I'm not even a vegetarian and I've heard way more fellow meat eaters fucking constantly bitching about vegans than I've ever heard vegans being annoying about it.
Tbf, there are way more non-vegans than there are vegans. I feel like this should be expected to an extent. This meme is dumb though. What vegan is out there calling non-vegans rapists?
Your comment actually made me wonder if the Lemmy community's vegan/vegetarian communities are better, and I need to look it up!
The reddit ones seem very hostile when I tried to participate as a person who eats meat but mostly has a vegetarian diet (and my wife is fully vegetarian)
They're overpaying for them. Which then makes companies calculate "we could sell a lot of product at small profit margins to the general vegetarian and flexi public" vs. "we could not invest in production capacity and charge affluent urban vegans and arm and a leg" and guess what they're going for.
The reason why there's tons of almond etc. milks costing 3-4 times as much per litre as actual milk is not because of subsidies. It's because vegans are stupid enough to buy 20 cents of ingredients for that price.
They only need to be pregnant once. The calf milk is different than normal milk and can not be sold. The stuff we drink is what happens after a calf is born but you never stop milking so the cow stays productive. I think you need to revisit mamal biology. Once the process of Milk production is started milk will be produced in most mammals till the long term cessation of mamary tisssue stimulation.
Impossible burgers cooked right on the skillet are pretty damn good, imo. And easy. I'm no vegetarian but we keep them in our weeknight rotation.
Edit: Connect is messing up and I can no longer see some comments below. The study you cite, SMCF, uses the Nova classification system to define ultra-processed foods, meaning that category contains "soft drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery; packaged breads and buns; reconstituted meat products and pre-prepared frozen or shelf-stable dishes." This gives you no information on Impossible burgers' impact on cardiovascular disease, it only gives you a trend among people who eat all of the above. I would suspect the reality is Impossible meat contributes to CVD slightly more than straight-up vegetables and significantly less than red meat.
Beyond burgers are literally right there lmao. You don't need lab grown meat to stop supporting animal abuse, it's a thinly veiled excuse to avoid having to change and grow as a person
Cows are mammals. They produce milk for their calves, its not something that cows just naturally produce. So the dairy industry only exists from repeated forcible impregnation.
Vegans need to downvote anyone that disagrees when them is proof their ideas cannot stand scrutiny. They do not relish in a debate of in any capacity. They don't even have original ideas, it's the same couple talking points because it's ideology base. They call themselves converts but won't accept it's a religion.
You know what's "funny". Vegans DO fund not only alternatives but also meat subsidies with the taxes on vegan food. For meat to be as cheap as it is, a lot of tax money is going into the industry
idk, I'm a meat eater and if it wasn't for vegans evangelizing I really wouldn't know how messed up meat production is. We allow some seriously cruel shit to fellow sentient beings, far beyond just killing them, and no one wants to think about it.
You definitely have a point; informing and evangelising are closer than we'd like to admit. Then again, the messenger is often as important as the message - in the case of the vegan debate too many folks choose the moral option rather than the pragmatic one.
As a species, we find it hard to empathise with the death of our own at massive scales, why would we be capable of doing it for organisms we were brought up to consider food?
However, almost all of us are on a massively reduced budget, it'd be a shame if folks shared delicious recipes that can be made cheaply and just so happen to be vegan right?
The next best thing for a non-vegan to do isn't to switch right away, it's to start finding vegan things you enjoy more than meat!
I get so scared to interact with the vegan users on here. And I am on their side.
But like why do I see people getting harrassed and banned for like admitting out loud they love cheese too much so that they haven’t been able to find a replacement yet but they are looking?
Why does veganism manifest in such a scary way here? Speaking as someone who participates in non-scary vegan commities 😭I wish the vegan movement so much success and I don’t want that to result in a schism on here but I feel like doing harrassment and name calling doesn’t work well. Just like, be kind.
It's just how internet activist groups work. Most people aren't motivated to improve things for their cause, they're motivated to prove to others in their group how zealous they are. The more outlandish and untrue the things they say are, the more they prove their loyalty to the cause and the more points they'll get from others in the group.
It's the same pattern of behavior for every internet activist group. Whether it's a vegan group, a socialist group, a MAGA group, an antivax group, Qanon, whatever. Promoting the cause doesn't really matter, it's about promoting yourself to others within the cause. Which is why you see insane lies about every kind of contentious issue. They aren't trying to convince you, they're trying to convince the others in the group how dedicated they are to the cause. "I'm willing to lie to help the cause!" gets a lot of points from the people already supporting the cause.
