Hello everyone, this is Ryan and you are listening to the Vegan Report.
Today we are going to talk about veganism and social media.
Let me start by saying that I despise social media.
I think they do a lot of good, however they are ultimately a force for bad in the world.
They make our society unhealthy and more divisive and you will find that I have no personal
presence on social media platforms.
But my opinion is certainly not the popular one.
Most people wholeheartedly embrace social media and this is particularly true in the
vegan movement.
Animal rights organizations tend to be hyperactive on social media and this is nothing to say
of the army of vegan influencers out there.
Yet is it the right way to go?
Can't we be just a little critical of this proximity with social media and self-reflect
on what it means for veganism on the long term?
To discuss this topic I have with me someone who is not afraid of playing with daring ideas,
a public commentator and vegan influencer whose insights and critical thinking I find
valuable.
You know him as Carnism Debunked.
George, welcome to the show, thank you so much for being here.
Yeah, thank you, it's a pleasure to be on.
So George, as an icebreaker question, I wanted to start by asking you, do you find that vegans
on social media are representative of the vegan population at large?
Yeah, this is a tough one because I guess it depends where on social media you mean.
If you mean the kind of animal rights community on social media, I would say unfortunately
not because well most people who identify as vegan I don't even consider to be vegan
to be honest.
If you look at the average man or woman on the street who says yeah I'm vegan, you know
I'm scratched beneath the surface and it's yeah I'm vegan, you know I eat honey occasionally
and I have a bit of seafood every now and again or something that's like okay yeah you're
not vegan kind of thing.
And I think when you're in a lot of these huge Facebook groups and stuff you see a lot
of these kind of like apologists or people who literally don't understand what veganism
is and that's the majority of people identifying as vegan.
But if you look at the actual circles that I'm involved in on social media where we all
have mutual friends with each other and we're all going to these events and stuff, the actual
activist community, yeah we're a tight-knit kind of community within the whole sphere
of veganism.
But to cut a long story short I guess we're not representative of it if you look at the
actual animal rights community on social media.
There is a caricature out there of what a vegan is and I think social media are doing
a great job at portraying that caricature because we have those big vegan influencers
who are I guess giving a certain reputation of the vegan movement and of vegans in general.
What do you think of that phenomenon?
Yeah it's hard to say because on the one hand we have got the kind of hardcore vegan activist
influencers you'll see people like Tash Peterson, Joey Carbstrong, that vegan teacher and stuff
and that creates an impression in people's head at least of the activist vegan.
But then the annoying thing in my view is that the vast majority of our representation
on social media is food pages and these food pages, no shade on the great food pages out
there and all the work that they do, but the majority of these vegan food pages are just
run by apologists, the people who are like live and let live, you do what you want to
do and I don't care if you murder and abuse animals, I don't but you can do that if you
want kind of thing.
I would much rather that people actually, if there's going to be a negative stereotype
about vegans, I would rather it was the militant activist kind of stereotype than it was just
this kind of weak pushover who says you abuse animals if you want, it's not my prerogative
but you feel free to do it.
So yeah I guess it depends where you look but our social media really is dominated by
food pages and that needs to change.
Do you consider the discussion around health and lifestyle veganism as being true to or
useful for the animal rights cause?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
So first of all, veganism actually has nothing to do with health, nutrition, that kind of
thing, right?
It just means you're someone who believes that animals are not our slaves, you don't
see animals as resources, you wish to live free as far as is practicable and possible,
a life free of animal exploitation, of animal slavery.
So it's a rejection of the use of animals as commodities for us.
But at the same time we have to understand that we get these counter, these arguments
all the time about the nutrition of living as a vegan.
So these arguments still have a place in that context.
If you're a vegan and you don't know how to respond to such arguments, you're not going
to represent veganism very well.
So it has its place.
We do need to be clued up on how to answer these arguments but at the same time it's
not what veganism is about, it's not about health, it is about the animals.
The reason for that is there's ways to abuse animals that don't impact your health.
So there's no way to abuse an animal that doesn't violate veganism in some way.
So that would be my answer to that I guess.
There is also kind of a cultish character to all of this discourse around health and
lifestyle.
And I think the fact that it is on social media just amplifies the whole guru aspect
of it.
Yeah, you have kind of a cult of personality around that.
And when I hear those people speak, I feel like it's less about animals or even about
veganism than it is about their personality.
And I feel like this is the whole thing of the epidemic of narcissism that has been brought
up by social media and I think the vegan movement has not been spared by that.
And many of those vegan influencers are just narcissistic people who are interested by
their own ego and their image more than animals are being empathic or following a plant-based
diet.
They're ready to abandon veganism if it's not serving their...
It's not worth it anymore and people will still continue following them.
Yeah, what do you think about that?
You're absolutely right and you took the words right out of my mouth.
Narcissism is one of the things that we're really observing now in vegan circles with
this spate of ex-vegans that there's been recently.
And I think with ex-vegans before, I was kind of clueless as to how this is happening.
I was always thinking, well, how could you bear witness to the torture that animals go
through and live the life and stuff and then one day just turn your back on them again?
