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Being overly pushy and judgmental towards people who want to make a change in the right direction is a great way to repel them from your cause. I prefer to welcome them and offer them the proper resources to get started.
It’s entirely possible that once the people who want to go vegan but aren’t ready to give up bacon/cheese/that one other food get used to a vegan diet and substitutions, they will eventually be ready to let go of those last few products on their own.
Being overly pushy and judgmental towards people who want to make a change in the right direction is a great way to repel them from your cause.
Someone who openly eats bacon because they enjoy it and claim themself vegan is far away from the vegan cause. If you don’t like to ear the truth or face simple criticism i would argue you are not really looking to make much change in the right direction.
I would argue that the person willing to give up 95% of their meat consumption cares more about making a change than the one telling them not to bother at all because it’s not the full 100%.
According to one survey, which has some interesting statistics on veganism:
52.1% or 6779 participants said they were vegetarian prior to going vegan.
Research suggests that people are more likely to stick to habits that they adopt gradually rather than suddenly making drastic lifestyle changes, and it’s much easier to reach 100 from 95 than it is from 0. Maybe a better vegan substitute for bacon will be invented in that time and they’ll give it up even sooner.
As another user here says, don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.
That applies to any cause. Every time I see people going all in and fighting anyome with 1 inch of different opinion I think “you are only pushing people away”. Once someone is moving is the right direction, let them go. If you still don’t agree 100% it’s ok, people can improve with time. Be tolerant of people and you’ll see a lot of improvement. Radicalism will never, in any areas, be good or make the world better
It’s absolutely fine to do this, but it’s just as reasonable to not call that veganism. Reducitarian or Flexitarier are right there.
Maybe I’m reaching, but this stuff feels like stolen valor. They want the label, without doing all the work.
You’ve convinced me, I’m going vegan + meat + dairy + animal fat.
I am seeing more and more folks go veg simply because the price, and that’s great! Build a culture of veg meals and normalize the epic curries, chillis, soups, stews, spreads, and tofu / seitan/mushroom dishes
I really like Derek Sarno’s YouTube channel for this reason. I feel very welcome watching his content because he doesn’t browbeat folks who aren’t fully vegan, he just presents an epic mountain of some of the most mouth watering vegan food I’ve ever seen.
Instead of purity tests to keep folks out, we need more people like Derek who hold the door open for everyone, so they can smell the amazing food cooking inside.
Gatekeepers are the fucking worst. Every time I start reading up on something there’s always a handful of miserable condescending shitheads being nasty to people because they’re 'not ‘doing it right.’
Most vegan threads I come across usually has some of these, insulting anyone that’s not 100% on board even if they’re trying to get into it. Audiophiles are pretty much on the same level as hardcore vegans when it comes to being obnoxious (recently saw someone ask why the op was bothering setting up a music system if they didn’t have thousands of dollars to spare, for example). Linux users on support threads is a coin flip of whether they’ll be helpful or insulting.
Let people ease into things, stop demanding perfection right out of the gates!
I think that knowing the definition of veganism is the bare minimum. Gatekeeping is one thing, but you should at least know what the thing you’re trying to join is. If you’ve done zero research, that’s on you.
What I would say to folks is that they should do whatever they want. If they want to eat a 99% plant based diet, then they should do that.
It’s not gatekeeping to say that you aren’t vegan if you eat bacon, but at the same time, veganism is more about ideology than diet.
I think I understand the complaint. It’s shitty when a word with a clear definition gets literally co-opted by the masses. Then you have to go find a new word for something that was already solved.
That being said, I’d rather we dilute the term vegan if it means getting more people to eat less meat. You can invent new words faster than you can convert people.
The problem is when said research runs you straight to a bunch of nasty people over and over. Really dampens enthusiasm when trying to get into something. Veganism is not something I personally want to get into (I’m not opposed, I just read threads to get other perspectives on things in general), but I observe the same behaviour in vegan threads as I do in other communities with die-hard enthusiasts for things that I am into. The same behaviour is also in Linux communities which makes me hesitate to recommend it to people, because it has a toxic shithead problem.
Kinda like when you look up a problem and the first thing you run into is a guy telling the op that they’re a moron and to just google it
You don’t do research into anything by asking random scrubs on the Internet.
Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book.
Why is it that when libs talk about “imperfection” it seemingly is about mass murder? This is how they tried to sell genocide joe, then bomber harris, and now this treatbrained bullshit.
That’s quite an escalation, and you demonstrated my point excellently. You’re not gonna bring more people to your point of view by being nasty, you’re only driving them away.