This is an interesting theory, but I think you're just wrong on several counts. There are definitely permanently online people who don't do anything in the real world, but out of the groups you listed, vegans and MAGA members almost universally have material impact on the world (socialists and antivaxers would like to, but their impact is usually hyper-localized, so you'll find more "only-online" types).
For vegans and MAGA, there is real direct action that they partake in as buy-in for the group. For the former, it's abstaining from animal products, and for the latter it's voting for Trump.
Claiming most vegans or MAGA people aren't motivated to improve things for their cause is demonstrably false. An interesting theory nonetheless.
I'll mention just so my biases are clear, I'm a vegan socialist, but I don't think i was unfair here in favor of those positions.
Look at it like that: Many people become vegan because they realize that there is no magical difference between humans (or dogs, cats and so on) and the animals who are raised to be slaughtered. We all feel pain, fear and grief. So a society that kills sentient animals and eats or wears parts of their dead bodies is not too different then one which does that with their fellow humans. How angry would you be to live in such a horrible society?
The only reason to not being angry all the time is, that I needed more than 30 years to realize those things myself. How we are handling most animals, how we are torturing and killing them is normalized. It is really hard to get from "steak yummy" to a vegan world view. How can I expect that other people change their ways just like that?
It is still fucking sad and I totally get, why some vegans are so angry. Live and let live is the most cynical shit one could say in this situation.
I can absolutely defend and relate to being angry :) I can absolutely defend being a “mean vegan.” I can absolutely defend being disruptive and proselytizing and refusing to live and let live.
I cannot defend verbal harrassment. That’s not “being mean,” that’s using your position as a vegan as a token to do emotional abuse.
Disclaimer
This comment may not be about you. If you are the person in the first paragraph we have a lot in common! My criticism is of those represented by the second paragraph and if that’s not you my apologies and much love 💕
I'm a mean vegan because I used to be a carnist, and mean vegans changed my mind. The people on vegancirclejerk are fucking hilarious. I stayed for the memes, and then I changed my diet because I felt guilty. The best possible thing you can do as a vegan is make carnists feel guilty. It works.
MLK said it best, so I'll just quote him directly:
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”
When moderates advocate for "kindness" or "civility", they're advocating for negative peace; the absence of tension. Vegans advocate for positive peace; the presence of justice. When activists advocate for positive peace, in the face of those who deny said justice, tensions rise and moderates fall back to this common trope.
Holy shit you did not just quote MLK at me saying people who eat cheese should not be harrassed!
That is a disturbing twisting of both veganism and MLK. :(
Once again I participate with so many vegan individuals in ways that do not involve harrassment campaigns. Here is a list of direct action that I consider constructive:
animal rescue
investigations of animal abuse
leafleting
inline education campaigns
protests and marches
restaurant sit-ins
graffiti
civil disobedience
many more
Again I cannot believe I am saying this, but there is no credible evidence that MLK participated in harrassment against individuals admitting minor disagreement. Attacking a person who admits to eating cheese, like maybe 60% of the world population, accusing them of being a rapist constantly and repeatedly, and calling that “advocacy for positive peace,” is really really fucking sad. It is absolutely terrifyingly in bad faith to quote MLK in defense of such behavior.
disclaimer
Maybe this isn’t you, I haven’t checked your account history so keep that in mind. You have my apologies if you aren’t doing verbal abuse. :)
My criticisms of others in the Lemmy community who do verbal attacks do hold, though. I am just glad they are the minority in real life and only seem to exist online.
yeah, this is why i need a fediverse version of tiktok/reels.
i think we can be quite kinder versions of ourselves when we have the constant reminder there is a living breathing person on the other side of the username :)
Thinking about it, it is strange that such extremist behavior seems so prevalent around here. In the real world, I haven't heard much like this since the Australian couple that malnourished their puppies years ago. They displayed the same level of smugness the whole time.
On the fediverse, however, it seems like I see someone yelling "carnist rapist murderer" every couple of days. I'm honestly starting to think that there actually might be some kind of corpo-backed false-flag going on here, it's so extreme and constant. There are people in this thread alone who are so extreme it reaches the point of parody.
Let's be honest, Lemmy is not a good sample of the general population. We're all atypical in one way or another, it makes sense that niche extremism concentrates here.
Second paragraph is a reach. I think it’s just a symptom of online toxicity, as in people feel enabled to do verbal abuse when they can’t see the person on the other side of the screen. You don’t need to stoop to the false flag accusations to see the cause, it’s literally just the same setting that brings about all uniquely online abuse.
Ive been thinking about that and I have a theory that most of those "extremist vegans" are people trying to make others hate vegans. Im not positive this is true but it makes more and more sense to me.