And now I guess the reason is it's revealing itself, like you say, to be, I think, narcissism.
I'm just going to turn my camera off here because it says my signal's pretty bad.
So sorry.
There we go.
So I think that is a huge pathway to becoming an ex-vegan.
And as you say, it does show itself a lot in these kind of health circles and stuff.
And you're right, it's kind of these people are quote unquote vegan just to make it about
them and not about the animals.
And they come into veganism as a way to give their lives meaning or as a way to kind of
look down on others to say like, I'm, you know, I hate this carnist argument, by the
way, when carnists say stuff like, you lot just act vegan, you lot are just vegan so
you can act superior to others.
Now in mind, in your case, that's not true.
Okay.
But because we're in it for the animals.
But unfortunately, there is a slight truth to it when it comes to these narcissists who
are just imposters in the vegan movement.
I feel the pressure of covering the health and lifestyle aspect.
I try, you know, I wanted a podcast dedicated to animal rights, but I see how it's more
popular to address the health and lifestyle questions.
People don't want to hear about the ethical side of veganism.
So I guess it's also a question of where the demand is on in the social media world.
You're right.
And I think it trivializes the message when we, you know, if we're talking about a justice
movement here and we're only talking about it in aspects to, you know, oh, you improve
your health or something like that.
What other justice movement do you think that this would be applicable to?
In no other movement would we sell, you know, would we sell the movement based on the benefits
to the oppressor?
Oh, stop oppressing this group of people and, you know, your health will improve and stuff.
And it's like, no, it's about the victims.
It can only be about them.
And I think it's very misguided and blinkered thinking from vegans when they say stuff like,
well, okay, but not everyone's open to the animal rights message though.
Well, okay, but you know, you understand that those people that you convert based on quote
unquote health, they're not going to be in it for the long run anyway.
And they're just going to abuse animals whenever the chances that they get when they find out
that this doesn't impact their health in any way.
Or, you know, even on the environmental aspects, you know, if you would just say, well, this,
the environmental aspect might be more applicable to someone.
Okay.
Well, the day that the beef industry comes out with these pellets that they feed to cows
that eliminates methane from their, from their waste.
Okay.
The person's now eating steak again.
So you have to keep it based on the animals and it undermines the animal.
It says that, you know, this idea that we should promote the health and the environment
aspects more so than this or, or in equal, with equal, you know, conviction to the ethics
stuff.
It kind of says that the animal rights message on its own isn't good enough when it is, that
is what has to shape the, the, the progress of a society, the moral progress of a society.
I want to say amen to everything you just said.
And there's another aspect I always go back to.
And it's the fact that most vegans abandon their vegan diet, or at least that's how
it appears to be.
If we look at a study by Phonolitics, most vegetarians and vegans quit their vegetarianism
or veganism after a few months to a few years.
And I think this is largely, largely due to the fact that they became vegan or vegetarian
for the wrong reason.
And that you can sustain this lifestyle without having a good motivation and convictions behind
it.
Yeah, you're a hundred percent right.
Well, this is the problem with the sampling.
I used to work in market research.
So I know quite a bit about this, about how you make one sampling floor and the whole
results, results of the survey can therefore just be skewed and give a completely different
message.
If you're including in the vegan population in your survey, in your data, people who literally
aren't even vegan.
So people who just self-identify as vegan, you will get very flawed, flawed results.
If you just say to the average man and the woman on the street, are you vegan?
Well, loads of them are going to be like, yeah, I am.
Those people are being included in the survey.
And yeah, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people who say, oh yeah, I'm
vegan, they're not going to stick to being vegan.
They're not, because they're not even vegan to begin with.
This is quite a crude analogy that I'm going to make, but this is to do with the problems
with self-identification in surveys.
So there was a study on penis size years ago, and they found that men in this country's
penises were wildly different measurements from what they actually are.
And the reason that it came out with those results is because they got the participants
to measure it themselves.
When the researchers then said, do you know what, this seems strange to us, we're going
to measure them, lo and behold, the results were wildly different and the results were
much, much smaller than the initial sample gave.
This is kind of what's happening with the ex-vegan supposed dropout rate.
If you look at the actual animal rights movement, the actual people who are in it for the animals,
the dropout rate is tiny.
It's less than 1% for sure.
It happens.
Unfortunately, it happens.
You do get the odd animal rights activists here and there who drops out and we're still
trying to figure out why that is.
Well, narcissism like you mentioned earlier.
But the point is, if you take the whole population of people who identify as vegan, who self-identify
as vegan, yeah, the dropout rate is going to be massive, like 84, 90%, right?
But if you look at the animal rights movement, it's less than 1% for sure.
That's a really good point you're making.
I want to get to an expression that I had in mind when you were talking, which is the
vegan community.
And we often hear it on social media.
We talk about the vegan community.
And I don't know, I've been vegan for about nine years now and I never felt like I was
part of the vegan community.
So tell me, am I just too introverted or is it something that has to do with, you know,
is it like a buzzword?
Like on Facebook you have friends, but they're not really your friends.
