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But never announce it on social media. The purists will fight you.
Vegans have the worst PR department ever
I’ve never encountered a group I mostly agree with that I want to avoid more
I’ve been a strict Vegan for over a decade now and even i tend to stay away from the crowd. It’s a bit better offline, but depends on how much any person needs to boost their ego by signaling moral pureness.
vegans as well as linux users are nowhere near as outspoken and petty as they are made out to be. personally i find jokes about that insufferable and ubiquitous. The ratio of jokes about this to actually people like this existing is like 100:1. my theory is, They get so much shit because them just existing reminds people of their own shortcommings, instead of applauding people doing the effort to pioneer a better world these people decide to make a snarky remark and continue being lazy and annoying with these jokes.
I know quite a few vegans in my life who are amazing, nonjudgmental people. On Lemmy, I’ve been called a “murderer” and a “carnist” for mentioning I’m reducing my meat consumption.
Doesn’t carnist just mean someone who eats meat?
It does. It’s just a word for people who follow the belief that it’s normal, natural, and necessary to consume animals.
Since those people are the invisible majority, it’s often taken as an insult to have their ‘normal’ status get a label. Veganism is the belief that we shouldn’t exploit and harm animals, carnism is the belief that we should.
Which is hilarious in hindsight, because the reverse happens in other topics. Call someone in other circles ‘normal’ and they’ll throw 15 label names at you for why they’re not normal.
Carnism would still technically cover “vegan plus (animal-based) bacon”. That’s kinda like saying you’re an atheist but believe in (insert god here).
Carnism would still technically cover “vegan plus (animal-based) bacon”
And this all-or-nothing approach is precisely what I’m referring to. I consider myself pretty well-read, and the only time I’ve ever seen the word “carnist” used in the wild is when someone who’s vegan is hurling it as an insult
Sorry to break it to you, but if you believe that the Christian god exists yet don’t think there was ever a guy named Jesus that rose from the dead after 3 days, you’re still a theist even if you call it atheist.
And if you think it’s acceptable to kill pigs because you like their cooked bodies, you’re still practicing carnism even if you call it veganism.
no. it’s a term made up by vegans to describe people who don’t have their ideology. just like how Christians talk about sinners
Yeah, most terms are made up. In this case the alternative is “non-vegan non-vegetarian” so I think making up a shorter term is worthwhile lol
all terms are made up. this one in particular was made up by vegans to identify non-believers.
most people are chill, but there are people who act like if you aren’t a vegan or a linux user, you are an evil and morally compromised person
which is understandable coming from vegans, imo. bad tactic and all but yeah, animal consumption is pretty messed up.
coming from linux evangelists it’s fucking laughable
All the linux “evangelists” I’ve seen online just shitpost with inside jokes, or talk about the benefits of FOSS, or explain what makes google and microsoft such evil companies, or post genuinely helpful content about software alternatives or advice for making the switch.
I’ve never seen a rabid linux user. On the other hand, some vegans get so rabid that they actually chase people away from their cause. You’re never going to get people to change a core aspect of their lives such as eating habits by insulting them and going on a tirade about why they’re evil.
For what it’s worth, I’ve spent years as a vegetarian, and it took me years before that to gradually reduce my meat consumption to zero. I tried going vegan a few times but I would get grumpy, lethargic, and start craving things like cheese and eggs.
There is no room in vegan spaces online to talk about the process of reducing consumption or the struggle associated with it. That’s pretty detrimental to the goal of a 100% meat-free society.
The only way we’ll ever eliminate factory farming is through slow-incremental change. But the average vegan will never accept that. They’re a classic example of “letting perfection be the enemy of progress.”
A “rabid” vegan turned me vegan. There was some thread on reddit about dogs or animals. It’s Reddit, so obviously crazy claims and discussions happened. One was a typical 30 comment deep discussion with a vegan. I thought he was a dickhead, like all vegans, injecting his preaching anywhere he could, like all vegans.
That’s why I started researching veganism. I wanted to prove to him that he was obviously wrong. Jokes on me though, because he was right. Roughly 4 months later, I was vegan.
I think non-vegans MASSIVELY underestimate the bubble they live in. What kind of vegan will ever reach the average persons feed or frontpage? It’s not the calm, nicely argued one. Just like with the “angry, yelling, colored hair feminazi”, the only vegans reaching most people are the most aggressive, most divisive vegans. That says absolutely nothing about vegans in generally, but everything about how filter bubbles work.
