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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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GoodGuy's social law #235: public perception of a social movement is, for obvious reasons, conditioned by the movement's most vocal advocates.

Are vegans annoying, or is it that vocal veganism advocates tend to be annoying?

I think a lot of it is perception. Veganism, like Kosher and Halal have a lot of foods that are not part of that diet, and it’s necessary to find out if the foods on offer contain offending ingredients. There’s no way to do this without having to announce it on some level or be annoying about asking.

This is only true of perfect, 100% veganism. I think that you can call yourself a vegan and eat meat occasionally. The idea of being a vegan, as far as I am concerned, is that you are doing your best to not eat meat and you eat meat very rarely, if ever. I would be fine with calling someone a vegan if they, for example, sometimes stopped checking for animal products in food at social gatherings in order to not be annoying, but the rest of the time they avoided animal products.

Vegans are annoying when you have to make an entire parallel menu to your Christmas dinner because of them, knowing that if they were hosting they would never, ever reciprocate for your preferences.

I don't think that social law is true. With the frequent siloing of groups and their members, most people won't interact with the vocal advocates, and 'most people' drive public perception. The most fervent socialist or gun-rights advocate in an American context are probably tucked away on twitter or youtube or possibly a university or thinktank, the public bases their perception I think from people like AOC or Wayne Lapierre.

Based on personal experience having been vegan for a ten year period of my life, most of the time I was so exhausted by the topic it’s the last thing I wanted to talk about.

The most annoying vegan advocates, in my experience, are people who just started and don’t understand why everyone else isn’t joining them immediately.

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