So on social media you have the vegan community, but it's not really a community.
Yeah, good question.
I think we can overuse the term and in some cases there is, you know, it's not applicable.
Maybe overall there is no vegan community as there were.
But I think you have kind of microcosms of a vegan community, if that makes sense.
I would certainly consider myself part of at least a vegan community in the fact that
when I go online, there's all these people I know from social media and see in real life
at all these events and you go on their profile and they have 300 and something mutual friends
with you and then you click on their mutual friends and they've got all these.
So we're all interconnected in that way.
We know of each other.
I mean, that is a community in that sense.
But if you talk about vegan communities, just this giant thing spanning across the world
and people who aren't involved in social media such as yourself.
Yeah, that's when I guess the term can come a bit like a buzzword, as you say.
It's kind of meaningless at that point.
But I would consider myself part of a community online.
I see these people as like a family of people, if anything, that, you know, I would see them
at an event for the first time and it's like I'm not meeting them for the first time because
I've already spoken to them hundreds of times on social media and so on.
Yeah, because as we mentioned, this vegan has become this umbrella term covering so
much and the health and the narcissism part is a big part of it.
And I certainly do not feel any sense of community with that crowd.
Something that makes a community is cooperation, a sense of wanting to help your fellow person
and do you think that is present in the animal rights movement?
Yeah, I think it is.
We do look out for each other.
The real ones do look out for each other.
There is some toxicity, some infighting that does happen, unfortunately, and sometimes
we don't have each other's backs.
Sometimes there is some nastiness that goes on.
But we do look out for each other for sure.
You know, I've been helping out some people I've never even met recently online with some
stuff going on in their personal lives and stuff that's deeply affecting them.
And I want them to know that I'm here for them because I see them as my brothers and
sisters in this fight as animal rights activists and I think we need to look out for each other.
Maybe where I see the difference is when it's grassroots and popular, it's easier to get
that help, that kick in the right direction.
But as soon as you are interacting with an organization, I feel like the dynamic changes
and it's not the same anymore.
It gets political in a sense and you have to go through their own canals of communication
in order to contact them or you get all of these issues around, you know, do we partner
with this person or not?
I don't know if I'm being clear here, but have you had that experience of interacting
with organizations and having a sense of, oh, they're not all about cooperation and
doing, you know, being together, this togetherness and they have their own agenda and they're
pretty clear about it.
So have you seen that?
I haven't perhaps seen it in the sense that you're talking about, but I've definitely
seen organizations pander to certain human socio-political causes that just serve as
distractions from the animal rights movement that I think they should not be getting involved
in.
You would not see a human rights group suddenly stop posting about their human rights work
in favor of animal rights.
You wouldn't see, I don't know, a gay rights organization say, we will stop posting this
week in memory of the dogs killed at Yulin Festival kind of thing.
Now they can obviously be against the dogs being murdered at Yulin Festival while focusing
on their gay rights work, but this just wouldn't happen.
It's unthinkable that a human rights group would do this.
In the animal rights movement, I've seen a lot of disappointing stuff.
2020 was the worst example of this.
I was seeing, you know, animal rights groups saying, you know, blackout Tuesday, we will
not be posting anything today because of the murder of George Floyd or whatever.
And it's like, BLM are doing this already.
Like we've got to be battling against the animal Holocaust here, guys.
This isn't like the time to be posting about human socio-political issues and saying, you
know, you're not welcome in our group if you have this position on X and you're not posting
about this human socio-political issue.
So I'm definitely seeing, yes, agendas and stuff being pushed by certain animal rights
groups from the human rights context, getting involved in things they just shouldn't really
be speaking up on, in my opinion.
But maybe in the sense that you're talking about, I'm not so sure.
The thing is with organizations, it is unfortunately true that they will just do stuff sometimes
that we aren't going to agree with or that we're going to think is a bit weird.
But this obviously shouldn't undermine the message behind the overall existence of the
group.
I think one massive example of this is PETA.
We all support PETA's aims in that it wants to end animal oppression.
But I think every single person in the animal rights movement would still see at least one
PETA campaign as questionable or think this isn't the right way to go about things or
is this truly effective or does this look a bit silly?
So I think that would just be an example I would use.
Every single animal rights group's existence and message is what we want, but they are
going to run some campaigns from time to time that we just see as not for us or that we
don't agree with.
Yeah, PETA is a good example.
I knew someone who worked at PETA and he was not vegan.
That was the first time I thought, okay, that's weird.
Why are you working at PETA then?
He was like, well, it's a good job opportunity and it's a good brand to have on your resume.
Then I think about the biggest donors on the board of PETA and things like that.
Most of them are not vegans.
I question if they're truly part of the vegan movement, drivers of the vegan movement or
representative of vegans in general.
Yeah, that's very worrying what you've just said, to be honest.
The fact that PETA are taking on staff who abuse animals, that's just a complete violation
of the organization's ethics.
It's particularly worrying because there's loads of vegans out there who want a job working
in animal rights and who deserve a job in animal rights and they're hiring carnists
over vegans.
