Quote:
Originally Posted by loris128  Sure, it's a possibility I hadn't thought about 
But there are better ways to bring about a change.
Let's say your goal is to decrease animal deaths.
Now, let's suppose your have 1000 readers divided this way:
- 100 are vegetarian/pescitarian/other partial-animal-eater
- 10 are vegan/raw-foodists/etc
- 800 are on an average diet and eat an average amount of meat
- 90 are meat-lovers
Would you:
- Write an inflamatory post that will resonate positively with your vegetarian/vegan audiece, eventually convincing the 100 vegetarians to become vegans, while insulting (because being called a nazi is an insult, at least here in Europe) 89% of your readers
- Write a post describing the health and ambiental benefits that eating less meat could produce (even saying that eating no meat is better), therefore convincing 200 of the "carnivores" to eat 50% less meat per week and to buy the other 50% from the local farmer instead of the supermarket
I think that option #2 is clearly the winner here (see what Seth Godin has to say about a similar problem) . |
I won't speculate on the proportions, but the shocking post certainly has the power to make some omnivores go vegan (several readers said they would do so in
this thread). The new vegans can now do outreach on their own. The conciliatory post has the power to make omnivores feel good about maaaaaybe eating free-range meat every once in a while. Soothing people's ego rarely helps them make drastic changes in their lives. The new sometimes-free-range-meat-eaters have an extremely limited chance of convincing anyone to follow them, because they don't have a strong, compelling or coherent stance at all.
There are plenty of mild, conciliatory messages on meat reduction aimed at the general public already. I'm glad Steve could show a stronger position to his wide blog readership.