To a leftist there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are with me 110%, believe everything I believe to the last letter, and are willing to punch people in the face to that effect, and enemies who must be crushed
I'm not a vegan (yet) but I have a lot of respect for those who are. I would love to see some developments in cruelty-free lab grown meat and just hope it won't be full of shit.
I consider myself a flexitarian, I adopt puppies, give them a good life till they're about 2 years old, then humanely slaughter them and eat them. The stuff I don't eat I backfeed to the next round of puppies.
I am so with this post, what I do is so much more sustainable and humane than anything that happens on a farm. Extremists harrassing me should fund lab grown meat instead. Really this is more ethical than eating beans because of crop deaths.
Your mistake here was saying "puppies" too early. You have to lead with a couple paragraphs of how you're a flexitarian who has a farm and humanely raised animals like pets and then slaughters and feed them to your family.
Then list off the animals you exploit, cows, pigs, dogs, chickens, cats and ducks. Then their brain gets hit with the dissonance of "wait why did I support this and then stop the second they said 'dog'?" That jarring experience can work for the intellectually honest type.
Saying it too early means they can categorize your post as satire easily and not engage with it at all mentally.
“wait why did I support this and then stop the second they said ‘dog’?
It's a bad idea in general to eat predators because the higher up the food chain you go the higher the chance you'll contract an illness. Humans are not alone at all among predators to practically only go after grazers, and not other predators. We leave the rest to carrion eaters who specialise to deal with all kinds of nasty stuff.
People thinking that this is some kind of grand ethical-philosophical argument or conundrum just shows how alienated they are from the ways of nature.
Eh, mostly I'm just pointing out how stupid this is to anyone with half a brain in their head.
We have animal rights legislation and morals for reasons, and nobody who like protests whaling gets criticised for not growing fake whale meat. You might disagree on where the line should be but it's just outing yourself as someone with underdeveloped theory of mind if you don't understand why people might feel strongly about it being further down the tree of life.
Dogs have not been human food in the absurdly long time they've been around except for very rare occasions. This is just a stupid "point" in your stupid fucking vegan brain.
I.e, I don't have dogs on my food list simply because they're not a part of the normal human food ecosystem not because I have some moral objections
I consider myself a flexitarian, I adopt puppies, give them a good life till they’re about 2 years old, then humanely slaughter them and eat them. The stuff I don’t eat I backfeed to the next round of puppies.
I do the puppy thing as well, but I don't eat them (they're nasty). I just like killing puppies.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever read. It's almost into not even wrong territory. I think you should contact a philosophy department and ask them why they haven't considered this.
It worked for christianity, or any religion fir that matter. "You're a filthy heathen and you're not allowed the privileges of a normal human if you don't pretend to believe in my particular set of fairytales"
It worked on me. I went vegan because I was ashamed of eating meat. If you're not a vegan then I don't think you have any perspective on what's effective at getting people to go vegan.
so if i and enough other people think your a fool and deride you long enough because you got peer pressured and bullied into making your dietary decisions youll switch back to eating meat ?
This is ironic because the argument concedes vegan ideology, it's just attacks them for not doing more. At this point the carnists are not really arguing, they're negotiating terms of surrender.
Most meat consumers already suspect vegans are right. We get aggravated because we'd rather ignore that question. And a vegan threatens to force the issue, even in our own mind. If you've ever wondered why vegans inspire automatic hostility, ridicule, and derision it's because they threaten a carnists identity as a good person just by existing.
I came up with an idea recently so I just have to ask: are you a false flag? Your behavior doesn't serve to make anyone more open to your position. In fact, it serves the exact opposite purpose. So, really, are you a false flag trying to make people less receptive to veganism as a whole or what?
Nope. Vegans are fine. Veganist like you are religious nut jobs. You've created narratives and then act like anyone who doesn't agree with you is the bad guy. Not unlike the far right or any other extremist group.
That feeling of your existence being a threat is the same feeling any other authoritarian feels.
Can't help but notice the sudden influx of downvotes for any comment that isn't making the claim that all farmers fuck cows. It's almost like some kind of brigade.
the post was in the top10 of "active" in /all, so everyone gets a vote, and it IS a topic where emotions tend to run high, regardless of stance to the topic, so thats to be expected
I already apologized to the mods here. I've been watching the vote counters fluctuate. I'm really sorry the nice people from shitpost are having to deal with this I just wanted a funny post.
Tbh I kinda agree with you, calling someone a murderer or rapist for eating meat is overboard; however the biggest issue I have is the pretentious and self-righteous attitude that vegans have. Like, cool, you don't eat meat, good for you! I agree that commercially raised farm animals are often abused, and that even animals raised by small, private farms don't always get to lead their best lives.^1 At the same time though, you're not making your cause look good.