I mean, that is extremely worrying if true.
That is absolutely something PETA needs to change from the ground up.
They should absolutely remove all non-vegan staff members from their organization and
replace them with vegans.
By the way, I just want to say to anyone listening who says, well, what about if they're vegetarians?
Vegetarianism is carnism.
These people are playing the same role in the animal Holocaust as the meat eaters are.
They're paying for animals to be gassed, to be stabbed in the throat and stuff once they're
no longer of use for their egg and their milk production or their wool production.
They're playing part in that same abuse.
Do you allow me to get a little bit political here?
Of course.
I did an episode on conservatives.
I invited two conservatives to talk about why they are vegan and identify as conservatives.
I made the post about it looking for those conservatives on Reddit.
I was just overwhelmed by the hostility of people toward that initiative.
I got four versions of the same comments saying that, well, why not platform Hitler if I was
going to platform conservatives?
I realized how much the vegan movement on social media is biased on the left.
I was wondering, I know you have also noticed that phenomenon.
What do you make of it and of what it means for vegan representation online?
Well, my question to these toxic people who are writing such comments to you, why don't
you platform Hitler and stuff like that is how small do you want the animal rights movement
to be?
That would be my question to those people because I think a lot of these people are
the very narcissists we're talking about.
They just want to use animal rights as some kind of self-gratification thing.
They want to build a community of people solely like them for their own human socio-political
goals and their heart isn't truly in it for the animals.
Most reasonable left-wing vegans, and there are plenty by the way, who see the toxicity
of the whole woke cancel culture stuff that's happened.
Most good left-wing vegans are just embarrassed by this behavior, can I just say.
They would see it as absurd that someone would not want conservative vegans to come onto
your show.
We want conservative vegan voices.
We want socialist vegan voices.
We want Jewish vegan voices, Muslim vegan voices, whatever it is.
We want everyone from every kind of ideology on the planet to actually be vegan because
we want everyone to be vegan.
We don't just want us to be vegan.
This isn't just some kind of philosophy, personal choice or something like this.
No, it's a justice movement that we want to eliminate all animal oppression from the face
of the earth.
I think these people are just toxic.
One of the stupidest things I think about the idea that veganism is, these people will
say it's a left-wing movement and this kind of stuff.
That's an insult to the animals because 99.99999% of leftists on the face of the earth are not
vegan.
They're not even vegan.
When you say veganism is a left-wing movement, it would be as ridiculous as two breakaway
Nazis for example who said, we are Nazis but we don't agree with anti-Semitism as such
so we're going to be against the killing of Jews.
Those two breakaway Nazis then going on to say that being against anti-Semitism is a
Nazi movement just because a few of them broke away.
What I like to say is veganism is a politically neutral thing.
If you're a left-wing person in the animal rights movement, good for you but that means
you're a breakaway leftist because the current leftist mantra worldwide is to round up animals
and put them in gas chambers.
That is the leftist mantra globally.
99% of leftists hold this position on the planet.
Imagine what the animals would think if they could understand what these people were saying
and say no, the movement about saving you is a left-wing movement.
As leftists continue to herd them into gas chambers, the animals would find this offensive
quite frankly.
That's a very good point.
I watched a webinar that was given by the National Lawyers Guild, the New York City
chapter and they were talking about wildlife and about their adventures of trying to get
their cause protection for wildlife into the political sphere.
Getting to influence politicians of the Biden administration, the liberal ones.
I was just discouraged just hearing them talk.
Forget about liberals or the leftist population or base.
Think about the leftist governments.
They're not your allies.
That webinar just proved how hostile they are to the animal rights cause.
We're not even talking about factory farming here.
We're talking about wildlife, which should be more acceptable by carnists in general.
But now that government put so many obstacles in the way of those activists and they had
a questionnaire at the end.
Most people answered that the Biden administration did not make a good job at protecting wildlife.
You're very right.
I think one huge example of this that we saw in the run-up to the 2020 election in the
US, the intersectional woke crowd within the vegan spaces, they were bullying other American
vegans into voting Biden and if you vote Trump, you're not a real vegan and you're this and
you're that and you should be outcast from the vegan movement.
Now I don't care if you vote Biden or Trump, whatever, but do not base it on someone's
veganness because neither are vegan, right?
What was one of Biden's first things to do as soon as he got into office?
He donated $1 billion to the US meat industry.
That was one of his first acts as president of the United States.
These people had bullied people into voting him.
They'd said, you're not vegan if you're going to vote for Trump.
And then Biden just pays to have God knows how many animals tortured and abused as soon
as he gets in office.
This just shows the sheer backwardsness and just entitlement of these people.
And there's been no apology for it.
You never hear them say, you know, hashtag I messed up kind of thing.
It was just, you know, they just act like it didn't happen.
And there is a great argument.
I often hear the argument for veganism, you know, on the left, but there is a great argument
for veganism on the right.
Starting with small government, why are we subsidizing the farm industry?
You know, that's a point that those conservatives brought home when I interviewed them.
So why are we not doing more outreach to the conservative crowd?
