The Weird World of Vegan YouTube Stars
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Usually, they then ignore medical advice, especially when it involves taking antibiotics, and try to cure themselves through wishful thinking and more diet. After that predictably fails they are then magically cured of all ills 8 hours after consuming eggs and fish.
They're HAVE got some serious issues and it's not a plant based diet.
My wife and I are not vegan, but vegetarian. It sounds like a bad idea to strictly follow a YouTuber without checking in with a nutriologist or doctor when you are full vegan though.
I would still watch her videos though even after this drama. She has some tasty recipes :)
The usual vegan dietary issues can be solved with a few supplements and a lot less drama.
Any sufficiently large group has it's outliers, zealots, and weirdos.
Raw-foodies / fruitarians are the weirdo subset of vegans. Flat-earthers are the weirdo subset of Christians. Sovereign Citizens are the weirdo subset of Libertarians. White Nationalists are the weirdo subset of Conservatives. Parents who speak exclusively to their kids in Klingon are the weirdo subset of Star Trek fandom.
But seriously, the first person to ever eat curdled milk from a pouch made of intestines must have been really fucking weird. There was probably someone eating cow shit in the village square, looking like a complete moron, and it never picked up because, 1) yuck and 2) no nutrition. But the cheese person started a whole thing. Does innovation happen at the fringes, with vastly more failures than successes?
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
On a side note, I've always wondered why "shellfish vegan" isn't a thing. They don't have brains or central nervous systems, but they do have the nutritional components of animal products.
It's the kind of conclusion philosophers reach, but doesn't seem to resonate with people.
Even though I wouldn't eat their eggs, I can't really see the problem with having chicken around if they don't suffer. For people who eat vegan for ethical reasons, my impression is that suffering is the main concern.
That sort of logic gets you back to farming animals for meat though. We're giving them a relatively cushy life compared to wild animals (at least in some cases), but cutting it short. It's easier to maintain the moral high ground if you simply cut out all animal products period.
My point was that I find it surprising people with this position who "break" for medical or energy reasons don't generally arrive at the shellfish conclusion. They eat eggs, dairy, meat or fish.
Maybe that goes without saying, but that last paragraph seems potentially reductive without qualifying it in that important way:
>But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
Most of us are going to inevitably be a healthy number of X's (the alternative is not really desirable, as many people along the borderline spectrum can attest to) so thinking of yourself as an X who is tolerant, accepting, and supportive of Y's is still always going to be inevitable and extremely necessary.
So while I know plenty of vegans with their own particular exceptions they don't talk about them outloud much.
Likely because of the issue you've pointed out regarding identity. The issue is diet-as-identity. Perhaps it would make sense to have a 95% vegan or vegetarian diet supplemented by the occasional animal product, but you can't claim an identity out of that. Veganism is viewed as some arbitrarily binary lifestyle where either you are or you aren't and there's no middle ground.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130208-seaf...
A secondary reason is that it's really easy to confuse people who do choose to eat meat about specific dietary concerns, especially when traveling globally. The Japanese for instance put fish into nearly everything and genuinely have a hard time understanding the difference between a vegetarian/vegan/etc there's also been some confusion between daishi and fish. Add to that the number of people who claim to be vegan/vegetarian but don't adhere to it at all and it can make a lot of people see it as a fad diet versus a diet adhered to rather strictly in other people. Another issue is religions that say fish is not meat. This isn't even getting into products people don't realize comes from meat. By just saying I don't eat anything that can feel pain it makes it significantly less likely someone will accidentally feed me meat. My wife on the other hand eats fish/shellfish. Our daughter chooses her own diet and has so far chosen to be vegetarian after deciding she no longer wanted to eat fish. To each their own, everyone has to be comfortable with their own choices.
I would very highly recommend reading David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster.
You can either buy the book of the same name which includes other essays or here's a PDF of the original article: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf and here's a video of DFW reading it out: https://youtu.be/_fZOl7C_vDI
The only difference is that traditional media doesn't allow for counter arguments. At least on social media, people can counter quackery. In traditional media, their quackery can't be disputed until they decide it is in their financial interest.
The irony of vegan ethics against causing harm and pain to animals, except when it comes to humans.
I'd just like to point out that this isn't something that applies to all vegans as there are some who try to communicate with less shaming and more empathy.
Check out Melanie Joy[0] if you're interested.
People wrote obituaries for other people's edge when that person started doing drugs (often at 21, almost always before 30). There was even particularly militant scenes in certain parts of the country that would get violent if you were smoking or wearing a leather jacket to certain shows.
Some really, really good music got made around it all though
Those abusers would be better off if they dug a bit into Melanie Joy's talks about vegan communication[0]. If we call out and shame everyone who are not perfect for being hypocritical, they'll just end up not caring at all.
There is a guy at my work who tried to become vegan when he started dating his current wife. I want to say that lasted about six months.
I think what did him in was when he tried a coworker's home-made beef jerky one day - he must have felt pretty good in the immediately-following days. He's been eating meat ever since.
When you start talking about ethics, it requires other people to consider pain and suffering they may be complicit in, and that will of course make people defensive. If it's just some odd diet, then you're just talking about your own preferences, which are less likely to upset anyone.
Not saying you shouldn't talk about ethics, but of course people are more touchy about that.