Why is memes a back and forth of vegan vs anti vegan. Make your own damn communities. So damn tiresome to see the same comment thread every day in a different post.
Look, PETA is not exactly the model organization they think they are. Actually they have plenty of issues and hypocrisy with their own messages and IMO are by no means a credible or reliable source. BUT, credit where credit’s due, their shitpost that everyone hated got more discussion from both sides on the realities of the meat industry than any whistleblower or researcher publishing a paper on the conditions of industrialized meat farming, its environmental and climate implications. More engagement from this than pretty much any measured response, analysis, or criticism of the meat industry or the ethics of eating meat that has ever come out. This thread is an example of that.
That might say more about the nature of internet culture and what people will actually respond to and engage with than anything else. Obviously in an ideal world everyone will engage way more with those whistleblower and scientific researcher findings and organizations like PETA wouldn’t even exist, and it would be the measured responses that will be the things triggering discussion on subjects like plant-based meat and veganism, probably a much more level headed discussion since that tend to be more dependent on the context of the discussion than the subject itself, and we really should be working toward that. But, I think that’s still a silver lining because we absolutely need to be having these discussions.
I mean I’m just saying, banning meat lobby shilling and boomer tier animal abuse memes is morally good. Would be pretty based mod. Idk. They can get shit on in the thread for sure but I wouldn’t mind not seeing the brain rot 🤷♂️
Most people on here will know vegetarians or in some cases be one. It’s a respectable choice that takes a lot of willpower and energy. People who make fun of that aren’t my crowd. Mostly because it’s a dick thing to do.
As one who does not care if the food i eat has meat in it, maybe i can clarify why people react like this. It’s simple: you make me feel like i’m some sort of a heartless, evil person for eating meat, i will make you feel bad as well. Eating chicken is murder ? We humans are omnivores, we eat anything. Meat is less efficient land wise, but is more efficient to digest. Morals have nothing to do with it, as we have long evolved to be that way.
If you want people to eat more plants; my advice is to make it a better option. I often make myself a 100% plant pasta sauce, but that takes 3x longer to do and doesn’t cost much less then just grilling a piece of meat and cutting a tomato or two. Make cheap tasty vegetarian fast food stalls, cheap mini markets, etc. Calling people murderers will make some of them hate you.
PS I have a vegetarian friend, for over a decade i didn’t know he was. Respect his decision, has nothing to do with me.
Unpopular take: Good people doing bad things does not make the bad things not bad. Yes, purchasing and consuming animal products is a morally bad thing to do. It is not morally neutral.
So yes, by consuming animal products, you are a worse person than you would be if you were not.
Your choice is to purchase the bodies of the dead and “respect” the fact they at they were killed by turning them into sewage. Your choice is to financially reward those who bring them into existence for the sole purpose of killing them for your pleasure and the killers’ profit. This is not a morally neutral thing. This is a morally bad thing.
Personal choice stops being personal when there’s a victim. The victim is the one whose corpse is being ground up in your mouth.
And the angel of the lord came unto me, Snatching me up from my place of slumber, And took me on high and higher still Until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself, And he brought me unto a vast farmland of our own Midwest, And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil; One thousand, nay, a million, voices full of fear, And terror possessed me then, And I begged “Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?”, And the angel said unto me “These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, Tomorrow is harvest day, and to them, it is the holocaust!” And I sprang from my slumber, drenched in sweat, Like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared “Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!”
This is necessary This is necessary Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on This is necessary This is necessary Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life
Your opinion isn’t unpopular and you are not oppressed if the media supports you.
The problem is when the animal suffers. Animals eat other animals all the time and you’re not a killer if you want to eat meat and be healthy.
If killing animals to eat them is immoral and sadistic even if the animal doesn’t suffer then why you kill fucking plants to eat them? I value animals’ lives and plants’ lives more than human lives but I won’t stop eating just because of that neither will force people or say they’re killers cause they’re eating something that was previously alive.
Animals eat other animals out of necessity to survive. Humans don’t need to consume animal products at all to be healthy.
If you pay someone to kill and/or torture an animal, mortality wise that is the same as doing it yourself.
