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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I always found vegan movement oddly close to religion. At my work, guy drives a car that has a custom VEGAN plate. I am not sure why I should know his dietary restrictions. I don't like liver. Do I add bumper indicating my dislike for liver consumption? Can someone rationalize it for me? Is it like sub-culture?

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Veganism is often a moral/ethical stance rather than a dietary restriction. It's not a food preference, it's a worldview. So this can be an attempt to attract attention to the movement and normalize it.

Ok. That makes more sense to me now. Thank you for taking time to explain it. I was genuinely looking for information.

The first point is that for many, being vegan isn't a "dietary restriction", but a lifestyle based on a moral philosophy that we shouldn't harm sentient beings more than necessary. Eg, the Vegan Society's definition is (in part): "A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."

There are vegans who really get into being VEGAN as an identity. Then there are the other ones who just do what we do and don't see a need to volunteer it or announce it at every possible chance. Some just live their lives, some participate in various aspects of animal rights activism. Either way, the VEGAN identity folks tend to be the ones that you will notice and remember. The rest, you pass by every day and probably never even know. (It's also worth mentioning that there are also a lot of people who are "vegan" as a fad diet (like "keto" or "paleo") but don't subscribe to the philosophy (vegans will usually try to make the distinction that those folks really just follow a plant-based diet), there are vegans who also get into weird things like raw food, alkaline water, fasting, etc. Like it or not, any large group of people will have fringes like this and they tend to be very vocal and attention seeking.)

Similarly, there are meat eaters who make BACON a huge part of their identity and like to remind you every chance they get how much they like it and "carnivore" dieters, etc.

It’s like any other modern movement, really. In the West, Christianity defined every aspect of life for over a thousand years. That has slowly eroded away over the last few centuries.

In the contemporary absence of a cohesive worldview, people look toward communities and philosophies like veganism, atheism, political affiliations, and so on for a sense of identity.

Veganism is not a dietary preference, it's a system of ethics. If there had been vanity plates in the 1910s there probably would have been some that said 5UFFR4G3, too.

Veganism extends to all modes of consumption, not just food--for example, vegans don't buy leather or animal-tested makeup. Side note, to reduce confusion like yours, some people use 'plant-based' specifically to describe vegan food. People are vegan, products are "suitable for vegans".

This one is apparently OK with eradicating rats: https://gothamist.com/news/revolting-dead-rat-soup-future-ny...

Shooting a bear that's charging at you isn't non-vegan, and by the same token, pest control isn't necessarily non-vegan either. This is the de facto definition of veganism:

> Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

And of course, what's possible and practicable is subjective.

I know some people who eat vegan to avoid a number life threatening allergies, so it's not always about ethics. It usually is, though.

Those people would accurately be called plant-based dieters. The point being that people getting vegan license plates are not allergy sufferers.

What people choose to identify with/as is pretty fundamental psychology and it's fascinating. There's only room in your mentality for so many categories of self-identification... it's gotta be something that distinguishes you from others. Everybody does it. You do it, I do it. He does it, in part, with his diet.

Yes and no. There certainly is what you describe. They are what many people think as vegan because it is the most vocal subset of vegans. There are many who eat vegan but don't proclaim it.

It is like my father-in-law who believes all gay people are loud and flamboyant. When in reality, he is dense and requires someone to hit him over the head to see it.

I've seen this out workplaces where a coworker A is vegan. A new coworker B notices and starts having a friendly chat with A about vegan food. Coworker B, who has been working and eating lunch with A for two years, is surprised to learn that A is vegan the whole time.

For some, it stems from values that differ from the norm, ie. antispecism, and values have something to do with religion. It allows for virtue signalling. But I don't see rituals associated with veganism.

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