[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?
[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
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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.
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Or the reverse: how people in liberal circles might see conservatives depicted as Maga-hat wearing weirdos who think 5G is killing them.
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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.
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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
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.
Defensiveness
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.
I think it’s guilt actually. Most people deep down kind of know that eating meat is wrong, but if the whole world does it, you can’t be blamed cause you have no choice.
And then there comes someone who is not participating. Their existence breaks the logic above and implies that it’s a personal responsibility.
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.
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:
- It raises the stakes, because now the identity is even more exclusive because it's more restrictive.
- 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.
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.
I don't hate veganism.
I just don't like the militant and pompous attitude that some vegans seem to possess, that they feel that they have to flaunt their vegan lifestyles on others over.
Yes, go eat as many vegetables as you like, go eat meat alternatives and whatever. You do you, eat what you want. But I don't want to ever have someone like that coming up to my face and tell me what I'm allowed to eat in their eyes.
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.
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 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.
Permanently Deleted
100% it's just cognative dissonance. Everyone knows meat is bad but most can't come to terms that they're too weak to quit it. This is especially painful when people are confronted directly and a self-defence mechanism kicks in.
It's ok to be a bit weak sometimes, everyone has a lot of going and has to choose their battles. Our contemporary culture hates to acknowledge this thus creating a lot of binary tension.
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.
Because the idea that there are vegans and vegetarians is an implied accusation of guilt to people that eat meat and animal products that are the direct result of animal suffering. Some people that don't eat animal products might be militant or preachy, but I've never met one. In fact I have only ever met the inverse, people that constantly berate people for being vegan or vegetarian. Having been one myself, I can say that for me and people I know it is the same reason religious people hate atheists; their existence implies that people that eat meat are wrong and therefore bad people. Studies have confirmed this. Here is an article from the BBC that goes over some of the studies.
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.
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.
It takes a "special" kind of person to take something so ingrained in culture and still say "I'm not gonna do that," usually a slightly crazy and/or neurodivergent person. I think this is partly why there are so many "insane" vegans, because it's self selecting for people who are outside the norm.
I don't even mention to most people I'm vegan, usually just an excuse like "meat makes me feel sick" because the average person will think I'm going to give them a 20 minute lecture.
To anyone who is the vegan who will give the 20 minute lecture, please consider if your goal is actually animal welfare, you can hardly ever debate someone out of something they like. Instead, just show people easy dishes you made that they actually enjoy (pasta with spaghetti sauce, French fries, vegetable stir fry, roasted veggies with olive oil) and you'll often find they start cooking more vegan food (or at least less meat), and also talk more positively about veganism
I think people hate vegans more than veganism. The most annoying x% makes the other (100-x)% look bad
Choose your own x I don't want dunks from either side lol
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.
Obviously there's the stereotype and that is what it is, but I usually get irked at the suggestion that it's easy and an imperative. Veganism and other similar diets are an EXTREME luxury, and is only a viable option for a small percentage of the population. It would never have been an option in the past and is still not remotely an option for most humans.
edit: see below comments to understand what I mean
Because appx 1% of vegans are straight up obnoxious and indignant. And a similar percentage of meat eaters are also.
Then everyone else just mildly gravitates to tribalism but probably doesn't actually care that much.
Half my social circle has gone vegan at this point and I think a lot of the anti-vegan sentiments is people don't like modifying their behaviour to give up their own comfort even when they know something is distressing to someone else. Since a lot of vegans see a very real cruelty that they are generally powerless to stop and other people do not understand their reactions to seeing other people participate in cruelty is often to feel very sad. Since so much of human culture surrounds shared meals having a vegan takes a lot of options off the table entirely and alters other people's options even when they don't intend to.
Like it's not a matter of "well we'll go to your vegetarian restaurant this time and next time we go to a place I'm excited to go" for those of us who care about our friends being upset we basically rarely pick our first choices and more often sacrifice things we are excited for in the name of someone else's comfort. It can be a love language to find restaurants and eat the things on the menu that don't exactly thrill you but other times you just want to have that selfish Birthday dinner where you don't feel compelled to pick a restaurant for someone else.