Honestly, most of the mid-range PC motherboards give a good enough sound output that one won’t require a separate cheap music system unless they want to disturb the neighbours.
I make do with my monitors’ speakers, which are pretty cheap. And when I care about sound quality, just use my headphones (which is the only audio thing I put a lot of money on) and having higher fidelity room speakers won’t even help me due to the traffic noise all day.
Monitor speakers are so awful, you can get a big improvement by spending $20 on a set of cheap PC speakers, which you can improve on more with a $100 soundbar.
Just due to the nature of how sound works, you need at least a certain amount of space for your divers and monitors are optimized to take up as little space as possible (over the screen itself). A lot of monitor speakers don’t even drive the sound towards you and sound like whatever is playing was recorded in a tin can.
Drive the speakers from your motherboard, you’re right that it can handle outputting signals that most people couldn’t even tell the difference between that and an expensive sound system (and those who say they can would surprise me if they could consistently do so in a blind test), but going from monitor speakers to dedicated speakers is one of the cheapest and most effective upgrades you can do with a PC IMO.
As I said, when I care about sound, I would just use my expensive headphones.
Just for hearing notification sounds and normal speech, with no particular musical requirements, monitor speakers are good enough.
And I have actually seen some sound systems that are worse than my current monitor speakers (although I can’t say why, considering they were other people’s setups). I even have the old SoundBlaster desktop speakers lying around somewhere and don’t consider them worth the effort.Similarly, laptop speakers work well enough for non-music purposes too.
Dont get caught up in labels. If you want to vegetarian but don’t want to give up bacon just do it. Doesn’t matter what you label it it’s just a diet.
I eat more veggies and less meat than ever
That’s down to iterative changes.
If the only option was a hard-line cold-turkey (lol) approach, I’d very likely have never changed a thing
It’s definitely easier if you do it one format at a time.
i always wanted to quit smoking, but couldn’t drop the first cigarette with my morning coffee. it took me way too long to make peace with that single cigarette, turns out i can easily forgoe the other 19 I’ve been smoking every day
Last year I nearly quit smoking weed, except when I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons.
that’s fair enough, you probably don’t play d&d every day
even if they do play d&d daily, it’s still less than if they were a morning/noon/night smoker.
This is such a conundrum for me because I absolutely support people eating less animals and animal produced products but veganism is not a diet it is a philisophy. You are not vegan if you do this and you should not call yourself vegan. Dilution of the term IS harmful. At its core veganism is the belief that animals should not be exploited for anything under any circumstances. They have every right to this earth as we do and it is our responsibility to insure their lives are not harmed by us.
trying to wean myself of genocide one bit at a time
the issue here is that it frames veganism as someone trying to become better by denying themselves treats, when in reality it’s someone becoming less of a monster by not denying others the right to life.
vegans are not good people because they’re vegans, veganism is only about not committing evil. It’s literally the absolute minimum. Carnists are evil, but it is so normalized people don’t see it that way.
vegans are not denying themselves cheese, we simply are not denying a baby the right to live.
The focus in veganism, like with every liberation movement, should be on the oppressed and not the treatlerites trying to be a bit less brutal. And that’s my issue with this tweet. Babystepping is for libs and people don’t get a pat on the back for no longer being part of the cow genocide. Either you have solidarity with the oppressed, in which case you’d be horrified at the thought of eating bacon, or you’re still looking at yourself and what you’re ““sacrificing””. Centering once again the humans when its about non-human animal liberation.
Either you have solidarity with the oppressed, in which case you’d be horrified at the thought of eating bacon, or you’re still looking at yourself and what you’re ““sacrificing””. Centering once again the humans when its about non-human animal liberation.
Oof. I want to print this out and frame it.
After being vegan for several years, it just hit me one day. I was thinking about how when I was a carnist, I felt like I had a right to eat a cow or a pig if I wanted to. That sense of entitlement to someone else’s body is insane!
But you’re still “the crazy one” for pointing it out. And don’t you dare break the norms of civility pointing out the mass murder and enslavement that is animal ag.
But the point of this is literally don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. There’s a rather large subset of the population that hears “oh no animals products at all? Forget that.” And they commit to no animal product reduction at all. So then the question is harm no animals, or harm less animals?
I absolutely support people eating less animals and animal produced products
Just don’t call it veganism because that is not what it is
There’s a rather large subset of the population that hears “oh no animals products at all? Forget that.”