Is this a super hypothetical animal not suffering? Every animal that is any of the following: subjugated, imprisoned, artificially inseminated, branded, murdered, factory farmed, either taken from his/her mother or their offspring taken from them, neglected etc. Suffers. I don’t know how much you know about the farming industry, but the vast majority of farmed animals will suffer horrendously and be killed unkindly, unjustly and will before their natural lifespan. Their lives and murder are a real-life hell. Knocking the animals out before slitting their throats doesn’t always work. Many, many animals end up taking ages to die while being conscious. Many animals are boiled alive because they didn’t get knocked out. But that is just at the point of being murdered… almost all farm animals up to that point will have suffered varying degrees of mental and physical torture.
I don’t know if you are joking about comparing eating plants being the same as eating animals. A lot of meat eaters do seem to make that argument as if it is genuine, so I’ll respond to it by pasting a part of a book I read recently about it;
“Firstly and most obviously, it’s important to address the science behind this. A plant lacks a central nervous system, pain receptors and a brain which means that anatomically they don’t have the ability to feel pain.
If we also consider that the primary reason human and non-human animals feel pain is to alert us that we are in danger or are being hurt and that we need to escape the situation that we are in, a plant cannot move and thus any pain would be inescapable, making life torturous for any plant. Which begs the question, why would plants ever evolve such a horribly debilitating and destructive characteristic, as it goes against the fundamental purpose of evolution?
If we now view the “plants feel pain argument” from a creationist point of view, why would a benevolent and compassionate God give such a horrible curse to plants? Why would he allow them to suffer so terribly, if it served no purpose for their survival?
I think part of where the confusion regarding plants and pain comes from is that it is true that they are alive and they conduct various activities at a cellular level, such as tilting to face the sunlight. In fact, plants are capable of doing some truly amazing things, but they do not conduct any activities at a conscious or cognitive level, in essence meaning that plants are not sentient.
I think a really good way of highlighting this to people is to point out that plants react but they don’t respond. A venus fly trap shuts itself on to a fly, not because it is consciously aware that a fly has landed onto it, but because it reacts to the pressure stimuli caused when the fly lands onto it. This is why the venus flytrap will close around anything that triggers this response, including cigarette butts. A cow on the other hand, won’t eat cigarette butts just because someone puts them in their mouth because a cow consciously responds.
If we move past the science of whether or not plants feel pain and concentrate on the ethics of the excuse, I am doubtful that anyone truly believes that dropping a cauliflower into boiling water and boiling chickens alive (something that often happens in the chicken slaughtering process) is the same thing. Nobody thinks that slicing the neck of a cow is similar to cutting the stems off a broccoli, or castrating a pig is similar to peeling a potato. But say the person you are talking to is determined that plants feel pain like animals do - it takes up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of animal flesh, meaning vastly more plants are killed in the production of animal products than they are vegan products. On top of this it’s important to note that up to 91% of Amazon rainforest destruction is due to animal agriculture, meaning that millions of trees have been and continues to be destroyed because of our consumption of animal products.
So if the person you are speaking to truly believes that plants feel pain and are sentient, then remind them that by consuming non-vegan products they are not only causing the suffering of animals but also causing the alleged suffering of huge amounts of plants as well. To be honest, if this excuse comes up I often avoid talking about the science of whether or not plants have the ability to feel pain as sometimes people will say, “but science has only gone so far” and they get stuck with that point. Instead, I often just go straight into talking about the amount of crops killed for animal products, so perhaps try asking: “For the sake of discussion, let’s say plants do feel pain, are you aware that it can take up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of animal flesh, so vastly more plants are murdered for animal products than they are vegan products?” You could also ask, “If you were driving down the road and a dog jumped out in front of your car, would you swerve onto a bed of flowers to avoid hitting the dog?” - this reinforces in people’s minds that there is morally a difference between non-human animals and plants, as in that situation we would always choose to avoid the dog and instead hit the plants”
Plants can feel pain and it’s not a creationist standpoint, they just can’t make a visible reaction but they do transmit very small electric charges in reaction to pain. Plants also can react to other things like sounds and it is sometimes used to make them grow better. Also, they can’t scream but they’re still alive so you’re still murdering them.
