You support an industry that rips living, oxygen - breathing plants from their roots, forces them through a lot of processses, and send them straight to your dinner plate.

:^)

Except plants don't feel pain. Animals do.

Do you make sure all of your clothes are made in America? All of your chocolate and coffee is fair trade?

I don't give a fuck where my clothes are made, as long as they weren't made from an animal.
I don't drink coffee, and I barely eat chocolate, because so much of it isn't vegan.

Does this have anything to do with veganism? I don't think so.

Wernt you calling people out for making the same kind of argument before?

...Uh. No? When? What the fuck are you talking about?

We were evolved in a way that we need the nutrients from both plants and animals  to be healthy.

False. We don't need meat anymore. All the nutrients that we get from meat can be retrieved in a wide variety of alternatives.

if you need suplements because your diet is deficient in that particular nutrent then clearly youre doing something wrong.

Why?

The cows aren't going to go on and discover the the cure to HIV, or the secret to Faster Than Light travel if I don't eat them.

Neither are you. I guess we should kill and eat you, then! Would you be okay with that?

The food chain has always existed ever sice an animal could crawl. You're not going to change it by calling everybody a cunt.

Murder has always existed. I guess murder is okay, then.

Alternatively, we could have and enforce stricter humane laws in regards to the treatment of animals being used  for consunsumption.

The most humane thing you can do to an animal is not kill it. At all.

Killing something for personal gain alone is not only inhumane, but outright evil.

I mean, we already have imitation meat through the use of soy. And I'll admit--a lot of it pales in comparison to the taste of real meat. I'll be the first vegan to say that. But we're still in the early stages.

I don't understand why vegans try to use pseudo-science

Point out the pseudo-science.

to try to fight against something that the human body (as well as a good portion of other sentient life on the planet) was naturally evolved to do, and then try to act moraly superior for it.

Do you believe in God?

If not, this is NO better than telling vegans that "God placed animals here to be eaten. God says so."

You are making a really shitty argument from nature here. You treat evolution as an infallible force that we should all follow for no reason. Evolution does not necessitate a "good" existence, or a "better" existence. All evolution does is make it easier for us to survive, that's it. Nowhere does it say, "eating meat is absolutely okay."

You could similarly make the logical argument that we are naturally evolved to kill each other, but I doubt you'd be stupid enough to argue that killing people for no good reason is okay. Vegans are making the logical argument that hurting other sentient creatures for our own personal gain is wrong.

And yes, that makes us superior to you.

If your problem is with the way animals are treated, or having inhumane methods of extinguishing them, then fight about that instead of trying to force an extreme lifestyle on everyone else and then getting mad when they don't want to comply.

Fighting the treatment of animals NECESSITATES everyone becoming a vegan.

In order to stop the meat industry, you have to boycott it. You HAVE to.
Boycotting = veganism.

Well when my choice to eat something is this...

or this

I think I know what I'm going to to be getting.

>implying that's all we eat

I don't even eat whatever the fuck that is.

But it doesn't matter. If that's how you decide to eat food, then you are incapable of logic. Because with your logic, you would probably eat your own mother (or your most significant other) if you could make a big, juicy burger out of them. You sick fuck.

and by the way, I've had vegan food before.  I was practically forced to sit down at a family friend's house for Christmas and eat an entire dinner of nothing but vegan food.  The salad was the only good thing I had, the other stuff was either a wet mush or just tasted awful.

Family and I went out for pizza afterwards since we didn't eat that much.

Fascinating.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal

And there's no reasoning with you if you're just going to cry and say "CUNT " like you do in every argument.

Except that's literally the first time I said that (and I didn't even really say it), because you are just WAY too stupid for words.

You're right. I don't care about the animal. Why should I?

Because empathy is an inherently good trait to have. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if you were painfully killed and eaten. I'm sure you wouldn't want any of your friends or family to be killed or eaten. Hell, if you had any scruples at all, you probably wouldn't want a random stranger to be killed and eaten. But when it comes to feeding you, your ethics dissipate, because you're being fed. That's why you should care.

Just because eating meat is surrounding by unethical means doesn't make the act of eating meat unethical.

I addressed this a few pages ago. No one's arguing that eating meat is unethical. No one. It's the fact that you're supporting an evil industry. When you buy an animal product, there's an unwritten contract that says, "I support the means, processes, and everything else that goes into the creation of this product." That's how the market works.

It's like video game pre-ordering. Pre-ordering in itself is fine, it's the way pre-ordering is abused that's the problem.

And as a result, you've expresssed a no-tolerance policy on pre-ordering and openly castigate those in Gaming for preordering. Anything. But when a vegan expresses a no-tolerance policy against something that actually MATTERS, you don't care anymore. Mixed priorities much?

But whatever. I guess I'll just continue being immoral. No skin off my nose.

At least you own up to it. Admitting that you're immoral, facetiously or otherwise, doesn't change the fact that you're immoral, though.

yeah, I'm not giving up red meats, the flavour and seasoning that I can combine for a meal alone are worth it.

Translation:

"My personal enjoyment is worth the continued suffering of other sentient beings."

