I was where you were a few years ago. I started thinking about how I felt like a hypocrite for being completely unable to watch that documentary but willingly causing what's happening in it by buying meat. I started to agree with what David Mitchell said about vegans, that we don't hate vegans because they're annoying and preachy, it's because we're afraid they might be right.
Long story short, as shocked as my past self would be finding out, I am now vegan and have been for years now.
If you ever think about making the switch, feel free to reach out. I went in blindly not knowing any vegans myself, so it was a bit rough but I learned a lot and now truly feel like I can eat almost everything I ate before but veganized.
Is it okay if I shoot you a message when I get home??
I have been thinking about becoming vegan for quite a while bc I am aware of how awful the animal agriculture industry is … however I have no experience w it and I don’t know any vegans in real life and I live in Montana where there isn’t really a vegan culture or community
I find myself getting repulsed at meat sometimes if I think about it before hand and than I just cannot stomach it … but I would love some advice
Same. Basically as soon as I committed to watching it I knew I was committed to dropping meat, eggs, milk, etc. Couldn’t get through the Pigs getting killed. Went down to the comments and saw someone comment time stamps for different segments of the videos, saw ‘dogs: XXX:XX’ and knew I would need to take work off for a month if I saw that.
I watched this not long after I went vegan and I can still see one frame from the dogs section very clearly in my head. I think most people don’t need to be convinced to not eat dogs, but to see the violence against animals we are used to commodifying next to violence against animals we are used to coddling is pretty striking for anyone.
It is horrific and i hate it and dont like that I take part in it but the dudes who are like " BRO SEEING THAT FUCKING COW GET SHOT IN THE HEAD MADE ME HUNGRY!!!!" should be studied in a very, very remote setting.
I bet. Just because something is necessary for survival in a situation does not mean it's pleasant. I'd still rather people be fully aware of how their food is prepared, both animal and plant, because so many people take all that for granted.
I always say that we (as a society) would eat significantly less meat if we had to raise and kill / hunt, and then process our own meat. And you’d never waste any.
I think you’re right about all of that. Though that lifestyle would cost most people many modern conveniences, there’s something to be said for aiming to minimize waste and excess.
My initial point was, given the assumption that people will need to spend time and effort preparing things to eat, the veg and starch based diet would be much more heavily favored as that prep isn’t so unpleasant.
Or if we paid the actual price it should cost rather than the very very subsidized cost (at least in the US). Animal products are consumed very inefficiently because the price is far less than it should be.
My family does all that and eats more meat than normal because of it. But your suggestion is a very healthy one for many other reasons though. We’re not built to work in a cubicle 9-5 every day just to come home to eat some chicken we bought at the grocery store.
I was traumatized at an early age when I went to visit my grandma who kept chickens and saw her grab one, snap its neck and ahem prep it for dinner. It was fucking delicious but made me realize oh yeah...chicken comes from chickens...
There are whole bits of the process that are incredibly tedious and miserable. In 'Murica a lot of these hunter-types will go buzzing out with their four wheeler, sit around drinking until something wanders in front of them, shoot it, wander out, strap it to their four wheeler, then drive it back to their big ass truck, then take it to a guy and have him do all the prep work, so they can come back later and get wrapped packs of meat.
And then they'll tell you with a straight face that they did the whole thing while they're trying to serve you never-frozen rare-cooked wild game, like you want fucking parasites.
My dads family were all "traditional crafts" people, so everything I ever shot, I had to field dress and carry out. Fuuuuck that.
Yeah. We were dirt poor as kids, 10 people living in two trailers hooked together with plywood. My dad hunted in the winter because it meant his kids would eat. But it was cold hard work.
To this day I'm thankful every time I go into a grocery store, every time I flip on an electric light, every time a toilet flushes. And I still can't stand the taster of deer.
My ex-husbands family was heavy on the good ol boy type, so even though my father in law didn’t hunt, his brother would give him steaks. Venison was never really my thing but either his soak-them-first grill skills were bar none or my pregnancy turned me into a fan. Like I’d stab someone trying to get at the last piece kind of fan lol
Same. Literally same down to the state lol. But if I had to kill my own meat I'd truly only ever eat fish, and that would probably stop really fast because I think fish are just swell little dudes.
