Seems a bit like a vicious circle to me. Hate against vegans leading to a hateful reaction, leading to vegans being perceived as assholes, leading to more hate against vegans etc. I guess it’s understandable, but it also seems counterproductive for spreading veganism.
Anecdotally, as a vegetarian I can say that the most vicious attacks against my lifestyle were not by meat eaters but some vegans (online-vegans to be precise, all I’ve met IRL were nice people). That’s despite me certainly never attacking veganism, I even think it’s morally superior to vegetarianism.
Eventually, maybe less aggro people will join and the cycle will break. Being ovo-lacto-veg is cool now. Or maybe not, because veganism isn’t based on ideas that modern people already agree with, but rather suggests a whole new system for how animals should be treated. Like, they’re against continuing to keep dogs as pets.
I really think this is an incredibly insightful take. I can’t say I hang out in many vegan specific corners of the Internet, but I know there is a very active and vocal segment of the Internet community that’s anti-vegan, I’ve heard stories of coordinated brigading attempts against vegan communities on the Internet.
I’d imagine it would be almost impossible to run an open and welcoming community when you are getting constantly inundated with hate messages, eventually it would become incredibly difficult to discern between a user who has genuine curiosity and one who is asking bad faith questions in order to trigger some kind of debate.
At this point in time you couldn’t pay me to become a mod in one of those communities, it really seems like a no win scenario.
Here is the thing, I was a vegetarian who was exposed to vegan “bullying” and it pushed me to veganism after seeing the contradictions between what I said and what I was doing. Not only did it work on me, literally hundreds of people have thanked me for helping them go vegan when I ran vegan circlejerk on reddit over the course of years.
No one tactic works, if you knew how to make vegans, you’d be vegan. For some people the vegan circlejerk style activism works with receipts, for others not so much. There is no right answer. If there was one correct way to promote and build veganism then the world would already be vegan.
I know for a fact though that I’ve helped 3 people in my own life and have received tons of messages in appreciation for what I did. No other social justice won supporters by being nice either. Civil rights are not gained by asking nicely.
Seems a bit like a vicious circle to me. Hate against vegans leading to a hateful reaction, leading to vegans being perceived as assholes, leading to more hate against vegans etc. I guess it’s understandable, but it also seems counterproductive for spreading veganism.
Anecdotally, as a vegetarian I can say that the most vicious attacks against my lifestyle were not by meat eaters but some vegans (online-vegans to be precise, all I’ve met IRL were nice people). That’s despite me certainly never attacking veganism, I even think it’s morally superior to vegetarianism.
It’s certainly a contradiction, understanding the true nature of the problem is the first step to fixing it.
Yup.
Eventually, maybe less aggro people will join and the cycle will break. Being ovo-lacto-veg is cool now. Or maybe not, because veganism isn’t based on ideas that modern people already agree with, but rather suggests a whole new system for how animals should be treated. Like, they’re against continuing to keep dogs as pets.
I really think this is an incredibly insightful take. I can’t say I hang out in many vegan specific corners of the Internet, but I know there is a very active and vocal segment of the Internet community that’s anti-vegan, I’ve heard stories of coordinated brigading attempts against vegan communities on the Internet.
I’d imagine it would be almost impossible to run an open and welcoming community when you are getting constantly inundated with hate messages, eventually it would become incredibly difficult to discern between a user who has genuine curiosity and one who is asking bad faith questions in order to trigger some kind of debate.
At this point in time you couldn’t pay me to become a mod in one of those communities, it really seems like a no win scenario.
Here is the thing, I was a vegetarian who was exposed to vegan “bullying” and it pushed me to veganism after seeing the contradictions between what I said and what I was doing. Not only did it work on me, literally hundreds of people have thanked me for helping them go vegan when I ran vegan circlejerk on reddit over the course of years.
No one tactic works, if you knew how to make vegans, you’d be vegan. For some people the vegan circlejerk style activism works with receipts, for others not so much. There is no right answer. If there was one correct way to promote and build veganism then the world would already be vegan.
I know for a fact though that I’ve helped 3 people in my own life and have received tons of messages in appreciation for what I did. No other social justice won supporters by being nice either. Civil rights are not gained by asking nicely.