I mean, yeah, that's your prerogative, but that's just a little bit psychotic, is all. And selfish.
Your selfish desires aren't worth a hangnail on a treesloth.

and as i explained, you can't force anyone anyway

i deconstructed the use of the word "force" rather thoroughly in the OP

i wonder if anyone actually read it

In what state do you think the world needs to be in to bin meat.

I don't really care. I'm not out to ban meat, I'm out to spread the message that eating meat is wrong. You can do with that information as you will, but hopefully, you'll realize that I'm right, and that we should probably do something about it.

Also what are we gunna do with all those cows? Theyll probably grow so high in numbers if you put them all together that it'll create more CO2 pollution then what we currently have.

...No they won't? There are about 1.5 billion cows. The only reason we have so many is because we eat them. If we stopped fucking eating them, there would be a drastic decline in cow numbers. Same for chickens and pigs and whatever the fuck else you eat.

So, actually, you're potentially wrong. Plants don't have nervous systems but they have functions and chemicals that are akin to them. And so far, we don't know if they feel pain. But they respond to many, many different forms of stimuli.

So, actually, that's a whole lot of yes. Plant neurobiology. An interesting field.

Really, all you had to cite was something simple like a Venus flytrap. We've all seen those, and one of the most prominent things about them is the fact that they respond to stimuli. But that's all they do, is respond to stimuli. It doesn't mean they're sentient, it doesn't mean they can feel. They were naturally selected to undergo a specific and niched process. That's all it is.

I concede that we don't know if plants feel pain, and we'll likely never learn, but until there is significant evidence to suggest that they do, I'm not going to start saying, "Well, it's okay to eat meat now, because plants feel, too".

You compare murder to killing animals, which I understand to you is synonymous, but you fail to demonstrate that humans have a natural aversion to killing animals like they do other humans. Making it a poor comparison.

I don't think that makes it a poor comparison at all, especially considering that there are some people who don't have any aversion to killing animals. Have you heard of hunting?

Or am I misunderstanding you? That was a rather poorly-constructed sentence, and I'm not even sure if that's what you meant.

Plants have nervous systems, plants feel pain, plants, even have short term memory.

No, no, no no no. No. No. Nope. No. No.

Sorry, but no. They do not.

I'm not one for killing or damaging anything as much as I can. But sometimes you can't not do it. The best you can do is be respectful and appreciative that something died to extend your life. Appreciate that loss, but do it not out of joy or for sport. Just be respectful and mindful is all.

I can respect this mentality, but yeah.

Plants... do not have nervous systems, and they do not feel pain. I have no idea where you got that information. They don't even have a brain to process such a sensation, so like... that's a whole lot of "no".

But what do I get out of you losing your limbs? Does somebody potentially gain from that?

In this case, no. There is very little you could ever use to attempt to justify someone having their limbs cut off. You're gonna have a very hard time justifying that.

The obvious point I'm making, which you dodged, is that the sensation of eating a cupcake, that good feeling, is a feeling that is substantially greater than the feeling of getting your limbs cut off for no good cause.

That's a very blunt example of a greater good, but an example nonetheless. Get this nihilistic bullshit out of here.

There is no such thing as a "greater good".

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather eat a cupcake than have my limbs cut off. That seems like a pretty substantially obvious "greater good".

Shall not be infringed and free country antics aside, I just don't think you should be able to ever legislate this kind of thinking.

We already do, though. I mentioned the murder thing. I'm sure you don't think killing animals is analogous to murder, though.

So there's a YouTuber by the name of Freelee the Banana Girl. Though she has over 350K subscribers, I've never actually seen any of her videos until today, but after taking a cursory perusal of her channel, it looks as though she just makes vlogs about dieting, nutrition, and suchlike.

A few days ago, she uploaded this rant video, entitled "What do YOU think? ...", wherein she expresses, quite militantly, her philosophy of veganism, and how "you should be forced to be vegan."

---

Now, I'm a vegan, so for me, this video was great propaganda. I do, on occasion, like to hear my own opinions echoed back at me, and I do happen to agree with the majority of the points she made in her video. Naturally, however, this video is blowing up—I discovered it after having seen three video responses on my YouTube feed, all of a bunch of indignant meat-eaters defending their ethically-questionable dietary choice. Currently, the video has a 2:3 like-to-dislike ratio, which is a pretty bad sign if you're a YouTuber with a six-digit subscriber count. Though, it seems like she's taking it rather well.

The point I wanted to focus on, however, was the point that I personally found the most interesting (or the point everyone else is up-in-arms over), and that's her argument that everyone should be forced to become a vegan.

It's an interesting point, because when I was first watching the video, I was thinking to myself, "Yeah, totally. Of course," but then soon after, I was like, "Eh, nah, that wouldn't be right. She's just being too extreme."

But then I thought about it even more.

Coercion, of any sort, is something that, as most of you should know by now, I'm wholly against. Though, as a vegan, I believe killing a sentient animal is essentially the same thing as murder—the same thing as killing a human being. They are both just as bad as one another. The difference, of course, is that murder is illegal. As a result of our speciesist value system, we have sanctioned that slaughtering animals is okay, because that's the dictum of nature—"survival of of the fittest", and other speciesist platitudes.