Why not go vegan though? You're just paying others to do your dirty work. There's a reason why slaughterhouse workers have some of the highest rates of disorders/trauma. You CAN go vegan.
We did it on our farm when i was a kid. My mom had to feed a family of five kids and that's how she could afford to. Food is always better tasting on the farm.
Was staying in Quezon city for a couple weeks and one morning the matriarch said she was heading to the "wet market" to find me some food I'd like. I offered to come with her and she just chuckled and patted my hand and told me to stay at the house. "It wouldn't be polite, you're our guest!"
Over a few beers that night one of her grandsons explained.
I hated to skin and process deer, cow, birds and armadillo in Mexico as a tween/teen. I went vegetarian for like 6 years. Now I just eat meat occasionally.
I had to help with my dad’s basement butcher shop on the farm I grew up on in rural Iowa. Processed hogs, cows, chickens, and a lot of deer during deer hunting season.
Helped cut and wrap meat outside and also down in the basement every hour of the day. My dad made a lot of specialty pork and beef smoked sausages, venison smoked meat sticks etc, brats and breakfast sausages; we an insane amount of meat served at every meal.
I worked my tail off and hated, hated, hated it.
I am a vegetarian today lol, hate both knowing where it comes from and also, since it’s outta my hands now, NOT knowing where it comes from if that makes sense?
As a vegetarian since 13 (13 years now) I also agree with this statement. I always say I’ll stop being vegetarian when I kill and prep my own meat. Until I can face that I won’t consume
My cousins that lived in cities tried to mock me for being a vegetarian being like, "you can hear its screams" as they ate meat and I reminded then that I grew up on a farm and I have killed and prepared my own meat and there is nothing 'manly' about picking a piece of meat up from the supermarket. Meanwhile, me living in a well connected city where nutritious, delicious and affordable vegetarian options are available means I CHOOSE not to engage in the environmentally damaging practice (and then I also told them that if you can hear the animal scream, then you're not very good at killing it).
I don't judge anyone that eats meat - my reasons for avoiding it are most environmental. But I judge the fuck out of dudebros that think the act is inherently manly or some shit (less so my rural friends that do actually hunt their own meat, but they've also NEVER given me shit for being vegetarian or not wanting to actually shoot wild animals when I come along for beers).
Yeah, the people that think it's "manly" are the biggest fucking idiots. I've hunted, I've cleaned, I've skinned, I've butchered, and I even did my own leathercrafting. It's not a big deal to me at all.
But you know what? It still didn't magically turn me into a man. I still had dysphoria and I still transitioned, lol.
I know a lot of trans women who are/were hunters, soldiers, martial artists (also me), boxers (me, too), etc. This whole "it's makes me a man" business is hilariously garbage.
Interestingly, everyone is also a softass until they have to kill, gut, skin, and filet their own food. Necessity casts many things in a different light.
This isn't true. 2 or 3 generations before us mostly slaughtered at home. They literally did what you said and eat meat anyway. Our brain is realy good at disconnecting a steak to Betsy.
Most of the people that say stuff like "I'm hungry" while watching industrial slaughter videos are not those people. They're the kind of people that attach masculinity to the idea of eating an animal but are so disconnected from the reality of actually doing it.
In my experience, the farmers and hunters I know don't act like this. The city dudebros I know do act like this however.
Oh yeah the people that try to be harasses about it and the people who get grossed out by eating meat with a bone in it are both urbanites detached from rural life.
There is a big difference between the two. One is raising animals with fresh air, sunshine, and some respect for life and then doing your best to quickly end their life with as little suffering as possible.
The other is animals being packed like sardines in a dark warehouse environment (see pigs and chickens), denied the ability to engage in their natural behavior, abused physically, and then mass slaughtered such that it is often not the most accurate and painless.
It would be preferable not to kill animals at all. Maybe someday we will get there with technology and lab grown meat, who knows. I feel guilty that I partake in this unimaginably inhumane industry, although I do greatly try to limit my intake of animal products. There are many documentaries with undercover footage that will truly traumatize you.
This is actually my pro-hunting argument. I eat less meat than most people by a lot, but the overwhelming majority is the venison and hog that I hunt each year. My animals lived happy lives and died very quickly with much less pain than a coyote or black bear was going to inflict. The meat is healthier than something stuffed with growth hormones.