I can’t see into what your experience has been, but I can give my own 2 cents: 99% of the time people say vegans are aggressive or uncompromising, the non-vegans are just wrong. Secondly, I’ve had many a horrible experience with feminists (and anti-racists etc.) online. Yet, none of that kept me from doing genuine research and becoming “woke”, and I most definitely didn’t use the terminally online versions of a movement as a indictment of the validity of the movement.
idk the amount of times I’ve tried to explain my wife and kid’s dietary restrictions that mean veganism is basically impossible for us in other places I get a lot of hate.
The kids are autistic and have major taste and texture aversions, which maybe we could work around with the right things. My wife though had a malabsorptive bariatric surgery that means she needs to eat Low carb, High protein, and most importantly Low volume meals. When you need like 1.5 cups of beans to get the same protein as like 3oz of ground beef and only have a 6 ounce stomach volume you kinda have to go with the one that gives you the most protein for the least volume.
I could imagine vegans being upset if you weren’t vegan solely because your wife and kids can’t be (like they are a shield or something, idk). Modern veganism should be about harm reduction. I know someone mentioned beans but I think seitan has more protein per punch (has more than steak according to a random google, *forgot about the carb limit tho, it looks like it wouldn’t go over too much but depends on the source). I don’t have much experience with your family’s conditions. I need a bunch of fiber or else I get severely constipated, I was shocked at how little your wife gets. Sorry you got hate for your wife and kids. It sounds like your wife was (is?) in a bad spot, I hope her recovery gets better.
*edit
I speak from personal experience. I once tried talking about reducing meat consumption and got attacked. Never again.
I got banned from a vegan community for calling someone out for equating meat consumption with domestic violence.
You think violence and violence aren’t comparable?
Comparing eating meat with domestic violence is a laughable comparison and disingenuous at best. It’s attitudes like that that make the average person unable to take vegans seriously.
Comparing eating meat with domestic violence is a laughable comparison
You’re right of course, but not in the way you intend. The scope and scale of violence in animal agriculture is far greater than in domestic violence cases.
I’m perplexed and rather horrified that you are so unable to empathize with your fellow creatures that you think anyone who can is being disingenuous.
I am seeing more and more folks go veg simply because the price, and that’s great! Build a culture of veg meals and normalize the epic curries, chillis, soups, stews, spreads, and tofu / seitan/mushroom dishes
I really like Derek Sarno’s YouTube channel for this reason. I feel very welcome watching his content because he doesn’t browbeat folks who aren’t fully vegan, he just presents an epic mountain of some of the most mouth watering vegan food I’ve ever seen.
Instead of purity tests to keep folks out, we need more people like Derek who hold the door open for everyone, so they can smell the amazing food cooking inside.
Exactly.
You can get a lot if not most of the Ecological and Health benefits by simply eating less meat (also fish, but mainly meat) and a way to do that is to replace some meat or fish meals with vegetarian or even vegan meals.
People in most of the West eat much more meat than it’s nutritionally recommended, so reducing one’s meat intake is a win-win and far more easy than fully switching to a vegetarian (or, even harder, vegan) diet.
Granted, that doesn’t actually address the moral beliefs around rearing and killing animals for food that inspire many vegetarians and vegans, but that’s a whole separate conversation that’s about one’s personal moral posture, not about Ecology or Health and should be discussed in that plane - a person who has already willfully reduced the amount of meat they eat should be no harder for Vegetarians or Vegans to convince that rearing and killing animals for food is immoral, than any other people, probably even easier since they’re already comfortable with eating vegetarian or vegan meals so that specific resistance to change is already lower.
Gatekeepers are the fucking worst. Every time I start reading up on something there’s always a handful of miserable condescending shitheads being nasty to people because they’re 'not ‘doing it right.’
Most vegan threads I come across usually has some of these, insulting anyone that’s not 100% on board even if they’re trying to get into it. Audiophiles are pretty much on the same level as hardcore vegans when it comes to being obnoxious (recently saw someone ask why the op was bothering setting up a music system if they didn’t have thousands of dollars to spare, for example). Linux users on support threads is a coin flip of whether they’ll be helpful or insulting.
Let people ease into things, stop demanding perfection right out of the gates!
I think that knowing the definition of veganism is the bare minimum. Gatekeeping is one thing, but you should at least know what the thing you’re trying to join is. If you’ve done zero research, that’s on you.
