this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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I thought about not sending this as I have been very unsuccessful in advocating for veganism, but considering the other comments I thought I may as well share.
When I became vegan at 16 I had my worldview shatter. I promptly went and told all my friends about veganism, the horrors of animal agriculture, and urged them to become educated on the issue. All, with one exception, got upset at me when I talked about it and eventually stopped being my friends, partly due to me advocating for veganism. I think the last straw was when I sent the group chat Dominion after I had seen it. It was very traumatising to watch and I wanted the others to know of the horrors they were contributing to (especially considering we were all living in Australia), but apparently I was "making everything about myself" again... I ditched their sorry asses soon afterwards.
The only exception to this, ended up watching some Earthling Ed videos I had sent and ended up becoming an "ethical" vegetarian 😭. I tried explaining how the dairy industry is not "ethical", but they genuinely seem to not be able to understand or care enough to do anything about it. I was mortified that I had created a vegetarian.
Afterwards, I didn't have many friends due to being vegan—among other issues—, but the one time I did make a new friend (via falling in love with an omni) I did basically instantly convert them to veganism just by explaining that meat is murder and veganism is based lol. I think they just trusted my word for it and they are a super based vegan still after years.
So becoming vegan, I lost lots of friends (although veganism was just one of many things that amounted to that), accidentally converted one to vegetarianism, and only once successfully created another vegan. I'm quite ashamed of how little (perceived) impact I've made, but recently I have been quite proud of my one convert as they are my best friend now and I don't have to deal with carnists on a day to day basis.
It would be wonderful if we could flip a switch and have everyone become vegan just by explaining the facts about the exploitation of animals, but it's not our burden to carry. This is a generalization, but I don't think we all became vegan as soon as we understood that certain "foods" came from violence. Each person makes the decision to participate in this violence with every meal. One day it clicked for you. Maybe one day it will click for them. You can't hold yourself accountable for other people's actions.
Although I feel conflicted about this one because I don't believe people are irredeemable, I do think it makes sense to have distance grow between people when their ethics are fundamentally opposed to one's own. I'm guessing I'm at a different life stage than you, and I don't want to downplay how hard this sounds like it was. I can share that friendships exist in all sorts of ways and sometimes they wind down because we or they aren't the same as we were when the friendship started.