ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, then, ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

— Hamlet and Rosencrantz

ALEX: I feel like i’ve been staring at a nudie mag only to find out that the centerfold is underage.

— Alex, on why he is upset that VegNews magazine used stock photos of animal products as stand-ins for vegan food. 

The controversy over VegNews magazine digitally substituting real meat for meat substitutes is a useful illustration of how veganism is about perception and individual guilt absolution, not about the actual consequences (“benefits”) of veganism.

Amongst all the outrage vegans are venting over being tricked into salivating over chopped up animal corpses, and the mockery they will have to endure from their meat-eating friends, it’s hard to find any concern over how VegNews’ previously undetected use of meaty stock photos was harming animals. That may be because it wasn’t. The best I’ve seen a few vegans muster is that by paying for stock photos of meat, VegNews was slightly contributing to the demand for photos of meat, which slightly contributed to the demand for meat.

It’s not easy to say exactly how the blame for the death of an animal trickles down and taints all the participants (obviously the blame doesn’t fall entirely on farmers and slaughterhouse stickers, or we wouldn’t have veganism), but by the time it’s spread to digital reproductions of meat that can be infinitely reproduced without directly killing more animals, the blame must be pretty damn diffused. And as some vegans were quick to point out, if we chastise VegNews for their tiny contribution to the demand for dead animals by purchasing infinitely reproducible pixels arranged in such an order as to represent dead animal flesh, any vegan who has contributed money to any non-vegan company or person is just as guilty, if not more so. At least VegNews has the excuse that they are propagandizing for the cause.

So if VegNews didn’t wrong the animals any more than the average vegan does just about every day, why are vegans so upset?

Because vegans were wronged, and in veganism, that’s even worse than wronging animals. Vegans like to compare themselves to the radicals who opposed slavery in the pre-Civil War US, but it’s hard for me to imagine those abolitionists complaining as much as vegans do about all the inconveniences they personally endure while consuming cholesterol-free fare for their chosen oppressed.

It’s not that vegans never talk about the animals, but animal suffering is almost as abstract for them as it is for omnivores who can down a fish-bladder-filtered glass of wine without detecting the notes of suffering. Vegans have faith that their consumption habits positively impact the world, but any external effects are invisible to them, aside from the multiplying array of soft-lit vegan products crowding the shelves in the wood-floored organic sections of major grocery chains.

Not that omniscience would help much, since veganism does not liberate animals. With the crowning achievement of veganism being to prevent new animals from coming into existence, vegans are relegated to the role of animal ghost busters, passively zapping away potential animals with the direction they aim their shopping dollars. The reason vegans can’t see the benefits of their consumption habits is that there is noting to see.  

So vegans tend to be preoccupied with what they can see: yummy vegan goodies, how ethical they are for not eating meat, the hassles of going to a wedding or a holiday dinner with hardly any vegan options, how disgusted they feel if animal products cross their lips, cute farm animals that they are powerless to help, and defensive omnivores taunting them on their facebook walls. The green V on their products and the “Vegan” on their T-shirts tells them that no matter what buying veggie burgers actually accomplishes, they are vegan and that is in itself an accomplishment. When QuarryGirl announced that thanks to VegNews, meat was having its final revenge and replacing the meat replacers, vegans didn’t worry about whether the secret use of meaty stock photos had led to more dead Elsies or Babes. Naturally they care more about how this will affect them, “the veg community,” and the public perception of the philosophy that compels them onward.

Perception is key to veganism. It has to be. Veganism doesn’t save any living, breathing animals, vegans use items containing animal products every day, and even their vegan foods harm animals. Vegans have no choice but to dabble in mind games.

A veggie burger is comprised of molecules that vegans recognize as morally permissible to consume. A steak is comprised of molecules that vegans consider morally abject. The actual consequences of procuring either of these substances generally doesn’t matter. (Except in the case of dumpster diving: the dirtier the meat, the cleaner it is of immoral connotations). This is a simplistic way to look at food. The far-reaching consequences of anything we purchase are impossible to measure. The production of 50 pounds of boxed and individually wrapped veggie burgers can and often will be linked to more death and destruction than hunting a deer or even raising, killing and packaging a grass-fed ruminant. But what vegans see is that a veggie burger is plants and a steak is flesh. The rightness or wrongness of either has nothing to do with consequences. It’s all in our heads. If vegans see an image of a dead animal but think it’s not a dead animal (as VegNews readers were doing for at least the past two years), everything is fine.

Why aren’t vegans appalled when they see an image of a veggie burger? Animals died for that Boca patty, even if it is not composed of flesh. Vegan agriculture kills animals directly through attacks on pests, and less directly through habitat destruction and environmental footprinting. Veggie burgers even contain corpses of sentient insects. But a lack of animal products on the ingredients label creates the illusion of innocence. These foods are “cruelty free,” no matter how many animals suffered and died in their production. What “cruelty free” really means is “cruelty that’s hard to see.” If vegetarian companies could determine the exact amount, and posted a list of these dead animals next to the animal-free ingredients, veggie burgers would lose their function.

“Eating a fake meat product allows me to enjoy some of my favorite flavors without the guilt which would come with violating my beliefs,” one vegan commented on a blog post about whether mock meats were themselves immoral by mimicking immorality.

As long as the belief violation is unseen or rationalized, it simply doesn’t matter.