The problem is when said research runs you straight to a bunch of nasty people over and over. Really dampens enthusiasm when trying to get into something. Veganism is not something I personally want to get into (I’m not opposed, I just read threads to get other perspectives on things in general), but I observe the same behaviour in vegan threads as I do in other communities with die-hard enthusiasts for things that I am into. The same behaviour is also in Linux communities which makes me hesitate to recommend it to people, because it has a toxic shithead problem.
Kinda like when you look up a problem and the first thing you run into is a guy telling the op that they’re a moron and to just google it
You don’t do research into anything by asking random scrubs on the Internet.
Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book.
The vegans mostly hate this. Which is probably why no one cares about outspoken vegans
Oh no why won’t the corpsemunchers like me 😢
Calling people who eat meat ‘corpsemunchers’ is definitely going to convince them to change, yep
Worked on me 🤷 be honest about what you are so you know why you should change
So now you eat only vegetable corpses ?
“I’m against animal abuse, except when I like their taste”
Just out of curiosity, what’s your stance then on people who cannot switch to a fully vegan diet because of health reasons? I’m always interested in hearing vegans takes on this, since they seem to vary a lot, and it’s a personal issue for me
That’s a more debatable thing. You’d have a necessity to not change, which makes it less immoral obviously, but it does put into perspective the question of the worth of a life, and whether a human life is worth a lifetime of meat eating/killing.
But that’s not the case for a huge majority of people, so I would call this an edge case which is less obvious. Not everything is obviously good or bad, some areas are grey, but it doesn’t mean that some areas aren’t. Eating meat for personal pleasure/comfort is obviously immoral, once everyone aligns behind this we can start debating the edge cases.
Also, people like you would typically be a good reason to keep on developing cellular meat, independently from vegetal alternatives to meat.
that’s not the case for a huge majority of people
you don’t know what others need
I know that most humans are not unable to survive without meat, it’s basic biology and nutrition.
survival needs are the very bottom of the hierarchy
What are you even talking about?
Other than survival needs, nothing warrants killing and eating sentient beings, in case you were suggesting otherwise. And if you were, then your morals are completely fucked up.
Other than survival needs, nothing warrants killing and eating sentient beings
most people don’t do that, anyway. but you’re asserting this without evidence, so it can be dismissed without evidence as well
ye shaming people always works
And hypocrisy always leads to change.
Since when reducing 90% of their meat intake is being a hypocrite? It’s objectively reducing the suffering of animals.
I don’t eat much meat because I know that morally it’s the correct choice, but personally I don’t care for the animals that died when I do eat meat. I’m completely aware that their murder is fueling my tastebuds, and I don’t hide it. I don’t think I’ll ever go full vegan unless the food offering changes, because I personally don’t care enough for the animals. I’d say that rn I’m 90% vegetarian, meaning that I probably eat meat only once a week.
Call me whatever you will but saying that eating meat once a week is better for animals than eating it every day is objectively true, and I’m not a hypocrite for promoting the reduction of meat intake.
Idk how long you’ve been alive bilut the reduction of meta intake in Europe has been notorious in the last 20 years. The biggest impact is not from people going cold turkey, it’s from all the families that reduce their intake by half. So yeah, meat intake reduction IS having an impact.
By the way, where is the hypocrisy in the post?
Since when reducing 90% of their meat intake is being a hypocrite? It’s objectively reducing the suffering of animals.
no, it’s not. even being vegan doesn’t reduce the suffering of animals.
Being overly pushy and judgmental towards people who want to make a change in the right direction is a great way to repel them from your cause. I prefer to welcome them and offer them the proper resources to get started.
It’s entirely possible that once the people who want to go vegan but aren’t ready to give up bacon/cheese/that one other food get used to a vegan diet and substitutions, they will eventually be ready to let go of those last few products on their own.
You’ve convinced me, I’m going vegan + meat + dairy + animal fat.
Because that’s plant-based plus bacon. Veganism is an ethos, not a diet.
Silly downvoters. You’re absolutely right. Veganism has diet as a component, but at its core is a desire to limit harm to animals in every possible aspect.
If you eat only plants/mushrooms, but still buy leather shoes, down pillows, or wool socks - that’s not veganism, that’s just following a plant-based diet. The two concepts overlap, but they are distinct from each other.
This sort of pedantry also annoys and turns people away from the cause though. Typically when people say they’re vegan, they’re talking about their diet, and it’s easy to infer that based on context. I really hope you don’t go around browbeating self-professed vegans by going “nuh uh, you’re a liar, that’s a leather strap I see on your watch”
Typically when people say they’re vegan, they’re talking about their diet,
this claim is made without evidence and can be dismissed without evidence
At least for vegans there’s chicken salt. What am I supposed to use instead of Steam? GOG? Or… Hold on, suppressing laughter so I can type… Epic?
