The other side to vegetarianism
As I expect most of you know, I am a life long vegetarian. It is the most important thing in my life (maybe even more important to me than music) and animal rights are something I feel very strongly about.
My vegetarianism has been at the forefront of my life recently.
Firstly because most of my university friends are meat eaters and like to tease me about not eating it myself. I generally don’t mind this. It’s something that I’ve always been subject to and probably always will be. I laugh along with them but sometimes the incessant questioning and comments about just how good steak apparently is get a little tedious. I was also a little annoyed to see how many of my Facebook friends ‘liked’ my status the other day when my friend Megan jokingly changed it when I wasn’t looking to ‘Lucy is now a fully fledged meat eater. Steak all the way!’. People ‘liking’ and commenting on it were people who should know just how huge a part vegetarianism is of my life and should also realise that I will never, ever become a meat eater. So congratulatory comments on my meat eating weren’t really appreciated too highly.
Secondly, some of you will know I have landed my first paid job in the industry I eventually want to work in. I am working for Bristol Eco Veggie Fayre. A two day festival in the centre of Bristol with tons of great music and stalls with free veggie foods, eco friendly products and animal rights campaigners. It’s a perfect opportunity for me as it combines my two greatest passions in life and also gives me a lot more experience in festival planning and programming.
One of my roles in this job is to carry out an online marketing plan. This includes setting up an official Facebook group, revamping the MySpace and also posting threads on all of the most popular vegetarian and vegan forums across the internet.
The forum part is the bit I am least familiar with. I don’t generally use them but was excited at the prospect of chatting to fellow vegetarians online, meeting new like-minded people and getting them excited about the event.
In reality, I have been faced with a pretty cold shoulder from the vegetarian forum world that has left me feeling confused and disappointed.
Before joining any of these forums, I decided to have a look through their terms of use and the way they are run - a lot of them only allow members to either be a vegetarian or seriously be considering it. For starters, that is a problem with the vegan exclusive sites as I am not a vegan and I don’t want to break the rules by pretending that I am and potentially being caught out. That bit I can live with. However, some of the forums are very bias towards users and choose to split them up into ‘already a vegan / vegetarian’ and ‘thinking about becoming one’. There are certain areas of sites that have restricted view for people who state that they are only considering vegetarianism when they sign up. I personally think this is an awful idea. Why segregate the two groups? If I was considering vegetarianism I’d look to joining forums to seek advice from existing vegetarians, not be told I’m not allowed to talk to them until I make the full step. What help is that to anybody?
Another thing I’m upset about is a post I made earlier on a forum named ‘Veggieboards’ that I was given a ‘warning’ for. Veggieboards is the largest vegetarian forum online. Someone had already started a Bristol Eco Veggie Fayre thread so I used that to reply to everyone who had already shown interest and to promote the Facebook and MySpace pages.
My comment was as follows…
‘Hi everyone,
This should be a good weekend!
I’m helping out with the fayre this year and have set up an official Facebook group.
If you’re on Facebook, click on the link below to see the group and join it for a bit more information!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?ei…9515200&ref=ts
I’ve also given the MySpace page a revamp.
Go to http://www.myspace.com/veganbristol to have a look!
Love,
Lucy’
A few hours later I received a threateningly titled email (‘You have received a warning at VeggieBoards’) with a message that said…
‘Hi Lucy,
I’ve deleted the links in your post. If you haven’t already done so please review the Community Guidelines - new members are not allowed to post links until they’ve established themselves as members of the community.
Thanks for understanding,
Gemma’
For starters, how on earth do I become an ‘established member of the community’? Presumably it’s to do with how many posts I have made and with that being my first one, I hadn’t quite established myself yet. I think this is a ridiculous rule. Fair enough if I was spamming the site with unnecessary or hurtful links but all I was doing was linking people to more information and a chance to join the Facebook group?! Ironic that Gemma rounded off the message with ‘thanks for understanding’ because frankly, I don’t understand one little bit.
Perhaps it is just naivety but I have always associated vegetarianism with being kind, forthcoming and open-minded. Not to form closed, cut off communities that are unwilling to let others in. If I was considering vegetarianism and came into contact with any of the above, I’d certainly be put off.
I know of a few vegetarians who follow my blog on Tumblr. If you have read this, I would be interested to see what you think? Or anyone who is not vegetarian for that matter. But right now I’m feeling slightly disheartened by the whole thing and desperately trying not to lose my faith in the vegetarian community. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.
