To be perfectly fair, this did happen during a discussion about abortion, so I guess I can't really hold it against the guy... I was just perusing various YouTube videos, as I perhaps regrettably so often do, and about a multitude of subjects as well, not just veganism, when I came across a decidedly vegan video about something or other and I decided to pull my usual argument, namely that it makes no sense for vegans to speak of expanding the moral circle when their own moral circle doesn't include unborn people to begin with. I thought I was making some good points, avoiding ad hominem stuff though perhaps I was being a tad sarcastic here and there, and I was having a good time when all of the sudden, bang! I get hit in the face with this absolute gem.
But let's go through the rest of the comment and see what we can extract from of it. The first sentence is an absolute stunner. I guess abortion is okay as long as you don't eat it afterwards? Brilliant... But then we have even more brilliance. For all the talk of studies, studies, studies, he casually dismisses some cases I had mentioned of popular people who tried a vegan diet, displayed an entirely vegan lifestyle and social media career, did the whole vegan thing in depth but who still had to quit, with much personal loss. I guess in typical religious fashion none of them were true believers to begin with... So it's just about what you'd expect really.
The second paragraph is more interesting though. I was intrigued by the idea that abortion comes up a lot since it's not the impression I had. Vegans are often used to being on the offensive in their exchanges, which is always the easier position to hold, especially when your interlocutor isn't as aware of the usual arguments and lines of reasoning as you are. Still, I would like to see it come up more often. It's insane to me that the people who are all about the lives of chickens, cows and pigs, as well as spiders, centipedes and slugs, they somehow aren't all about the lives of people who do not yet have a birth certificate. But then the most brilliant thing is how he says I am just using abortion for its atrocity effect... Sir, if abortion has an inherent atrocity effect then why are you so cool with it? Very strange. For all the talk of how we have to watch all the slaughterhouse documentaries it does seem like no vegan is in a rush to watch any abortion footage. And by the way, at the time of writing this I have watched neither.
Then he ends by suggesting, once again in a completely unfounded way, that people who are concerned about abortion are a whole string of nasty things. There's nothing to respond to such an assertion other than a quick note of how it's just more green madness. But the funniest thing of all is that at the end of said madness we get two likes... In the comment section of a relatively unknown video, where me and a few vegans argued abortion, one other vegan stepped in to say I should have been aborted, and two other vegans thought that was such a nice idea that it deserved visible support. Wise move... That sure was a great way to prove me wrong about my suspicion that a lot of vegans are misanthropic abortion-loving nutters. Or maybe the fella liked his own comment, which is possible, but that still leaves one fella too many.
So why did I take time off from my lazy day to write this? The first and foremost reason is because I kinda had nothing better to do. The second reason would be that I figured this was relevant one way or another. Since I engage in a few comment section arguments, about more than one topic of course, I've had my fair share of frustration but I never had this kind of thing happen. And the interesting bit is that this didn't surface as the typical nasty side of the internet stuff, it surfaced during an antagonistic but for the most part civil debate with, to be fair, most of the vegans present there. But I have yet to cross online paths with a categorically pro-life vegan. In fact the more I look into this the more it seems like vegans are categorically pro-death. Preferably a painless death, I suppose, but it does seem like that according to vegans, the fewer people we have, and even the fewer carnivorous animals we have, then the better the world will be for everyone, well, except those people who are forced into that good night early... and those carnivorous animals... and everyone else who needs to cease to exist, but hey, it is what it is. At least according to this one vegan fella, whose name I omitted though I still remember it since it was a biblical first name plus a sea animal, it would seem the world would have been a better place had I never begun to exist in it. Hell, for all I know he's right to say that... Nah, but he's a good man.
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