Handling anti-vegan comments on social
As vegans on social media we can end up creating vegan bubbles. It might be that everyone we follow is vegan, our friends are vegan, we spend a lot of time in vegan Facebook groups or watching vegan celebrities’ stories on Instagram. But we know that the majority of people in the world are not vegan yet, and many simply never will be. The more you reach out on social media, the more likely it is that you are going to encounter people with anti-vegan views who express them on your business’s social media posts. How you handle this, and how you let it affect you, can make a huge difference to your company’s social media experience.
It is easy to get upset, offended and angry when this happens. It might be someone just posting the word ‘Beef’ on your post, or putting links to studies (usually funded by the dairy industry) trying to disprove what you are saying. Your first reaction might be to go full-on vegan Rambo! Out comes your inner keyboard warrior and before you know it there’s a train-wreck on your company’s social media page.
Instead, I will give you a huge piece of advice that may change your view on how to handle this: remember that you were (likely) also once not vegan. You know the truth now and feel passionately, but how did you feel 3, 5, 10 years ago before you were vegan? We have spent a lifetime being told that we need meat, egg and dairy in our food intake to remain healthy. What did you know about veganism before you were one? Did you think it was a bunch of preachy millennials trying to take away your Sunday lunch and mocha latte? Do you now realise how wrong you were, not because you were a bad person but just because that is how vegan has been portrayed in the media and that’s the only information you had?
At the heart of veganism is compassion to all species, and that extends to your own. There is nothing wrong with letting an anti-vegan comment stay for a while on your post while your tribe rallies around you. If there’s an argument to be had, let your followers have it on your behalf to protect your professionalism. You can delete challenging comments straight away if your prefer, but other people may have the same views but haven’t commented themselves. Why not use it as an opportunity to engage in the most friendly and positive way and bust some myths? You might not change the mind of the person who posted the comment, but you might plant a seed with the other 50 people who read it. As vegans we need to be ready to defend our standpoint and change the views of others, but in the most compassionate way imaginable. Be the vegan you wish you’d have met before you turned vegan yourself. And if you’re not up to that on this particular day, then there’s also a lot of satisfaction to be gained from replying to someone’s post with a huge dollop of corrective information and then blocking the person from your page so they can’t reply…
