Memes

Mine is that everything being caffinated now is a ploy by Big Piss to get you to produce more piss for no extra money.

The vast majority of commonly spouted anti-PETA information is pure meat industry propaganda. They have spent so much money to paint PETA as cartoonishly evil, and people just bought it hook, line, and sinker. Yes, they have pulled some abrasive and controversial publicity stunts. No, they are not, as an organization, kidnapping and euthanizing healthy animals. They're just passionate animal lovers, and just like within any large organization, people make mistakes. The difference is if someone makes a mistake in most charitable organizations it's treated as such, where any mistake made by someone even peripherally related to PETA is attributed to the organization as a whole as a deliberate, malicious act.

Okay so yes, I'm vegan and I don't love PETAs tactics and some of their practices are not the same choices I would make. I'm going to leave it at that, I will not debate carnists about PETA. Just like I try not to criticise leftist movements in non-leftist spaces and will focus on specific elements and not write them off entirely.

I do think a variety of tactics is important, just like in leftist movements. It takes a lot of different approaches to tackle these huge systemic problems. No one is making me do street theater. I can choose not to like it or think it's effective. But it doesn't mean it never reaches anyone or that people don't enjoy that outlet.

Edit: I should probably explain how that connects lol - so even if I don't like it and people think it gives vegans a bad image, I don't think the meme is literally true. People will take issue with even the mildest perceived criticism. I am very careful to not discuss it in some circumstances but if someone asks for dietary restraints and I answer sometimes even that makes them defensive. You can't win.

Yes, but not because they're trying to divert attention away from quiet, polite, easily ignored vegans, but as an alternative to orgs like ELF/ALB that do direct action against slaughterhouses, offices, spike trees, stuff that threatens to make these companies non-viable.

I think people are already predisposed to dismiss vegans or make fun of them for various psychological reasons. I only mention my veganism when I have to and even then I get all the weird comments about protein, etc. One cousin asked me if I would eat a chicken if they paid me 1 million dollars or some shit. I live in Morocco and people who make these comments don't know PETA

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

I don't think vegans care about their image. They care that you stop putting money in this industry

The one conspiracy theory I believe is that, generally speaking, conspiracy theories are psychological operations to distract from class consciousness.

I think at this point we've all realized PETA is a trash organization, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they're funded by the meat industry; I'm not going to forget that while the Gaza genocide was going on, the only thing they had to say was that they wanted to rescue donkeys out of Gaza; Not the people of Gaza, but the donkeys; I hear all the time that humans are animals too, but apparently you're less than that if you're a person from the global South being genocided by a Western government. They're either zionists, or just your average white liberal.