Recidivism

Hey, you convinced someone to go Vegan! Good for you! Now here's some bad news: There's at least a 70% chance that person is not going to be Vegan for longer than a year.

As animal rights activists, there will always be a whole assortment of challenges when it comes to convincing people to go Vegan; Whether it'd be terrible arguments and logic, pseudoscience, stubborness, apathy, laziness, all of these things inhibit the spread of Veganism. But without a doubt, the number one reason why Vegans have been consistently only a tiny fraction of the population for so long, is due to recidivism.

The thing with Veganism is that it has something of a spillover effect; Your actions don't exist in a vacuum, and like it or not, what you do has tangible impacts on the material world. Since it's all about changing where you're spending your money (well, unless you're Freegan) and influencing folks, the economic and social importance of the movement shouldn't be overlooked as huge venues for pushing the issue. Vegans buying plant-based foods will shift market focus away from animal products, as well as influencing family, friends, and acquaintences to reduce their meat consumption, who will then influence their family, friends, and acquaintences, and so on.

If everyone who went Vegan stayed Vegan, not only would that mean there would be far less animals being killed, but it would keep the cycle going strong. Someone goes vegan, they help contribute to the market share of Vegan alternatives, which will mean more Vegan options for the general public to try out. And human beings are social animals. We see someone doing something, especially if it's a close friend or family member, we want to emulate that behavior. It would be something of a breaking point, where more and more people would go Vegan faster and faster.

But not everyone who goes Vegan stays Vegan. The overwhelming majority will sooner or later go back to eating meat. Most that do go back within a year, but there are many cases of people who've been Vegan for years, occasionally decades even, and just decide to give it up (We here at PV have met so many The writer of this article has been in contact with a person who was vegan for fifteen years who gave it up one day). If you ever meet a Vegan, statistically speaking, they aren't going to be Vegan anymore in a few years. So instead of positively influencing society towards Veganism, they go back to supporting a terrible industry, and not saving the animals they could've saved.

Why does it happen?

It happens for a whole sleu of reasons, ranging from poor nutrition, not being familiar with anti-Vegan arguments, or simply convienence.

There's also the phenomenon of people just not caring anymore. You know how on Social Media every few months or so there'll be a huge social movement that virtually everyone will throw some lip-service towards, which will last for a few weeks then after that is never brought up again as if it never happened? That's pretty much what happens with a lot of these Vegans, even those who were incredibly passionate about it.

They can see slaughterhouse footage and go Vegan on the spot, and for months or even years dedicate much of their time to the animal rights cause. They protested, gave talks, showed slaughterhouse footage in public, or hell, even participated in ALF activities and other acts of civil (or uncivil) disobedience. One day, though, One day, the flame burns out. They just don't care anymore.

Think of it like fucking your girlfriend; You look forward to doing it all day, you're incredibly excited to do it, you love every second of it when the time comes, then after the climax and all is said and done you just don't care anymore, and roll over in bed and fall asleep.

What can be done about it?

Although we've had our share of criticisms of Gary Yourofsky, one thing we give him a lot of credit for is his effective means of activism.

You can say this is just one person to have as an example, but Gary has given speeches to over 60,000 students, by anay reasonable definition that's a pretty good sample size. It's somehting to think about, anyways.

To clarify, he used to advocate for a reducitarian message in his earlier days, but he seems to have dropped this sometimes before 2010.