Billie Eilish Responded To Criticism For Recent Vegan Statement: I Don't Give A Fxck!

[Hadrian 1,912]

Here's a strawman for you: if you want us all to become vegans, cook our meals for us or stay out of our kitchens. 

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,349]

20 minutes ago, PartySick said:

There is no way you're comparing the meat industry with legitimate genocide and crimes against humanity  

I fear you've lost the plot.

But ignoring that, I genuinely think you're fighting the wrong battle in the wrong way.

People against gun violence call for gun bans and guess what happens? Gun sales skyrocket and people dig into these almost religiously held pro-gun stances. Instead, they should be focused on incrementally closing legal loopholes and making inroads with gun owners showing how we can make this a country that both protects their 2A right to bear arms but also makes it a safer place. That's how you sway the ~70% of Americans who want gun control reform without alienating the skiddish ones.

People against gas powered cars want laws in place that ban the sale and ownership of petrol vehicles. That's caused huge backlash and people go out to intentionally buy the biggest, most gas guzzling trucks they can find to "stick it to the libs". Instead, what they should do is vote and organize to build the infrastructure to support EVs, urge politicians to incentivize buying an EV vs a gas powered car, and lean into the fact that EV sales were already growing.

For meat? You will NEVER win with a "you support cruelty and mass murder" argument 'cause it becomes a debate about morality which pisses people off (and rightfully so). Nobody will listen to you  

Swerving away from the moral arguments (which are irrelevant and weak as every person has different lines in the sand), you're factually correct  

So, since reality is on your (and Billie's) side, you have to wonder "why can't I convince anyone?". The flaw isn't cognitive dissonance or "meat eaters are just bad people". You're just not doing a great job of selling your stance.

"These people claim to be rational but when I throw statistics in their faces, show them pictures of dead animals, and call them evil for disagreeing with me they suddenly aren't wanting to hear what I have to say?!"

You're looking at people who are willing to give opposing stances an inch and demanding a mile and when they call you unreasonable for it, you call them evil  just take the inch and be constructive with it.

A small battle won is better than forfeiting the entire war.

I'm out of adages so  

Or maybe just stop caring so much about what a bunch of gays on a Lady Gaga fan site think  I'm sure you're active in your community to make some headway on animal welfare, no? If you're gonna be stressed enough to write essays (pot, black, etc) then do something important.

It’s a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good, tbh. You can acknowledge something is a step in the right direction without having to concede your personal belief. Like, I personally think that we should move toward single-payer health insurance, but if a politician wants to try to do something like expand the ACA to ensure that more Americans have access to unabridged heath insurance coverage, I’m not gonna spit in their face and tell them about all of the ways they’re failing because that’s dogshit coalition building. You can thread the needle of seeing where the public is, where the money, power, and influence are, and work from there towards your preferred outcome without abandoning your belief system.
 

The problem is that I think ego and moral self-righteousness get in the way: “I’m right, they’re wrong. Trying to convince them is beneath me and they should just concede that I’m right.” It’s emotionally satisfying, but it’s a complete dead end because you both betray your cause by failing to build out the tent and you also fail to change minds because you don’t meet people where they are and try to encourage them to join you. 

I also feel like the idea of “changing minds” has been consistently (and wrongfully) framed as “coddling” in this thread. For example, if I were trying to argue against Zionism as a categorical argument against theocracy and ethnocracy, I could get there *without leading with attacks and vitriol* by both laying out my argument and trying to get insight into how other people think/feel about the issue. Condescension is a horrible political strategy, no matter how emotionally gratifying it feels to be right. 

[Bronco 21,470]

29 minutes ago, PartySick said:

There is no way you're comparing the meat industry with legitimate genocide and crimes against humanity  

It finally happened after 2 threads 

[Jarvin 1,425]

She is absolutely right!!!!

i am a hypocrite for eating meat, supporting this industry. I’m not mad… i tried going vegeterian. Its hard. I cant fault her opinion - its the same with people who claim to love animals and then have birds in a cage. Its utterly hypocritical.

[Ultimecia 6,551]

[gagzus 20,272]

9 hours ago, Bebe said:

It’s 2026 now and I actually don’t think Billie would have an issue calling out Halal and Kosher meat.

Can you describe what ethical slaughter is? It’s not ethical to slaughter a sentient being when you have another option for your protein.

“plus cattle for example can be bred and culled where as the planet only has so much natural resources and they take too long for a planet of 7 billion people to regenerate. We also would still be using up resources that animals need”

I’m sorry but I actually have no idea what you mean by this? Are you saying we can’t go for plant based agriculture because it’s not sustainable? We use plants to feed cows, they eat a lot more than us and plants grow back! We could reduce our agriculture by over 75-76% by ending animal agriculture!

