this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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With respect, this approach does nothing to convince people to reduce their meat consumption, and in fact alienates people who might otherwise be on the fence about reducing their meat intake.
We get told this literally no matter how we approach the subject lol.
Which approach is it you think I'm using here and why is it ineffective?
It's not like I've been especially rude or anything?
Which approach worked on you?
You've been hostile ("reactionary fucks") and you've hijacked the broader discussion referenced in the article (Musk's Twitter showing terrible videos including human death, animal cruelty, etc) to make a point about meat consumption generally versus videos on Twitter showing the intentional and purposeful infliction of pain on animals for pleasure.
My meat consumption is down quite a bit. Information on substitutes, good recipes, studies on the intelligence of (for example) squid and such have shifted me into eating less meat. While I'm sure you'd prefer people not eat meat at all, convincing 5 people to cut their meat consumption 50% is better than convincing 0 people to cut their meat consumption 100% , no?
After my comments were downvoted to hell lol.
I've not hijacked anything, I contributed to the conversation and everyone lost their minds because they don't wanna think about the animal abuse they support every day.
Would you feel the same about abolishing slavery?
Would I prefer that 5 people free half of their slaves versus no one freeing any slaves? Of course, why would I want everyone to stay enslaved if I could free some and continue to work to free others? Would you prefer that everyone who is currently a slave remain enslaved until we convince the entire world to free their slaves?
I think they more prefer to focus on the issue (the state of Twitter) in a post about Twitter, versus going off on tangents that would otherwise make for interesting conversation.
Would you prefer people advocate for freeing all slaves or "slave free monday"?
I think it's really a difference about whether you approach meat consumption as a moral issue or an environmental and social one.
I tend to agree with @Melpomene that any improvement is a good thing, maybe a better analogy would be in CO2 emissions. If we can convince 10% of people to bike to work one day a week then that'll make meaningful difference, and it's exactly the same from an emissions standpoint as taking X cars off the road.
Convincing someone, at least in the USA, to do without a car is fundamentally difficult, but convincing them to use it less is a significantly more accessible proposition.
I just don't see reduction as enough or what should be advocated when it comes to something so serious as billions of animals getting needlessly killed.
Billions of animals are killed wherever crops are grown.
Even if you are entirely vegan, animals have to die if you want to eat.
In fact, if your food is grown on a farm then you are probably contributing to more animal deaths than someone who obtains food from hunting or fishing.
Source on billions of crop deaths?
Besides, most plants grown are used for animal feed.
Killing animals when we don't have to is inherently cruel, farming can be done without harming animals.
Billions of invertebrates and other small animals are killed during tilling before planting, with pest/weed control during the growing season (even with "organic" or "natural" compounds), and of course during harvest.
This is inevitable, farming requires controlling soil and plants, and this will inevitably kill animals that you don't even see. Do you really think you can flood a rice paddy without killing countless mesofauna?
Fishing/hunting also kills animals, but you can catch a fish or hunt a deer without restructuring an entire ecosystem. Which means you can feed yourself without killing quite so many animals.
That you literally made this argument is sad and gross. You just argued that people shouldn't fight to free all slaves. What the actual fuck? You literally made an argument to not fight against slavery because it's hard
?????
Slavery never ended suddenly, exactly like any other major change in society. Also its extremely off topic.
The "reactionary fucks" was in response to hostility. Hijacking broader topic? I'm sure you're on reddit complaining about John Oliver taking over the broader topic that is generally on r/pics. I'll let you ruminate on that until you see the obvious point.
I'm sure in history some abolitionists wanted to get rid of slavery all together, but just minimizing the number of slaves is better than nothing right so they shouldn't have been so absolutist. At least according to your own argument unless you admit to being hypocritical or simply not understanding the argument of those you're responding to. You can't be neither though.
You're putting forth either bad faith arguments or extremely toxic ones, under the guise of polite society. It's kind of sickening if you aren't actually intentionally doing it.
This is kind of funny, cause it's the same approach the toxic right takes against progressives. "Be nice to us cause pointing out the things you do makes us get angry instead and won't convince us." It'd be ridiculously hilarious if it weren't so sad at the same time. This is the most subtly toxic response you could have had.