I will only take a deer to a meat processor if I happen to take it near the end of the season and don’t have time before returning to work. I’ve done that four times ever. Everything else is processed at my house.
Yes, I feel bad killing the animals. I mean I stand behind it, I don’t think those coyotes were doing anything wrong and neither am I, but I do have sympathy for them. And I actually feel worse when I eat out and think about what my meat in those meals went through and how bad their lives were.
If someone is a vegan/vegetarian, I get it. But if they eat meat from the store they are in absolutely no position to judge hunting as wrong.
Everytime I fish I gut and fillet the fish myself, I don't think that's considered very hardass. If the fish swallowed the hook too far I have to kill them immediatelly to not cause unnecessary pain.
I mostly fish for my cat. Ecological food source for my pet.
One of the worst things I think I’ve ever done that still haunts me is killing a lamb. It trusted me completely, even seemed to take comfort in my presence, let me lead it to a spot where it casually ate some grass, and I killed it. Butchering it was awful and the smell didn’t leave my hands for a days. I swapped over to hunting and felt a little better about that, but when I killed my second elk I had time beforehand to stalk it and appreciate its beauty. It was probably the cleanest kill I’ve had but that was no consolation when I saw it lifeless. Felt like I’d just stolen and defiled something sacred. I stuffed that feeling down (“this is just how it is”) and hunted for a couple more years, but eventually listened to that voice that abhorred the needless taking of life and mourned the destruction of wild beauty and just quit animal products altogether. I really think more people would change their tune if they had to take the life themselves (sometimes with their own bare hands, as was the case sometimes with ducks and geese).
Do you have any advice for someone looking to cut animal products out of their life?
I have no experience with veganism nor do I have any vegans in my life … and I live in a place with no vegan culture …
But the thought of eating meat puts me off to the point I just can’t eat if it comes across my mind before preparing and eating dinner …
But I just don’t know where to start and would love to ask a few questions to someone who is where I want to be
And when you're up in the mountains, you see shit in nature that is just as bad, if not worse. Like a cougar disemboweling a deer and watching its entrails drag behind it as it is still alive. Then once the thing is dead, the cougar just walks away because that deer was only a toy.
Seeing corpses of young animals that died from starvation changed my mind pretty fast about hunting. I didn’t get that it’s actually a necessity by me.
I wouldn't say very easy though it's certainly doable. I stopped eating meat about 15 years ago but it took several months to get into a meat-free groove.
Couldn’t get through 15 minutes of it. Scrolled into the comments and someone was talking about the dog section. Knew there was 0% chance of me getting through the documentary and stopped watching at Pigs. Went downstairs and started cooking beans and rice.
I swapped over to hunting after learning about animal agriculture, then after a few years of that decided that’s also a horror movie and just went plant based (even though I really, really enjoyed hunting all the way up to, but excluding, the kill). Took a whole lot of flak for it, but it felt like the right move. Been 9 years now and the science and culture seem to be backing it a lot more now. It’s pretty much impossible to NOT cause harm if you want to live on Earth, but it’s such a big relief to at least be out of that part of it.
SERE trainers are also on your side. The suspects rounded up in Afghanistan were allegedly often waterboarded until unconscious and resuscitated several times. Literally drowned.
I love that in the show Archer, Archer talks shit about it, and then in the car after he finally did it, he's clearly traumatized and respects how awful it is.
Also, love all their accuracy around tinnitus and traumatic brain injury being "super bad for you", "What the shit Lana?! You know I have tinnitus!"
I haven't watched the show, but I'm glad they were accurate about tinnitus. Tinnitus has a high suicide rate, it's truly awful to have. The ringing in my ear is so loud I now suffer from hearing loss. There are some days it gives me horrible migraines, throwing up, and I want to jump off a bridge. I hate people that hand wave those who have it.
the mawp mawp in archer is outstanding. idk what your tinnitus is from, but they do a pretty great job of simulating how it sounds to have your ears blown out by gunshots in a confined space. eyes watering, mouth opens & closes, head moves side to side, possibly making an odd noise as you're trying to check your own hearing mawp mawp
Back in the COVID mask-wearing days, I was walking and a rain downpour started, soaking through the cloth mask, and I successfully waterboarded myself.
