Running a vegan blog and a cluster of social media accounts is not all plant based pastries and high fives from readers.
There is a less glamorous side that anyone who has ever spoken publicly about veganism will recognise instantly. The comments. The eye rolls. The people who arrive online purely to be annoyed and annoying.
Read more below.
This weekend delivered a very familiar moment. I shared a Facebook post promoting a vegan shoe shop owned by friends of mine called The Third Estate. It was hardly a groundbreaking piece of content. Just a friendly nudge to support a compassionate business. Low stakes. Low drama. Or so I thought.
Enter Heath.
A Facebook user named Heath popped up in the comments with a tired and poorly constructed graphic designed to ridicule vegans. As far as online abuse goes, it barely registered. I once had someone tell me I was worse than Mussolini. That still makes me laugh. So no lasting trauma here. But Heath’s contribution was odd enough to make me pause and think about intent.
My Facebook page is very clearly a vegan space. It is followed by vegans and people who are at least curious about vegan living. I am not sure what Heath imagined would happen next. Did he think a handful of us would suddenly abandon compassion after seeing his subpar meme? Did he want applause from strangers? Or was he simply hoping someone would argue with him so he could feel briefly alive?
I often wonder if there is a proper study into the motivations of online trolls. In this case I know Heath lives in a small rural town in Australia, so perhaps boredom plays a role. Maybe stirring up minor drama on the Internet feels like interaction when the day has been a bit quiet. Who knows?
The genuinely amusing part is that comments like Heath’s actually help my work. It is how the algorithm functions. Engagement is engagement. A bit of friction on a post tells Facebook that the content is interesting and should be shown to more people. So while Heath was trying to take a swipe at vegans, he was also quietly helping promote a vegan shoe shop to more potential customers. Thanks, Heath.
Of course there is a line. When comments tip into sustained harassment or abuse or threats, they get blocked and reported without hesitation. But most of the time it sits at this odd level where it is annoying, confusing, and strangely useful.
As I move into my 16th year of doing Fat Gay Vegan, I am realistic enough to know that comments like Heath’s are part of the landscape. If they stay in the realm of daft memes and do not tip into anything more serious, if that is the worst of it and it helps push vegan businesses a little further into view, I can live with that.
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Hi FGV! Thank you for continuing to do what you do, despite this sort of nonsensical ridicule from people who clearly can’t (or won’t) reflect on their own flaws before making feeble attempts to criticise others.
Cheers! Thanks for the kind words