No Stupid Questions

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.

From what I have seen, it more stems from the activism vegans are engaged in more than the actual veganism.

Do-gooder derogation Basically, some people perceive others' moral choices as criticism or as some kind of bragging.

If you accept that there are moral/ethical problems with eating meat (contribution to climate change, health concerns, animals being killed and eaten, whatever), and choose to eat meat anyway, and encounter a vegan, what has to happen?

You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you're making a worse choice. Most people are cowards and protect the ego at any cost. Rather than shrugging and saying "yeah, i should eat less meat. Good for you taking the high road", which requires accepting that you're not being the best, you can instead grab onto any reasons why no it's really them that sucks. That's easier, more comfortable, and doesn't require any painful introspection or changes.

It's the same mechanism when people get mad at cyclists, pedestrians, people who go to the gym, people who don't shop at Walmart, whatever. They're doing something that makes you feel bad in comparison. Most people are terrible at that and will lash out instead of doing anything productive.

Alternatively, or maybe additionally, people are really tribal, and once they adopt the idea that vegans (or cyclists, or people driving small cars, or people wearing sandals, whatever) are in the outgroup, then they enjoy being hostile to them.

People are ego driven emotional morons. All of us. Me, too. It's terrible.

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.

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.

It's a first world hill to die on, and many of the people who espouse veganism are only able to do so because of their own privilege.

It's a combination of smugness and "I'm better than you" and the lack of awareness that everyone had and continues to benefit from a world that has always used animal products. The Industrial Revolution basically ran on steam engines and leather belts, for example.

I have absolutely no problem with the idea that using fewer animal products and eating less meat is a good idea. I also recognize that feeding the world's growing population is probably going to involve insects being more widely used as a food source.

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.

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.

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.

Instead of whimsy anecdotes, how about something with a bit more science behind it: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Yeah I don't get it either. You do you 🤷🏼‍♂️

As long as people aren't trying to force their views on me (veganism, religion, what have you), I couldn't care less.

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.

It’s part of a shifting norm and shifting norms are always controversial. Especially norms that involve opening up bodily autonomy, dignity, or respect to previously excluded groups.

My personal experience has actually been quite whew opposite of everyone here apparently. Of the 3 vegans I've spent time with, not one of them has ever brought it up to preach or to sound smug. It only ever comes up because I ask for a recipe they served and they say something along the lines of "now, this is a vegan recipe, but you should be able to substitute 'x' with 'y' if you wanna avoid that." It's never preachy, it's always in the "don't let this being vegan ruin it for you" kind of way.

My low stakes conspiracy is that vegan hate on the internet is like people that don't like the word moist. They either watched friends and decided to adopt that as a personality trait, or they look up to someone that did just that. They hate veganism because they watched a comedian quip about it and agreed or they saw someone that watched a comedian and agreed. It's all too consistent to not be feeding from the same bowl.

People like to characterize those they already want to disagree with by the worst, most extreme examples of the group. So before even considering the benefits/drawbacks of veganism, people have already chosen their position after thinking "vegans are just so preachy and annoying".

It's putting outrage before reason, and it's really common in social media and news:

• Think about how Fox News viewers picture liberals as the least coherent, unreasonable individuals that they see get interviewed, when in reality most are just normal people.

• Or the reverse: how people in liberal circles might see conservatives depicted as Maga-hat wearing weirdos who think 5G is killing them.

• Same with how many religious people evaluate atheism or atheists think of religion by their worst representatives.

In short, I think the answer is that it's a symptom of tribalism and identity-politics.

I'm an ex vegan (about 5 years) so I've been on both sides if it. Here's my opinion.

When I was a vegan it was very much a part of my identity. It was something that I thought about 2-3 times (at least) per day when I ate, and any time I went to buy food. I remember being actually insufferable about it for a long time and I'm pretty sure I've lost friends over it, being annoying and preach to a friend's husband and then eventually just not getting invited back for game night. So people are definitely feeling burned/rejected/otherized by vegans who, if not just coming right out and saying it, strongly infer that you are a "bad person" for consuming even small amounts of animal products, or at least let you know that you're being judged for it. As an ex-vegan I've experienced this myself.

On the other hand, non-vegans are also insufferable about food. My friend in college didn't like cheese. Hated how it tasted, hated the way it felt in his mouth. But he loved pizza. He would often buy pizzas for everyone, with cheese on, pick the cheese off himself, and eat it without. I swear that every time he did this someone would say something about it, "what? You don't like cheese? Why?!" I personally had to endure a lot of weird questions and looks, and comments when after volunteering for a whole day at a baseball field for my son's team, and they served pizza after which I just refused. I just quietly didn't get myself any, and people had like 20 questions about it. I didn't even bring up that I was a vegan, I just said I wasn't hungry, which was odd and apparently unacceptable.

Vegans and vegetarians also get judged for their diets, there are plenty of non-v people who will become like preemptively defensive about it, and let you know they think you're weak and unhealthy. You get otherized and judged, even if you dont care what people eat and you just patiently say that its a personal choice, for health or the environment or whatever. This actually deepens the in-group acceptance/out-group rejection of everyone involved. The next time a vegan has to hear about their choices they'll be less patient with the person asking; the next time that person eats an egg around a vegan and gets lectured, they'll be less patient and around and around it goes.

I have theories about why this is, some of which maybe are apparent from what I've written. I think people do construct identities around consumer behavior, and they feel rejected when someone doesn't share those same consumptive habits which they take for granted. I'll get into it if anyone gives a shit.