Did you ever wonder how vegans tolerate living in a world of exploiters, slave masters, and holocaust participants? The most popular way for vegans to excuse our sins and maintain their sanity in our modern Gomorrah is to credit our ignorance. If only we knew as much as vegans knew about the suffering that animals endured to become corpses on our plates, we would become vegan as well. We are good people who are misinformed, duped by milk mustache posters and “beef, it’s what’s for dinner” ads.

If, however, we watch Earthlings and continue to eat meat, there’s not much to say for us other than that we are deeply, deeply disturbed.

If you ask for a dash of lamb’s blood in your veggie stir-fry, you are hedonistic, selfish, uncaring and obscene. But if an anti-vegetarian chef secretly slips lamb’s blood into your veggie stir-fry and you eat it unknowingly, you are a victim. The act of eating the animal product is not where the mischief lies — what’s important is what goes through your head as you do it. The immorality of food is non-existent until the fact of its immorality materializes in your head. The second you realize, “Hey, this tastes distinctly of lamb’s blood, which is immoral to consume” you better spit it out and send it back. Or better still, rationalize that they will throw out the lamb remains if you refuse them, that wasting “food” (be sure to make air quotes to show that you do not consider animal fluids to truly qualify as food) won’t help the animals, and that it’s your duty to finish it.

As you sacrifice your purity over the blood of a lamb, you mull over what you’ll say to your vegan message board; it won’t be had to predict the reaction. They will be incensed at the restaurant for infringing upon the sanctity of your ideals, for what it made you endure. Few will judge you for eating the lamb’s blood veggie stir-fry given the circumstances, but many will say that they would have sent it back to send a message, and also because lamb’s blood is gross. The last sentiment is hard to quibble with. Whereas you previously thought the stir-fry was delightfully flavorful and satisfying, you now taste death and your stomach hurts. Expect constipation for the next few days.

Some vegans swear that years of animal-product dodging have left their body unable to process immoral foods. The smooth return that most ex-vegans make to animal-laden dishes, however, implies that the body’s rebellion is more psychological than physiological. Still, it’s good for vegans to maintain the urban legend of rocky reunions with animal products for a couple of reasons. One, it adds another reason for vegans to never give up veganism. Two, and more important, it enforces the illusion that veganism is actually doing something, that being vegan is a real change with results. Veganism, in this conception, doesn’t just affect your routine. It alters who you are, internally, all the way to your core. Many vegans want to think that on some level they are the physical embodiment of their beliefs. The vegan body rejects animal foods the way a human body balks at a heart transplant from a baboon. “These molecules are all wrong,” the vegan body says. “These things are not me.”

I’ve seen vegans venting on message boards about vegan or vegetarian friends who went straight back to regular meat eating after someone accidentally served them animal products, which they ate to be polite. How could one chance consumption of death on a whim subvert all those years of identity construction based on never ever touching the stuff?

The usual suspect, cognitive dissonance, shoulders much of the blame. People become vegan to escape cognitive dissonance. If you eat meat again and it doesn’t return, there is no longer anything to escape. It is a strange sensation for a vegan to do the thing that goes against all their beliefs… and see that nothing happens. If you can eat animal products and fail to feel guilty about it, fail to notice any ill physical effects, or fail to see any harm coming to the world — and the taste is so shockingly familiar that it can’t possibly have been 10 years since you last had it, and where are all the animals your veganism saved anyway? — and then you look in a mirror and see that you are still yourself… it might just destroy your illusion that veganism is something tangible and significant, that a vegan is something that you can become.

Vegans are just humans who have a particular set of thoughts flitting through their minds as they don’t put certain things in their mouths or on their bodies. To make this into a personal identity or a movement requires some amount of self-delusion. And delusion can be shattered. As Pixelpest commented about the VegNews scandal: “THIS IS HUGE. What VEGANS EAT is what MAKES VEGANS VEGAN.”

The worst part of this VegNews scandal for many vegans is the retroactive guilt of inadvertently lusting after animal products for so long. Even if vegans don’t mind the taste and texture of meat, the sight of an actual animal corpse — the physical result of the brutal system they oppose — should inspire revulsion, not desire. VegNews tricked vegans into thinking like omnivores. And since veganism is nothing but a thought, in some sense these vegans were temporarily omnivores, just as someone unknowingly lusting after photos of underage girls is temporarily a sexual deviant.

As long as the deception was undetected, it didn’t matter that vegan mouths got wet at the sight of this:

Once QuarryGirl exposed this as a depiction of sliced and diced sentient beings rather than sliced and diced beans, however, the gushing saliva in vegan mouths mattered quite a bit. Some VegNews defenders have said, “It’s not as if VegNews tricked us into physically consuming animal products against our wills.” But would it be so different if they had?

Sure, animals died for that ground beef the vegans would be unwittingly eating, but animals died for their veggie burgers too. The veggie burgers being vegetables allows vegans to not think about the death; the same is true of meat consumed under the false pretense that it is vegan. When vegans don’t have to ponder the harm that their existence causes, what is there to complain about? What you don’t know can’t guilt you.

Somehow the editors of VegNews failed to understand that this would upset vegans so much, but their ears finally pricked up at all the online vegan shouting, and have decided to change their policy. They haven’t said exactly what this means, but vegan stock photo sites are cropping up, and some vegans have suggested that VegNews use its unpaid interns to cook and photograph the vegan foods they’re writing about. These solutions would actually cause more animal deaths and suffering than if VegNews had continued to get away with using stock photos of meat, since it destroys more animals to produce dairy-free buns and mock meats than it does to download a photo.

But of course that’s not what matters to vegans.