We’d go from from roughly 4 billion hectares of farmland down to about 1 billion hectares which would free around 3 billion hectares for rewilding, forests, ecosystem restoration, or other uses.

Food-related greenhouse gas emissions could drop by around 49%. Since food is about 26% of global emissions, that’s around a 12–13% cut in total human emissions before even counting the extra carbon that could be absorbed if freed land regrew forests/grasslands.

In terms of water use one major estimate puts the reduction in freshwater withdrawals at about 19% under a global plant-based diet scenario. Agriculture currently accounts for around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, so this is a big deal. Agriculture also causes about 78% of global freshwater and ocean eutrophication, moving away from animal farming would reduce manure, fertiliser runoff for feed crops, and waste pollution.

I think she would because she’s white and would have her whole career snatched away if she openly came out against religious practices of how they prepare their food.

 

The sustainability bit I was on about is because it takes TIME for plants to grow if every human on earth became vegan you simply wouldn’t get enough plant based food harvested and prepared every year to feed a planet full of people as well as animals. The reason we don’t have worse world hunger (not saying we don’t have any ofc) is because we have both meat and plants to eat plus we’re omnivores it’s an evolutionary trait to have Canine teeth so we can rip flesh off of bone. It’s literally been our life cycle for millions of years. Of course we can adapt to it but I think millions of years of hunting and gathering kinda goes against veganism.
 

Take in the UK for example, bad weather can ruin an entire harvestable field overnight and sometimes does. And only certain crops grow at certain times of year. The reason we don’t have a shortage of bread for example is because we also eat meat and other things and not just wheat for instance. All it would take is a few weeks of terrible weather to destroy entire food supply chains if people were all vegan. We need to eat animals to live that’s just a fact. 
 

So you’d need plants to feed about 7 billion people AND upto a billion or so animals and wildlife. It’s not sustainable plus us eating meat reduces over population of animals in the food chain to keep the cycle of life going if we all suddenly stopped eating animals all together then the food chain would become messed up and there’d be more of one animal to eat the other organisms etc. Once again a reason why humans are omnivores. 

To make up for it you’d have to turn more open fields into private farmer land for them to grow fruit, vegetables and what not so you’d lose even more wildlife spaces to make up for it. And activists would absolutely complain us having to turn probably a large portion of every country into fields to grow things.

I think there’s just far more to worrying about than veganism vs non veganism in the world because whether people like it or not, the word isn’t gonna suddenly stop producing slaughtering etc regardless because like I said before there’s too much grey area and it’s not a black or white issue.

Edited May 8 by gagzus

[27monster27 15,529]

42 minutes ago, Ultimecia said:

We should've never let the fan site Admin made die.

[StrawberryBlond 15,380]

I appreciate that she sticks to her guns but this aggressively defiant response is not the way to go about things. It just makes the other side want to stand by their beliefs even more, just to spite you. She's also too old for this teenage level response. But I guess, when you're born in California to a family of artists who encourage you and you got famous when you were very young, you're going to have a very rebellious attitude and lack decorum with how to respond to pushback and also believe it's cool to have a profanity laced response. Looking down on the opposition will result in you screaming into the void because nobody likes to be preached to and then insulted.

I know I sound like a dreamer but I genuinely believe that gentleness and respecting the other side with empathy is the better way to making them listen and potentially changing minds. Phrases like: "I completely understand why you like to...," "It's completely natural to like to...," "I was once just like you," etc. can be key to making people give your argument a second look. Going the brute force route is not it.

[PartySick 171,263]

2 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

It’s a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good, tbh. You can acknowledge something is a step in the right direction without having to concede your personal belief. Like, I personally think that we should move toward single-payer health insurance, but if a politician wants to try to do something like expand the ACA to ensure that more Americans have access to unabridged heath insurance coverage, I’m not gonna spit in their face and tell them about all of the ways they’re failing because that’s dogshit coalition building. You can thread the needle of seeing where the public is, where the money, power, and influence are, and work from there towards your preferred outcome without abandoning your belief system.
 

The problem is that I think ego and moral self-righteousness get in the way: “I’m right, they’re wrong. Trying to convince them is beneath me and they should just concede that I’m right.” It’s emotionally satisfying, but it’s a complete dead end because you both betray your cause by failing to build out the tent and you also fail to change minds because you don’t meet people where they are and try to encourage them to join you. 