Yes, I might honestly be a better person if I stop eating meat, dairy and buying any form of animal product; but I'm also gonna be associated with assholes with overinflated egos. I'm distanced enough from the slaughter that the overinflated ego is more of a turnoff than the slaughtering of animals.
Is that how it should be? No, but that's how humans usually work. The object perceived to be closer is a higher priority than the object perceived to be further away. Animal slaughter is perceived as being further away than being associated with assholes, so the fear of being associated with assholes is a greater "threat" than the inhumane treatment of animals.
Be a vegan if you want, or don't. You're honestly probably a better, healthier person if you're vegan (though you probably have your head up your ass about it), because your diet and spending habits are less likely to contribute to climate change, animal cruelty, and because you have to be conscious about what you eat, your food is likely healthier.
Just... Don't be an ass about it, dude.
Instead of accusing people of being "carnists", talk about a good (totally-not-vegan) dish you had recently. Instead of accusing people of murder, talk about the pros and cons of real leather vs faux leather.^2 Instead of telling people they're animal rapists, talk about new sources of cow's milk.
I swear I recently read about a technically vegan blue cheese that won and then got disqualified from a cheese competition because the milk it was made from was technically synthetic cow's milk that had been derived from fungi or something. Talk about that shit. That is pretty fucking cool. Fungus milk that's virtually identical to cow's milk? That's awesome!
Meat eating and the damage it causes is far off in most people's rear-view mirrors, and many people don't know or don't have time to find ways of getting off the meat highway. They don't know about alternatives or up-and-coming technologies related to meat substitutes. Being an ass is only going to turn people away; if you really care, then you'll understand that you have to take people's hands and take baby steps with them. And no, you can't get angry when they mess up. You're helping a baby to walk, if you get angry then they'll just get angry, demoralized, frustrated with you or themselves, or something else, and you risk them giving up. If you actually care though, then you don't want them to give up, and that means you have to grit your teeth and bear it when they complain about how something sucks or admit they have a "guilty pleasure" like dairy ice cream.
Some additional notes:
^1 imo meat should only be harvested from animals that have died from age-related causes. "But the meat will be too tough!" Yeah? Hispanic people figured out how to deal with that a long time ago. Make fajitas! I still eat meat anyway though, despite knowing they're slaughtered and don't die of old age.
^2 when it comes to leather, my experience is that natural leather lasts a lot longer than faux leather, and faux leather tends to use plastics. Additionally, I've heard that while "leather is a byproduct of the meat industry" is mostly a myth, it's my understanding that there are "ethical" ways of getting leather, e.g. by taking cast-offs that'd normally be trashed, leather harvested from animals that have died from old age; you just have to be very conscious about where you're buying leather from. I'd be curious if anyone knows about any non-petroleum-based faux or lab-grown leathers. I mean, it's literally just skin, how hard can it really be to grow that in a lab?
How come you're so opposed to the concept of, like, self-esteem that you think it's worse than death? Like, someone having high self esteem is a worse thing in your emotions than something dying. Why is pride worse than death to you?
I love being an annoying vegan because it was annoying vegans who made me go vegan. I was once like you, I knew the animal ag industry was fucked, but I still liked eating meat and dairy. Then eventually the cognitive dissonance caught up to me and I realised that enjoying meat and dairy wasn't a good enough excuse to support a cruel industry that is quite literally destroying the planet.
At least you're not in denial about what you're supporting and you're not spreading misinformation. I'm chill with that, but I think you're wrong about what's effective at converting people to veganism.
PS: people make pineapple and cactus leathers nowadays, I've heard of a mushroom based one, too. Not sure on how the durability and longevity compares just yet but it seems pretty tough so far. Also not sure on the processes involved and how 'clean' they are.
Yeah there were some animal rights people that ran out onto the field at a ballgame I was at. The fine for running onto the field is $5000. There were two of them, so that was $10,000.
TV broadcasts don't show people that run out onto the field since they don't want to encourage it. So the only people that saw their banner were people at the ballpark. Someone shouted "get off the field you hippies" and the whole section laughed.
They probably should've just donated the $10,000 to an animal shelter.
Still wish to see more of a rise of kangatarianism. Basically, starts in Australia, where the land has an overpopulation of kangaroos. You only eat their meat, helping the ecosystem equalize. There are similar species in America that we have way too many of in the wild.
To be clear, this practice couldn’t sustain for decades of popularity, but it would mean people don’t have to give up meat as a whole, while we continue to research tastier alternatives.