Sorry that wasn’t directed at you. The “you” in my rhetorical question was the silly vegan extremists, not you. That was not clear. Go ahead and claim the word and make dinosaur nodes. It makes their silliness even funnier and takes away all their power.

While you have a point, my immediate reaction was, “oh cool, now they’re trying to do it too” (I’ve seen tankies claim the same shit). When I probe my brain to try and figure out why that was a response, the result is my brain telling me that I’m hearing some kind of dog whistle but it won’t go into more detail about what makes that statement sound like a dog whistle.

Tbh, considering how unhinged they’re behaving (though at this point I think they’re doing it for shits and giggles), I wouldn’t be surprised if they truly meant it that way; it honestly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen someone on here try to claim something like that. I suppose that doesn’t mean they intended to mean it that way, now I’m curious if anyone else had a similar interpretation. I’m used to hearing people referring to racial, or gender, or ethnic minorities when they say something like, “I’m part of a misunderstood minority group”; and I know I’ve heard people from other english-speaking countries (other than the US) do it as well.

I have seen the word used in both ways, though I think that in this case the user was intending to use it to imply oppression, rather than simply meaning that they do not have a lot of users.

Religion, by itself, is normally not a qualifier when we refer to minorites, as that word normally implies an ethnic or racial minority. However, there are some religions with ethnicities tied to them, e.g. Jewish people, and Muslims, so the line can definitely become a bit blurred.

Jewish people are a minority in most places because of their ethnicity, not their religion. Muslims are often referred to as minorities in most places, because most Muslims are ethnically related, at least as far as the Western world is concerned.

Some also reuse the word minority interchangably to refer to religious minorities, political minorities, etc, which further blurs the line, but the most common use of the word is in reference to race or ethnicity.

I understand that Veganism is more than just a diet. Its a lifestyle, culture, pledge to a certain set of morals, etc. It can be as important as religion is to a devout religious person.

A person on the Carnivore diet can make the same point. A person that subscribes to a political identity could also make your same point. This slippery slope leads to Nazis being able to call themselves minorities, because technically, Naziism is a culture, too, albeit a terrible one, and they are very thankfully in the minority of political beliefs.

It’s still a CHOICE. No one is born vegan; it’s a position that someone arrives at.

Yes, and there are Muslim diets I’m sure, but Islam isn’t a diet either, for example. Just stick “veganism” into your search engine of choice and the credible sources won’t call it a diet.

And there’s surely people who are looking for traditional Muslim food without wanting to convert to Islam as well. Muslim’s would probably treat people curious about their food less hostile than those vegans would.

I suspect your willingness to assume the worst of what a vegan’s said

You can suspect that I assume the worst of any sort of human, especially when they constantly argue in bad faith and with hostile rhetoric. That being said, I don’t approach vegans at all. I just observe the constant self righteous shit flinging they do from the outside, or get unwillingly caught up in it because they can’t help but attack people even outside of their little radicalized bubbles.

Alligator lovers

Yeah it’s weird it just says ‘mod’ or ‘admin’ instead of the username

Getting bullied is not the same as being a “MINORITY”. White kids who are not minorities in North America but get bullied all the time in school. Not eating flesh of a mammal or fish etc doesn’t mean you are a “minority”. Like I said, I’ve experienced life as a veggie. Is it annoying? The stupid questions, the comments people make? Yes. But I’ve never had a cop pull me over and worry about whether I’ll die that day because I don’t eat beef. Or worry, walking down the street, alone at night as a single woman, if I’ll be assaulted because I don’t eat chicken. Non-meat-eaters aren’t minorities in the sense that they are discriminated against in the idea that the word “minority” conjures up. They deal with, at most, someone tricking them into eating meat. Which I’ve had done. It felt violating and offensive but wasn’t any sort of level as someone who is an actual “minority” in our continent.

I mean, it is a valid point to be brought up. A year ago when I joined Lemmy, one of the first advices I’ve read for new people starting out is to block communities they don’t want to see posts from - for whatever reason it may be.

What happened to that stance? I feel like if it were any other subject than veganism, people wouldn’t bat an eye. I’m not out here arguing that being vegan is like being part of a minority, but there sure as hell is a lot of vegan bashing on reddit. On Lemmy too, it seems

You have to appreciate their efficiency.

It was clearly purposeful.

And what about those commenting on good faith?

Do you have examples? That modlog is a bit busy as you know, I’m not going to go through it

And what’s the problem with voting on public posts on a public forum?

What’s the problem with banning on a public forum?

There was a post yesterday about vote manipulation by bots (https://feddit.org/post/2795018 ), if people just downvote the vegan content without contributing, it’s not that far from that.

Or maybe it just comes from them seeing downvotes as “non relevant to the community” and not “disagree”, hence getting rid of people who use it the other way.

I’m really not sure to get why it’s such a big deal. You got banned from a small community on Lemmy.

• Were you going to participate to this type of community? Then create another one and post there, if yours is better moderated, people will come to yours (my experience in the past on a different topic)
• Were you not going to engage with that type of content? Then move on. I’m not interested in US politics, if all the US politics communities would ban me that would be fine, I would just move on.

They are probably trying to identify people who would rather downvote or post cheeky comments (see OP) rather than block the community, or not interact with it

Paddle’n