Was it a one-time sudden realization, a nagging feeling you couldn't get rid of, or a back-and-forth process?
For me, it was 5 or so years of back-and-forth waffling between vegan and "reducitarian/VAH" before a very strong dose of magic mushrooms a few years ago gave me a stern kick in the ass about my own ethics and hypocrisy, which is how I finally stayed vegan. The same trip was the beginning of my political radicalization left as well.
Mine was really fucking dull
I was a vegetarian until I went to prison, then when they handed me the form for meal preferences and shit i was about to mark myself down as vegetarian but thought "do I trust the prison service to store dairy products properly?"
Then marked myself down as vegan
When I got out i just kept it goinghaha, you say it's dull, but i bet that story is waaaay less vanilla than most
Holy shit, I get teased for being vegan by my fucking in-laws. Can't imagine what it's like being a vegan in prison.
not too bad tbh, it helped that i was pretty hench
i am english though, our prisons aren't as fucked as american ones
Incredibly stupid memes on r/vegancirclejerk. I was a vegetarian for quite some time before that though.
Some of those stupid memes are next level and should probably be studied by people who want to do smart activism. It's like they make enough sense to be convincing but too absurd to trigger defensive reaction you have when you feel like you're being preached to.
That's actually harder than you'd think. It's been like five years ago, so it's basically from the time when people thought rage comics were the hight of comedy. The sub's content changed with the time and all the "most upvoted of all time" stuff is from this year.
Look up "vegan sidekick", it was all the rage on the sub at the time. It might look cringe now but it fed me a constant stream of arguments and counterarguments in a form of badly drawn comics and probably worked better than telling me to read articles or to watch Earthlings would.
No joke it was VCJ for me as well. I went from eating meat literally 3 times a day, to overnight vegan. Been more that 2 years since then, never slipped, never been visited by the vegan police.
Something about people just being like "fuck you stop eating meat" just worked on me idk why.
:vegan-edge: VEGAN VANGUARD IS ON THE SCENE :vegan-edge:
Thank you for your service comrade o7
I like VCJ in theory. I got banned recently because I pointed out that finding lonely people on reddit and bullying them for that is pretty scummy though, so they can fuck off and die.
Yeah. It has this weird fundamentalist streak to it that surfaces ocassionaly. I guess this kind of hyperfocus on individual is a radlib thing.
I got an institutional start. When I was a backpacking guide they asked me for my meal prefs, so I wrote down vegan because I knew it was the right thing to do, even though I was eating meat prior. had no more choice in the matter for 6 months, and then it was easy to keep going.
Mine was pescetarian for a few years, then watched I think Paul Mccartneys Doc on Animals (which was the first animal doc I've ever seen) and then watched Dairy is Scary? I think it was an hour later and that solidified it for me, I couldn't ever do it again and it fit in perfectly with my leftist philosophy,
Flirted with buddhism. Luckily i actually read some buddhist texts and didn't look at online buddhists who are all like "well yes buddha says it is a stain in your karma to kill an animal BUT"
bruh
Anyway i realized vegans were right, went vegan overnight and haven't looked back since.
I had already been vegetarian for over three years, and wasn't attached to milk or eggs, just thought it would be difficult to completely avoid them. Turns out it wasn't, and I've been vegan for years now. The /r/vcj memes helped give me the push too.
Coincidence (or not?): I was raised conservative (and omni, ofc), became a lib soon after i went vegetarian, and became a socialist at same time i went vegan.
Similar story for me. Realized the vegans were right but I only understood it in an abstract, cerebral way. Ended up being "flexitarian" for a while. Then I experienced ego death on LSD and came back with a greater gut-level appreciation for the interconnection between myself and everything/everyone else. Been strict vegan ever since that day, almost three years ago
idk why peta doesn't just give out psychedelics. ego death is good for veganism and the animals.
Tbh mine was more like the first image. I was watching the summer solstice sunrise on a hill and a cow sat down next to me all peaceful just wanting to chill next to me like my cat does all the time. I looked at her and suddenly all the guilt I had buried about being a carnist came flooding to the surface. I cried and looked at the sweet cow who was probably going to die for no reason. I said sorry to the cow but it didn't make me feel any better. I knew If I was truly sorry I'd have to go vegan so I did. That was like 8 years ago now.
Oh my goodness, my heart can't handle this story 💚 💚 💚
:gui-better: the capitalists will have their day...
I ran out of food, walked out to shop, noticed all the stuff I put in my basket was vegan and I thought "Huh. Wonder how long I could keep that up". Anyway it's been most of a decade.
Friend was vegan. I made fun of her in hs but were still friends. Eventually realized she wasn't joking and I was like "oh."
Also I love to make my boss and coworkers feel uncomfortable like they need to accommodate me. Yes, nerd, accommodate.
