No Stupid Questions

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.

Imagine that you go to an outdoor barbecue on a bright Summer day.

And some guy who is an extreme Muslim is going around telling some women that they're not dressed in a modest enough way and that everybody should follow the Teachings of the Prophet and how life is a lot better when people follow the Teachings of the Prophet.

It's not Islam that's the problem, it's certain kinds of people, their proselytising and, worse, their trying to force or even impose their own moral values on others.

Same with Veganism and some kinds of Vegans: because it's a moral choice some of those who practice it have the very same behavioural disfunctions as religious nutters and because they're the most visible representatives of it they just cause many to draw negative conclusions about the entire thing.

Its because they ran into the loudest, most annoying vegans.

IDK how, maybe different areas have more militant vegans, or maybe they just roll with negative stereotypes and the algorithm bs that lets the worst folks float to the top of their media feeds.

I've actively sought out vegans because they have great advice on dietary restriction resources and as long as you're respectful of their choices, they've been consistently so willing to share.

And they also really love a good breakfast, in my experience, like the local vegan group has just pages of discussion on good vegan donut resources.

they hate vegan preacher. how do vegan promote their ideas? by saying meat eater are murderer. by calling people meat eater. meat bad. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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

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.

Vegans simply existing make people feel uncomfortable, so defense mechanisms in the brain trigger.

Since it’s an ethical stance, and people at least deep down know that killing innocent animals for 5 minutes of taste pleasure is wrong, but they don’t want to change themselves.

So the brain tries to rationalize how it’s definitely not wrong and really the vegan is wrong, and/or demonize the position to shield itself from the discomfort of knowing.

Basically psychological defenses kick in to defend unethical behavior that someone highlights by simply existing.

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.

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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.

I don't think many people truly hate veganism, they are just frustrated by a few of the louder vegans out there.

For example, some vegans are very judgy - they will unabashedly tell non-vegans that eating meat is morally reprehensible. They also often want you to watch brutal videos of animal abuse and slaughter, with the overt overtone being an accusation of "you are doing this. It's your fault if you eat meat."

I'm not sure how any person who isn't vegan could possibly see that as anything but unwelcome. Life is hard enough without this sort of thing.

This said, I know plenty of vegans that never do this. I think it's awesome that they can avoid meat, and I applaud and support alternatives like impossible and beyond.

Do-gooder derogation

I have never, ever, heard someone in real life bring up veganism unless it was specifically in the context of what they eat.

The problem is, it comes up. Food is a very foundational element of social life. Sharing a meal is important, providing a meal as a host is important, and supplying food at events is customary.

Rejecting the offer to put something in their body is misunderstood as an insult.

Because brains are wired to avoid 1) changes to habits and 2) admission of wrongdoing. Encountering a vegan makes the brain start running cover and looking for ways to discredit arguments. Often, the mental framework for dismissing "uppity" advocates already exists. There's also the force of money and industry propaganda which should be acknowledged, but in my experience people are more than capable of coming up with justifications on their own.

It's very difficult to overcome these psychological forces, but simply making the switch can remove a lot of cognitive dissonance and expose certain BS arguments for what they are.

For me it's the high-horse holier than thou attitude most of them seem to carry in online conversations. I know a fee vegans and they are mostly fine in person after the first few months of radicalization, but I imagine they just suppress it in person to maintain the acquaintanceship and then bitch in their vegan echo chambers about how "my co-worker who knows I'm vegan had the audacity to order a hamburger and eat it in front of me knowing I'm vegan, does he know he's destroying the world with that Burger... AITA?"

If you're looking for scientific answers, good luck they, Inrhjnjbmost people stop worrying about micromanaging people after a few years of academia.

There’s a ton of vegans who exist without trying to force their way of life on everyone, but the ones who do dominate the conversation and can be off putting.

no one hates veganism, we just hate the vegans

I think some meat lovers get aggressively opposed to vegan ideas because they know that vegans are morally correct. I say this as a meat lover

So, here's the thing.

Regardless of a hundred different ethical and meta-ethical theories that people espouse, what everyone actually reacts to with outrage is plausibly-generalised threat perception.

If someone's actions are directly threatening you, you'll feel anger and/or fear.

