I've been a vegetarian for 15 years. People IRL often do get offended if you tell them you don't eat meat. I try my best to avoid saying it because it often leads to being lectured about proteins. Everyone suddenly becomes a nutritionist when you explain why you don't eat meat.

From what I have seen, it more stems from the activism vegans are engaged in more than the actual veganism.

Do-gooder derogation Basically, some people perceive others' moral choices as criticism or as some kind of bragging.

If you accept that there are moral/ethical problems with eating meat (contribution to climate change, health concerns, animals being killed and eaten, whatever), and choose to eat meat anyway, and encounter a vegan, what has to happen?

You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you're making a worse choice. Most people are cowards and protect the ego at any cost. Rather than shrugging and saying "yeah, i should eat less meat. Good for you taking the high road", which requires accepting that you're not being the best, you can instead grab onto any reasons why no it's really them that sucks. That's easier, more comfortable, and doesn't require any painful introspection or changes.

It's the same mechanism when people get mad at cyclists, pedestrians, people who go to the gym, people who don't shop at Walmart, whatever. They're doing something that makes you feel bad in comparison. Most people are terrible at that and will lash out instead of doing anything productive.

Alternatively, or maybe additionally, people are really tribal, and once they adopt the idea that vegans (or cyclists, or people driving small cars, or people wearing sandals, whatever) are in the outgroup, then they enjoy being hostile to them.

People are ego driven emotional morons. All of us. Me, too. It's terrible.

It's a first world hill to die on, and many of the people who espouse veganism are only able to do so because of their own privilege.

It's a combination of smugness and "I'm better than you" and the lack of awareness that everyone had and continues to benefit from a world that has always used animal products. The Industrial Revolution basically ran on steam engines and leather belts, for example.

I have absolutely no problem with the idea that using fewer animal products and eating less meat is a good idea. I also recognize that feeding the world's growing population is probably going to involve insects being more widely used as a food source.

I don't hate veganism. It's a dietary choice and that's fine. What I hate is vegans. They're always pushy and judgmental and hateful and sometimes even destructive in their activism. They're an annoying group of people and I just don't want to have to deal with them.

I've never once in the last decade seen a single vegan post other than recipes. What I do see is constant posts about how "vegans are always throwing it my face/holier than thou", "I'm gonna eat extra meat because vegans make me feel bad". I really don't think vegans are the problem, I think these fools fall for every single piece of beef industry propaganda that comes across their screens.

The same reason people hate leftists, feminists, trans athletes, "gamer girls", people on welfare, blacks, etc. An image the right cultivated of the group, out of convenient easily-hateable annoying people in it that they could use to create a generalization/stereotype out of. It's something that's able to happen to any group, I could portray any hobbyist or activist in this way the same exact way as these "annoying" groups are portrayed, but the right is particularly willing to just flat out lie, slander, and cheat their way into making countercultural/anti-status-quo groups look as absurd as possible, to the point that the majority of the population falls for it (even those that don't consider themselves to be conservative).

I'll make a comparison. Conservative/"anti-sjw" thumbnails often have a picture of some angry-looking rainbow haired woman, usually the same few, in order to be like "look how irrational and crazy these feminazis are, she must hate men so much" and like 4 out of 5 of those times it's a picture of a woman that was protesting a literal neo-nazi gathering or something, not some sort of radical crazy man-hating feminist. But the internet has conditioned the average person to look at someone like that and immediately think they're an irrational "feminazi", and conservatives showing these pictures everywhere and making 100 videos on the same person makes people subconsciously believe they're rampant and have a massive (and bad) grip on society.

Same kind of thing happens with vegans, you have the same 10 or so internet vegans people use to portray veganism that conditions people to think poorly of the concept "vegan", and when these influencers are confronted about it they say "I don't hate veganism, I just hate the annoying vegans" then they go onto Twitter to complain about the vegans and how they're irrational for not eating meat and their brains must be de-evolving or something. They know what they're doing, but they can hide behind plausible deniability, and the majority of viewers fall for it.

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.