Then they aren’t getting the message. The answer to that is not to give up the message. It’s to find a way to communicate that message so that it’s understood.
Give them the gateway to veganism.
Do you genuinely believe this? If I hear “X is bad”, I don’t need someone to tell me “oh, but less X is still good step”. I can understand that with even my two braincells.
Where’s the proof that people don’t understand that? Do we need to start preaching harm reduction and “perfect is the enemy of good” in other areas of activism? Feminism, anti-racism?
I actually believe this. I believe people are both more ignorant and petty than even you or I can imagine. I also think that people can be persuaded. Make people think that these ideas were something they came up.
Fewer.
Because that’s plant-based plus bacon. Veganism is an ethos, not a diet.
Silly downvoters. You’re absolutely right. Veganism has diet as a component, but at its core is a desire to limit harm to animals in every possible aspect.
If you eat only plants/mushrooms, but still buy leather shoes, down pillows, or wool socks - that’s not veganism, that’s just following a plant-based diet. The two concepts overlap, but they are distinct from each other.
This sort of pedantry also annoys and turns people away from the cause though. Typically when people say they’re vegan, they’re talking about their diet, and it’s easy to infer that based on context. I really hope you don’t go around browbeating self-professed vegans by going “nuh uh, you’re a liar, that’s a leather strap I see on your watch”
Lol, of course not. What would be the point of that? I can acknowledge someone being gifted a leather watch, or continuing to wear old leather shoes they bought from before they went vegan, as a vegan still trying their best.
But pointing out a verbal distinction on a chat board like Lemmy isn’t the same as calling people out in-person. The distinction matters, and this is an appropriate place to make that point. Harassing people for their choices is an entirely different scenario.
There isn’t really a verbal distinction though. “Vegan” is an overloaded word that has multiple definitions, and you can very validly use it to describe your diet. “Correcting” people by telling them they should say “plant based” instead is just pedantry.
The fact that most people don’t think about it critically doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be explained and telling people who belong to a group that they can’t tell you what their group specifically is about is entitled and absurd.
Veganism is not a diet and there are a number of diets you may adopt while being vegan.
I can accept that the harm reductionism that Danielle is advocating for is good compared to the lack of restraint we have as a culture, but this does not make it vegan.
And the fact that you assume people “aren’t thinking critically” when they use a word in a way you don’t like says a lot about you. Makes you seem like the entitled one, actually.
If you can’t accept that saying “I eat vegan” or “I follow a vegan diet” is just as valid as someone saying “I’m vegan” in the context of taking about food/diets, you’re gonna have a tough time, because that’s just how our language is used.
I’m sure you can get away with telling trans people what they are without trans people or defining atheism without atheists. But sure. Sound off like the ignorant ass you are.
It also gets super annoying when people start learning the watered-down meaning.
The number of times people have asked “But you eat fish, right?” because pescatarians call themselves vegetarians instead of taking 3s to explain “It means I eat plants and fishes” is real annoying.
Labels with a specific meaning that have practical applications should not be muddied with use like that.
Not pedantry. Veganism is an ethical position, distinct from carnism, which is also an ethical position. That may not be how the majority use the term, but it is possible for a majority to be misinformed. If vegans yield the term and it comes to mean “mostly eats plants, sometimes eat fish or pig or perhaps bear”, what should they call
“tries to minimize animal abuse as far as possible and practical”? Wouldn’t the new term also be eventually devoured?Typically when people say they’re vegan, they’re talking about their diet,
this claim is made without evidence and can be dismissed without evidence
So when you go to a restaurant and they say “do you have any dietary restrictions”, you can reply “I’m Catholic” and they should guess what that means?
Vegan is an overloaded word that is both a diet and an ethos. Don’t try and restrict the language. You will not win.
The issue here is that veganism is regarded as a diet by the popular culture and fad dieters, not vegans. Your insistance that we not try to correct the record is like asking middle easterners not to set things straight when people assume all of them are Arabians or Muslim.
Veganism is regarded as a diet by vegans. The diet kind of vegans. You’re doing a No True Scotsman.
You can certainly try to fight language. It doesn’t usually work. Good luck!
- I am vegan. I know what I’m talking about.
- All kinds of people call themselves a vegan without without actually being one.
- It’s not a no true Scotsman because I’m using the actual definition for what veganism is, the one given by the vegan society. You’re making a category error here.
