fuck that server though. what if instead of a voluntary dietary restriction you were allergic to meat?

The same goes for the vegan/vegetarian side too, tbh.

Like, it's something more related to group dynamics. Give people a way to distinguish themselves and they'll build all of their identity around it, then they'll discriminate the out-group and suck the in-group's balls even if they're wrong.

As of myself, I'm omnivore and I can't get carnists nor vegetarians and/or vegans points, but I do respect them as long as they respect me too.

I think it partially has something to do with the internet brainrot propaganda against veganism/vegetarianism

I hear you. I was raised vegetarian (mom is awesome) and have flip flopped between that and veganism my whole life. Growing up meatless and male has been a weird experience, with countless people telling me I'm not manly be cause I don't eat dead animals. Wtf.

Sadly, I've also received the opposite, telling me I don't really care because I'm not vegan enough (sigh)

Because your lifestyle choices are an affront to their lifestyle. In many places in the world eating meat is an important part of the culture. Saying that you don’t eat meat is seen as a rejection of the culture. And they will immediately label you as “the other”.

It’s like if a person says they are an atheist in a country where everyone is religious and religion is an important part of daily life. Even when the atheist isn’t judging anyone the atheist will receive negative reactions and even violence.

I've never once pushed my diet on anyone or brought it up out of necessary contexts

And that's a good way to go about it. But unfortunately that's not the case for every vegetarian or vegan, and as for every demographic, the loud and confrontational ones are always the ones that get the most attention. And this is coming from an atheist that doesn't talk about religion unless directly asked about it, so I can sympathize.

The sad fact is that most people that are wary of vegans and vegetarians are like that because they've run into ones that are varying forms of asshole about their diets. Some of the antagonists throw insults, some will be dishonest, most will be some mix of the 2. Of course it's not fair that those bad impressions are being applied to you as an individual, but it's unfortunately also just human nature.

Just going through the other responses on here. Pretty much every other responder is trying to come up with some complicated Psychology 101 argument as to why people don't like vegans despite the answer being simple.

Hell, I've run into vegans criticizing keto (which is weird because you can be vegan/vegetarian on a keto diet), and their tactic was to throw out something like 14+ research papers and pretend that they all backed up their claims. I went through all of the papers, and 1/3 were completely irrelevant, 1/3 weren't even looking at proper keto (or even properly low-carb) diets, and the final 1/3 contraticted their points.

While this may have seemed like a tangent, it's relevant to my point: people are messy, and they'll sometimes be dishonest and/or contradictory, especially when they think they have the moral high ground. And people that are on the fence or disagree can see that dishonesty and it leaves a bad impression for the whole group.

To recap: just like with atheism, a lot of the issue is a small number of bad apples that give the group a bad name. All you can do is mind that fact and try to avoid being one of the bad apples yourself.

Hugs.

This is why I don't bring it up to other people.

The BBC has a good article on this concept

The tension that results can make us feel stressed, irritated, and unhappy. But instead of resolving it by changing our beliefs or behaviour, it’s quite normal to blame these feelings on something else entirely – all without realising we’re doing it

In the case of eating meat, Rothgerber suggests we have a number of strategies – around 15 – which allow us to avoid facing up to the meat paradox. These include pretending that meat has no link to animals, imagining that we eat less of it than we really do, wilful ignorance about how it’s produced

[...]

Unfortunately, most of these are derailed by the presence of vegans.

According to Rothgerber, people tend not to think of meat eating as an ideology. The dominance of meat eating around the world helps the omnivores among us to avoid the idea that it’s a choice – it’s just what everyone else is doing. But when a vegan turns up at a dinner party, suddenly we’re bumped out of the comfortable “mainstream diet” category and into the unsettling “meat-eating” category. By their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200203-the-hidden-biases-that-drive-anti-vegan-hatred

It points out how shameful and lazy meat eaters are to their face, and people don’t like having their poor choices pointed out to them.

It is the same when telling people that you dont drink or take other drugs..

A good friend of mine is vegan and has been actually assaulted (old lady slapped him, which isn't exactly being attacked with a tire iron, but it's still fucking assault) because of it.

Another good friend is vegetarian, and when we went out for pizza, he ordered this one fancy pizza, and told them to hold the meat (entire pizza is veggie except for prosciutto). They brought it out with prosciutto on it, and when he said "I don't eat meat" the server replied "it's very thin" as if that made a difference to it being meat. It was genuinely quite funny in the moment. Lol. They did replace the pizza without any qualms or attitude, but I'll never forget that moment. It's thing, so it doesn't count!

... Also, I do wish they'd left that pizza instead of taking it back. It looked so good, and whenever I visit them they like to starve me to death because they're all tiny people with caloric deficits D: