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What causes people to choose to live vegan or vegetarian? If one could only use one word for the answer, it would have to be "Internet". If you ask vegan living directly, you usually get answers that have to do with "animal suffering". Animal suffering, however, is rumored to have existed as early as the 20th century, when vegans were still regarded as insignificant nutritionists and despised. Clearly something has changed in recent years. So why did the most influential business journal in the world, the Economist, call 2019 the year veganism becomes mainstream?
The protest of the peasants is justified at least insofar as they are also in a predicament through a bigoted consumer attitude. In surveys, almost half of Germans claim that they pay more for meat in favor of animal welfare. But when citizens become customers, they buy cheap.
In early 2019, a field trial will be announced in which Edeka offered three categories of meat side by side in 18 stores: expensive organic meat, medium-price animal welfare meat and conventional cheap meat. Nearly three quarters of customers decide against organic and animal welfare. Despite huge signs.
Politics also supports this bigotry for historical reasons; the history of the EU is inextricably linked to a European agricultural community. To date, about 40 percent of the EU budget consists of somewhat intransparent agricultural subsidies, almost sixty billion euros a year, mostly for conventional agriculture. Thus, among other, more positive effects, a less sustainable system is maintained and forced to merciless, short-term efficiency.
A prime example of the impact of the network
These backgrounds are essential for the spread of veganism. The thesis: The Internet functions as an awareness machine. No matter which topic you are interested in, you will find more detailed information, emotional stagings and, above all, like-minded people. In the wave of veganism, I see a positive example of the impact of the net on society. We become aware of the consequences of our normal lifestyle so far - or at least more consciously.
Anyone who is even half an hour closer with today's industrial factory farming, for example, inspired by the latest news, begins to suspect: The problems and horror reports are the direct result of today unfortunately prevalent system meat, in which cattle products are much too cheap, People and animals are exploited and animal suffering is priced in literally.
This system is based on the thoughtlessness of many who either can not or do not want to, what it means, if by 2019 a kilo of pig hardly brings the producers in wholesale two euros. Ignorance of customers is anyway one of the superpowers of capitalism of the 20th century, which is being pushed back only slowly. But the net offers all possibilities to actively counteract one's own thoughtlessness, such as factory farming.
The social question remains unresolved
A falsely cited Bismarck quote reads: "The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep." If you look at the production of average sausages and only have a spark of empathy in you, you almost automatically ask yourself the question of your own responsibility - with all the positive and sometimes difficult consequences of an offensive world improvement intention.
In particular, the social issue associated with high meat prices seems unresolved in the context of veganism and too often ignored by those who are less worried about financial concerns anyway.
However, the path of becoming aware via the Internet often leads to horror images and corresponding stagings that can border on manipulation. For the World Capital of Veganism, Israel, the impact of the Internet and YouTube in particular can be well assessed. There are many statistics on veganism of varying quality, it is reasonably certain that more than five percent of the population now live there vegan (in Germany about one to one and a half percent).
Social media are emotional media
According to experts, this development was triggered by a single, widespread YouTube video from 2010. In it, vegan and radical animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky, a Jewish American, uses extreme images to describe the consequences and excesses of livestock farming.
He also uses the, in my view, absolutely unacceptable comparison between the meat industry and the Holocaust; some campaigns by animal welfare organizations are also abusing this topic. But those who use their love for animals to relativize the industrial mass murder of humans can put their ethics in the orifice of their choice.
The video was effective anyway. The two variants with Hebrew subtitles have now been viewed more than one and a half million times, with nine million inhabitants of the only Hebrew-speaking country in the world.
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Reality shock: ten lessons from the present
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The fact that such narratives, based on shattering facts and disturbing productions, have become so effective in recent years, is in turn due to digital networking. Social media are emotional media, built to arouse and spread emotions. The best effect is a mixture of empathy and anger.
The principle can also be observed in very successful, right-wing and right-wing extremist communication. The most common postings contain an element of compassion, such as an innocent German victim. The story is enriched with anger at perpetrators, often foreign men.
Empathy and anger condition and reinforce each other and lead to a stronger "commitment". That's what the currency is called in the social media. It corresponds to the intense occupation through likes, sharen, commenting. From the identification with the victims becomes the angry desire to become part of the fight against the perpetrators - and that begins with the further spreading of the story.
Veganism is also a generation issue
Similar factors play a role in the spread of veganism via social media, because the victim-perpetrator structure seems so clearly distributed, at least at first sight, and monstrous, that is, pitiful images exist in large numbers. That's not the only motivation, but almost every reason seems somehow social media-driven. Almost as if meat consumption was being surrounded by the internet.
In recent years, a large number of celebrities have been publicly known to relinquish meat, often accompanied by huge social media roar. Social media are person-based, and so these beliefs act as role models. Food is one of the biggest topics in social media, also because it gives rise to three times a day occasion and publication. And so, besides everything else, veganism is also a generation issue.
In early 2018, a study by the Swedish "Youth Barometer" shows that about one third of people between the ages of 15 and 24 live "vegan, vegetarian or flexitarian". As the main reason, in addition to animal suffering, they indicate the effects on the environment and especially the climate. When the widespread fires in Brazil were much discussed in August 2019, CNN headlines: "The Amazon burns because the world eats so much meat".
This fall - it's about the world! - creates the moral furore and mission awareness that is often accused of vegan life and sometimes true. Even though the derisory antidote now seems bigger. There are more people in Germany who laugh about vegan jokes than vegans. Anyway.
But in my observations on the net I discovered an interesting phenomenon. Even people who came into close contact with vegan vegans through internet taunts began to think about their meat consumption. In this way, the greatest despisers of veganism have contributed directly to its spread. And this circumstance should be vegan living an inner Thanksgiving.
Author's note : I myself do not live vegan or strictly vegetarian.
