons.)
Wow. Sounds like she wasn’t helping herself or her cause.
Ah yeha, agreed. If they get physical, fuck that. I’m sure that’s just like 1% or less of vegans. We can’t judge a whole group for the actions of a few.
As a vegan myself, I’ve only met a handful number of other vegans in my lifetime irl, being raised omnivore for 23 years until changing.
Whenever I talk about the reasons why I made the switch to those who are curious, I always keep the militant vegans in mind and try to offer more charity than I otherwise would.
We vegans need to show the world that whether it’s diet or clothing (general use, specific use, etc.) or medicine or society (e.g. slaughterhouse workers contributing to societal psychosis) or climate or species loss or economic transparency, making the change is easy and a socially accepted thing to do.
This absolutely cannot take form as aggression against those that would be considered outside of our “group”. Any means of using coercion or manipulation to change what others do is a violation of their moral capacities. Unfortunately, humans also violate the moral capacities of more than 100 billion animals every year, so the trade-off can seem justified to some.
Every vegan needs to remind themselves that we’re doing this for the animals first and foremost. All behaviors should be guided by that principle: to reduce suffering for them as much as possible. Being militant, aggressive, and shameful to others can result in backlashes where people dig their heels in. A better way of convincing would be to give the science, show moral charity, offer easy alternatives, and illustrate factual evidence of the crimes done against animals. If we respect people to be able to change their minds given the evidence to do so, then they will.
Specifically the annoyingly loud, self-righteous, insists-everyone-must-join-them vegans.
Unfortunately, most people only really see this sort of vegan
If all you can see of a movement are the annoying loudmouths, it will quickly taint the overall image of that movement, regardless of goals of the the movement itself.
Ding ding ding, got it in one, yes.
I said this on another thread posted by a very antagonistic vegan: Acting holier-than-thou, smug, and hostile is not a good way to convince people of your arguments. It pushes people away and biases them against you and the argument you’re making.
Far too often I see vegans outright shaming and harassing people for choosing to eat meat, or acting smug and superior because they are making “the right moral decision” and everyone else is lessor for thinking otherwise. I often see them call people “stupid” and “lazy” for not making the same choice they did.
Now, if I came here acting the same way, but I was championing eating only meat and shaming others for eating vegetables, I’m sure vegans would be upset for the same reason.
It’s gotten bad enough that a lot of people (admittedly myself included) are put off by vegans and their arguments. Not because the arguments don’t have merit (they certainly do) but because enough vegans have acted antagonistic or smug that they get shunned for it when the discussion gets brought up, because it’s what has become expected.
If you really want people to listen to you, you need to frame it from a friendlier and more down-to-earth position and not come across as hostile. The human mind tends to close itself off immediately when faced with hostility. This doesn’t just apply to discussions about veganism, but any discussion in general really.
I have absolutely encountered way more smug meat eaters than vegans or vegetarians… They go out of their way to make sexual jokes about forcing some sausage down people’s throats, too.
If you’re not vegan because of what other vegans might or might not do, maybe grow a pair and do what you think is best? Can’t people think for themselves anymore?
Kinda childish or sad not to do what you want because of others, most of whom you’ve never even met in real life.
And I have yet to encounter a single smug vegan. Not online, not offline.
But I’ve seen countless people like you fighting the just fight against vegan windmills (awesome Rügenwalder double reference for the German people here).
So where exactly are those vegans? Are they in the room with us right now? Or are you defining every mere mentioning of veganism as an attack because you deep down are afraid of actually having to confront the cognitive dissonance you’re living under?
With the Kirsti Noem controversy going on I’ve seen quite a few smug shit takes about veganism including (paraphrasing) “why are all you non-vegans outraged by this, it’s no different than murdering a cow for their meat”.
How is that smug?
i mean, a great many people don’t appreciate being told they are murderers. it provokes defensiveness rather than an openness to pro-vegan arguments.
It completely disregards other people’s feelings.
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Well, it’s not actually that different. There’s no consistent moral principle that explains why the animals we treat preferentially ought to be treated preferentially, it just comes down to cultural norms and which animals you think look cute. It’s worth examining whether our behaviors are grounded on what we actually think makes sense.
Thanks for your advice, but just to be sure it actually works, may I ask how many people you have convinced to go vegan?
Surely your advice is based on actual experience, right? You’re not just saying this because you disagree with veganism and want vegans to phrase their arguments in a toothless and ineffective way, right?
Far too often I see vegans outright shaming and harassing people for choosing to eat meat,
As someone that has been Vegan before I assure its far far far far far far more common for it to be the other way around.