I think a lot of people reject veganism more forcefully because they don't want to have to participate in that sort of friction. All it takes is one ethical vegan to completly change a friend groups food culture. Even when they bring their own food and try not to make a big deal and mask it not bothering them when they see meat being consumed people are generally compelled to care for people they know and ignoring someone's distress isn't showing care. When people ratchet up the social cost of veganism they are more often than not trying to engineer a social sphere where they do not feel callous, don't have to give up what they like and don't have to do any additional research work or social calculations .
There is a push from the meat industry to make hating veganism the cool thing is what I feel is going on. Some militant vegans are honestly annoying.
I don't mind vegans, or that lifestyle, at all. What I do mind is people who are overtly (and possibly aggressive) in presenting a lifestyle that the feel is "right". Unfortunately there's a stereo type with vegans being that way.
Veganism is a big lifestyle choice and the difference to vegetarian is the avoidance of near all animal products if and when possible. Not just in regards to eating meat, but things like a leather wallet too.
Someone has to be careful and on top of their diet and dietary needs to be vegan and properly nourished (even omnivorous people are subject to this malnutrition mind you).
I have some personal differences in views to vegans in regards to the consumption of meat, but rather similar views in how it's obtained. I do think generally the mass production and lifestyle is not morally correct for the animals. However I would also say humans are naturally omnivorous and eating meat is something that not only is built into our diet but what gave us a fundamental evolutionary advantages.
Animals eat animals and humans are animals. Though if we are sentient enough and empathetic enough creatures we should at least provide a decent life for the animals and utilize all we can so as not so waste them.
I have no issues with veganism but I do have issues with being attacked because I'm not vegan. I've been attacked for using cow milk even after explaining that I can't use plant milk because of sensory issues.
Funnily enough, just like you said, I know vegans IRL who would never behave that way and of course I accommodate their dietary choices when I'm in charge of food.
I think it's mostly an Internet thing when you just see the loudest minority instead of the more quiet majority.
Because it's the easiest way to avoid having to consider changing opinions and behaviors
I personally don’t care if people want to be vegan and sometimes I’ll eat vegan food. For me though, on the whole, I find vegan food unappealing. It usually involves compromises and doesn’t taste that great.
Additionally, I did eat in a house of vegetarians for about 10 months once. I ate meat outside the house on occasion, but mostly ate vegetarian. It was really hard on my stomach. After meals, I would usually have crazy gas. It did improve over time, but always was an issue for me.
For these reasons, I don’t prefer veganism or vegetarianism. It’s okay if you do though.
Edit: for vegans wondering why they’re hated, I think the downvotes to this comment summarize it. Above I’ve expressed a view perfectly tolerant of veganism. I’ve even tried some of it myself, but don’t find it appealing. Rather than just accept that someone else has a different dietary preference than you, you shit on them. If you want to be tolerated, be tolerant.
It's the fandom mostly. I like using Linux but I don't think you are immoral for using windows. Rick and Morty is funny but I don't think Rick is someone to take any advice from. CrossFit seems to work for most people who stick with it but it is one of many options. I won't apologize for being an atheist but I don't think you are stupid for not being one.
The problem with Veganism is the problem with monotheism. There is one proper way to live and all the others are wrong and awful.
That and the lying. I won't deny that there are farmers who abuse their animals, that is a problem that can be dealt with through the legal system, but you can't sell me a sack of lies claiming that I abused the cows I milked growing up. Because I know I didn't.
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.
Well it's like the old joke says,
Q: how do you know someone's a vegan?
A: OH, THEY'LL TELL YOU.
Seriously tho I don't have a problem with them unless they start saying there's no difference betwern killing an animal and torturing it.
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.
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.
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.
No one likes being criticized and labeled a monster by an ignorant prick. They way too frequently act like every egg comes from a half zombie chicken that's kept in a little box and tortured just for fun, or that a cow couldn't possibly end up in a cheeseburger after living its best life. Factory farming is bad for lots of reasons, but it's not characteristic of the entire industry.
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Wait til people find out you don’t drink alcohol! 🤯
I have nothing against veganism as a dietary decision, I'm actually seriously considering it for health reasons and for easier food preparation.
