From Veganism To Online Food Bullying

This article offers a glimpse into the world of vegan YouTube stars, and it shows that extremism can manifest in so many different ways.

Stella Rae is a 19-year-old vegan influencer with hundreds of thousand of followers on social media channels. She suffered from an eating disorder, then discovered veganism and subsequently became a sort of a missionary. “She came to see veganism as morally righteous, and took to aggressively “spreading the vegan message”, in her words, by posting confrontational videos like “Dumb Things Meat Eaters Say”, in which she tells non-vegans: “Eggs are literal chicken periods. Why would you want to eat that? That is so disgusting!”

The good news is that Stella Rae is not at that point in her life anymore, and she’s now actually embarrassed by her know-it-all attitude. The way she came to realize that what she was doing is called food bullying — a major issue within the online vegan community — was when she was given a taste of her own medicine. Because, in case you didn’t know:

“Being a “perfect vegan” does not just mean only eating nonanimal foods. It can mean a vast variety of things to different people: There are gluten-free vegans, refined-sugar-free vegans, raw vegans, “Raw Til 4” vegans (who only eat cooked food after 4 p.m.), high-carb and low-fat vegans, and the small but vocal group of junk-food vegans, who try out vegan versions of popular treats. There are so many opinions about the right way to be vegan that anyone who posts meals online almost inevitably receives some amount of backlash.”

Rae now wants to show people “that you can be vegan and just live your normal life”. And I really hope she will accomplish that, what with veganism overlapping orthorexia (an obsession for eating healthy, pure products) and other eating disorders.