r/Vystopia

I don’t think suffering should be weighed against other suffering. Suffering is an individual experience that deserves to be taken seriously on its own. I know the title will offend many people, and I’m more than willing to accept criticism and downvotes. All I ask is that you hear me out before responding. This post uses parallels to emphasize the scale and horror of what is happening, not to equate animal rights activism with resistance to the Nazi regime. I'm fully aware the consequences faced by those who resisted the regime were far more severe. With that being said, I hope you’ll read this in good faith.

We live in a system where generations upon generations of families are killed in gas chambers, euthanized, experimented on, slaughtered and exploited in the worst ways imaginable, simply because they do not belong to our species. Yet, the media and large parts of society present animal exploitation as a respectful and ethical practice that is essential to human existence. Cow milk cartons in stores display happy cows grazing on green pastures, propaganda in its purest form.

Most people are complicit in this injustice. Among the few who are not, many are too afraid to speak out against the majority or too shy to engage in activism. At the same time, animal rights activists who attempt to liberate animals are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced by the same system that encourages this mass killing.

When you meet people, they may seem kind and friendly, but it becomes increasingly difficult to look past what they support. It can feel as though they carry symbols of animal exploitation, a constant reminder of their affiliation.

And if animal liberation were to finally succeed, if animals could confront humanity and we were all summoned before a great post-liberation tribunal, a "Conference of the Animals" where we stood trial for speciesist crimes, what would humans say in their defense? Were you complicit in the exploitation? Did you benefit from the oppression? What did you do for animal liberation?

I’m slowly finding it impossible to ignore all of this anymore, and it’s weighing heavily on me.

Let’s visit a Subway restaurant in Europe: They serve chicken raised in cruel conditions in Thailand.

But it goes far beyond that: The bread is made from wheat contaminated with glyphosate, the tomatoes are harvested in Italy by Africans working under slave-like conditions, the soy for my plant-based teriyaki comes from the rainforest, and all the ingredients have been delivered to the restaurant in plastic that is being recycled but somehow ends in the oceans eventually.

All the vegetables I happily have piled onto my sandwich with a “Put everything on it” come from a seed monopoly controlled by a handful of companies making billions while killing diversity.

And in the end, someone is putting together this Frankenstein’s sandwich of capitalism for a ridiculous wage that’s barely enough to live on.

In the end, everyone loses. But when I bring this up even among fairly open-minded people, I’m the weirdo.

Of course, I can boycott such chains, but millions of people flock there every day because the advertising tells them they deserve this experience, the unique taste of nothing and the possibilities that this carcinogenic food brings.

How the hell is one supposed to survive once you’ve seen the full picture of this horror?

And I know as vegans we are ok with it and it's not an issue compared to what humans do but I'm just having a small crisis after seeing a video of a deer hiding from a predator. Why is everything on earth about death. Why do we reproduce all the time just to die and suffer. I feel so bad for all the little creatures that die just because that's how the world works. And their deaths aren't painless when they're attacked. Why is it all organized this way. I feel so hopeless and it's all so useless. Why do we even exist

I have a hard time having hope for the future of humanity.

With climate change looking like it is going to eventually affect food distribution in the West...

How much longer do you really think we have left?

Fishless oceans by 2040?

I mean, fuck.

Enjoying my oat milk matcha while I can, I guess.

I decided to post a statement on my Instagram story "if you want to keep eating meat, I don't want to be friends with you. I'm done acting like this weirdly accepted horrific cruelty is ok in any capacity. fuck off if you are speciesist advocate for violence, educate yourself, watch dominion, fight the cognitive dissonance, rise above. evolve. violence is not the answer"

It's a bit nerve wracking, but it feels good to say it out loud. I hope it gets through to some. I don't really care anymore, I only want vegan(or at the very least vegetarian otw to veganism) friends at this point. I hate the disgusting comments non vegans make on the daily. I will literally die on this hill.

