What importance did the Internet have on you turning vegan?

[Jebus]

I am old enough to remember when the only way one could get information was to go to the library and do a lengthy search. During the first 30 years of my life I had never knowingly met another vegan. I don't even recall having a conversation with another vegetarian until the day I converted to vegetarianism. All the information and motivation I received before becoming a vegan was from the Internet. I would be curious if most vegans, like I, were persuaded by something they saw or read on the Internet, or if it happened through social interactions, or simply through self reflection.

If most vegans became vegan thanks to the Internet I think we can expect a rapid vegan expansion over the next generation.

[miniboes]

I would not have been vegan without the internet. There is no vegan influence in my non-digital life.

[brimstoneSalad]

The internet is where religion goes to die... hopefully it becomes where carnism goes to die too.

There is definitely reason to hope!

[Volenta]

I also wouldn't be a vegan (and many other things for that matter) if it weren't for the internet. The internet is where I get my information and references to information from. It's an immensely powerful tool for spreading great ideas and I believe is an important force in social progress. It's great for all the rights movements, and indeed the place where religious believes for many people find their end—it's the place where religion is exposed for what it truly is. I think if you get steered in the right direction, it has a lot of potential in stimulating self-development and slowly making the world a better place to live in.

P.S. I'm fully aware that I'm focusing here on the positive sides of the internet. It's not my intent to paint a picture of the internet as a kind of utopian place, since it also has lots of downsides and (potential) dangers.

[EquALLity]

Yeah, the Internet gave me information that got me to turn vegan (factory farming documentaries).
It also made being vegan much easier than it probably would have been without it. I wouldn't have known about ingredients like casein, albumen, etc.

[Volenta]

Now I'm actually wondering whether there is someone here that became a vegan without any (or much) influence from the internet.

[Jebus]

Now I'm actually wondering whether there is someone here that became a vegan without any (or much) influence from the internet.

I didn't have Internet when I became a vegetarian. This was motivated by a book I read and meeting the author.

[brimstoneSalad]

Like Jebus, I was vegetarian before the internet was really a thing; it was just something governments and universities used, and a few hard core computer nerds (the first commercial dial up service had just been opened around that time, but it wasn't popular). The world wide web had not been invented yet, so there weren't really web pages then as we understand them now.

I wasn't a big enough computer nerd to be online then.

Like many, I just came to the realization of what meat really was, and stopped eating it.

I was lacto-ovo vegetarian for some time, and gradually went vegan. I don't think the internet had very much to do with it, although I had chatted with some vegans then (this was in the days of AOL). I would have gone vegan anyway, and I'd met a few vegans outside the internet prior. That said, it might have taken me longer. I'm not sure, because I finally went vegan when I left home, and that's not something that necessarily would have gone any faster or slower without the internet.

I envy these young whippersnappers with their internets and all this information at their fingertips from such a young age. I had a lot of catching up to do. I'm also annoyed by how some of them squander this opportunity, but that's another topic.

[Seachants]

I also probably would not have become vegan without the internet. I'm interested in another question for everyone here, too: for the many who probably wouldn't be vegan without the internet, did you deliberately search for information online relating to veganism, or did you just serendipitously happen upon it? And if you deliberately searched for it, what gave you the idea to do so? Was it some other internet site or something or someone offline?

There were three YouTube videos that guided the way for me. What first sparked the thought was serendipitously happening upon a lecture called "The Real Matrix" by James Wildman, which I think was in the related videos margin. I liked how he starts with broad questions that get the audience to question reality and how he shows that cultural conditioning distorts our perceptions. I wondered why more people who consider themselves "freethinking" don't just associate that with atheism in a theist culture but also with veganism in a carnist culture. I was vegetarian for three years before then, but I had never thought much about the dairy industry, and he got me to question that, too. Then I saw "Earthlings," after which I really wanted to become vegan, but I didn't want to be uninformed about how to be a healthy vegan, so I found a lecture by Michael Greger, where he summarized then-recent nutrition studies and gave practical advice about what to eat. Thank goodness for YouTube.

I had met two vegans face-to-face before then, but they didn't influence me to become vegan at all. The first vegan had mostly compassion and animal liberation reasons, but he stayed silent about those reasons. Some people have this approach to interpersonal relations - never initiate talking about controversial topics that may evoke uncomfortable feelings for others, like the social rule "Don't talk about politics and religion." I think it's not the best approach when used across the board with everyone in all circumstances, because it results in missed opportunities to plant seeds of thought in open-minded people that may result in a better world. I could have become vegan a few years sooner had this person shared all of his reasons with me. Instead, he only touched on two small topics: (1) he said that his ex-girlfriend had clearer skin after she became vegan, which only sounded like an egoistic reason; (2) he described the honey industry, which didn't sound very unethical to me. I didn't hear the main arguments for compassion and animal liberation, environmental benefits, and human health benefits. He also sent a link to some foreign-sounding guy talking about health, but I had no background knowledge to interpret it, so it meant almost nothing to me. The second person I met who called himself "vegan" just follows a plant-based diet exclusively for his own health and wasn't very compassionate. I was vegetarian for compassion reasons and didn't relate to him. These people did not enlighten me.

I wonder how many other people have met vegans who didn't influence them to become vegan, because those people stayed silent about it or didn't give good reasons for it. I try to have empathy and perspective taking for where I used to be, so that when I meet a vegetarian or carnist (like I used to be, too), I want to influence them in a positive way instead of have no effect or even an adverse effect regarding veganism. Maybe more people won't have to rely only on the internet to become vegan, just by knowing me. My mom has already said that she wants to become vegan, as a direct result of me becoming one and sharing everything I've learned with her. The best advice I've heard is for vegans to be joyful, which models a counterexample to the myth that vegans are all sickly people or angry activists.

It was easy to become vegetarian without the internet, though, because I just adopted a straight-forward principle that if you can survive and thrive without supporting killing another sentient being, then you have no reason to support that. I wanted to reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering and killing in the world, so vegetarianism just seemed logical. I never watched even one video on factory farming, and the internet had nothing to do with becoming vegetarian.

Kelly

[Jebus]

did you deliberately search for information online relating to veganism, or did you just serendipitously happen upon it?

It was a bit of an accident for me. I was searching on a fitness related issue when I came across a forum called veganfitness. I was so impressed by the quality of the posts and the general message that I immediately decided that I wanted to be like them.

Like you, I became vegan having never had a conversation with another vegan. I have barely even met a vegetarian. Unfortunately, I have always been surrounded by meat eating friends and family.