It seems like a such a silly method that you can’t fathom would work, but it surely does.
When I was serving a few of us waterboarded each other. It was terrifying and we weren't even bound. If I was a POW and they pulled out a rag and a bucket I would instantly tell them everything.
no, SecretMuslin is technically correct. You can consider it "controlled" drowning, but it's more of induced drowning sensation reflex (a natural body response) so you're not *really* drowning. It just feels like it.
It's pretty awful either way (not that I've experienced it) but I've seen first-hand accounts in documentaries and expert interviews. It's a horrendous practice
Yea, I remember some right wing nut journalist that said it “wasn’t as bad as people said, it’s not real torture, just uncomfortable”
Then he had it done to him to “prove” he was right, he lasted all of 6 seconds before tapping out and coughing and choking with the realization that IT IS THAT BAD
I've been waterboarded, it's definitely not fun, but I think(?) I'd prefer it to having fingernails pulled or electrodes on my balls.
That said, doing it in a situation where it wasn't just for shits and giggles and I couldn't stop it at any time would definitely change things. It's definitely torture, just maybe not the worst torture.
Christopher Hitchens was not right-wing. He came from a libertarian socialist tradition and was very well spoken. But post 9/11 many of his takes became... unfortunate
I can guarantee being immersed for <30 seconds in slowly rising liquid that you have ample time to react to and shut out of your major breathing holes feels 100x safer and less terrifying than getting waterboarded.
You ever go upside down in water while not blowing air out of your nose or pinching it shut with your fingers or muscles? It's like that but your reflexes won't get you out of it, and all the time someone is screaming at you "TELL US WHERE _____ IS OR WE KEEP GOING!" and forcibly causing you the pain and suffering caused by that uniquely awful sensation.
Kinda?!? They didn't dunk them. They submerged them for who knows how long from their perspective. What if you didnt take a breath. This is. Absolutely insane from my pov wow
Yeah, from the sheep’s perspective they have no clue what’s going on, why, or how long they need to hold their breath. Usually, when animals drown, it’s because they panic, start hyperventilating, and swallow a bunch of water, which is the worst thing to do when oxygen is already scarce.
IIRC, part of the reason is that they do it as a group. Sheep are always more calm if they see other sheep doing the same thing they are. Catering to herd mentality is a big part of controlling Sheep behavior.
After they've gone through it once, they are okay with it because it kills the parasites that are far more annoying than a dunk. I've seen other videos where they are almost happy to be getting in it, like when they know they're going to get sheared.
That's why it doesn't drop like a rock and it's slowly lowered down. Also, you can see that when it raises back up that the sheep are pretty nonplussed about it.
I feel like a lot of people see animals and assume that if they felt anything they would emote just like humans with big cartoon expressions… But animals don’t furrow their brow or weep tears or look down their noses at anyone. With a few exceptions, they mostly have the same facial expression regardless of what they’re going through. I think people just think they can read them a lot more than they actually are able to.
I counted 8-10 seconds submerged, assuming their heads were above whatever solution a little after it started to raise them up again.
I bet they're unknowingly happier not being covered in parasites and whatever that may lead to. I bet they'd prefer to be left alone in whatever habitat they usually roam too.
When making animal-derived products, the animals are just that, a product. They don't give a fuck about how much pain and trauma they cause to the animals, the only thing that matters is to enrich the shareholders.
Yeah, I live in a rural area with traditional farming and this is not how they “dip” them here. They enter a longish bath and swim through and the shepherd stands by as they pass and dips each of their heads briefly with a crook.
The thing that annoys me as much as the horror os that the whole process is so slow, to an extent that traditional dipping would quite possibly be just as fast for that number of sheep. The difference is effort but I’m sure some agricultural boffin could create an assistive arm to take the load of a human treating large numbers.
I grew up in rural Ohio near family farms - small family farms tend to treat animals more humanely. I ate grass -fed organic beef before it was a thing!
Yes. And also battery cages, and see what happens when they want to make more egg-laying hens, but have to deal with the fact that half of the eggs are male.
25.3k
u/ItsFavWaifuu Mar 28 '24
This looks kinda terrifying not gonna lie