Animals aren’t tortured cause of the simple fact stress makes their meat bad (and it would be a crime and stupid to torture an animal just cause you can) and sometimes nearly not edible and, if you couldn’t notice, people don’t eat bad meat.
“Lie for youself if you want but not to me.” You can pretend your unhealthy is helping someone but you can’t say to people it is healthy. Vegans face many health issues and are, almost always, very underweight; humans are omnivores and not herbivores. Destroy your body if want but don’t lie to other people and encourage them to do the same.
I figured you have been trolling from the start but ok… A visible reaction in plants = pain? Just because there is a reaction in something, doesn’t mean it has to be pain. How do you know the reaction isn’t pleasure or you know… just a reaction without a feeling involved?
Also, I didn’t say that it was just a creationist idea, part of the book passage I pasted covered that incase people try to argue it from that standpoint, but the main focus is the science behind the idea I’m pretty sure the concept of murder covers sentient beings.
But let’s say for sake of argument they do feel pain, many, many more plants are grown and ‘murdered’, as you put it, to be fed to farm animals than straight to humans. So for the human race to cut down on both animal and plant murder, it would be best to cut out animal farming altogether which would save both trillions of animals and many more trillions of plants from being tortured and murdered. Humans obviously need to eat to survive, so why not go with the way that causes the least suffering both animal and plant wise, if it can’t be cut out completely?
To quote my favourite philosopher as to why he was vegetarian “cows scream louder than carrots”.
You may continue to voice your mis/disinformation about veganism being unhealthy, but these days there’s so much proof that being vegan can be healthy, not only healthy but has many health benefits over a meat eating diet including missing out on all kinds of diseases which come from a meaty diet. Biologically speaking it seems humans have most in common with frugivores. I’m thinking most people think we are omnivores simply because we are able to eat both plants and animals. Real omnivores are many times biologically better evolved to have meat in their diet.
Several of the biggest health organisations in the world have confirmed that a vegan diet is healthy. I don’t know where you get your information from, but it is incredibly faulty.
Reaction to being damaged ≠ pain? So how can you know animals feel pain if someone damaged them? It may be just pleasure. Absolutely not, nature won’t make plants seek for their doom for whatever reason.
If you watch animals reacting to pain, pretty sure most people (including non-human animals) with a brain can recognise the animals are trying to escape the pain. They audibly scream and cry when in pain. They either try to run away or defend themselves. I’m pretty sure there have been countless experiments on animals that prove beyond any doubt that they experience pain very similarly to us human animals.
We know for a fact that animals have central nervous systems and most people can tell when other sentient beings are in pain because we know how it feels to be in pain ourselves.
Do you honestly believe plants feel pain? Or is it just some kind of weird tactic to justify continuing to enslave, torture and murder animals?
I think you mentioned earlier about people using sound to help plants grow; another way to help plants grow is to prune them. I’m not a gardener by any means, but it seems with many plants the more you prune, the stronger and bigger the plant eventually becomes.
So speaking hypothetically, it’s not outside the realms of possibility that if plants were able to feel for some reason, then maybe it does feel good to be cut shorter so that it can come back bigger, stronger and more capable of surviving than before.
Look, I agree that eating meat is morally bad, I accept that. What most extremist vegetarians need to accept is that there’s people that simple don’t care about animals as much as them, I don’t really care about it just like I don’t really care about some bad things happening in the world, I know that it’s morally wrong, and I’ll push for more options for the people that do care, but I won’t restrict my diet or personally try to fix those things, because I don’t care enough.
And this sounds quite rude and I look like an ass, I know, but the reality is that there’s a lot of people that think exactly like this. Hell there’s tons of people that thinks like this about actual humans. You won’t convince those people because in the end, it’s their decision and as bad as eating red meat etc is for the body and global warming etc, so are tons of other stuff that people do.
I really advocate for more vegetarian stuff, I actually enjoy seitan/tofu and dishes with them, but the fact is that I’ll keep consuming meat once in a while, and when you start trying to make every meat consumer your enemy, you also make people from my group, people that actually push for more progress, your enemy, and that’s honestly a bad way to make progress.
