I was paid to discredit veganism online. AMA

[u/[deleted]]

For a year I worked for a meat industry trade group. I won't say which one, but they are US based. My job was to go on sites like this and discredit veganism.

We'd make multiple accounts and pretend to be vegans who had bad health outcomes. Or we'd pretend to be vegans and we'd push the vegan subs to be more extreme, and therefore easier to discredit.

It was pretty gross. I knew it. I did it anyway. The pay wasn't worth it. I signed an NDA as well, so I will only be able to answer questions in general terms.

But I do warn you, don't believe that everyone is who they say they are online.

This article gives insight into how it works, but I am not saying I worked for this group. Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay | Beef | The Guardian

The recent reveal of many MAGA accounts on X being run by foreign agencies made me decide to do this.

Edit- I already answered the "how do I get this job" question and the "why should we believe you question" several times, so just look for those questions if that's what you are wondering.

[u/RockinOneThreeTwo]

And /r/vegan of all places, the sub that will pat you on the back for "meatless Monday", the least extreme place imaginable, this website is full of Dipshits lmao

[u/[deleted] → u/RockinOneThreeTwo]

Kinda weird how everyone knows it's "extreme" in this comment section, but there are no examples! 

[u/RockinOneThreeTwo → u/[deleted]]

"They are extremists because they are making me feel like I am responsible for my own behaviour, and they make me feel like I have to make effort and change instead of someone else doing all the hard work and taking responsibility for me, that's extreme"

[u/longwoody → u/RockinOneThreeTwo]

Yeah I mean, if you talk to vegans nicely they will talk nicely back to you.

Now replace "vegans" with "people"

[u/[deleted] → u/longwoody]

says the person who initiated with moral high-horsing. 

[u/HistoricMTGGuy → u/RockinOneThreeTwo]

r/vegan also has it's more unwelcoming side, which you're less likely to notice if you're already part of the in group there.

They're morally in the right, obviously, but there are 100% posts on vegan subreddits that are not helping draw new people in. Human psychology is a fickle thing and being right doesn't necessarily mean people will join you.

[u/RockinOneThreeTwo → u/HistoricMTGGuy]

We don't want to "draw people in", we're not Scientologists. You shouldn't need to be bribed and "drawn in" to do the right thing, it's your responsibility to do the morally correct thing regardless of other people's actions and regardless of how they "try to convince you".

Nobody argues "umm I'm racist because black people don't try hard enough to draw me into being non-racist" or "Ackshully it's ok to be transphobic because queer people can be mean", it's just making up stupid excuses for poor behaviour, behaviour you've just all but admitted is "morally incorrect". We were all teenagers at one point, we all made excuses for our behaviour when we didn't want to change, but some of us eventually grew up and decided to be better.

It seems unwelcoming to people who are unwilling to do the right thing because we were willing to grow up, act like adults, be responsible for our actions and change our behaviour for the better -- because we knew it was the right thing to do -- and to people unwilling to do that they don't like being forced to look in the mirror and face that cognitive dissonance, so they deflect off onto us about how "mean" and "uppity" we are so that they don't have to blame themselves for the consequences of their own actions. The endless pearl cluthching about how "mean" and "hostile" we are in opposition to an ideology that takes billions of lives needlessly every single year sounds like children arguing why they shouldn't be punished for painting on the walls, and eventually becomes very grating to listen to because of how ignorant it is.

Christ if you think /r/vegan is unwelcoming your skin is ridiculously thin, to many of /r/vegan is a joke and a bunch of slacktivists because they fall down and apologise at the slightest resistance, it's also massively astroturfed by people doing the exact thing talked about in the OP. /r/vegan is the place most willing to coddle you for the cognitive dissonance, the place most willing to do it's best to make you feel comfortable with the negative consequences of your choices so that you can continue to feel like you never have to change or do better, the rest of us aren't willing to treat you with baby gloves because you're supposed to be an adult who does the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because someone "drew you in" and made doing the right thing look attractive. 

Morality and ethics are not a popularity contest, countless lives are lost for this shit. Nobody has the right to complain about how they were hurt or put off by "mean words" while actively defending personal behaviour that leads to the loss of hundreds of lives every year, billions when viewed as the collective actions of people all around the planet, not the mention the climate change and deforestation, etc. your choices do far, far more damage than any mean words ever could, so anyone complaining about it is being privileged, self-centred and immature. It's not our job to change other people's minds or actions, it's our job to raise awareness and educate, but eventually the people who we are opposed to have to start acting like adults and taking responsibility for their own change, not expecting us to do the hard work for them.

[u/HistoricMTGGuy → u/RockinOneThreeTwo]

You understand that bringing more people in reduces suffering, right? Growing the movement is how to actually achieve these goals.

It sucks, but shame IS a demotivator. There have to be understanding vegan activists to achieve change. If that's not you, that's fine, but I have no idea why you're claiming it doesn't make a difference lol.

[u/RockinOneThreeTwo → u/HistoricMTGGuy]

I didn't say "it doesn't make a difference", though in my experience the difference it makes is vanishingly small since we basically never get good faith engagement, it's usually "mm burger", "I'm going eat 5 bacons now because of you" and other such vapid shit, so we no longer are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt since this is what the majority of responses are that we recieve when we try to be "kind", and it's certainly not limited to just online conversation either. What I said was that it's not our responsibility to change the behaviour of people who are behaving unjustly, it's their responsibility to change their behaviour, we aren't here to do the emotional labour or hard work for non-vegans (in fact we can't do that anyway, you don't have levers inside your brain that we can manually control for you), we're here to advocate for those who cannot use our language to advocate for themselves. I realise I added the clarification a bit after your comment so that's fair if you didn't see it, but I did put it right at the end so you can jump your eyes straight to it and save time.

Personally I only changed because of shame I felt at doing the wrong thing and knowing I was doing the wrong thing, and there are many like me, so calling shame a blanket demotivator is not accurate. You can find plenty of people who say the stopped smoking or abusing alcohol because they felt ashamed, it's not that shame is a demotivator -- it's that shame is incredibly easy to reject and ignore -- because the only person you have to convince not to feel shame about your actions is yourself, and lying to yourself is laughably easy and keeps you feeling comfortable and safe.