Dramatic, polarising vegan activism content might satisfy our base instincts and provide copious amounts of dopamine through online views, likes and comments, but the long-term goal of creating a more just world demands something deeper: empathy, strategy, and accessibility. The real challenge lies not in shouting louder, but in being heard by the right people in the right way.
DAVID RAMMS: What is vegan porn (vp)? It’s not a sub-genre of vegans bumping uglies, actually, it doesn’t necessarily include anything of a sexual nature. I define vegan porn as activism by vegans, for vegans. Activism that appears only to entertain, or aid in gaining the support of, vegans. I think a lot of content in the online activism space has fallen into the category of vp.
Without giving any specific examples, because we’re not here to target anyone in particular, let’s see what vegan porn looks like…
I think this is a good example of vp. Who else other than a vegan is going to benefit from this video? Who is this video going to convince to go vegan? To be fair, all approaches have a chance of affecting someone. Maybe there are a minority of non-vegans in the world who would find my behaviour in this interaction endearing. They might respect my passion, and be convinced by my conviction. But let’s be real, the majority of people are going to think I’m a rude, condescending jerk.
There’s only one group of people who we can expect to overwhelmingly support my behaviour in this video – vegans. And that’s because this video is vegan porn… I look back, and I can see that in many cases, I was probably making videos to entertain vegans. Sometimes consciously, but most of the time I did it unknowingly, genuinely believing I was doing great activism.
In sharp contrast to this, take a look at my debate with a homesteader/animal farmer, or my recent outreach video…
I’m sure you’ll agree that the difference is night and day. In these videos, I make a conscious effort to encourage behaviour change not only for the people I’m speaking with, but for those watching. I am laser focused on getting people to make positive changes for animals.
In my debate with the farmer, many vegans expressed their desire for a savage takedown. A brutal, no compromise fight. They wanted name calling and moral grandstanding. They wanted a ferocious verbal battle in defence of the animals, and many vegans also want to see that in vegan street outreach. But after many years of doing this, I’ve come to believe that most content of this nature predominantly serves vegans…
How does one go from being an activist set on changing the world for animals, to an activist making videos that appear only to serve other vegans? It’s pretty simple actually, numbers.
Almost all activists gauge their success by views, likes, shares, and follower counts on social media. Most of us use these numbers as a proxy for the success of our activism. So when a video of you screaming down the excuses of a meat eater performs ten times better than a video of you calmly helping someone come to the conclusion they should change for animals, it appears that screaming is the way to go…
I know some will be eager to point out that many people cite this kind of aggressive activism as the reason they went vegan, and therefore surely this “vegan porn” can’t be all bad. I agree to some extent. We have a world population of billions, we can expect different people to be impacted by all different forms of activism. But we have to consider the concept of survivorship bias.
As vegans, we come into contact with many other vegans, both online and in real life. Thanks to that, we gain access to valuable information on how they became vegan. What we don’t have access to, however, is all the people exposed to vegan activism who didn’t go vegan. This can lead us to making incorrect conclusions about how to convince people to go vegan…
What if, instead of leaning on drama or aggression, we focused on creating balanced, approachable activism? Take Clif Grant, for example. This video of his garnered 1.3 million views, yet he avoided anger or hostility. Instead, his calm, empathetic tone invited meaningful discussion while still maintaining the engagement that drives impact…
I’m no stranger to creating vegan porn and reaping the rewards of views, likes, shares and follows. If you’re not constantly keeping in mind why you’re making these videos, it’s very easy to fall into vp territory. You tell yourself, “oh they’ll love this!” and “this is gonna get people so pumped!”, without realising the audience you’re actually targeting, non vegans, will likely watch it and think you’re unhinged at best, and deranged at worst.
We aren’t doing this for a dopamine hit, we’re doing it to try and make a better world for animals, and I believe we need to be more responsible with what we put out to the world… If we lean too heavily on vp, we risk alienating the very people we hope to inspire. Instead, I believe focusing that building bridges, fostering understanding can help us create content that sparks curiosity and change…
In the end, I believe vegan activism needs to find a balance. Dramatic, polarising content might satisfy our base instincts and provide copious amounts of dopamine through views, likes and comments, but the long-term goal of creating a more just world demands something deeper: empathy, strategy, and accessibility. I believe the real challenge lies not in shouting louder, but in being heard by the right people in the right way. SOURCE…