I have no idea how to navigate conversations when eating flesh is brought up almost daily. I want to throw up in their faces. I try to be gentle and nice about it cuz I was a meat eater 5 months ago. but jesus christ. the vystopia hits like a train. I will remain kind and compassionate but I need to find an outlet for this rage

Dude, I am so touch starved and lonely, its getting pathetic.

I am 24 and from Germany and have been vegan for over 6 years without issue. I started getting slightly better and more mature over the past year but I feel like Veganism is dragging me down. Not physically, mentally. Part of me wishes I never discovered that its a moral obligation. Well, not really, but you get what I mean.

I had two attempts that came close, have enough trauma to supply two seasons of a shitty Netflix drama including physical violence and SA and haven't been hugged in years. I have nightmares several times a week, sleep paralysis demons, a couple of nights ago I woke up screaming because someone was cutting me into pieces with an axe in my room and I have little motivation to do anything all day.

And ON TOP of that the world just so happens to be completely fine with throwing baby chickens into blenders and killing trillions life forms for sandwiches. Fun. So cool. Great.

There isn't really anyone I can vent to. I pretty much abandoned the idea of friends that I can hang out with regularly or god forbid a relationship. I have diagnosed crippling depression and denationalization and panic disorder, I am vegan, I am slim and feminine, I like to wear cute stuff, each one of those things on their own would make finding friends or a relationship infinity harder. And I am annoying.

I basically accepted that Ill die alone. Hopefully sooner rather than later haha eyy. But when I see couples online or in public enjoying themselves it feels like a punch in the gut. Like, look here is this really beautiful experience that you can not have because your mom decided to be an alcoholic after you got born and because you made the dumb decision to do the right thing and not fund death champers.

I am starting to lose hope that life really has anything left for me. If I my first attempt had worked 7 years ago I wouldnt have missed much, if anything I would have died happier because I wasnt vegan and aware of all the suffering in the world. And I doubt Ill think different in 7 more years.

Why can't people just assume that they are specisists? I mean they say that they do but if they really don't care about animals why are they so fucking annoying as soon as you tell them that you're vegan?

I swear to God if you feel bad about animal exploitation, there are really only two options : either you assume your choice of condoning the torture and killing of millions of sentient beings daily or you change your actions to align them with your values.

The annoying thing about normies is that somehow, they always manage to choose the third option : blame the vegan for making them feel bad.

It's not my fault! If you really feel bad then do something about it! I'm not your mom, I dont know where you got the idea that I was supposed to tell you that you are 100% morally pure and that there's nothing wrong about animal exploitation!

But instead of actually assuming their positions, nooo, they have to prove that you are a horrible person and that veganism is actually fascism in disguise! So tired of dealing with all the mental gymnastics performed by leftists to tell you that actually they are not specisists because they're weak egoisitic bigots no, actually antspecisism is racism so eating chicken from KFC is anti-colonialism somehow.

But hey they "fully assume being specisists" yeah right... Right after fucking insulting me for 10 minutes insinuating that I'm a racist, colonialist, transphobic, mysoginous, pedophile asshole just because I said that maybe killing baby chicks = not cool. If you really assume your specisism why do you feel the need to sublimate it into anti-racism?

Honestly at this point, I 100% believe that it would be less annoying if people just said straight up, I don't care about animals.

Hi everyone!

I really care about animals and when I see them suffering, it feels like a something in me dies. I suffer from Vystopia every single day.

I have, for as long as I can remember, wanted to be a part in an animal rights group to help animals.

However, I have severe mental issues. Autism, and the worst thing is derealization which makes life look super distorted to the point where I’m just frustrated and sad all the time. I rest a loooot when I don’t go to uni for mandatory lessons. I’m also really anxious 24/7. I only have one friend, which I see seldomly. I also become mute and freeze a looot when i’m too anxious. But medicine don’t seem to help with my mental issues.