Absolutely.
You're 100% right.
And this is what I say about veganism.
It's actually in line with everyone's principles, no matter which side of the political spectrum,
no matter what your kind of philosophy on life is.
Everyone believes the things they believe, not necessarily because they're evil or because
they're a bigger or whatever it is, but because they believe that's the right things to do.
So leftism is about, you know, standing up for the little guy in equality and, you know,
being against discrimination.
That's perfectly in line with veganism.
That's amazing.
Right-wing people, again, they're protecting innocent life in the womb.
They're against, you know, big government and authoritarianism.
They support liberty and freedom.
Again, this aligns with vegan values.
So it doesn't matter if you're left-wing or right-wing.
It doesn't matter if you're, you know, a socialist or a capitalist or you're pro-life or pro-choice.
Whatever your values are, the reason that you have these beliefs, if indeed you have
them with good intention because you believe this is the best way for, because this is
what you want for society and for whatever it is.
Those opinions you hold are perfectly in line with animal rights, with being vegan.
And it doesn't matter whether you're left-wing or right-wing, your ethical framework is consistent
with being a vegan.
So I think we did a great job at describing what is veganism on social media.
So what it looks like and how it behaves.
Now I want to talk about, you know, the effectiveness of the vegan discourse on social media.
And let me start with kind of a sensitive question.
Something I, you know, I joined Instagram when I launched this podcast.
Before that, I did not really know what Instagram was about.
And I started following animal sanctuaries and also animal rights organizations.
And here I am every day looking at my feed and you have all of those sanctuaries begging
for money, mostly run by ordinary people who have a job and who are doing this on their
free time and on their dime.
And there is a big demand for their presence.
They have to refuse so many animals because they don't have enough place or resources
to care for them.
And they're always begging for money, having a hard time fundraising.
And then on the other hand, I see PETA, I see Mercy for Animals, I see the big animal
organizations pouring hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on their social media campaigns,
on the content they produce.
They have also armies of social media people on their payroll.
I think the vegan society has like 10 people in communication.
But I'm always asking myself, is it the right thing to put that money on marketing on social
media stuff instead of animal sanctuaries and concretely saving lives?
Because there is no major study out there proving that social media, the campaigns,
vegans launch or have launched, have truly made a difference, were worth the money that
was spent on them.
And I don't see why they have that confidence that they're doing the right thing and they're
willing to go large scale on social media in terms of mobilizing resources.
So it's kind of a difficult situation to witness and I want to have your thoughts on that.
Yeah, so you definitely make a great point about the sanctuaries being underfunded.
One thing though, I definitely think we shouldn't do, and I did a video about this a while back,
is we should never take what's called the crabs in a bucket mentality.
So we should never say, you know, this group isn't having it so this group shouldn't have
it either or something like that, which is what I have seen certain vegans do.
What the mentality should be instead is we should support sanctuaries and we should also
support these big organizations in getting their content out.
As for the studies, yeah, while I'm sure there is no kind of concrete study on whether these
so big expensive social media campaigns have changed amounts of people, anecdotally, we
do just genuinely see this every day.
You know, we look at, I don't know, if you look at like Tash Peterson's stories she uploads,
she's constantly getting messages and stuff saying, you know, I came across your video
on social media and it's changed my life.
Thank you so much.
Well, so we do know for sure that social media does work and change people vegan and I actually
think it's the leading driver of the reason that veganism has exploded this past decade
or however long it's been.
If it weren't for social media, I wouldn't be vegan myself.
I came across Gary Yourofsky's speech while surfing on Facebook in 2012.
I was probably eating a bacon sandwich or a pizza or a burger while I was sat there
on my computer and then boom, his speech came up on my newsfeed and I watched it.
So, I probably wouldn't even be vegan if it weren't for social media and I actually think
that's the case with most vegans actually.
I think we came to it through seeing stuff shared on social media, whether that was a
documentary, a speech, whatever it was.
So ultimately the movement needs more money in it.
We need it to go to sanctuaries.
We need it to go to individual activists so that they can actually leave their jobs and
dedicate their full time career to working in activism.
We need it to go to the large organizations.
We need it to go to the small organizations.
I just wish, you know, we're fighting against a very, very powerful entity here in the animal
exploitation enterprise.
These are multi-billion, multi-trillion dollar enterprises.
We need to have the money at our disposal to fight them and we need to have the money
as well to help these animals at sanctuaries.
So I mean, it sounds idealistic, doesn't it?
Yeah, of course we need money for all.
It sounds great, doesn't it?
But that is ultimately the deal here.
I think we all need funding, wherever we are, whatever we're doing in the animal rights
movement.
But let me maybe push a little bit on what you just said.
The people who reach out and say, you know, like, thank you, you've changed my life.
I decided to, you know, consider going vegan because of what you do and stuff like that.
In actuality, there's no way of verifying if what they're saying is true and if, you
know, it truly made that impact.
And also, would you at least concede that there is too much attention on social media
stuff instead of, you know, most people in the world are not on social media, I think.