I am sick of veganism as a moral high horse, especially with hypocrisy in the background. I have a friend constantly ordering stuff, including vegan ingredients, from Amazon of all places. If he's going to low-key admonish me for hurting animals, I'd expect him to care about the Amazon warehouse employees to a similar degree. Unless it's all just posturing.
My experience around any opinion where there is a default option, the vast majority will accept the default without thinking. Then when presented with an alternative by someone who has actively chosen to not chose the default, people become highly defensive as if they did do their due diligence, whether or not they actually did. Depending on where you live, the defaults change, but being that humans are tribal, differences in lifestyle naturally create friction. In parts of America, you drive an SUV, use an iPhone, and eat meat. Whether or not they actively or passively chose that lifestyle, when someone doesn't conform to what is expected there will be friction. How people react to that friction is up to them, but again, the default is to be critical of them and encourage conformity.
Some people feel judged for eating meat if they learn that you're a vegetarian or vegan. As veganism appears more extreme, it causes a stronger reaction.
These people don't like being judged, so they seek to judge you instead. If they can judge you for not eating meat, you can't judge them for eating it, or so they feel.
Some vegans being quite obnoxious in their attempts to convert others, doesn't improve things. Rather, it helps those who dislike vegans to reaffirm their beliefs that all vegans are silently judging them all the time.
All of this is just my theory.I can't stand the proselytizing powered by privilege on so many planes. Whether it's cost, availability, or time, people have many reasons for being mUrDeReRs. Nobody likes being condescended over things that are barely in their control as it is.
There are some very militant vegans out here on Lemmy, equating eating meat with rape and murder and generally being annoying without actually contributing to the discussions.
They are actively harming their cause. So much so, I suspect them of actually being trolls trying to make vegans look bad.
Or they are just dumb as a brick and don't understand common discourse. That's possible too.
Because the Internet makes it easy to more forcefully express strong opinions, from both parties.
It's very easy to run into vegans on the Internet who will call you an unethical monster for eating meat, which if you don't think of yourself as an unethical monster, can be a bit offensive.
You also run into non-vegans who can't get it through their heads that that's not every vegan on earth, or even just the Internet or likely even that conversation.
It's much harder to call someone an animal hating monster or a pretentious condescending asshole face to face.
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.
Right. I see what you mean but I think what you're asking for is impossible to ascertain
I think its the extreme. The idea of reducing meat consumption over eliminating it is not met kindly by many vegans and vegan communities. I also see a lot of down play of the nutrient challenge discussion. Now like anything on the internet the extremes tend to be the most vocal. I have personally known vegans who are pretty happy if people are even reducing meat consumption at all or being lacto/ovo pescatarians or such. Its really bad as sometimes the message is if your not going to go full on vegan than your personally responsible for destroying the planet (much like all responsibility for palastinian suffer is because joe bidens the one doing the genocidin) and you might as well eat meat at every meal. The reaction of this for non vegans is very often F these folks and you know what I think I will go out and have a triple bacon cheese burger right now because they taste great.
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 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.
I think a lot of people also have a hard time seeing it as a priority for themselves compared to their personal problems and other ongoings. It's subjective, sure. But it also takes a ton of personal responsibility and self control/denial to change habits.
Bottom line, there is a lot of things out there to care about right now, and being vegan is a big change for a lot of people. That, mixed with the extreme (understandable) feelings about mistreatment of animals by vegans, often leads to a feeling of repulsion from investing personal bandwidth into changing the behavior.
That's my opinion based on growing up with religiously vegan parents.
Same reason people who love fossil fuels hate people who are worried about global warming
Because strident, belligerant activists don't raise awareness, they just make people hate them. I'm sure there's a generalizable lesson in here somewhere.
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.
There are two kinds of vegans. The ones who do it for personal ethics, and the ones who do it to justify their own ego. The first kind tend to be pretty chill, you wouldn't know unless you asked them directly. The second kind are fundamentally insecure and use every available opportunity to draw attention to themselves. The first kind also hate the second kind.
Some ideas on the topic.