This is going to be a generational progress, there’s way more vegetarian teenagers than 40+ people, and every friend group I frequent on my age range 25-35 has at least someone vegetarian, and businesses naturally will offer more options because if they won’t they’ll lose business.
Try not making society your enemy, because if you do you will become the enemy of society.
May I request that you watch Dominion, a 2018 documentary about the farming industry. youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko
If, after watching it, you still don’t care about consuming animal products or not then fair enough. People seem so sure they already know how animals are farmed so they don’t need to learn about it or watch this kinda thing, but I feel many people would be shocked to actually see with their own eyes that it’s not ‘happy cows living it up in green fields all day’ like the farming industry would like us all to continue believing.
Many people who work in factory farms end up with all kinds of mental illnesses. Even those who are desensitised to the suffering of animals end up with PTSD and severe depression from contributing to this man-made animal hell.
My grandparents had pigs, chicken, goats, etc. And my father has farm animals. I’v also seen larger scale farming in my country. It’s not so bad as what you are thinking of, here is not the usa. I know of what you want to show me. Maybe go watch Clarksons Farm for a different view ? Do what you want either way.
So have you seen Dominion already? I just find it hard to believe anyone can watch Dominion from start to finish and not be done with animal products forever, unless they lack any form of empathy.
I don’t see how your family having farm animals has much relevance unless they keep them as part of an animal sanctuary where the animals can live out their lives in peace and safety, plenty of room to roam and live as they would like to live their lives? Were any of the animals’ lives cut short so that they could be eaten? Were any of them ever forced to do something they didn’t want to do? Did any of the animals that were slaughtered actually want to die?
When you say you’ve seen large scale farming in your country, was that in the slaughterhouses? All of the animals were treated with courtesy and respect? Never mistreated? Imagine for a moment that instead of animals being farmed, it was your family members being farmed… would you feel that they were all being treated fairly and justly then? Being herded around and murdered in the prime of their lives so someone can enjoy a sandwich?
Animals have feelings and emotions just like human animals… the way they feel things will be very similar to how we feel things, both pain and happiness amongst all the other types of feelings and emotions. Imagine again your family being stunned before being murdered, does that make the murder ok because they didn’t suffer at the moment of death? Or perhaps you live in a country where you don’t even need to stun the animal before killing, you can just hang them upside down and skirt their throat while they slowly die in agony.
I’ve seen a clip of Clarksons farm, it was something to do with him always feeling dread when it was time for his animals to be slaughtered. I’m assuming because even a complete buffoon like Clarkson knows deep down, it’s wrong to kill animals.
A) I don’t have to equivocate. Killing humans isn’t the same as killing a chicken. We agree. The point is obvious. Moderation exists for a reason. Discrimination and normalizing violence are things worth moderating. You’re either being intellectually dishonest in response or need to give it a little more thought.
B) Species difference aside, their experience at scale is by definition a holocaust. 136 million will die today alone. They can’t grasp the scale as individuals, but they experience it personally. Believe it or not, some people value non-human life. Whether or not you do is not relevant given lack of moral justification.
You can’t expect people in here to have some kind of brain. It’s like trying to understand how they want a free (as in freedom) Internet without big tech at the same time they want censorship of their opponents and are lefties.
My dad was killed before I was born, and I was raised by sisters and aunts. So you can take your hollering about the patriarchy somewhere tf else lol. Got any other talking points you’d like to try out?
If that’s true and not an attempt to emotionally stun the conversation as is common in dipshit trolls, I’m sorry for your loss.
Back to your dumbass toxic masculinity comment now - you literally argued that they were being “emotional” despite nothing in their argument being emotional
But yeah we can pretend you somehow had a point lmao
That Texas heat has you delusional. hopefully climate change from the massive meat farm industry won’t fuck up that privatized (lmao epic win right) electrical grid yall rely on.
Lord knows I’ll be lobbying that you all get not one penny of aid.
Your brilliant, typical southern response to someone expressing how they feel about a situation was to call them emotional.