- I will absolutely fight language when language is wrong. I have had several times in my life where I gave up the colloquial definitions that I’ve lived with in order to have my views more accurately reflect the words that members of specific communities use to define themselves. Otherwise I’d think that bisexuals only dated men and women, ace people are incapable of romantic attraction, all feminists hate men, and that trans people can’t be trans without clinically diagnoseable dysphoria.
- Thanks for the luck, but I’m blocking you. Have a lovely day.
mushrooms and yeast aren’t plants though, so it’s also also “fungus-based” as well
Vegan restaurants and tiktok chefs do infinitely more for veganism than posters.
Vegans will hate me for this but I only eat animals that I don’t find particularly cute.
I don’t eat pig or cow meat because they are beautiful, intelligent animals with great personalities. I do eat lamb because I’ve worked on sheep farms and they are dumb assholes. I eat chicken because they are basically vicious dinosaurs who would eat me if our sizes were reversed.
I’ve yet to get first hand experience with live sausages in their natural environment so I proceed with caution on a case by case basis.
Uh, I have bad news on where sausages come from…
Germany?
Animals should be respected equally the same way humans are. You don’t disrespect ugly people, a lamb suffers as much as a cat or any other pet.
I’ve yet to get first hand experience with live sausages in their natural environment so I proceed with caution on a case by case basis.
No that’s a pretty cool stance to hear as a vegan, it means you’re fine with me shooting you because I think you’re a dumb asshole. One less corpsemuncher and they actually wanted it this way.
If you ever get a clean shot on me I encourage you to take it 🙏
How about game sausage? Deer are bag of rocks stupid, though harmless. But at least they get to live a natural life before walking round a corner into an rpg on the way back from the betting shop.
Deer are “overabundant” in my area. Guy I knew hunted them. One day he brings some deer meat to work for everyone to try.
It’s gross, it’s chewy, ropy, and tastes like juniper. I guess it’s free, but no thanks…
Maybe your guy just wasn’t a good cook …
When the vegetarian option becomes cheaper and tastes just as good though, continuing to eat the meat version is an explicit choice.
I think there is also a cooking skills gap no one acknowledges. For example tofu is way different than chicken/beef/pork. Scares a lot of people away because poorly cooked tofu is 100x worse than poorly cooked meat.
Our family eats about half vegetarian because the cost difference is still minimal and variety is fun. Animals are also way more evil than most people realize. Cows are basically the only one that won’t eat it’s friend when they are bored. Not saying it justifies earing them, but I’ve never understood why vegans put animals on a pedestal.
I don’t put them on a pedestal. I would still be vegan even if I hated animals. You don’t have to love or even like somebody to not want them to be tortured and killed. The conditions that chickens, pigs, and cows live in aren’t something I would wish on my worst enemy.
I think tofu is just an acquired taste. When I first started cooking it, I did all the things. Pressing, freezing then thawing, brines, breading, sauces, air frying, etc.
But the more eating it became habit, the less all that stuff mattered. When I’m preparing it now, I usually take it out of the package and immediately crush it with my hands into rough chunks into whatever I’m cooking. I actively crave the stuff enough that I will pretty much always eat a raw chunk as I’m crumbling it.
The meat animals are selected for tastiness, not friendliness.
That, and their magical ability to convert things humans can’t eat (grass) into things humans can (beef, milk). This is fundamentally why"food" animals were domesticated.
I might add health concerns to that list along with cost and taste. Allergens and sodium content, for instance. Also a concern about being “highly processed”.
Not that that’s not an issue with animal-based foods. But Impossible is still “new and different” and if Impossible turned out to be terrible for you, it wouldn’t be the first time something new and different (even something new and different that was touted by some as being better for you) resulted in a public health crisis. (I’m referring to trans fats in particular here.)
Sometimes it tastes better. The last 10 years has been really depressing, because I’ve discovered that there are quite a lot of people who are unwilling to change even in the face of pandemics and environmental collapse.
Nope! Change is bad. Always. Just cross your arms and dig in your heels.
It’s already cheaper it’s the tastes just as good part that is expensive. The faux meat is still expensive but vegetables have been cheap. If you didn’t care about variety you could eat chicken soup with a Costco chicken for a whole week for like $8
It’s already cheaper
for some people
I don’t get why you make such an effort to avoid meat only to seek out vegetables prepared to mimick meat dishes. I’d argue that’s not what vegetables are good at. There’s plenty of vegetable dishes that are delicious without needing to pretend there’s meat involved. Indian cuisine has a ton of them.
Unless someone is a on a serious carnivore diet, then we probably eat “vegan” more than we realize.
