Why Vegan? in 140 characters or less
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
Since joining twitter I’ve connected with lots of lovely vegan and vegetarian folk out there - many of whom have given me much food for thought (thanks followers!). Read on to find out more about twitter and what initially motivated some of the veg community there to go and stay vegan.
The low down on twitter
If you’re not familiar with this new social networking tool, twitter is basically a form of microblogging that allows you to post comments about what you’re thinking, feeling or doing so long as they’re 140 characters or less.
You might think that 140 characters isn’t really enough to be able to develop a discussion or post anything other other than the most trivial of ‘tweets’ about mundane aspects of your day to day life. But I’ve actually discovered the opposite is true!
The word limit forces you to be concise and eliminate words that serve little purpose.
In our fast paced world it’s also a great way to catch up and stay in touch with people - you might not have time to write a page long email to someone but most of us have time to type a few words and hit update.
So, why vegan tweeps?
Twitter is also great for getting feedback if you have a problem or question. I recently asked people who follow me on twitter why they went vegan and got the following responses:
‘Because of today’s food industry. It’s not natural at all anymore, we torture and kill because of our greed’. @KarlijnTandy
‘Veggie at 13 to annoy mother 
- Vegan at 18 when I had done the research and knew the link between meat and dairy’. @karencooke
‘Because I think we should treat others the way we’d want to be treated - and I don’t want anyone killing me and eating me’. @dogzero
‘Why #vegan? started with climate concerns, researched vegetarianism. Found #veganism to be more logical than vegetarianism’. @veganB12
‘Y?Not PS,TR ,nor even Francione-it was GRamsay&HughFW happymeatBS-made me wake up 2 my own hypocrisy & go vegan- overnight’. @yovegan
‘I couldn’t treat any being the way that “food” animals are treated, or cause any to be treated that way - so I went vegan’. @Beccane
There are many different reasons for going vegan, but the most common all involve compassion as you can see from the sample above. Whether you’re opting out of supporting the animal agriculture industry for your own health, out of concern for animals’ lives or to be kinder to our planet you’re indicating that you’d rather be part of the solution than part of the problem.
Are you following me on twitter?
For more veg wisdom, news and views sign up to twitter and connect with the many fabulous veg people there. To follow me, click here:
May 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Great post! I really enjoyed seeing everyone’s ‘why vegan’ responses pop up throughout the Twittersphere. It was really encouraging! I’m glad you listed some of them here so everyone to see.
@helloveggie