But how do you force someone into something, anyway? Are we forced not to murder people, because murder is illegal? I would argue that, if murder was decriminalized (or, hell, straight-up legalized), most of the human race would still refrain from killing anybody. Sure, there would be a lot of crazy fucks who might go on a killing spree shortly thereafter, but generally speaking, I think it's a safe argument to make that people don't need the law to tell them what not to do. Just like you don't need God to tell you what not to do.

As a result, I don't think anyone here on this forum would make a bold statement like, "I want to be a murderer, but I'm being forced not to by the state!" That would be a little bit silly. "Force" implies direct action, and you really can't actually force anyone not to kill—you can only convince them, logically, that killing is wrong, and if they don't agree, then you can incarcerate them if they fail to abide by that basic law.

How could anyone, then, be forced to become a vegan? If vegans had it their way, and the meat & dairy industry was not only destroyed once and for all, but the slaughtering of animals was also criminalized, does that necessarily entail any coercive measure to turn everyone into a vegan? No, I don't think so. If you like to eat meat, and there's no industry to provide you with meat, you have two options at that point:
1. Suck it up.
2. Break the law.

I'm not condoning that you break the law, here, either. Just the opposite. All I'm saying is, this idea you should be "forced" into veganism is nonsensical, because you cannot feasibly do it. There are laws already in place that fail to "force" anyone into doing anything. All Freelee is saying, essentially, is that everyone should be a vegan—using words like "force", as I interpreted it, was merely a hyperbolic gushing of passion. It irritates me that everyone is scrutinizing this particular bit, because the idea behind what she's saying is rather clear, but because she had to use the word, now she's being labeled an extremist, and a Nazi, and all these other ridiculous names.

The other thing that people hate, of course, is just her tone, as if that has anything to do with her arguments. Not only does she seem angry—she seems to really want to get under meat-eaters' skin. She really wants to get a rise out of them. So she's a bit of a rabble-rouser. She uses words like "ignorant", "we cannot wait," and "get your shit together". And a lot of people in the comments section don't like that. I'll be responding to a couple here.



Except at no point in her three-minute video did she ever make any remark that resembled "humans aren't as important as animals." Personally, I don't think of humans as less important than animals—they represent the same level of value. Animals are worth no more or less than humans. Humans are worth no more or less than animals. Humans are animals. We don't kill humans for food. We shouldn't kill animals for food, either. It's really not that complicated.



I'm not sure what her "unspoken failings" have to do with the fucking video, actually. Ad hominem attacks are a classic for indignant meat-eaters. If someone dares to exert any level of ethical superiority to another, don't expect any rational discussion from the meat-eaters. Responses like this are truly indicative that most meat-eaters have about as many legs to stand on as their chopped livestock.



Yes, anyone who's not a good, rational person who understands basic, fundamental ethical standards of value should probably die. Yes. I know, I'm just horrible. But once again, we just have another literal-minded, easily-offended, weakly-constituted individual who's going to take passionate, hyperbolic statements out of context, inflate them, and conflate them with decidedly evil, unscrupulous individuals.



You're a spineless, petty cunt.

And you obviously never wanted to become a vegan anyway. So that makes you a duplicitous cunt, too.

---

As an addendum, I think this Freelee chick is very aware that she's not going to make any friends with this video, let alone convert anyone into veganism. She woke up and decided to spit some fire at the people she so despises, which... I can relate to. You can argue that she's only making it harder on herself, and for all vegans, to spread her message, because people don't respond well to vitriol. Not to mention being told what to do. But the thing is, she's absolutely right. We live in a very dark, serious world, and sometimes, if there's something colossally fucked up in society, it takes a lot more than a cordial, meek, capitulating tone to get one's message across. Some of us have been vegans for a very long time, and as a result, we are confronted with the same stupid arguments time and time again. It's very trying, and some of us simply lack the patience to hold your hand through the simple choice that is veganism. And it is a simple choice.

Do I harbor any animosity towards meat-eaters? Maybe a little bit. If you were running short on time, and you simply ran to McDonald's to pick yourself up a chicken sandwich, will I hold that against you? No, I won't. No more than I'd hold it against you if you killed a spider in your house, instead of releasing it outside. But what irritates me the most is when meat-eaters try to justify themselves. A lot of my friends do that. They'll say stuff to me, like, "Uhhh, I had a hamburger for lunch," and then they'll add, "...but that was it," nervously, as though I'm going to lash out at them for doing what 99.99% of the human race does on a daily basis. Or they'll say, "You know, I only eat meat when I have to, you know what I mean? Like, I had nothing else to eat."

The truth is, you never have to, and you most certainly have other alternatives. But it really weirds me out when I have my friends try to walk on eggshells around me whenever they bring up the fact that they've been eating animal products. The truth is, I'm not that anal about it. I'll only ever get annoyed when people start trying to placate me. I'd much rather people look at themselves and say, "I eat meat. I know it's wrong, but I can't help it, because I am too x." And that x isn't going to be a flattering term. But my point is, if you eat meat, own it. Don't try to defend yourself. You're just making yourself look bad. Worse.