About

Veganism refers to a lifestyle that abstains from eating or using anything made by or of animals. Unlike vegetarians, vegans won't, for instance, consume dairy, wear leather, or even own pets or consume certain plants, depending on the degree of radicalization. The reasons invoked by people who chose a vegan lifestyle are various – religious beliefs, search for a healthier diet, reduction of one's environmental impact, etc -, but the main reason that's been argued about online centers around the ethical implications of killing animals, or otherwise exploiting them. Veganism, both in its justifications and its associated practices, has been a very contentious subject of debate on social media.

History

Although veganism itself has been documented since several centuries ago, the term "vegan" was only coined in 1944^[1]. Some internationaly famous and influent vegan organizations are the Vegan Society and the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); the movement has also been promoted by many celebrities, independantly or alongside such organizations.
The Internet, especially since the implementation of social media websites, has been another major tool for vegan activists to advocate for animal rights, leading to many inflamatory debates and controversial communication campaigns. Across all kinds of political activists, vegans especially have gained a reputation of obnoxiousness and haughtiness, leading to several jokes made at their expense; for instance, it's common to post "Spotted The Vegan" or "Found The Vegan" whenever an animal activist intervenes in a thread to guilt-trip the other users.

Relevant Online Personalities

Many celebrities have gained online popularity and support due to them being vegan, whether or not they openly advocate for this cause. Such personalities include actor Joaquim Phoenix, musical artist Weird Al Yankovic, and streamer Ceres Fauna.

The Blonde Vegan

Jordan Younger, aka The Blonde Vegan (later, The Balanced Blonde), is a blogger who started her online presence in 2013 by posting about her vegan lifestyle. A year after her debut, she publicly renounced vegetarianism for health-related reasons, leading to backlash from the vegan community.

Nasim Aghdam

Nasim Aghdam was an Iranian vegan activist, mostly known for her YouTube channels talking about animal rights. She died in 2018, commiting suicide after she started a shooting in the YouTube headquarters, as a payback for the demonetization of her videos.

Nikocado Avocado

Nicholas Perry, aka Nikocado Avocado, is an American Youtuber, mostly famous for his controversial binge-eating videos. Before them, he used to post vegan-related content on his channel, but as of 2017, he renounced this lifestyle and deleted all of his videos which promoted it, arguing his dislike of the online vegan community.

That Vegan Teacher

Kadie Karen Diekmeyer, aka That Vegan Teacher, is a Canadian animal activist, known for her controversial TikTok videos promoting veganism. Due to those controversies, she ended up being banned from the platform in 2021.

Related Memes

Mental Gymnastics Comic

The Mental Gymnastics comic (see below, left) was first posted in 2016 by the Facebook group Vegan Sidekick. This political cartoon puts side to side a gymnast representing vegan beliefs, with a performance as simple as a walk, and another gymnast representing carnist beliefs, with a performance consisting of increasingly irrealist moves and stunts. This cartoon has been used as a template for many memes, in order to similarly represent one side of an argument as obviously right and the other side as full of inane assumptions and technicalities.

Yes, We Exist

Yes, We Exist is a snowclone joke which grew popular on Twitter in late February of 2018, in which a person states a facet of their identity, then says they do something which completely contradicts that identity, and ends the tweet with "We exist." In the original tweet, Twitter user @KelseyFionaBich posted a satirical tweet which read "yes i'm vegan. yes i eat meat. we exist."

Stop Using Anti-Animal Language

Stop Using Anti-Animal Language is a sentence associated with an infographic (see below, left) posted by PETA on December 4th, 2018 on its official Twitter account, urging people to replace animal-based expressions with vegan equivalents. This infographic has been mocked online, and inspired parodies in which other expressions are replaced to fit a certain context.

Eat Your Vegetables Remix

The "Eat Your Vegetables" Remix refers to a viral TikTok video by That Vegan Teacher yelling "eat your vegetables" mixed with $uicideboy$ 2020 song "…And to Those I Love, Thanks for Sticking Around".