The meat and dairy industries have been pumping out propaganda for years, mostly aimed at right-wing dudes. It's just kind of part of right-wing culture at this point to kneejerk react to veganism with tired old tropes and stereotypes.

It was worse back in the 90s and early 2000s.

This is so frustrating. People saying "Oh I just don't like those self-righteous vegans". Thing is, it doesn't really matter what vegans say or how reasonable/logically sound it is, the knee-jerk reaction is always the same.

Holier than thou attitude from new vegans whose world view changed overnight and cognitive dissonance on the part of non vegan with the need to deflect than to make substantial changes.

People don’t hate veganism as much as they don’t appreciate being judged for their choices and chastised by other adults for beliefs that they don’t share.

Personally I have no problem respecting the beliefs of people who are vegan due to their personal morals. Until they start disrespecting the beliefs of others who don’t agree with them with regards to meat, then they become annoying.

Because of the trope that vegans are pretentious twats that publicly chastise anyone not vegan.

Like most things it’s one of those situations that’s blown out of proportion and the vast majority of us will never interact with a preachy vegan. I’ve encountered many vegans in the wild and they’ve most all been decent people, and I love picking their brains for decent vegan or vegetarian foods. I don’t mind vegan/vegetarianism, it’s just not easy to do well, so it helps to talk to people who do it for real. That said, I have encountered a few that are on the preachy side, but whatever. They’re no different than the tool who has the “eat tasty animals” bumper sticker and the like.

Usually it’s not veganism, itself. Rather, it’s the vegans.

Specifically the annoyingly loud, self-righteous, insists-everyone-must-join-them vegans.

Unfortunately, most people only really see this sort of vegan- rather than the more common, average sort of person who happens to also be vegan.

Because I sat at a table for an hour with a work colleague lecturing me on veganism. I couldn't care less if you don't lecture me.

Instead of whimsy anecdotes, how about something with a bit more science behind it: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation

It's not the diet or anything that bothers me; it's the vegans themselves. They're basically religious zealots but for food. If a meat eating atheist went around yelling at vegetarians and theists in unrelated discussions, I'd hate them too.

Speaking as a life-long lacto-ovo vegetarian who did a ten year stint as a vegan (I'm 30), it's because there is a subset of the vegan population that's very gung-ho about their diet and wants to proselytize about it, and no one likes being told what they should eat. When you remark on people's diets, people tend to get annoyed and defensive about it.

I grew up being told that my food looked yucky, how I can't call something meatballs since it doesn't contain meat, how since I don't eat protein I'll die, so on, so forth. It got annoying fast, so now I don't generally discuss my diet unless it makes a contextual sense. e.g. when planning a restaurant outing with people - though to be frank I often just avoid social situations where food plays a role.

I think where the big clashes really happen is when someone has made veganism/eating meat a core part of their identity, having that criticised, however gently that might be, will cause friction and often cause people to double-down on it; even though they may know on some level that the criticism might even be valid. You can see this in the fat pride movement as well.

100% it's just cognative dissonance. Everyone knows meat is bad but most can't come to terms that they're too weak to quit it. This is especially painful when people are confronted directly and a self-defence mechanism kicks in.

It's ok to be a bit weak sometimes, everyone has a lot of going and has to choose their battles. Our contemporary culture hates to acknowledge this thus creating a lot of binary tension.

I think it’s guilt actually. Most people deep down kind of know that eating meat is wrong, but if the whole world does it, you can’t be blamed cause you have no choice.

And then there comes someone who is not participating. Their existence breaks the logic above and implies that it’s a personal responsibility.

It’s part of a shifting norm and shifting norms are always controversial. Especially norms that involve opening up bodily autonomy, dignity, or respect to previously excluded groups.

Yeah I don't get it either. You do you 🤷🏼‍♂️

As long as people aren't trying to force their views on me (veganism, religion, what have you), I couldn't care less.

It challenges something people have been indoctrinated with and causes them to question their moral character.

Vegans are like Arch Linux users:

They make sure you know they are vegans.

I don't hate veganism.

I just don't like the militant and pompous attitude that some vegans seem to possess, that they feel that they have to flaunt their vegan lifestyles on others over.

