For the second group, I always like to ask "Why should I use your argument to convince people when it didn’t convince you?"

Seriously, non vegans need to shut the feck up unless they’re willing to make the effort to stop hurting animals. Otherwise I’m not interested in their opinions.

I know I’m going to piss off every single group with this unpopular opinion, but I view veganism/vegetarianism and religion similarly.

Both of them come with benefits and downsides. The extent of these benefits and downsides differ from person to person. There’s no “right” answer, talking about your choice is perfectly fine and I don’t really care what you do either way, but I don’t like it when you try too hard to convert me.

What does that dog eat?

I watched the videos when I went vegan because I was afraid of backsliding. I thought that if I didn’t see what was happening on factory farms, then I might be tempted to go back to eating meat and dairy again.

Economic forces are always going to welfare wash and treat these poor sentient beings solely based on the bottom line instead of their actual wellbeing. Please don’t increase demand for their childrens and grandchildrens suffering.

Not vegan

Why?

The videos made me want stricter regulation, it didn’t make me want to go vegan or cut down on meat.

But there are other reasons to be a little more conservative with meat in my diet.

I find it hard to understand the disconnect you must experience.

I think it’s important to be aware of the process of everything we consume, that way we can influence the impact our habits have.

I watched some pretty terrible films. Watching those did make me cut down on meat and milk, and it made me try to source my animal products from more ethical sources. I still haven’t been able to make the full commitment to veganism or vegetarianism, though, unfortunately.

That being said, I do wish these kinda of films were shown in schools. It would make most people more conscious of the cruelty and harm caused by these industries, and maybe there would be more push to move to more ethical ways of doing things in the meat and dairy industries.

People have been saying that for decades. It doesn’t work. I never understood the concept of “protests shouldn’t make me feel uncomfortable or inconvenience me.” That kind of undercuts the purpose of a protest and trying to spread a message. If you make it so it’s easy to ignore, it doesn’t work. Without fail there’s always the “ugh, someone who tries to make me feel bad about torturing and killing animals is simply not going to convince me to do otherwise.” It’s such a shitty excuse.

Highlighting contradictions in people’s beliefs is good, actually. If they choose to be willfully ignorant of cruelty while reaping the benefits, then they’re not going to face that contradiction from you asking nicely while carefully avoiding any implication that they might be doing something wrong. Rather, it’s the opposite - you want to make it as difficult as possible for them to ignore what they’re doing. But of course, since they are trying to remain ignorant, it can be expected that they will react with hostility when you call attention to it, no matter how nice and polite you are about it. The only way to avoid provoking such a response is by allowing them to keep the cruelty out of sight and out of mind, in which case they will have little motivation to go vegan and you’ve rendered yourself useless.

People who have neither been convinced nor convinced others of veganism love to offer their perspective on how we can be more convincing which invariably seems to consist of defanging our criticism and going out of our way to avoid making people to confront the cruel realities caused by their actions.

This is something that I often think about in connection with veganism.

I can sit down and watch a video about how vegetables are produced. It might be boring, but I could watch it.

Most carnists, on the other hand, can’t sit and watch how hamburger, sausage, cheese, etc. is produced. For them to enjoy that food, they have to ignore all the suffering behind it.

Isn’t “I’m for the intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty” just a consequence of “I saw the videos you refuse to watch”, hence similarly alienating and holier than thou?

Maybe even more so. “I can’t continue because I saw a video” could be an unreflected emotional statement, whereas yours sounds like a moral argument.

Or maybe getting people uncomfortable and forced to think about it, and actively face the dissonance is effective. Maybe they get mad and confrontational, but then you have to ask why.

Why are you doing something whose moral implications are making you uncomfortable?

Same thing goes for shit like buying stuff made by people in horrible working conditions. Maybe we shouldn’t feel as if we are entitled to being comfortable all the time, especially when we do so at the expense of others. What if it was you in the place of the worker or animal? Are you okay with continuing on like this?

And it makes people uncomfortable because it makes them see themselves as a bad person. But hey, maybe you should feel uncomfortable if you are doing something you yourself consider bad.

I mean vegans are welcome to be vegan. If you want you can mention these things if you think they might matter to someone but in the end what is important to a vegan isn’t going to be important to other people and that’s fine. In the end suffering is life and we all are made to suffer so that someone else can exploit us. The only difference with meat is that it’s nutritious and something our body makes good use of. Humans on the other hand are exploited so that the privileged can continue to be privileged.