I've only met vegans on social media. The vocal minority preaching vegan lifestyle is delusional. Outside of it, it's still corporations doing their best to make a profit. The regular person just eats quietly and lives their life. The requirements and costs are pittance only in their idealistic view of the world. "If only people would just .." No. They won't. We are where we are because people don't. Everyone wants the world to go their way and we kill each other for it.
As an omnivore animal, I eat what my budget allows. Sometimes it's meat, sometimes it's vegetables and sometimes it's cardboard. Just like the wild life, eating plastic bags because they taste yummy. Social media vegans seem to be either the ones that can afford to be picky or can't afford anything else.
Simple truth is that life can always be better, people can always do more and most of us simply don't want to.
Because many people see it as political, or at least moral. And that means they want to "pick a side"
Might be an exposure thing. If you're vegan and you go online for the explicit purpose of talking about veganism to sttangers, you're going to attract haters. That goes for anything. Politics, veganism, parenting, car enthousiasts, movie fandoms, etc..
If you keep to your own, you won't experience the same hate.
I'm not saying you should hide your opinions, but you should mind the context in which you out them. Also, just brush it off, don't let others define you.
It’s like everything else, no one has a problem with probably 99.9% of vegans, it’s just the ones that want to pretend they are better than other people because they don’t eat meat.
The rest of them are fine.
Plus text is forever unless deleted, someone could have typed it 5 months ago, but it is still there as fresh as if it had been said 5 minutes ago, so there is a lot of aggregation involved.
If you say it, only the people around you hear and then it’s gone.
It's the preachy judgmentalism that has led to the hatred of vegans. Of course I'm not trying to say all vegans are like that, it's obviously a vocal minority. Most just eat their damn food and live their life.
But I can't even tell you how many times I've been attacked on places like this and Reddit when I commented about meat.
reddit
People don't want to be told that they have been contributing to horrible animal cruelty and environmental destruction, and do not wish to be morally accountable to it.
I am not fully vegan yet, but vegans are correct.
Some of the movement's ideas seem difficult to accept. The more vocal aherents of the movement can be abrasive and very zealous. It can be seen as like vegetarianism taken to an unreasonable extreme for ethical reasons many do not understand or agree with.
I'm not vegan, but I wish I could be vegetarian. I do know a lot of vegans, most of them are super nice people, that never made me feel bad about not being vegan, and who usually bring the best dishes at potluck. The truth is being vegan would be the most sustainable way of living for humanity, but people feel attacked whenever this is mentioned.
Veganism is more or less a 1st world phenomenon. Most humans, especially in the past, did not have the luxury to choose what they could eat. They ate what they could get and if they got access to meat and animal products they ate it because it has high nutritional and caloric value. Even the vegetarian Indians who don't eat meat foe religious purposes still have eggs, milk, etc.
It feels disconnected with the human struggle.
In addition, it's sort of meaningless in the grand scheme of things. OK. You don't eat meat to protect domesticated cows. In reality, those cows would not exist in the first place. So really, you're advocating to eliminate the species of domesticated cattle.
In addition, our modern society requires massive amounts of energy which is often generated by fossil fuels. Even if a society uses 100% solar, they're importing products from countries like China that burn coal.
So you're pumping out carbon emissions that will inevitably result in mass extinctions anyway. It seems like a meaningless protest against the inevitable. You say let's exterminate the cows to save them from suffering on one hand and with the other drive to work talking on your iPhone with the A/C turned up- contributing to the destruction of infinitely more animals.
The only real way to stop is for everyone to give up every modern luxury and live in a log cabin in the woods. And for the vast majority of the population to die off.
It just feels like pissing into the void but doing so with moral superiority.
Having said all that, I empathize with many vegans. But those are some thoughts on why people may look down on vegans.
Not just vegans. These a million of things that bring this up in people.
Holier Than Tho - "having or showing the annoying attitude of people who believe that they are morally better than other people."
Its like when normal people say they hate the Green Bay Packers, what they really mean is they hate the people that are fans of the Packers.
What they really hate is being guilt tripped into changing their dietary habits.
