Philosophical Vegan Forum

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

Bored of the very limited amount of movies on the Dutch Netflix, the forks over knives thumbnail drew my attention. I watched it, and that snowballed into me learning all about the vegan diet and its strength. Then I landed upon TVA's channel, who introduced me to the ethical side of the debate.

I became a vegetarian and later vegan without much input from the Internet. I had heard of vegetarians before I stopped eating meat, but didn't know any personally. After I went veggie, I read things like Vegetarian Times and used vegetarian cookbooks. PETA's cookbook "Please Don't Eat the Animals" was my first exposure to veganism. It took a while, but I became convinced that being lacto-ovo still contributed to animal suffering and environmental damage.

The whole Internet thing came later for me. I'm used to going it alone, and I still forget sometimes there's a whole community of vegans out there to connect with.

You get the chance to read the success and positive outcomes of eating veggies and will be entice to turn vegan!

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

Same here. Most of my influence to become vegan came from the internet, where I was exposed to TheVeganAtheist, Gary Yourofsky, various documentaries & debates, and pro-vegan nutrionists.

I was always aware of the existence of vegetarians, but for most of my life I was fooled by popular delusions about the ethics and nutritional value of consuming animals. It was not until my writing teacher, during the first quarter of my first year at UCSC, spoke about her reasons for being a vegetarian that I seriously considered becoming a vegetarian myself. During my third quarter of that year I signed up for another writing class with her, thinking that the theme would be science fiction. That turned out to be the theme for the class she taught during the second quarter, and so when I first walked into her class during the third quarter, the theme turned out to be "The Sexual Politics of Meat." The class had a combined theme of vegetarianism, feminism, and environmental issues. My teacher educated me on the issues of meat industries, but as far as I can remember she did not make it clear that egg and dairy industries are inherently problematic in most of the same ways. She inspired me to become a vegetarian, but in hindsight I wish that she had advocated veganism; not vegetarianism. Thus I think it's always important to be clear that veganism is what we owe to animals.

That was my inspiration to become a vegetarian three years ago, but my inspiration to become vegan one year ago was almost entirely due to the internet. Nobody in my non-digital life tried to encourage me to become vegan, but the internet educated me well and so I'm now determined to stick with it.