What do you think, am I making a harsh decision? Sometimes I feel like I should just rest, my mind is going in fast and that my body can’t catch up. Should I just continue posting anonymously on Tiktok, as i’m doing now, or maybe take a step further? I really want to help animals ❤️

Hi everyone! I'm a 15 year old in high school and recently became vegan more than a month ago after realizing that it's a moral obligation. I watched a speech about it on YouTube and became vegan overnight simply because of the logical arguments in the speech, about 2 weeks later watched Dominion which helped me see what I'm contributing to when I buy animal products, and now I watch debates, discussions, and read books about veganism.

It really bothers me how my friends think it's okay to not be vegan. As soon as I announced that I was going vegan for ethical reasons, one of my friends said "you're not going to be one of those crazy vegans, right?" Another one of my friends always buys chips from the vending machines and always says that I can eat one and she won't tell anyone that I broke my vegan streak. I honestly don't know if she's joking or not when she says this but it's not okay. I try and explain to her that I'm not being vegan for anyone but the animals and by my own moral compass every time. Another person asked why I was vegan and even tried explaining how she heard vegans don't get enough nutrients which is obviously false with well-planned meals, just as any person, vegan or not, should do. I don't think people understand how much this affects me.

Whenever I tell someone new that I'm vegan, they always ask why and I tell them something simple like "I don't agree with it ethically" or "I watched a speech about it" so I don't sound pushy. But I wish I didn't do this. I just don't know what to say in a few sentences. I want to have open discussions about veganism and question people on why people think it's okay to eat animal-products. What can I say instead of this when people ask me why I'm vegan?

I also just absolutely hate seeing the cognitive dissonance of everyone around me. My friends say that they think zoos are incredibly cruel and how the animals suffer all their lives just for us to gawk at them. I even asked one of my friends after she said this whether she would ever consider being vegan and she said probably not!

I'm just so upset that nobody understands how their food is made, sourced, and killed. People think the dairy and egg industry aren't cruel when they fund slaughterhouses, animals are forcefully impregnated, and live their entire lives in suffering. If I had known about the industry earlier, I definitely would have made the switch much much earlier as well.

What can I do at my age for advocacy and to raise awareness about veganism? I am so incredibly passionate about being vegan!

I wrote a post in r/vegan venting about unbased reasoning that people use to not go vegan and to not even learn about it. At first a lot of vegans commented, and it was nice and funny. Later a lot of carnists got to the post and started arguing with me, calling me extreme and started saying they're allowed to eat meat because they enjoy it and other stuff like that. It's just insane to me how much speciesm is normalized in society to the point that when I actually point patterns of racism people get mad and defensive, blaming me for my lack of empathy for them. It's insane to me that as a society we repeat the same story of slavery, racism, nazism and any other marginalized groups. I dream of the day I'll tell my grandchildren how it was normal in the old days to see animals as products. It will be a part of the past one day.

Like I know they’re just joking but they know I’m vegan. I ask them if they’d eat the acts and dogs too and they say yeah if it came down to it. I asked them if we did get a pig would they stop eating bacon and they said no.

Like wow.

Someone I did vegan activism with just posted very bad animal cruelty in their story. It wasn't even factory farms or anything specifically around animal exploitation, just senseless and extreme violence toward an animal that is usually a pet and not a number.

I reported it because it really shook me and I was both devastated and angry at the violent person and the guy who posted the story, but now I'm devastated and wondering whether I should have reported it... maybe it's good people see it so this animal wouldn't have experienced the violence in complete secret. People are seeing and crying for the animal, and that somehow makes it that tiny bit less terrible? The guy in the video cannot be identified because their face was covered and it's taken from far away.

What can lead to people being so cold and emotionless? The large majority of people are already cold and emotionless judging by how they feel about veganism, a way of life that seeks to reducing unnecessary suffering caused on defenceless, innocent animals, but to do something that even the typical person who hates vegans and types "mmmm bacon" on vegan posts would find revolting, toward an animal we are raised to feel compassion for... how? How do you become that person?