EDIT: To be clear, I support veganism. I'm saying the people who react apprehensively to veganism are choosing willfully ignorant bliss. To choose a high meat diet is to deny reason and give into what the animal in us wants.
In this thread: a lot of confused vegans refusing to acknowledge the behaviour of other vegans and explaining why non-vegans' experiences with them are wrong.
There are a subset of vegans who are very vocal an pushy about being vegan.
There are a lot people who think vegan food is just salads.
Vegans often don't actually remember what meat tastes like. I have several very nice vegan friends. They sometimes that something tastes just like meat and you can't tell the difference. In sorry but I can tell and vegan meat substitutes are often bad.
It's too bad because there are a lot of tasty and satisfying vegan dishes but they are usually not trying to mimic meat. I love fried tofo or mapo tofu. I've never had a good tofu burger.
There are also a lot of vegans who are all or nothing. I eat meat but I also try to limit the amount. I don't need meat at every meal. Some act like that's the same as eating streak for the meals a day.
There is also a lot of complexity eating vegan. Just cooking for vegan friends can almost double the complexity.
I primarily limit meat because of environmental reasons. And frankly my backyard chickens are lower impact then that avocado at the store.
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Most people think themselves as good people. Most people love, or claim to love, animals.
The existence of veganism and its implication is that there is an unnecessary animal holocaust happening, because of societal norms and for the entertainment of people's palates. So how do you reconcile these things? By claiming that veganism is something extreme, something unattractive, something that is impossible to do.
People who talk about how "militant vegans have turned them away from veganism" are mostly lying to themselves. If an asshole told you not to litter, would you litter because of that? If an asshole told you to be atheist would you go "well now, i will be even more religious"? But when people make arguments like this, leftists realize how ridiculous those arguments are. Except when it comes to veganism.
Obviously you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar but i want to believe that people in this site can see past that and think for themselves.
Legumes(beans/lentils), vegetables, fruits, potatoes, pasta and rice is what most of the world already eats. Nowadays there are vegan alternatives for stuff and most restaurants often have a vegan option. It isnt hard to be vegan but any lifestyle change can be hard, especially if real life is putting a lot of pressure on you.
Any change is hard, being vegan is easy. Millions of people are vegan and have been vegan for many years. I have been vegan for 12 years now. There has never been an easier time to be vegan than now. Being vegan is the easiest and with the biggest impact thing you can do.
True Courage Is About Knowing Not When To Take A Life But When To Spare One
PS Salt potato chips and oreos are vegan. You dont need to eat healthy. And if you are a straight dude, vegan dudes are more attractive to women, even to non vegan women. It's literally free +charisma in real life.
I really don't care what others eat but a lot just of vegans, especially the ones who take it super serious, I had to deal with have just a aura of passive agressive judgmental smugness. Vegetarians not at all from my experience.
Because veganism is an inherently right wing activity and exploiting animals a left wing activity. (Do I need to put that /s?)
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.
I love vegans. A few of my friends are vegan. There are two things some vegans will say which boil my piss, however. First is that they have a moral high ground because they don't eat animals. This isn't a given, it's a complex and nuanced argument I'd happily partake in if the other party weren't approaching it with a top-down belief that they're already in the right. Second is the notion that we should all be vegan to save the planet from climate apocalypse. I don't want this comment to get too long, but I have multiple problems with this faulty line of reasoning, and it muddies the waters. The only likely effect of it is that less progress is made on stopping global heating. So the upshot is that these people are literally sacrificing the ecosystem they purport to care about in order to bang their drum. Fuck that.
It’s because people feel threatened. Vegans indirectly say „you meat eaters are the baddies” no one wants to be the baddies. But… instead of putting effort to change to vegan, the easier and lazier thing to do is to paint them as mad, bad, cult, in the mind.
And also some of the vegans really ride a high horse and behave all pure and that stuff is making it easier. Some vegans really do it to get moral high and have superiority syndrome.
I am not a vegan but I managed to curb these coded in ape brain mechanisms somewhat.
I cook and eat vegan sometimes. I have a bunch of vegan friends.
Vegans on the internet are really annoying.