Yes, go eat as many vegetables as you like, go eat meat alternatives and whatever. You do you, eat what you want. But I don't want to ever have someone like that coming up to my face and tell me what I'm allowed to eat in their eyes.

It's not veganism we hate, it's the stereotypical preachy vegans, acting like farming is the equivalent of the holocaust.

You don't tell me what to eat, I won't tell you what to eat, everyone's a winner.

My ex was vegan. While I have absolutely no problem with the practice of being vegan, she would critique and criticize nearly everything I ate. It was extremely exhausting. Nothing against vegans personally however some of them won't shut up about it and try to make you feel bad

People don't like to be made to feel uncomfortable (via knowledge) about something that they enjoy

I don’t hate people who are vegans.

I do hate the person who righteously yelled at me about eating meat while I was eating her vegan food at her house which she invited me to. And then proceeded to send me Facebook farm videos that were obviously staged. I worked on a farm… so when I corrected her what actually does happen on a farm Vs what these idiots were staging to get reactions, it was even more disgusting to me that she wasn’t doing any of this for the animals as she claimed but doing it so she could feel important. So she can fuck right off up a mountain.

So no:I don’t hate people who are vegans. I hate self involved, insincere shitheads.

That said yeah, we need to address commercial farming. It’s an issue. We need to cut down the meat products that are getting produced and stop creating diets that get capitalists richer. But also we need to be honest with what is actually happening. No, they do not give hormones to animals on farms. That practice was discontinued prior to the 1990s. We need to out assholes who spread this bullshit online, dampening the real issues as to why introducing more plant based food is necessary. We also have to keep plant based food healthy and not just inject it with sugar ,salt and fat creating the same health issues we had with consuming commercialized meat.

Also I think this is why vegan is a ruined word and why ‘plant-based’ is now becoming a substitute. To replace this damage that many of the self called vegans did that were just as much lying and cheating as the industry they so much hate. two wrongs do not make a right. So I’m all about the pivot away from that dumpster fire

Obviously there's the stereotype and that is what it is, but I usually get irked at the suggestion that it's easy and an imperative. Veganism and other similar diets are an EXTREME luxury, and is only a viable option for a small percentage of the population. It would never have been an option in the past and is still not remotely an option for most humans.

edit: see below comments to understand what I mean

People like to characterize those they already want to disagree with by the worst, most extreme examples of the group. So before even considering the benefits/drawbacks of veganism, people have already chosen their position after thinking "vegans are just so preachy and annoying".

It's putting outrage before reason, and it's really common in social media and news:

• Think about how Fox News viewers picture liberals as the least coherent, unreasonable individuals that they see get interviewed, when in reality most are just normal people.

• Or the reverse: how people in liberal circles might see conservatives depicted as Maga-hat wearing weirdos who think 5G is killing them.

• Same with how many religious people evaluate atheism or atheists think of religion by their worst representatives.

In short, I think the answer is that it's a symptom of tribalism and identity-politics.

Defensiveness

My list..

Sometimes they'll offer their opinions as "proof" that they're "right"

It's expensive, so often vegans are people with resources others don't have and yet they act like this isn't a thing

They're right that it's way better for the environment and it annoys me that I'm contradicting my own values on that point

There's an abuse of science at times, which always bothers me, even in the name of a good cause. If you're right, let the truth do the talking.

Just off the top of my head...

Not all vegans, etc... no actual hate involved for anyone

My personal experience has actually been quite whew opposite of everyone here apparently. Of the 3 vegans I've spent time with, not one of them has ever brought it up to preach or to sound smug. It only ever comes up because I ask for a recipe they served and they say something along the lines of "now, this is a vegan recipe, but you should be able to substitute 'x' with 'y' if you wanna avoid that." It's never preachy, it's always in the "don't let this being vegan ruin it for you" kind of way.

My low stakes conspiracy is that vegan hate on the internet is like people that don't like the word moist. They either watched friends and decided to adopt that as a personality trait, or they look up to someone that did just that. They hate veganism because they watched a comedian quip about it and agreed or they saw someone that watched a comedian and agreed. It's all too consistent to not be feeding from the same bowl.