I also feel like the idea of “changing minds” has been consistently (and wrongfully) framed as “coddling” in this thread. For example, if I were trying to argue against Zionism as a categorical argument against theocracy and ethnocracy, I could get there *without leading with attacks and vitriol* by both laying out my argument and trying to get insight into how other people think/feel about the issue. Condescension is a horrible political strategy, no matter how emotionally gratifying it feels to be right. 

You sound like me when the lefties were talking about withholding their votes in 2024  

But yeah, if you start a conversation by creating an "us vs them" situation then how tf do you expect anyone to ever let you get an inch of ground on them  

[Ladle Ghoulash 45,349]

Just now, PartySick said:

You sound like me when the lefties were talking about withholding their votes in 2024  

But yeah, if you start a conversation by creating an "us vs them" situation then how tf do you expect anyone to ever let you get an inch of ground on them  

Girl, I was in the trenches with you on that one, lest we forget lmao

I was actually thinking you sounded a little like me in another thread with Miz Mars on one of your previous comments, but no need to wake up ancient tea 

But fr: online leftists (and I say this as a progressive) are sincerely painfully bad at messaging in part because of the whole “it’s not my job to explain it to you/convince you” trope from like 2015-2016. It’s like…if you want to change someone’s mind, it actually is, quite literally, your job to convince them. Pretty much no way around that 

[TheSine 6,758]

[apollorowling 820]

I'm not going to comment this time, or I'll get sanctioned again. Love you guys 🤣

Love to @Broncoand @Ladle Ghoulash

Edited May 8 by apollorowling

[Bebe 17,282]

7 hours ago, PartySick said:

There is no way you're comparing the meat industry with legitimate genocide and crimes against humanity  

I fear you've lost the plot.

But ignoring that, I genuinely think you're fighting the wrong battle in the wrong way.

People against gun violence call for gun bans and guess what happens? Gun sales skyrocket and people dig into these almost religiously held pro-gun stances. Instead, they should be focused on incrementally closing legal loopholes and making inroads with gun owners showing how we can make this a country that both protects their 2A right to bear arms but also makes it a safer place. That's how you sway the ~70% of Americans who want gun control reform without alienating the skiddish ones.

People against gas powered cars want laws in place that ban the sale and ownership of petrol vehicles. That's caused huge backlash and people go out to intentionally buy the biggest, most gas guzzling trucks they can find to "stick it to the libs". Instead, what they should do is vote and organize to build the infrastructure to support EVs, urge politicians to incentivize buying an EV vs a gas powered car, and lean into the fact that EV sales were already growing.

For meat? You will NEVER win with a "you support cruelty and mass murder" argument 'cause it becomes a debate about morality which pisses people off (and rightfully so). Nobody will listen to you  

Swerving away from the moral arguments (which are irrelevant and weak as every person has different lines in the sand), you're factually correct  

So, since reality is on your (and Billie's) side, you have to wonder "why can't I convince anyone?". The flaw isn't cognitive dissonance or "meat eaters are just bad people". You're just not doing a great job of selling your stance.

"These people claim to be rational but when I throw statistics in their faces, show them pictures of dead animals, and call them evil for disagreeing with me they suddenly aren't wanting to hear what I have to say?!"

You're looking at people who are willing to give opposing stances an inch and demanding a mile and when they call you unreasonable for it, you call them evil  just take the inch and be constructive with it.

A small battle won is better than forfeiting the entire war.

I'm out of adages so  

Or maybe just stop caring so much about what a bunch of gays on a Lady Gaga fan site think  I'm sure you're active in your community to make some headway on animal welfare, no? If you're gonna be stressed enough to write essays (pot, black, etc) then do something important.

Sorry where did I say they were equivalent? 
We are, however, talking about two systems of violence that are normalised by the state and majority.

You can think I’ve lost the plot but if you removed the top part about replacing “settler” with non-vegan you wouldn’t know.
Once again you have an issue with tone but can’t engage with the actual subject matter.

“So, since reality is on your (and Billie's) side, you have to wonder "why can't I convince anyone?". The flaw isn't cognitive dissonance or "meat eaters are just bad people". You're just not doing a great job of selling your stance.”

I don’t care about what you think about my messaging and how effective it is, earlier you noted that your  ethics allow for mass suffering for small personal benefit. I don’t think you can be convinced.

You think you can convince 99% people to change their mind on a subject in a GGD thread? You think I can compete with a lifetime of social conditioning and the normalisation of mass violence? 

