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
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.
As much as I’d like that to be true, I’ve definitely still seen vegan spaces online that are intensely alienating and hostile 😅 when I was using reddit, often anything from r/vegan that hit r/all was pretty hostile to anyone who hadn’t already decided it was an important issue for them and made big lifestyle changes accordingly, adopting veganism.
To be totally honest I’ve also never seen any beef industry propaganda encouraging people to hate vegans or resent veganism. If you can think of any examples off the top of your head I’d be curious to see them (if nothing comes to mind thats fine, I don’t intend that as a gotcha)
I’m not vegan (grew up with an eating disorder, not in any position to cut stuff out of my diet or make eating more complicated/difficult, though I have a lot of respect for vegan ethics) but I am a big nerd about open source stuff and linux, and I’ve observed similar things in that space. I have a friend who’s averse to open source stuff because folks have evangelized to her aggressively and with the same sort of superiority complex many folks perceive vegans as having. I’m grateful she’s excited to listen to me talk about the stuff I’m excited about anyway these days, but I’m careful not to make her feel pressured to drop proprietary software she’s using for open alternatives because I want her to feel respected even though she’s not invested in this thing I care about a whole lot
I think when you work hard to adopt a big change for reasons you’re proud of, it’s easy to view yourself as superior for having learned the thing, or made the dietary change
Back on reddit there were those who had alerts set every time the word came up across the site, then they’d brigade the fitness and health subreddits with their vegan crew to derail any conversations. It was really annoying. No clue if that’s still a problem because lolreddit
The very first vegan I ever knew talked at me for 10 minutes about how I should go vegan. It was the only 10 minutes I knew her. I was 15, still living with my parents, didn’t have a way to get around, and my family was fairly poor. Oh, and my mother didn’t cook so much as unboxed dinner, because the kitchen was always filthy. I definitely walked away from that interaction feeling like I’d been told I was a terrible human who deserves to suffer by a rude principal. So yes, they definitely exist.
I’ve never met a Vegetarian that wasn’t chill about it, though.
I’m sure there are plenty of chill vegans too, but some of them come off like an annoying televangelist, in my experience.