Vegans and vegetarians: do you find animal cruelty videos harmful to our cause?
I think it does sometimes hurt the cause. To me, instead of a rational discussion, it seems like it’s a guilt-fest. Instead of talking about the changes they can be making, it just shows animals dying in pretty terrible ways. To me it’s the same argument against abortion. Many anti-abortionists just show giant pictures of dead babies (often mutilated). That’s not really the best way to sway someone to your side. You want people to stop eating animals, but you don’t want to alienate them completely. Another thing to consider is the fact that many people are veg*ns due to environmental, societal, and health reasons, not as much for “saving” the animals.
No I think they benefit our cause. You cannot hide the truth and sometimes it takes the truth to convert people and the ones that laugh and say “meet focking rules yeaaaaah vegan *****” then they are the ones that should be hanging from hooks in a factory. I have directly seen people change there point of view from viewing animal cruelty videos…even heartless souless cops who a second ago were pushing and shoving people will making up laws suddenly back off a bit and have a more saddened look upon their face. Plus the ones that say they don’t want too see means that they know something is bad and they are scared to change so they must be bombarded by it. The videos are hard to stomach, what humans do too other creatures is horrid and senseless. We must show these videos so it doesn’t keep happening. Tragedies are always hard to handle but that is why we must show them because otherwise people won’t do anything about it. It is a big reason the Pentagon and much of the rest of the gove
It;s not the video themselves that may cause harm to your “cause” as you call it, it is most often the source of those videos. Most of the videos links you posted in your other question had “peta” or it’s known affiliates as the producer or source and that turns off most people including other vegans and vegetarians. Think about it. If you saw a video against the US and the link or source says “Al Qaida Productions” or from www.osamabinladen.com, would you believe it? Just because it is on video, it does not mean it’s accurate or that watching it makes you “informed” or that people will react the same way as you do. You get frustrated and annoyed because your “cause” was rejected. It’s not that people don’t know because that has been around for years and years. It’s that they don’t see things the way you do. YouTube has videos of aliens from outer space and ghosts. Watching them immediately makes me more informed? Well yes it does, It informs that there is one born every minute and PET
I agree with exsft on this. The reason alot of people, vegetarian and not are opposed to those videos is because they generally don’t present the whole story. Remember, those videos on animal cruelty are made by people with an agenda to advance, so they’re going to seek to paint their viewpoint in the best light possible, which means portraying the other side in the worst possible light. Now I’m not saying animal cruelty doesn’t occur in places like slaughterhouses, but to make an informed opinion about anything, you have to be able to see things from both sides. If a person really wants to be informed about animal cruelty, maybe the thing to do is to actually visit a slaughterhouse or a factory farm and actually see with their own eyes what really goes on, not just watch a bunch of videos on animal cruelty and assume that’s the way things really are everywhere all the time. For a person to say they are informed about animal cruelty solely by watching some videos on it, is no different