How would a person build a properly FOSS games store? I feel pretty good about using Steam, still, given how much Valve has contributed to gaming on Linux, but maybe I haven’t thought it through fully?
How would a person build a properly FOSS games store
Never in the history of software has people been able to deliver software over the internet in an easy way until Steam came out. It was revolutionary. People cried and shit their pants with the sudden and seismic shift that occurred. Every other form of software delivery pales in comparison to the Steam app.
If I make a game, I will package it for flatpak if I can. Hopefully there is some way for me to distribute that on Linux. I can’t imagine how it would happen though… woe is me. Don’t look at flathub!
And don’t look at Itch.io either since none of it is open source at all. Don’t look at the itch.io github. Don’t look at its package delivery system that is so much worse than Steam. Don’t look at it! It is bad! Stop looking at open source software that competes with the value proposition of Steam!
And then there’s the Steam interface. It is made in React.js and we all know that FOSS cannot use React.js. There are not enough FOSS react devs out there to compete, so unfortunately Valve will just always produce better software than the FOSS world. It is inevitable. FOSS GUIs that equal or surpass closed-source commercial giants? Never happened once, never will happen in the future.
I’m not at all shitting on you specifically. There’s just a mindset of “we can’t even try” that exists out there on lemmy and reddit and the greater web that I really hate.
In a sense they’re not wrong, but it depends on what is actually happening, and what the person’s attitude is. It’s good to pursue a lifestyle that’s increasingly less dependent on animal products, even if imperfect. But is an actual progression occurring? It can often be the case, especially with dietary things, that a person will do something they believe is good once, and then treat themselves with a “cheat” day three times to that one good choice.
My change didn’t happen overnight. But I approached it the same way that I did when I quit smoking: I kept track of how long I went without eating animal products. When I messed up and caved in, I would start over at 0 the very next day, and resolve to go even more days without animal products than I had done on the previous attempt.
One of the larger barriers I had to break through was an anxiety about nutrition. By that point I had a pretty firm grasp of nutritional science already, and knew that people can get all of their nutrients from plants. Consciously I knew better. But unconsciously there was still this wild fear as to whether or not I could keep living on plants only. It felt dangerous. I was going up against a lifetime of propaganda.
The last time I intentionally ate meat was some pepperoni. At that point I had gotten so used to living on plants that it didn’t taste the same anymore. For one, it turned out at least for me, that after being without meat for long enough, it didn’t smell the same anymore. The odor became more rotten. It didn’t and doesn’t matter how fresh the meat is, it all smells like putrefying carcass now. That was one thing that made the pepperoni taste off. The other was that apparently I had gotten used to having less salt in my diet, because it was a completely overpowering, disgusting salt bomb.
And something had clicked in my head by that point. As I was eating it I kept thinking, “Why am I doing this? I’m not even enjoying it. I don’t need it. This isn’t right.” So I stopped eating it, and I haven’t felt the need to consume any animal body parts ever again.
Anyway, I think where things become frustrating depends on how a person is framing their habits. If it’s something like, “I’m trying, I am working on doing better,” then it’s understandable. But if it sounds more like the person is trying to justify eating animals or their products, and they’re either talking about it in a way where they’re trying to seek validation or using “militant vegans” as a strawman to criticise (see: the majority of the comments here) - that kind of makes it hard to remain diplomatic.
In cases like the latter, why are you so preoccupied with what other people think? It’s not about vegans, it’s about the animals. Going vegan requires going against an immense tide of social pressure, and that burden will never go away. You need to learn to think for yourself. Because when you do, you can look more objectively at how humankind treats every other species of sentient being on the planet and use your own internal moral compass to finally recognize what’s right in front of your face: it is wrong to eat them. It is wrong to exploit them. What happens in factory farms and slaughterhouses is horrific. And it can never stop until we stop supporting it.
It’s a hard conversation because y’all are demanding we tiptoe around a vast injustice that is urgent and actively resulting in the extreme suffering and deaths of billions every year. That’s not even getting into the other issues like health problems, environmental destruction, and pandemic and zoonotic disease potential.
it is wrong to eat them
this is stated without any supporting evidence, and can be dismissed without any evidence.
When the vegetarian option becomes cheaper and tastes just as good though, continuing to eat the meat version is an explicit choice.