How is that not typical toxic masculinity/patriarchy. You don’t need a father or male role model in your life to be affected by, oh I don’t know, the rest of the fucking men in the country?
You fuckers need to get your head out of the sand, learn how to have civil debate again (like the south used to be, prior to getting FUCKED on the civil war) and reinvest in your education systems because you sound dumb as fuck right now
Personally, I just think the moral middle ground would be to be the person that slaughters and butchers the animals you eat. It would allow the most respect for all parties imo.
I don’t know. That feels a bit off-center to me rather than middle considering one end of the spectrum is “kill nothing ever” and the other end is “How many endangered animals can I make extinct just for funsies.” If everyone killed what they ate themselves, manually, I bet we’d have a bunch more vegetarians hanging around.
I agree that question is morally neutral. And not yet, I don’t, but that is the long term goal. I’ve got the land I would need and am working on fencing. In the interim, I have switched to meat raised and butchered by hand.
Hmmm, I hadn’t considered it in those particular terms, previously. I would definitely say my actions are less moral than they would be if I was doing the raising and butchering myself. Evil feels harsh but if we are using clear cut terms like good, neutral and evil, then I have to put my current actions in the evil column. And since my entire argument is based on a moral middle ground, I would say yes. I am attempting to move into morally neutral territory.
Yes, PETA does some crazy shit, but as with many things there are two sides to the story which is difficult to see when you get bombarded by anti-PETA stuff as is common on e.g. Reddit.
They are the driving power behind all the misinformation and PETA-hate that is spread around. PETA is actually doing a lot for animal rights, that’s why they are such a big target for smear campaigns:
PETA kills animals because unfortunately there are no better places for them. Blame the puppy mills and irresponsible short term owners that give up their pets a few days or weeks after getting them because they had no idea what they got themselves into. Those people create more pets than there are places for them, so instead of having them become strays and further add to the problem, PETA put down those they can’t adopt out. Because PETA accepts all animals, even those that other shelters turn away in order to not sully their adoption numbers, PETA shelters end up with many more “hopeless” animals. See more here.
The case of the mistaken dog (and how PETA doesn’t steal and murder pets):
A farmer asked PETA to euthanise a pack of stray dogs that were aggressive and violent towards the farmer’s cows. Upon arrival, PETA found the pack of stray dogs, took them to the shelter and put them down, as a free service. Unfortunately it turned out, that one of the presumed stray dogs was a pet-chihuaha called Maya, that was not sitting on the porch, as often claimed, but running freely with the stray pack, without leash or collar or supervision. PETA fucked up, because they didn’t wait the 5 day grace period to give the owners time to look for and collect their pet. That’s why they had to pay a fine and apologized for it. www.whypetaeuthanizes.com/maya.html
The monkey selfie:
The monkey took the picture himself btw, the photographer just left the camera lying around. I am not saying the monkey should be copyright holder and it’s an open-shut case, but it does raise the question about the photographer having ownership over something that was voluntarily and independently created by an animal. What if a painter would leave his brushes lying around and an animal would create a painting? The artist actually sees it the same way and settled for a compromise with PETA followed by a joint statement. This was a landmark case in copyright law.
PETA equating milk to racism:
White supremacists actually use milk to demonstrate their superiority over “inferior” (their words, obviously) lactose intolerant ethnicities. That’s the reason behind their campaign on the issue.
Final thoughts (I promise):
PETA does a good job at raising issues and are one of the most successfull organisations to fight for animal rights. The granting of rights is the only real way to protect animals from unneccessary cruelty. Animal welfare will always be arbitrary, both in what species are worthy of protection, and the extent of protection they are worthy of. You cannot consider yourself an animal lover without recognizing the importance of that.
Sometimes PETA (intentionally?) overshoot, that happens when you try to move the border of current perceptions (i.e. animals are objects to be used for food, clothes, entertainment). I am not here to defend their tone or (lack of) tact, and there are a number of (sometimes downright stupid) PETA-campaigns I disagree with. I’m not trying to convice you to become their friend, but at least judge them for what they are doing, not for what they are said to do.
