this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
329 points (88.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35735 readers
890 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

I said this on another thread posted by a very antagonistic vegan: Acting holier-than-thou, smug, and hostile is not a good way to convince people of your arguments. It pushes people away and biases them against you and the argument you're making.

Far too often I see vegans outright shaming and harassing people for choosing to eat meat, or acting smug and superior because they are making "the right moral decision" and everyone else is lessor for thinking otherwise. I often see them call people "stupid" and "lazy" for not making the same choice they did.

Now, if I came here acting the same way, but I was championing eating only meat and shaming others for eating vegetables, I'm sure vegans would be upset for the same reason.

It's gotten bad enough that a lot of people (admittedly myself included) are put off by vegans and their arguments. Not because the arguments don't have merit (they certainly do) but because enough vegans have acted antagonistic or smug that they get shunned for it when the discussion gets brought up, because it's what has become expected.

If you really want people to listen to you, you need to frame it from a friendlier and more down-to-earth position and not come across as hostile. The human mind tends to close itself off immediately when faced with hostility. This doesn't just apply to discussions about veganism, but any discussion in general really.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

I have absolutely encountered way more smug meat eaters than vegans or vegetarians... They go out of their way to make sexual jokes about forcing some sausage down people's throats, too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

If you're not vegan because of what other vegans might or might not do, maybe grow a pair and do what you think is best? Can't people think for themselves anymore?

Kinda childish or sad not to do what you want because of others, most of whom you've never even met in real life.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

And I have yet to encounter a single smug vegan. Not online, not offline.

But I've seen countless people like you fighting the just fight against vegan windmills (awesome Rügenwalder double reference for the German people here).

So where exactly are those vegans? Are they in the room with us right now? Or are you defining every mere mentioning of veganism as an attack because you deep down are afraid of actually having to confront the cognitive dissonance you're living under?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

With the Kirsti Noem controversy going on I've seen quite a few smug shit takes about veganism including (paraphrasing) "why are all you non-vegans outraged by this, it's no different than murdering a cow for their meat".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

i mean, a great many people don't appreciate being told they are murderers. it provokes defensiveness rather than an openness to pro-vegan arguments.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

It completely disregards other people's feelings.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well, it's not actually that different. There's no consistent moral principle that explains why the animals we treat preferentially ought to be treated preferentially, it just comes down to cultural norms and which animals you think look cute. It's worth examining whether our behaviors are grounded on what we actually think makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Thanks for your advice, but just to be sure it actually works, may I ask how many people you have convinced to go vegan?

Surely your advice is based on actual experience, right? You're not just saying this because you disagree with veganism and want vegans to phrase their arguments in a toothless and ineffective way, right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Far too often I see vegans outright shaming and harassing people for choosing to eat meat,

As someone that has been Vegan before I assure its far far far far far far more common for it to be the other way around.