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
It challenges something people have been indoctrinated with and causes them to question their moral character.
This is pretty much why people get mad and argue, along with many other posts from vegans in this thread. The very obvious disrespect and talking down to, insults, accusations of being bad people.
I think part of the issue is people tend to conflate “does something immoral/less moral than an alternative” and “is a bad person”.
I think most meat eaters would acknowledge that meat is inherently worse for the environment, and also less moral due to more animal suffering, than not eating meat. Doing so does not make them bad people, just like owning an iPhone doesn’t make someone a bad person, etc. And yet when the topic of "meat is immoral " comes up, people very quickly seem to think it is an accusation of them being a bad person?
Yup, if you want to change someone the last thing you do is accuse them. Instead, point them to material about how healthy a plant based diet is, and point out how cheap it is. Or for guys like me, tactfully, point out you have to eat more actual stuff to get the same amount of calories. So big guys can lose weight eating plant based. If you introduce it in a positive way then people feel supported instead of attacked. That’s where veganism went wrong.