The concept of being vegan originated from a newsletter for vegetarian recipes in the UK, in the '60s, I believe. It was purely for recipes. Veganism was an offshoot of this newsletter that, from day one, was far more ideological. The people who ran this newsletter immediately succumb to much of the infighting common amongst the vegan community online today. It wasn't about a diet, it was about who could be the better person by being the most vegan.
I hate to break it to you, but vegans have been preachy and annoying since the concept originated.
Because you're annoying ass fucking puritans
Currently being vegan or vegetarian is a choice of privilege. An healthy and varied diet becomes more difficult and expensive, when you start removing dishes from your pallet.
So it becomes coupled with a status symbol, instead of being the default way. As long as people call themselves "vegan" or "vegetarian" because of their choice (people being vegan or vegetarian because of mental or medical issues, is different case), they highlight that status over "normal" people.
If people are just not eating meat or animal products for whatever reason, without trying to use labels like "vegan" or "vegetarian" to highlight their status, then that is fine and a personal choice.
Creating societal change, to make vegan or vegetarian the default position, will also lessen the status of the vegans and vegetarians, that use those labels as such. So they have incentives to not produce a political or societal change.
Vegans & vegetarians should go on protests and lobby to make vegan food cheaper and easier than meat, so that it becomes the default. If they don't do that, and still call themselves vegan/vegetarian then that might imply that it is all about showing their status, and people don't like that.
Consumer choice is a privilege and not about creating an effective societal/political movement. They should not be used as a status symbol.
(Disclaimer: I eat meat and animal products very infrequently, only when my body demands it. I am also thankful for all vegans and vegetarians, because they gave us more interesting options in stores and restaurants.)
The one nutrient I for sure know vegans lack should be Vitamin A, since it’s not found in plants and the body has this weird thing of "the more beta carotene it converts into Vitamin A, the less effective it gets“ making it impossible to get the minimum recommended amount of it - and vitamin A deficiency could lead to depression.
They are way overly convinced their option is the best and only viable option, and they won't shut up about. They also want special treatment at all gatherings. "You don't have a vegan option?" "I said I was a vegan and all they gave me was a simple salad" "You're hurting the environment" blah blah blah.
Yes, "not all vegans are like that", but enough are that it makes them all assumed to be annoying.
How do you know someone is a vegan? Don't worry. They'll tell you.
People are haters, Lemmy is infested with them as you can see from other comments.
The core of the hatred is the hater doesn't want to admit they're wrong. Nothing you can do about that, but the fact is there are certain societal choices that can solve our problems and there are certain people who do and don't make those choices. Passionate vegans who try to convince people through force of rhetoric are usually wasting their breath, but effective activism doesn't trigger the same flight of fight neurotransmitter cocktail that argumentation does.
There's also a TON of capital interest in bashing vegan lifestyles from animal agriculture, manufacturing and so on.
The only way you can make someone into a vegan is to get them to decide that it's the best thing for themselves. My grocery bill is $50 to $150 a week for a 2-person household and I'm able to stay in great shape with minimal exercise because I sleep better at night.
Personally, I had a formative experience on a family ranch during steer castration that went badly. My dad says he saw the devil in the animal's eyes, if you ask me though it was his own mug reflected back at him. Cheese has always stunk to me and meat always has this aroma of decay to it even though meat eaters tell me it's good. A lot of people say things like "live and let live" and I think this is a good way of trying people's words against their actions.
Because it requires them to admit that what they're choosing to do is damaging the planet more significantly than they need to in order to survive.
For me, it's this subset of vegans:
Me: want a burger? V: No thanks, I'm vegan. Me: Oh, cool. Well there's egg and cheese in the salad dressing so you'll want to avoid that too, but I have some black bean patties in the freezer if you want. V: Do you know how bad meat is for your body? Me: Yeah I actually do, but we all make our own decisions about self-harm, don't we? V: Factory farms are cruel and sadistic! Me: Agreed. That's why I buy from a local butcher. V: RAISING MEAT IS DESTROYING THE PLANET! Me: Corporations are destroying the planet. Now fuck off and let me enjoy my burger in peace.
Lookup the vegan teacher on YouTube or TikTok you'll see why.