Thugs / Hood Vegans / Lightskin Cheerleader

Thugs / Hood Vegans / Lightskin Cheerleader refers to a series of TikTok videos from TikToker @bamajuice2real in which he portrays three characters, a "thug," a "hood vegan" and a "lightskin cheerleader", predominantly using the phrasal template "How Thugs Eat X / How Hood Vegans Eat X / Lightskin Cheerleader." bamajuice2real started posting the videos in 2023, leading to a series of fan-made parodies in which creators played the same characters, inserting them into different scenarios.

Related Events And Controversies

PETA Shock Campaigns

PETA is one of the most known vegan groups, as well as one of the most criticized, even among the vegan community as a whole. Their members have made a specialty of organizing communication campaigns based on shock value, most of which have been widely seen as tone-deaf by the Internet community. The most viral of these online campaigns include:

• Cooking Mama : Mama Kills Animals, a 2008 video game parodying Cooking Mama with gory meat-based dishes;
• Pokémon Black & Blue, a 2012 Nintendo DS video game parodying the Pokémon franchise, and in which the titular creatures beat up their own trainers;
• the Stop Using Anti-Animal Language chart, tweeted in 2018, encouraging people to replace popular animal-inspired expressions with revised versions;
• a 2019 tweet denouncing the positive representation of late TV host Steve Irwin by Google Doodles;
• another 2019 tweet [warning: NSFW] displaying a drawing of an old man suckling on an anthropomorphic cow's breast;
• PETA's "Not Cake" Tweet [warning: NSFW], posted in 2020, which displayed the uncensored photo of a dissected dead cat, in the midst of the These Are All Cakes trend;
• PETA's Animal Crossing Guide, posted on their website in 2020, which urges Animal Crossing players to not to any in-game activity that would be considered non-vegan;
• PETA's Cashmere Goat Video, a viral video of a demonstration in which an activist is shown ripping wool off another activist playing as a goat.

PETA has also been criticized for promoting misogynistic content in their campaigns, as well as controversial and debatable arguments in favor of a vegan lifestyle, linking animal-based food consumption, for example, to autism or erectile dysfunction.
Moreover, the abundance of PETA-funded art and performances featuring animal disguises, anthropomorphic animals, and sexual content, lead to many jokes about PETA and sexual fetishes.

PETA Pet Euthanasias

Yet another subject of online criticism towards PETA is the alleged hypocrisy of the organization regarding their own moral guidelines. Especially, it's well-known for taking pets into its shelters, before euthanazing many of them.

Cause Animale Nord Homeless Man Puppy Stealing

In 2015, French animal rights activist group Cause Animale Nord received heavy backlash after some of its members kidnapped a dog from a homeless man – in front of a witness who filmed the whole event -, and then put the dog for adoption on their Facebook page.

ItsAllZara Ice Cream Controversy

In 2018, a tweet by vegan blogger ItsAllZara, who claimed to have given money to a child so she could buy ice cream, led to backlash with fellow vegan activists, mainly Anthony Dagher.

Jill Biden Pushing Away Vegan Protesters

In 2020, during one of Joe Biden's political meetings, his wife Jill Biden pushed back a vegan activist who had just rushed on the stage. Following the release of a Washington Post article about this event, the expression Lunging Vegans became viral on Twitter.

Joaquin Phoenix's Milk Speech

At the 2020 Academy Awards, Joaquim Phoenix received the "Best Actor in a Leading Role" award, and took this occasion, during his acceptance speech, to speak out against the consumption of milk. On social media, this was both celebrated by vegan activists and mocked by some other internauts.

#CowsMenu

In 2020, Burger King started a communication campaign under the hashtag #CowsMenu, to advertize that their cows were fed a special grass diet in order to reduce their methane emissions. This led to backlash from the vegan community, arguing that the cows shouldn't be farmed in the first place.

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External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Veganism – Origins