You know, should we not try to reach them, you know, at their church, at their school
and have more of those initiatives instead of having, you know, a more prevalent presence
on social media?
Yeah.
So here's the thing.
When these big animal rights organizations do get a lot of funding and stuff, it is actually
put to use on the streets.
So for example, you know, Anonymous for the Voiceless or Viva or PETA or Mercy for Animals
or whatever.
Yeah, a lot of money will go into their social media stuff, but also a lot of that is actually
going directly into their street campaigns.
So it is happening like that anyway.
But you're right.
Yeah, we don't know how many people use social media, whether it's most people in the world,
wherever it's like.
I know that like billions of people, there are billions and billions of social media
accounts.
It's just to what regularity they're being used and how many of these are bought accounts
and stuff like that.
But absolutely, we need to diversify our approach.
We need to be out on the streets.
We need to be doing campaigns.
We need to be on social media.
We need to be everywhere.
We animal, you know, carnism infiltrates every single aspect of our society.
And with regards to the first point you made, yeah, sure, we don't know.
Like, we don't have any way of kind of verifying that the person who, you know, Tash Peterson
shared to her story is vegan, whatever.
But at the same time, we do just know it to be true that people do go vegan as a result
of social media.
You know, it's just it's not like a theory or something.
We just know this to be true because this is what happened to us, to me.
I don't know how you came to veganism.
To me, it was absolutely through social media.
And I think it was for most people that you meet in these vegan circles online, even if
it was them hearing about a documentary that changed their life, like Dominion or something
like that, they would have heard about that through social media, rather even than word
of mouth or on TV or whatever.
Well, I'm afraid, you know, I'm just thinking about are we playing, you know, the right
game or are we playing actually the game of the social media platforms?
Are we serving the social media platforms more than we are serving the vegan cause?
Because another thing about this hyperactivity on social media platforms is I think we've
created a whole anti-vegan movement.
And I want to have your thoughts on that.
But I really think that most anti-vegans online have just smelled the money and the time and
the resources and the energy that vegan influencers and organizations have put and decided to
just surf that wave and attach themselves and create an identity on that.
And yeah, I don't think that the anti-vegan crowd would have existed if it was not for
the hyperactivity of vegans online on social media platforms.
And I feel like this is what the social media platforms want.
They want conflict, they want drama, and they're not here to serve our interest.
So what do you think of the response to, you know, the content people have put out and
the reaction to the vegan message online?
Yeah, so I don't doubt that social media exacerbates these things and it creates dramas and conflicts
and stuff.
However, the sad truth about the human species is an anti-vegan movement absolutely would
exist whether or not social media did.
And I'll use two historical examples to prove this.
One was the ending of black slavery in the United States.
There was literally a war over this.
This is just how much humans disgust me.
People actually fought for the right to keep slaves.
So there was this justice movement, the abolitionists, and half of the American population stood
up and said, no, we will not have you abolitionists force your lifestyle choices on us.
This is the way of the world.
This is the way things are.
It's the natural order of things.
Blacks are here to serve whites.
Do not push your beliefs on us or we will fight you.
The other is in the UK with the suffragette movement.
When the suffragette started speaking up for women's rights, you know, there was lots of
vitriol towards women as a result of that.
And, you know, most men and even a lot of women in society were just like, who are these,
you know, hysterical, whiny women and, you know, get back in the kitchen and all this
kind of stuff and a huge anti-women movement, you know, kind of started as a result of that.
So unfortunately, yeah, while I agree with you that social media absolutely does exacerbate
these things and put fuel on the flames, as it were, unfortunately, the bigger the vegan
movement grows, the more resistance will grow until maybe even there'll be a war over it
or something, unfortunately.
But that is where hopefully things, you know, technology like lab-grown meat and whatever
can actually come in and hopefully we won't actually have to get to a stage like with
the ending of slavery in the US where there was literally a war over it.
Do you believe that at the end social media platforms have a net positive on the vegan
movement?
I do.
I definitely do.
I completely understand and agree with your reasons for not being on social media.
It is a toxic place and I think you're looking after your own mental health by not being
on there and any activism that you're doing outside of social media, I highly appreciate.
But at the same time, I absolutely do think social media has a net positive on veganism
because as I say, if it weren't for social media, I wouldn't be sitting here having this
conversation with you right now, I'd still be abusing animals.
I would still be paying for this horrific stuff and so would so many, so, so, so many
people I know.
And it's through having a platform to speak.
You know, they say about social media now in the digital age, every individual is essentially
a celebrity because you can go online and you can platform your views to hundreds of
thousands, millions of people from your bedroom for doing pretty much nothing, right?
So I mean, look at the fact that both you and I have podcasts, right?
I mean, in the, let's say the 1990s or the 80s, you or I would have to have a radio show
and we would have needed to have a job to get that on the radio show and stuff like
that.
Now you or I can just go online and we can actually just put our views out there to whoever's
listening on a podcast.
So I think that's very, very powerful.
And I think social media has played a huge role in making a net positive for animals
for sure.
Unfortunately, as human population rises, the number of animals killed will rise just
naturally in line with the human population.