Ok, but it’s about something people actively and blindly participate and fund. Not just folks watching traumatizing videos for fun.

If I was actively funding the abhorrent things in those videos, you’d be well within your right to tell me to stop, or at the very least insist I watch them.

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I think it’s worse to admit that you’re fine with inflicting that kind of pain on animals and still enjoy the end result. There’s a reason they tell parents to be wary of kids who enjoy torture. You’re just a step below that.

So then why do you eat meat? Are you just a selfish narcissist who thinks their pleasure is more important than anything else? Or what is it?

Because scientific evidence hates you.

It is very actionable to vote with their wallet and mouth and not eat meat. The “can’t save them all, so why bother”-argument is really sad. I don’t think most people would apply that logic, if they saw a child in distress, because so many children die every day of preventable causes. Every sentient being matter.

One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough

You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott. “Why should I vote? My one vote won’t change anything.” The truth is, you aren’t one person. There are many vegans.

But even one person can do quite a bit. I’ve influenced my friends to eat less meat. When we go out to eat, if they want to include me, we’ll go to s vegan-friendly restaurant.

A vegan view requires no amount of anthropomorphizing. It’s the traits that humans share with non human animals that makes what we do to them unjust. The traits that make us different are not required, and neither do they justify our treatment of animals.

Emotionally resonating with animals also does not require anthropomorphization. Empathy and sympathy between humans and non human animals is default in most people because of our shared experiences. A lack of is a sign of, at the very least, selective sociopathy, like the kind soldiers might be trained to have in regards to enemy combatants.

Veganism also is not a diet, I think that’s important to say. And veganism doesn’t create health disasters out of thin air. There’s a plethora of nutritional studies backing up how eating with vegan restrictions can be more than adequate.

Describing vegans as making major dietary changes because they “saw one video” is a pretty dishonest interpretation. Rigorously sticking to a vegan diet can be fairly difficult, and requires you to be very aware of exactly what you’re eating – including innocuous seeming things like food dyes and white sugar, which can often be made of animal products. To me, that doesn’t read as impulsive, but instead disciplined.

Furthermore, while the decision to switch to going vegan could theoretically sometimes be done on impulse, one still has to make the decision every single day. It’s not just a decision you make and it’s done, it’s one you must always choose to continue to make. A vegan has to decide to continue to be vegan every day, likely while under scrutiny of themself and others.

I’ve seen only a few you listed like cowspiracy and seaspiracy and a majority of those two films were just facts and diagrams and interviews. So I call bullshit. I know this is a bad faith attempt I mean seriously, “impulsive highly emotional person”? Maybe people who care for the environment see the facts and diagrams and convert because it isn’t possible to feed this many people sustainably. It’s not a health disaster to be vegan either, that’s ridiculous of you to say. This won’t shock you because you came here to troll but vegans can go through pregnancy just fine, breast feed just fine too, something that shouldn’t be possible if it was such a health disaster. A lot of our food is already fortified with vitamins so you don’t need meat for b12 or iron, just eat a bowl of cereal with soy milk. I’m in the process of going vegan so not 100% but I’m so tired of seeing trolls come to vegan communities to talk about how much they don’t care about animals or the planet. And how manly and fulfilled it makes them feel to eat bacon. We get it, you’re boring and have nothing new to say.

What had the biggest impact on me was videos of pigs and cows being cute and dog like. Nothing else changed my view like a cow hopping around like a happy idiot.

(I’m not vegan but I eat pescatarian now and feel myself on the way to a bit more)

as a little kid i saw the slaughterhouse videos PETA would put into flash games. still eat meat to this day

being omnivorous doesn’t mean we have to eat meat, it means you get to choose, which is like, the entire point?

Do you think you would die or be unhealthy if you stopped eating meat and other animal products? If that’s what you think then say that so someone has the opportunity to rebut you.

Because it’s unclear what you’re trying to imply by saying “we’re omnivorous”.

So much of that is misplaced anthropomorphism though. Throughout history hundreds of millions of people have wrung the neck of a chicken or dropped a lobster into boiling water. Almost none of them have cried.

TV melodrama is a weird way to decide which actions have moral weight. We’re particularly sensitive to the deaths of mammals because we see human qualities in their suffering.

Everyone else is cowards.

Or worse: they just don’t care. There are people like that. Zero empathy.