I had an English muffin with some homemade wild raspberry jam and a banana with my tea this morning. I have already planned an Indian lentil curry and rice for supper tonight. I don’t know what I’m having for dinner today, but I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I suppose.
A whole day without meat. Not that I actually considered doing that because “vegan.” But because that’s what sounds good to eat today. Tomorrow, maybe some smoked oyster stuffed venison loin chops for supper perhaps or some eggs and bacon for breakfast.
You eat pretty healthy compared to the average person in North America or Europe. There are a lot of people who eat a big piece of meat every day.
I’m just less fussy about what I eat than most. And I long ago learned there are many tasty things of all kinds to eat. Worrying about carnivore vs vegan is a waste of my time. One can eat a different meal everyday for a lifetime and never eat the same thing twice. Whether there is meat on the menu is not as much of a deal as eating tasty food.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly
“We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought that it would be easy.”
Not something I want to hear just before going under for my surgery.
Yeah but if you were in the middle of nowhere and just broke your leg, would you rather have a lazy doctor or no doctor at all
An issue with boycotts in general is that people are constantly talking about what not to do and not what to do alternatively or the specifics on how to get there. Eventually it makes you realize that literally anything you do will cause someone to get genocided or abused somewhere, and when they way out isn’t clear or straightforward, now you’re overwhelmed with thousands of things you hate that you do and have to figure out how to change on your own one by one, and those changes result in new problems that overwhelm you or turn out to also be unethical and you have to change them yet again. And in the end you hate yourself because your change attempts made you miserable while you’re still doing doing harmful things and other people hate you because you’re still causing genocides and the rest think you’re an idiot or a hypocrite for trying at all, while meanwhile everyone else around you is just enjoying themselves and not giving a fuck, and you’ll always be a terrible person anyways so you might as well give up.
I think if more people instead of saying “don’t do this” instead said “do this instead” when they talked about what to boycott and why, that would help with harm reduction a lot more.
Veganism is not a boycott. Here’s the commonly-accepted definition of veganism from the Vegan Society:
Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
It is practically a boycott though, since a purpose of a boycott is to avoid something that is unethical. With veganism you’re refusing to purchase (or obtain in other ways, but 99% of people purchase) products that involve animal exploitation. For BDS you’re refusing to purchase products that involve Palestinian exploitation. For most others you’re refusing to purchase products that involve other forms of human exploitation like slave labor, like with the chocolate industry, battery mining, sweatshops, etc. (Nestle being a common example)
At best, a boycott is part of veganism. Vegans obviously also don’t personally kill animals to eat, or kick puppies, or have cock fights. Not supporting those things financially is a consequence of that stance, not it’s sole purpose.
The reason it seems like a boycott is simply because for the average city dweller, buying animal products is simply the main way they interact with this form of oppression.
To try an analogy: Imagine most/all men actually not assaulting or raping women. But, 99% of them pay for others to do that on their behalf, three times a day. Feminism would look a lot like “just a boycott” to these people simply because consumption is their main point of exposure/support of anti-feminism.
No, a boycott is withholding purchase to get a company to change. For example most people observing BDS would have no problem buying mcdonalds if they are no longer part of the occupation. The problem isn’t the product but how it’s obtained. With vegans the problem is the product and no amout of “free range” or “no chick killing” is gonna have us buy dairy or eggs.
The product is “food”, the problem is animal abuse. Would vegans have a problem with buying a vegan bigmac?
It depends on the vegan and other circumstance I suppose. I would on BDS grounds and that even a vegan bigmac still supports one of the largest cow murdering corporations there is. I don’t understand the point of a “vegan” bigmac and having mcdonalds not be part of the palestinian or cow genocide means it would functionally be a completely different entity bearing only the name due to historical reasons. Like Nintendo the playing cards company and Nintendo the videogames company.
Sure, but that more or less also goes for Israel.
Olives from pissrael or spain are still olives. A “vegan” bigmac is a different product from the “original”.
Getting a business to change is also one of the goals. It pressures restaurants and grocery stores to provide more vegan options and put less focus on animal products.
Remember this always: Try.
Do what you can and don’t regret it. It’s not on you to fix the world but if we all just try, even a little bit, we might succeed eventually. Just remember when you try, I am too and so are millions and millions of others
I am only boycotting when I have options or I really don’t need whatever is offered. Also if it is the only option and I need it, the boycott takes a back seat.
I am an activist when it doesn’t inconvenience me
essentially what the tweet in the OP sounds like, thanks for putting it so succinctly.