But without social media, I believe the number would be higher than it actually would.
Even if it was like China where they just banned things like Facebook and stuff, I don't
think the animal rights movement would have anywhere near as much of a chance when the
only information you're getting about animals is just through a few leaflets or through
word of mouth or from worse from the farming industry.
That was how people's impressions of animals were shaped back in the day.
It'd be the farmer who told you what happens.
Now you or I can go on Facebook or Instagram and we can show people what happens.
We can show, but are we too, not vocal, but maybe too loud about it to the point that
we're just part of the background that the footage of animals being tortured has become
something people are not really sensitive about anymore because they have seen it so
much in their feed.
I've heard people, sensitive, smart people say, oh yeah, I know animal rights and animals
are tortured and all.
For them, there was this banality to the vegan message and I attribute that 100% to social
media.
I feel like you said before, your point before, this veganism has been diminished and to more
of a trend.
The footage we put out in the message has been diluted because we're so too loud about
it.
Yeah, so there is obviously a danger that people can become desensitized to slaughterhouse
footage.
You're right about that, but here's the thing.
Those people who have just watched the slaughterhouse footage and are now just like, meh, I don't
really care about it.
I don't think those people were going to go vegan anyway.
The point is about sharing these things online.
It's not going to get everyone, it's not going to change everyone to go vegan, but it's going
to change some people and that's a start.
It's better than nothing.
In any case, there's different forms of activism we can do.
We can upload outreach reels of ourselves, just us on the streets talking to people.
These we're seeing have results.
These are changing people.
We can make written posts.
I just want to tell you how powerful this is.
One or two posts that I've just written on Facebook have been shared by mainstream media.
They've been shared by The Guardian or shared on this newspaper article I saw in Croatia.
Just me writing a post about what's happening to animals and comparing it to our societal
speciesism.
The fact that I was able to do that, just sit at my computer in my bedroom or something
and type that up and that's gone into mainstream media and potentially change people, that's
incredible.
That was without showing a single piece of slaughterhouse footage.
It's not that slaughterhouse footage online is the be all and end all of it.
Yes, it might desensitize some people, but it's also going to change some people and
also you don't necessarily have to see the slaughterhouse footage to be convinced of
the vegan message.
I know people who are vegan that have never seen slaughterhouse footage in their life.
It's different strokes for different folks.
We need to try all these different approaches.
I hear you and I'm getting the message that you think the animal rights movement and veganism
as a whole, at least its modern form, you cannot detach it from social media.
It is like a limb of this movement now.
Am I right on that perception?
Yeah, maybe you are.
That's not to say every single activist has to have social media.
But I think that there's always something that we can do on social media.
I do think that without it, the animal rights movement would be severely harmed.
I think that we don't really live in the age of word of mouth anymore.
Everyone gets their information online now.
So I think it's very important that we have a presence online.
We have to have a big presence online.
People are on YouTube all day.
People are on Facebook.
People are on Instagram.
People are on TikTok.
It's the one that a lot of the kids are on.
Without a presence on these platforms, what are these people left watching?
It's just going to be pro meat propaganda.
So I would rather, and I'm sure you would rather as well, that people go online and
instead of seeing the laughing cow cheese advert and the company telling you, buy our
delicious laughing cow cheese with the happy cows in the field, they're seeing a vegan
meme or something that says, you know, laughing cow, are you sure about that?
And a mother cow being tortured and having her baby taken away.
Well, as someone who is not distrustful, very much distrustful of social media platforms,
it scares me to hear that the vegan message depends on those platforms and those big companies
like Facebook.
Yeah, I guess it is just a sign of the times.
Ultimately, we're all going to need to use forms of media that we might dislike in some
way in order to push the message.
I mean, I hate TikTok, for example, but I begrudgingly got a TikTok account a few years
back and hey, one of the videos I made on there got half a million views and potentially
changed a lot of people.
So the point is we have to use whatever it is.
I make the same analogy with money, for example.
I know vegans who are against a monetary system at all.
So they're not just anti-capitalist.
They're literally anti-money.
They think money shouldn't exist, but while money does exist, they say, look, this is
the world we're in and we need to have money in the animal rights movement.
So my analogy would be to think of it like money is to someone who's against money.
Yes, you might be against money, but you're going to need it in a world that has money.
So I'll just say to anyone who is against, like yourself, who finds it rightfully scary
that maybe our message absolutely depends on having a presence on these big corporations.
Yeah, this is unfortunately the world that we're stuck in.
This is the world that we live in and that's just the system we've got to deal with.
I would love to live in a world where we didn't have to push the animal rights message on
social media, but that is just the world we are dealt with.
I don't like these companies either, the same as you.
I don't like the way that a lot of these companies operate.
Do you feel like the social media world is overcrowded with vegan initiatives and that
people should consider more to get out of them or look at what kind of contribution
they can make on social media, but through a very critical lens, like what can you add
to the conversation actually?
Yeah, I think ultimately that my very simple answer to this would just be to do both.
There are lots of things we can be doing off social media.
