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.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 15 years. People IRL often do get offended if you tell them you don’t eat meat. I try my best to avoid saying it because it often leads to being lectured about proteins. Everyone suddenly becomes a nutritionist when you explain why you don’t eat meat.
As a life-long vegetarian, this has been my experience as well.
Yeah. I try not to mention it to people if I can avoid it. I work construction and am surrounded by manly men tring to out man each other. I had one guy offer me bear jerkey and got bent out of shape when I declined. He wouldn’t stop. He just kept on me about why I didn’t eat meat. After about an hour of him asking again and again why I don’t eat meat I said “meat’s another word for dick and eating dick is gay”. As problematic as it was, it worked.
It never cases to amaze me that a 250pound dude with a 40oz soda in one hand and a mouthfull of gas station pizza thinks he has the responsibility to lecture me about nutrition.
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.
You can accept that they are making a better choice,
That’s exactly where it starts. You simply assume that vegans are the better people. And then you preach. That’s exactly what people dislike in vegans and similar people.
You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you’re making a worse choice.
No, people don’t dislike vegans or vegetarians because of their choices, they dislike them because they lord their, what they think “better” choice over others. And create in- and out- groups via labeling.
Being vegan or vegetarian means that you have to spend more money in the store to buy food, because meat is heavily subsidized compared to vegetarian options. Also, because being vegan/vegetarian is not the default, many products are overpriced.
Another point is that a healthy and varied diet using only vegan or vegetarian food doesn’t come so natural, so you have to research this more, which means you have to spend time, which again is a commodity.
So it is not just about good or bad, it is also about privilege and class. So people should not go around making statements about other people making “worse” choices.