If someone's actions don't affect you or yours, but :stuff like that: being commonplace definitely would, then you will feel outrage.

If I kill people and take their stuff, you'll be very upset: you're a people, and you like stuff - and if we let the general case happen, the specifics could come bite you in the ass soon enough.

If I kill and eat animals, most people don't consider it plausibly worrying that they or little Timmy will be next. We have great big enormous taboos against eating people, so that slope just don't slip - and as a result they just don't have a problem with it.

(If I go and torment animals for lulz, then that's a very different case; people who are cruel to animals are often even worse to people, after all - and so people see that as monstrous. And again, if you want to manufacture consent for some atrociy, the easiest way is to reclassify the victims as qualitatively different. Oh good lord no, we're not killing people and taking their stuff, that would be awful. Nonono, we're killing :group: and taking their stuff, totally different proposition...)

So when vegans are horrified at people killing and eating (or breeding and milking, or whatever) animals, and go to great lengths to try and elicit that same outrage, there's a disconnect and dissonance going on. The non-vegans don't have the emotional trigger of perceived threat, so to have them keep trying regardless is seen as pearl-clutching and sleeve-tugging, like making up a sad story and loudly demanding that everyone weep about it on the spot. It's uniquely annoying. And when you combine that with (perceived) moral superiority and a hypercritical attitude, it comes across as something like a Karen with BPD. It's calling red on someone else's scene; everyone is supposed to cater to the vegan's emotional distress when there's no corresponding emotion in themselves, and honestly that just provokes people to schoolyard bullying.

That's at the core of it, I think. There's a bunch of other annoyances around it, but I think they're mostly after the fact.

Honestly if you want to make people feel that general existential threat, frame it in terms of ecological damage. Animal agriculture is horribly unsustainable and causes huge enviromnental problems, not least of which are are a truly gigantic carbon footprint. Pushing that angle would actually stand a chance of being effective, tbh. But annoyingly (from the outside), it seems that the most vocal vegans don't want people to be outraged on that basis, they want them to be outraged for the poor little lambikins, and will settle for no less. I can see their point, and I can be a stubborn bastard myself about not settling, but jesus fuck it's annoying.

Not a vegan, though I've been mostly-veggie for the last couple of years for health reasons. It's interesting how it shapes your perceptions; eating meat doesn't seem wrong to me, but it has started seeming weirdly excessive and uncreative.

I don't hate vegans. I even dated one for a while. She would eat veggies, I would eat meat. It worked because neither of us were dismissive of the others choice.

I do hate being preached to. I think most people do. Many of my encounters with vegans were ones where they were very hostile to me. For just not being vegan. I wasn't going around telling them veganism was bad or that they were a terrible person for being vegan. I have been told that by vegans. That I am a bad person for eating meat.

I have to eat meat I have always had a high metabolism. At various times in my life my maintenance diet had to be at least 3,000 calories. Plus of course any additional food needed for non maintenance activities. Additionally I'm allergic to soy. This means that it would be nearly impossible for me to have gotten enough food without eating meat. I am pretty certain that if I had not eaten meat and animal fat. I would have died as a child, or at best had serious issues with nutrition. I was well fed as a child. I could eat as much as I wanted, still many of my memories of childhood were ones of hunger.

I even explained this to someone once and they responded by saying "well you didn't die" and then heavily implied they wish I did. As if me not dying made my point invalid.

This is why I am skeptical of vegans and vegan ideology. It is often toxic, and actively tries to hurt and shame people. Even people like me who are effectively choiceless in regards to eating meat.

Often even non-militant vegans will allow this behavior. I know how frustrating it can be to be told you need to police your own community. Though that doesn't mean it's okay to allow bad behavior amongst your peers.

I guess I’m lucky I’ve never personally known anyone to preach about their diet.

For someone like myself, this all sounds overblown and just a meme/trope you see in movies and TV.

I don't see many people hating veganism. I see a lot of people hating vegans pushing their ideology when it wasn't asked for. The simple truth is that every person has different ideologies, beliefs, priorities, and ethical systems, and what makes perfect sense to one person sounds over-prohibitive, and any attempt at dialogue to find a middle ground ends with a bunch of moral posturing.