Microblog Memes

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.

https://xkcd.com/871/

In a sense they're not wrong, but it depends on what is actually happening, and what the person's attitude it. It's good to pursue a lifestyle that's increasingly less dependent on animal products, even if imperfect. But is an actual progression occurring? It can often be the case, especially with dietary things, that a person will do something they believe is good once, and then treat themselves with a "cheat" day three times to that one good choice.

My change didn't happen overnight. But I approached it the same way that did when I quit smoking: I kept track of how long I went without eating animal products. When I messed up and caved in, I would start over at 0 the very next day, and resolve to go even more days without animal products than I had done on the previous attempt.

One of the larger barriers I had to break through was an anxiety about nutrition. By that point I had a pretty firm grasp of nutritional science already, and knew that people can get all of their nutrients from plants. Consciously I knew better. But unconsciously there was still this wild fear as to whether or not I could keep living on plants only. It felt dangerous. I was going up against a lifetime of propaganda.

The last time I intentionally ate meat was some pepperoni. At that point I had gotten so used to living on plants that it didn't taste the same anymore. For one, it turned out at least for me, that after being without meat for long enough, it didn't smell the same anymore. The odor became more rotten. It didn't and doesn't matter how fresh the meat is, it all smells like putrefying carcass now. That was one thing that made the pepperoni taste off. The other was that apparently I had gotten used to having less salt in my diet, because it was a completely overpowering, disgusting salt bomb.

And something had clicked in my head by that point. As I was eating it I kept thinking, "Why am I doing this? I'm not even enjoying it. I don't need it. This isn't right." So I stopped eating it, and I haven't felt the need to consume any animal body parts ever again.

Anyway, I think where things become frustrating depends on how a person is framing their habits. If it's something like, "I'm trying, I am working on doing better," then it's understandable. But if it sounds more like the person is trying to justify eating animals or their products, and they're either talking about it in a way where they're trying to seek validation or using "militant vegans" as a strawman to criticise (see: the majority of the comments here) - that kind of makes it hard to remain diplomatic.

In cases like the latter, why are you so preoccupied with what other people think? It's not about vegans, it's about the animals. Going vegan requires going against an immense tide of social pressure, and that burden will never go away. You need to learn to think for yourself. Because when you do, you can look more objectively at how humankind treats every other species of sentient being on the planet and use your own internal moral compass to finally recognize what's right in front of your face: it is wrong to eat them. It is wrong to exploit them. What happens in factory farms and slaughterhouses is horrific. And it can never stop until we stop supporting it.

It's a hard conversation because y'all are demanding we tiptoe around a vast injustice that is urgent and actively resulting in the extreme suffering and deaths of billions every year. That's not even getting into the other issues like health problems, environmental destruction, and pandemic and zoonotic disease potential.

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!

what you believe is not shown by what you just tell yourself in your head, but shown by how you act. it means that if you say you believe in the ideals of veganism but can't give up a meal of bacon for it, you simply don't hold that value strong enough.

which is fine, its okay to be unsure about your values, but lets not confuse ourselves here by saying we can hold certain values without behaving like we actually do.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I support small changes for self improvement. Buying pints instead of fiths is a start.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly