VEGANS AGAINST VEGAN STUPIDITY

Such a club doesn't exist, but I wish it did.

I originally heard about this situation when the lovely @goldenarms posted about it on his weblog here at steemit.com, where I commented in agreement with him and disagreement with what the "activists" were doing.

The short version is that a bunch of vegans, essentially unprovoked (other than this is one of the infinitely many restaurants who serve meat), decided to congregate outside this restaurant to protest the eating of meat. It's an organized, ongoing sort of thing which seems to involve loudness and hostility.

And then I happened to catch the chef/owner talking to Joe Rogan about it.

Joe Rogan is against veganism, so it's not lost on me that this is why he's having the guy on the show. Almost like the way Bill O'Reilly might choose his battles based on whatever naturally lends itself well to the perspective he wants to get across.

But it doesn't change the fact that this chef seems like a really nice guy and is completely in the right, and that these so called "activists" are being obnoxious af and not making the world better or even helping their own cause.

Having free speech and the right to assemble and all that doesn't mean that you can do it in all conceivable ways without violating general standards of politeness and decency.

If they really want to protest in this way, they could at least march thru the streets. It's a little twist that's better in all possible ways. They'll be seen by more people, without randomly victimizing one restaurant owner.

I speculate that what's going on in their psyche is that they actually want to victimize someone. Making life less pleasant for a restaurant owner (while I doubt they're consciously aware of it) is actually their goal. Whether or not it's making things better for the animals. They feel victimized, and so they want to victimize someone.

The anarchic nerd in me is jumping out of my chair like IT'S THE SIDEWALKS ,, PRIVATIZE TEH SIDEWALKS. And true, you should. But even short of that, state police (it is their sidewalk after all, and they'd probably be quick to break up a congregation of homeless people yelling at customers) should feel correct about it if they quell these people.

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Then there's this other segment where I guess a different vegan group has this girl stand up in front of the restaurant and start talking about her friend who was abused (and it turns out the friend is a chicken):

This seems completely less bad than the thing in Toronto, assuming they just do it once and then move on to another restaurant. It's at least kind of like entertaining and almost theatrical.

But it's cringey and, imo, a bad sort of activism in its own right.

I'm vegan myself, and if I had to briefly explain why, it's because I don't think it's right to cause pain or suffering where you can avoid doing so. But it doesn't mean that aggression against animals and aggression against people are exactly the same.

If you have a chance to hit a squirrel or hit a human with your car, I'd actually consider it kind of insane if you said there was no difference.

So to talk about "your friend" being abused, I get it in the sense of like you want to get people to empathize with the chicken. But it's also kind of trollish and manipulative. You're deliberately trying to imply that you're talking about a person, as a tactic to get their attention and lead their emotions somewhere. And I don't think it really works like that, that you can "trick" people into empathizing.

So there's probably some blowback, where you just polarize more people away.

And at one point she says the word 'murder' which I think literally is defined as a legal thing related to the killing of a person. So that would be maybe my most specific problem with the performance. (Just say 'kill'.)

It's like she wants to be cute and be like "oh I never actually said it was a person!", but nah.. ya kinda did 😃

At the same time, Rogan kind of shows his hand here.

It starts to be clear that he's looking to generally put down veganism. (I like that the chef, on the other hand, doesn't really bite, and he seems only concerned with the disturbance aspect.)

The "the animals eat meat tho" argument that Rogan gets into is just really bad. (Plus it's a tangent and off topic. Remember, you're pretending to only be concerned with the way they're protesting, not with how much sense their underlying cause makes.)

There's always the 3 or 4 really dumb arguments that some people make. (Probably any time you have some idea or philosophy or whatever that you're into, you hear those few really terrible arguments repeated. And this is one of them for veganism, that other animals eating meat is suggestive of what we should be doing.)

Of course the rebuttal is that chickens do lots of things that we don't mimic or take social cues from. Are you saying you're a chicken, Joe? Nobody is trying to bring veganism to the chickens.

It's just really dumb and meatheaded.

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But yes,

these protesters are obnoxious.

I'm often quick to argue that the "pushy vegan" stereotype is something that sensitive meat eaters imagine more than it's really out there.

And of course it's an observation bias sort of thing where the loudest and most obnoxious are the ones you notice. But still, apparently it's out there!

I'd really love these people in Toronto to quit it. They're making the world worse for the animals, not better. The only point to what they're doing is feeding their own desire to make a stink or make a victim out of someone.

Something like 6% of people are vegan, up from 2%, or something like that. It's growing fast. We have all the evidence and arguments on our side. You don't have to be disorderly and a troll to people. That's for you, not for veganism or for the animals.