But I think theres a problem with public discourse that encourages this kind of ingroup/outgroup good/bad acceptance/rejection, so much that it is implied in all discourse whether a vegan or not. This is the thing that drove me away from veganism: I think that vegans are right about a lot of things, but they can't actually see the world for what it is, they can mostly only see through this lens. This is basically the same problem with liberals, conservatives, religious, atheist, whatever. Its the cult of the individual having eroded any experience of interconnectedness, even though we are interconnected. As such, people can't see the world for what it really is, we can only see it from behind the fences of our specific camp.

I don’t hate people who are vegans.

I do hate the person who righteously yelled at me about eating meat while I was eating her vegan food at her house which she invited me to. And then proceeded to send me Facebook farm videos that were obviously staged. I worked on a farm… so when I corrected her what actually does happen on a farm Vs what these idiots were staging to get reactions, it was even more disgusting to me that she wasn’t doing any of this for the animals as she claimed but doing it so she could feel important. So she can fuck right off up a mountain.

So no:I don’t hate people who are vegans. I hate self involved, insincere shitheads.

That said yeah, we need to address commercial farming. It’s an issue. We need to cut down the meat products that are getting produced and stop creating diets that get capitalists richer. But also we need to be honest with what is actually happening. No, they do not give hormones to animals on farms. That practice was discontinued prior to the 1990s. We need to out assholes who spread this bullshit online, dampening the real issues as to why introducing more plant based food is necessary. We also have to keep plant based food healthy and not just inject it with sugar ,salt and fat creating the same health issues we had with consuming commercialized meat.

Also I think this is why vegan is a ruined word and why ‘plant-based’ is now becoming a substitute. To replace this damage that many of the self called vegans did that were just as much lying and cheating as the industry they so much hate. two wrongs do not make a right. So I’m all about the pivot away from that dumpster fire

People don't like to be made to feel uncomfortable (via knowledge) about something that they enjoy

My ex was vegan. While I have absolutely no problem with the practice of being vegan, she would critique and criticize nearly everything I ate. It was extremely exhausting. Nothing against vegans personally however some of them won't shut up about it and try to make you feel bad

You tend to get two groups who dislike it. Ignorant folks who think something like no animal stuff means no protein means you shrivel up and die, and the ones who've encountered a few too many militants in their time and ain't interested or are downright sick of their schtick. Vaguely similar to atheism, except replace the animal product stuff with something religion related, ofc.

Because the only way most people interact with vegans is through activists using it as a bludgeon to project hate towards them.

It's not the diet or anything that bothers me; it's the vegans themselves. They're basically religious zealots but for food. If a meat eating atheist went around yelling at vegetarians and theists in unrelated discussions, I'd hate them too.

Defensiveness

Do-gooder derogation

Cuz it itches the part of our brain that looks for status-seeking behavior and labels people as inauthentic.

Being vegetarian places a degree of exclusivity onto your consumer habits, and in the Western capitalist lens, conspicuous consumption has a lot to do with how we communicate our status.

Being vegan stands in direct relationship to vegetarianism as being even more exclusive. This does two things:

1. It raises the stakes, because now the identity is even more exclusive because it's more restrictive.
2. It creates a pattern, where it looks as if you're saying "Oh yeah? Well, I'm even vegetarianer! Take that! Look how cool I am!"

Just that in and of itself puts vegans on the receiving end of a whole bunch of cognitive biases.

But wait, there's more!

Because mass production never lets a social identity go to waste, major brands got on board with explicitly labeling things as vegan, which starts to make it seem like you're trying to be cool but really just deepthroating the corporate cock to "buy your way to cool".

And then came the trends of organic/non-GMO, local-first, artisanal, farm-to-table, etc. etc.

At the point where Wal-Mart has their own artisanal farm-to-table cheese brand, it starts to look (to our dumb pattern-matching brains) like vegans are just rubes falling for the most basic version of an obviously fake status-seeking game propped up by cynical brands preying on how desperate you are to look cool.

But wait, there's even more!

Because, surprise -- our brains never actually stop caring about status, even if we think we're just trying to make rational, objective, moral choices. Picturing yourself as a rebel for being vegan, taking the sneers and the insults in stride because you know it's the right choice for the planet... is appealing.

And that self-aggrandizing image is inseparable from actually doing the thing, because that's just how our brains work. Even for the most pure-hearted among us, thinking we're morally superior -- especially in tangible ways that we get to physically play out on a daily basis -- is intoxicating.

So the people who are chuckling about the inauthenticity are... kind of right. But this same dynamic exists for literally everything. So when you chuckle at the vegan, but then take a moment to consider which kind of bacon really speaks to who you are as a consumer, you're playing the same game. It's just one that far more people are invested into. So if anyone calls it silly, nobody takes that criticism seriously. Not like your organic local-first artisanal acai kale kombutcha.

--

Basically my recollection of this episode of You Are Not So Smart: https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/selling-out-andrew-potter

...which I listened to, for the first time, as an attempt at bonding with my then-girlfriend/now-wife's roommate. We had not gotten along up until then, because she was aggressively vegan and I ate a lot of fast food. But I found out she liked podcasts and I was really enjoying this one and there was a new episode I hadn't heard yet! She really enjoyed it, until the guest talked about veganism as a form of status-seeking. That didn't go well. I didn't mind taking over her half of the lease though.