Most of the criticism of PETA you read on Reddit comes straight from the mouths of the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE), formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). It’s basically a corporate propaganda organization with donors like Tyson Foods, Wendy’s, and Coca-Cola. They also run campaigns claiming obesity isn’t that major of a problem and that you can eat 10 times as much mercury from fish as experts recommend. The vast majority of the animals PETA euthanizes are suffering and are brought to PETA’s shelter by their owners specifically to be put out of their misery, but the CCF distorts that into “PETA is stealing people’s pets off the streets” and Reddit gobbles it up.
The media also knows that PETA is an easy target. Years ago I read an article in one of the British tabloids (the Sun or the Mirror) with a headline something like, “PETA blasts child’s bunny wedding!” But if you actually read the article, what happened is a kid dressed up some bunnies in wedding outfits, the “journalist” reached out to PETA and asked them to comment, and PETA said something like, “we don’t support dressing rabbits in costumes because it may be stressful for them.” And that was the end of the story, but that wouldn’t get clicks so they distorted the headline to make it sound like PETA was protesting or attacking the kid on their own accord.
For the record, I think there are perfectly legitimate criticisms of PETA, like the sexist imagery they use in some of their ad campaigns and their welfarist (as opposed to abolitionist) approach to advocacy. It just gets to me that so many redditors claim to be rational and free-thinking but then read literal corporate propaganda about PETA and swallow it whole without a second thought.
It’s their own materials and marketing, it just gets on my nerves. I hadn’t heard any of those claims about them, so the smear campaign didn’t reach me. I’m a vegetarian anyway, but yeah, I don’t like PETA.
No, I find the way they conduct themselves as an organisation irritating. Because they are brash, rude, and often come across as stupid as in the above post describing the chicken family unit.
An interesting tangent is that this could entail the extinction of several human-designed strains of animal which are not well equipped to live in the wild.
So mote it be I guess.
Base genetics are still around for the chicken, pig, and sheep, but the Aurochs’s extinction means we irrevocably altered the cow. I’m sure a few varieties of cow would adapt to the wild though.
Buffalo may need to keep their vestigial wings too.
More broadly, the answer is that it doesn’t really matter that much. Species go extinct all the time, and with humans around the rate has been astronomically higher. Replacing animal products with plant based or cell based products might even have a net benefit in extinctions, since land that would otherwise go towards feeding and raising livestock could instead be let back to nature.
Simple: If the animals were freed they would destroy the ecosystems they were freed in (all ecosystems). They could all be killed so they don’t cause any impact. The animals would be suffering from pain, illnesses and slow deaths just as nature intended. Animals would not turn vegans. The world would probably suffer a supply issue. Everyone would be weak, unhealthy and have a lower lifetime cause of their horrible diet. Everyone would be hypocrite as they kill plants and don’t feel remorse just because they’re killing something that can’t walk and doesn’t have eyes and mouth.
I don’t know what the metric is, but chickens wouldn’t exist without us eating them. So from a species standpoint they need us to keep eating them. From a humane standpoint it’s probably cruel to keep the species alive.
Agreed. The chicken’s closest natural ancestor, the red jungle fowl, would continue to live in the wild. Unlike modern chickens, they only lay around once a month (as opposed to upwards of once a day), and they aren’t bred to be excessively large to the point that many can’t even walk properly. It would definitely be more humane to let these human made species go extinct.
If a life form alien to me was going to suddenly, randomly (from my perspective) kill me to use me as food, I don’t think I would necessarily mind because I had no idea it was going to happen. If I lived my entire life in fear that I could be killed at any moment, I’d be less ok with it.
I guess what I was going for was that trying to compare a chicken’s understanding of mortality to our own isn’t a compelling argument to me. I think the simple fact that they’re alive and deserve to be treated with dignity is a better argument.
The world is burning. Meat has got to go, just like short holidays by plane. And of course a whole bunch of other things. There is very little room to bargain here as we’re way behind on our targets.
who gives a shit what you eat
We all should because we share this planet. You should judge a friend who eats steak frequently the same as someone who once in a while chops down a bit of rainforest. The consequences are the same.
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