One thing I would say in social media's defence to such campaigns is it adds weight and validity
to our arguments, a bit of credibility, when people see that masses of people support this
action.
So what these social media campaigns can do is they can show online all the people who
have signed this petition and stuff.
Of course you can do that off social media as well.
You can use good old fashioned pen and paper petitions and stuff like that, the push to
end things.
I did a campaign recently like this in Bristol.
There's these plans to set up a horrible octopus farm in Spain.
We got people signing pen and paper on the street to put an end to that.
But ultimately I think social media still plays its role.
So yeah, social media I'm not saying is the be all and end all of everything.
I mean anyone who went vegan before 2004, ergo social media played literally no role
because it didn't exist back then.
But the explosion of vegans that we've seen now is due to social media I guess.
So I think we can do both and I definitely respect any work that you're doing off of
social media because that's what I'm doing also.
I'm doing activism out on the streets every month and doing stuff that doesn't involve
social media.
So there are so many ways to play our part and as I say, carnism infiltrates every aspect
of our society that there is.
So we've got to be versed in using different strategies.
So this podcast is all about actions and encouraging people to take action.
What has been your journey and why did you decide to be more than a passive vegan?
Yeah, so I first went vegan in 2013 and that was after seeing Gary Yerufsky's speech in
late 2012, so the best speech you'll ever hear.
And I thought that, I always thought from the start that it would just be absurd to
sort of just sit there in silence while the animals scream in pain.
This just seems like a completely absurd view to me.
So I'm always wondering why any vegan, so called vegan, would have the view that we
should just sit there in silence as the atrocity continues.
Carnism is a justice movement, it's not just some mundane, trivial kind of dietary preference
or your favourite colour or something like that or how you style your hair.
Carnism has victims and we need to actually speak up for these victims.
So that was why I always had this feeling from the start that we actually need to do
something because if I was in the animal's position I'd want someone to do something
as well.
So I guess that's been my story.
And why did you decide to make that contribution on social media?
Is it because you were convinced, like you said before, by something on social media,
on YouTube?
Yeah, I think it was just the most practical and easy way to get my message out there to
such a large number of people.
It's paid off.
I have a sizeable platform now on social media just from espousing my views on there.
All it took was me back in 2014, 15, whenever it was, just writing these Facebook statuses
and setting them on public and having a few friends that I'd never met in the world before
across the vegan community and suddenly your friend list builds up and all this kind of
stuff.
And from there, suddenly my posts were just being shared all around social media and seeing
God knows how many people in the world.
This was just a great, great way to get my message out there using my abilities to write
arguments clearly and concisely, which is something that I've just been good at.
Like I studied English at university, so it's just something that I'm good at, I guess,
formulating, I'm good with words and convincing people through written argumentation.
And this was a very, very effective way to channel my abilities.
We should all do activism in a way that we have some kind of talent at.
Like if you're a talented musician, you should make songs about animal rights.
If you're a talented artist, you should do animal rights art.
If you know how to infiltrate a place, you should go out into the concentration camps
and liberate those animals from their oppression.
So we all need to play our part in a way that suits our abilities.
I guess when I first became vegan, social media was just a fantastic way for me to get
my message out there to huge numbers of people.
And what do you say to vegans who don't correspond to the profile of most vegans we see on social
media?
Maybe they're conservative and they're afraid of making their voice heard on social media
platforms because you're someone who dares speaking his mind, whatever the consequences
and the response.
So what kind of advice would you have to that person?
First thing I'd say to them is don't worry, I've got your back.
So if anyone out there is afraid of coming on and speaking their mind just because they
believe they'll be attacked because they're a conservative, whatever it is, don't worry.
The vegan movement isn't completely full of these unreasonable people.
There are perfectly reasonable people like myself who will support your content and who
will be there for you if you come under a mob attack.
But look, if you want to make changes in the world, it's not going to be comfortable.
I think people think that activism is meant to be some kind of easy ride and they're not
going to get any resistance.
When you're an activist of any kind, you're going to get resistance outside and even inside
your own movement.
So if you're going to make any kind of positive change in the world at all, you can't go in
just expecting that it's going to be an easy ride.
So if you're a conservative vegan or whatever it is that you think, oh, I don't know if
this is for me because people might, vegans might turn on me online.
Well, okay, I mean, look at the civil rights movement in the US, even MLK and Malcolm X
didn't even like each other.
And there was constant war of words, infighting going on there.
So don't worry about the stuff like infighting and stuff.
Don't let that push put you off from making your voice heard.
If you, if you have the truth, speak it, it needs to be spoken.
It's an injustice to remain silent in the face of oppression.
Well said.
So George, did you have anything more to say to add to this conversation before I end the
recording?
No, I think that's all good.
Thank you so much, Ryan, for having me on the show.
And yeah, I really enjoyed the discussion and I look forward to listen to this as well
as your other podcasts.
So yeah, thank you for having me on and yeah, I'll be sharing it to my audience as well.
Well, thank you, George, for having accepted my invitation and thank you for your work
online and offline.
Thank you everyone for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know.
Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.