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
No body hates veganism as a concept in and of itself. People dislike vegans that think they’re better than everyone else because they eat no animal product.
My personal experience: Trying to find a restaurant that has vegan friendly options isn’t always easy, and used to be much harder. That would make trying to find somewhere to eat as a group much more tedious if someone was vegan. I don’t think anyone had issue with the person being a vegan, I think they just didn’t like eating at the same two restaurants over and over.
People don’t like to have deeply held beliefs challenged and even less so like to be told they are a bad person for eating certain types of food.
My list…
Sometimes they’ll offer their opinions as “proof” that they’re “right”
It’s expensive, so often vegans are people with resources others don’t have and yet they act like this isn’t a thing
They’re right that it’s way better for the environment and it annoys me that I’m contradicting my own values on that point
There’s an abuse of science at times, which always bothers me, even in the name of a good cause. If you’re right, let the truth do the talking.
Just off the top of my head…
Not all vegans, etc… no actual hate involved for anyone
To grossly oversimplify things, there are two kinds of vegans…
Type 1 are “healthy living” and “sustainability” vegans. These type are generally benign, polite, helpful, positive, and keep to themselves unless asked. They also tend to not be super militant about their veganism… like the occassional egg from someone’s beloved home-raised chickens is fine.
Type 2 are ideological vegans. These types believe that “exploiting” “living creatures” in any way is fundamentally immoral, and because it’s a morality issue (e.g. basically religion) the vast majority are very preachy, demanding, and in-your-face about it. They don’t consider type 1 to be “real vegans”.
Type 2, being the loudest and most abrasive, giving veganism a bad name and ruining it for everyone.
I knew a vegan that tried to convince me that when vegans shit, it doesn’t stink. Guess what their shit smelled like… I’ll wait.
Because nobody likes self aggrandizement. The perception that so many people only do it to make themselves appear to be better people because of their morally superior choice is often a vile taste to anyone who hasn’t made that same choice.
We all know eating meat is bad and for the many reasons for it. What we don’t want to hear is that someone made the switch and that their bleeding heart simply couldnt take it anymore.
I eat beyond meat and I do my best to transition, yet, I’d never say that for the purpose of making myself seem like a better person. Vegans typically do.
I respect other people’s choices in what to consume, and I expect the same respect in return. I have no problem with people being vegan or vegetarian. In fact, most people I work with are from India and are vegetarian. We eat lunch together most days and no one has any problems with each other.
Unfortunately most vegans I know are extremely pushy and judgemental about their diet/lifestyle. They do not respect my choice in what to consume. This used to causes some preemptive judgements on my part, where I would get defensive immediately about my dietary choices, because I assumed they were judging me. Over time I have learned to control this reflex.
I can only assume that many people have had the same experience as me, and jump to the same conclusions.
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I generally try not to bring it up, but I know folks that’ve resumed eating meat and we’re welcomed back with high-fives. This argues against the “preachy” argument in this thread. And people don’t get criticized the same way over eating unnutritious fast food all the time. My view is that some people feel criticized by other folks’ different life choices. When Alice to be in an out group, Betty is confronted with their own life choices.
they hate vegan preacher. how do vegan promote their ideas? by saying meat eater are murderer. by calling people meat eater. meat bad. 🤷🏻♂️
To preface this all, I’m not a vegan but I support the cause. However on the west coast of Canada, a lot of shitty people use veganism as social camouflage to cover for their moral failings in other areas. I just don’t trust anyone that trumpets their veganism. Just like I don’t trust the overtly religious.
no one hates veganism, we just hate the vegans
Do-gooder derogation Basically, some people perceive others’ moral choices as criticism or as some kind of bragging.
There is no life without death. In order to feed vegans, countless insects must die. In order for agriculture to exist in any form, we must wage war against nature (and win). For example, coconut oil is a terrible vegan product. If vegans are complacent about killing insects and ravaging natural habitats, why not kill and eat crustaceans and mollusks - they’re not all that different in terms of neurons. We can keep stepping up the level of consciousness - fish, etc… when does it become unacceptable?
The next question I would ask, is whether death is always equal to suffering. Death can be painless. Some vegans don’t eat honey because many honey bees are treated horribly. What if they’re not? Also, if you feel that way as a vegan, you shouldn’t eat anything pollinated by bees (try not to starve). Some animals have good lives and painless deaths. If there’s no financially viable market for animal products of happy animals (by vegan boycotting), we’ll be left with only industrial animal agriculture. Do you think a deer would rather be ripped apart by a puma, hit by a car, shot by a bullet, or become elderly and senile - abandoned by the herd to die alone in a field, picked apart by buzzards. Nature is brutal as fuck. Death by human is not the worst outcome for many animals.
The final thing I’d assert is that animal agriculture has an important role in the overall food system. Pigs, cows, and chickens are fed a lot of agricultural byproducts, like spent brewing grains or corn stalks, and their manure is used as non-petroleum fertilizer. Many animals are raised on land that is too hilly and rocky to farm any other way. Our industrial food system is like a artificial ecosystem of its own. Each piece of the industrial food web has a role, and you can’t simply remove all the animals - you’d be overwhelmed with green waste, reliant on petroleum fertilizer, and many would go hungry.
Ethical veganism is idiotic because it places human morality onto nature. It’s a child-like misunderstanding of the real world. The reality is that for you to be fed, the natural world will suffer. Don’t draw a line in the sand and think you’re living a better life. You’re an ostrich with your head buried in sand.
Freeganism on the other hand, is something we could use a lot more of (25-50% more). The only thing worse than raping and killing animals to feed ourselves, is that there’s so much abundance that we throw a lot of it in the trash. Freegans understand the real crime against nature is food waste.