Hello everyone, this is Ryan and you are listening to The Vegan Report.
Today we are talking about social media and their bad influence on vegan advocacy efforts.
I know we have already touched on the topic back in episode 32 of the show with our good
friend George Martin.
But this episode is a solo episode.
For this episode I took the time to write down my thoughts regarding social media in
an article published in the magazine The Animal's Voice.
And for today I wanted to read the article out loud.
I wanted to share with you my very unpopular arguments regarding this very important issue.
This is definitely a first for the show, I promise to get back to the usual interview
format of the podcast as soon as next week.
But for now I present you our social media undermining vegan advocacy.
A few months ago Mark Zuckerberg revealed that one of his favorite pastime is to create
some of the highest quality beef in the world.
Indeed he keeps a cattle of wagyu and Angus beef on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
He decided to raise them with a diet of macadamia nuts and beer.
The media coverage of this story has been lighthearted and positive.
One fortune article was titled, Mark Zuckerberg says his daughter thought that I was a cattle
rancher for a while thanks to his unusual hobby in Hawaii.
Yet camouflaged by the amused tone of journalists hides a heartless cruelty.
The sad reality of dozens of captive-sensitive beings who are misfed nuts and poisoned with
alcohol in anticipation of a violent and unnecessary slaughter.
In addition to ethical concerns there is the worry of environmental destruction.
As a matter of fact cattle ranching plagues the fragile ecosystem of Hawaii, provoking
deforestation, soil degradation and biodiversity loss.
However the question I want to raise in view of this situation is, can vegans depend on
this man and his company Metta to advance the animal rights mission?
Explicitly is it wise for this movement to rely on an unsympathetic private platform
with a long record of content censorship?
And even more broadly, can vegans depend on social media at all to efficiently advance
their cause?
Anecdotes of people adopting veganism because of a YouTube video or a Reddit post can be
counted by the thousands.
Yet there is no major study examining the true impact of vegan content on social media.
No researcher has asked pertinent questions such as, are those anecdotes accurate?
Are we conflating social media engagement with making meaningful change?
For every person who has been receptive to the vegan message, how many have been put
off?
Have social media users become desensitized to the hyperactivity of vegans online?
To the point there is no hard evidence justifying the hundreds of thousands of dollars habitually
spent by animal rights organizations and activists on social media campaigns.
Unfortunately the cost of a social media presence for veganism is more than monetary.
Alarmingly the social media ecosystem is quickly deforming the vegan movement beyond recognition.
In 1944, veganism was first defined as the principle of the emancipation of animals from
exploitation by men, and to seek an end to the use of animals by men for food, commodities,
work, hunting, vivisection and by all other uses involving exploitation of animal life
by men.
It is a clear and uniting ethical stance focused on the liberation of animals.
Yet most social media activity related to veganism is a witch brew of pseudoscience
peddling, nutrition quackery, trend chasing, snake-all salesmanship, new age confusion
and personality cults.
An idiotic world which gravity field has brought down one of the most enlightened ethical philosophy
to the mud of a fad diet.
An expected outcome from platforms that reward popularity indiscriminately of any quality
or safety standards.
After losing credibility and reputation at the hands of virtual gurus, veganism can count
on identity politics and echo chambers to lose its universal appeal.
Since being captured by the intersectionality paradigm, the vegan message of compassion
is prevented from appealing to independent, moderate and conservative crowds.
For instance, try making the right-wing argument for veganism without encountering a barrage
of dislikes, downvotes and angry comments from vegans.
Then there is the social media addiction that has consumed the time, attention, energy,
creativity and passion of too many animal advocates.
It is a compulsion disguised as activism which pushes people into an emotional spiral of
burning outrage, hindering obsessions, mindless reactions and crazed fits.
It is an unequivocal demonstration that algorithms and not principles or strategy are piloting
the vegan movement.
At the same time, there is a great need for vegans to think outside the social media box
and make a real life and offline contribution to the fight for animal liberation.
For example, Liz White, a long-time activist and the leader of the Animal Protection Party
of Canada, shared with me in an interview that
If we really want things to change for animals in Canada, we have to do the politics.
On Facebook, the Animal Protection Party of Canada has about 8,000 followers.
Yet at the time of writing this article, the party only counts 12 candidates.
A staggering ratio of one candidate for every 1,500 followers.
But nothing surprising here.
This is just one more project in a long list of original and impactful initiatives that
fail to pull vegans away from the orbit of social media.
In the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, the phrase If you're not paying for the product,
you are the product is heard multiple times.
At the end, it is important to remind ourselves that however inspiring, necessary and powerful
vegan content can be, from a business perspective, it will never amount to being more than a
lure for consumers whose private data is exploited by big corporations.
Putting aside all societal debates, any individual should clearly see their interest in taking
a wise distance from greedy platforms which have no regard for mental health or privacy.
.