I'm sorry but this pretend quote did make me giggle: ""These people claim to be rational but when I throw statistics in their faces, show them pictures of dead animals, and call them evil for disagreeing with me they suddenly aren't wanting to hear what I have to say?!""

You seemingly admit that there is overwhelming evidence that animal agriculture is bad, in the form of statistics and actual images showing conditions of animals in animal farming - but then acknowledge your cognitive dissonance by implying that because these images and statistics make you feel uncomfortable you don't want to engage with the topic. You're upset at people presenting evidence that makes you uncomfortable. That's not my problem, you're going to have to sit with that uncomfortable feeling and unpack it. I can't do that for you and I'm not going to avoid presenting evidence or discussing morality/ethics when the topic is around a morality and ethics. I'm not going to play this game where I self-censor and avoid presenting evidence so that the argument is framed in a way that makes you comfortable. You should feel uncomfortable - the one thing I can't control is how you respond to that feeling. That's up to you.

I mean come on, nobody has been able to justify why they shouldn’t replace meat that requires suffering and slaughter with cheaper plant based alternatives that don’t, nobody has been able to justify the environmental impacts of animal agriculture (in fact people just ignore and make up that reducing animal farming would be worse for the environment anyway 💀).

I can say the same thing and state "If you are wondering why I can have multiple people trying to convince me that they can’t go vegan, yet I haven’t been convinced - it’s because the arguments presented have been flawed and unconvincing".

Surely you remember me from years ago? Used to argue against Israeli occupation and violence at a time where most users were pro-Zionist. Not afraid of holding an opinion that is unpopular, not worried about making friends online, I’m concerned with remaining morally consistent.

I don’t care that you have your defences up over being called out for engaging voluntarily in a system of exploitation and violence and you don’t actually care about my messaging being effective 🤣 Can we please just be honest here? Seeing everyone pearl clutching and patting themselves over the back for being so civilised in their defence of mass suffering and slaughter is a little bit funny - it's very obvious that nobody actually wants the opposing view to be more effective so lets stop pretending that's what this is about.

I don’t know why you are bothered about me commenting my thoughts on a thread! I enjoy discussing the topic, you are free to join or not! 🙂

Edited May 9 by Bebe

[Bebe 17,282]

4 hours ago, gagzus said:

I think she would because she’s white and would have her whole career snatched away if she openly came out against religious practices of how they prepare their food.

 

The sustainability bit I was on about is because it takes TIME for plants to grow if every human on earth became vegan you simply wouldn’t get enough plant based food harvested and prepared every year to feed a planet full of people as well as animals. The reason we don’t have worse world hunger (not saying we don’t have any ofc) is because we have both meat and plants to eat plus we’re omnivores it’s an evolutionary trait to have Canine teeth so we can rip flesh off of bone. It’s literally been our life cycle for millions of years. Of course we can adapt to it but I think millions of years of hunting and gathering kinda goes against veganism.
 

Take in the UK for example, bad weather can ruin an entire harvestable field overnight and sometimes does. And only certain crops grow at certain times of year. The reason we don’t have a shortage of bread for example is because we also eat meat and other things and not just wheat for instance. All it would take is a few weeks of terrible weather to destroy entire food supply chains if people were all vegan. We need to eat animals to live that’s just a fact. 
 

So you’d need plants to feed about 7 billion people AND upto a billion or so animals and wildlife. It’s not sustainable plus us eating meat reduces over population of animals in the food chain to keep the cycle of life going if we all suddenly stopped eating animals all together then the food chain would become messed up and there’d be more of one animal to eat the other organisms etc. Once again a reason why humans are omnivores. 

To make up for it you’d have to turn more open fields into private farmer land for them to grow fruit, vegetables and what not so you’d lose even more wildlife spaces to make up for it. And activists would absolutely complain us having to turn probably a large portion of every country into fields to grow things.

I think there’s just far more to worrying about than veganism vs non veganism in the world because whether people like it or not, the word isn’t gonna suddenly stop producing slaughtering etc regardless because like I said before there’s too much grey area and it’s not a black or white issue.

Can I get a source for that because every major study says you are wrong! The idea that we can grow crops fast enough for the animals that we then slaughter but not for humans is a bit ridiculous. Especially when the animals eat more crops than us! Very inefficient food system.
 

How does the UK manage to feed their animals in the winter to fatten them up before slaughter? 

As mentioned earlier we would need LESS land for agriculture if we were to eliminate animal agriculture (over 70% reduction) as we would no longer need to grow crops for animals to eat and would no longer need space for animals!

A plant-based UK would rely on a mix of stored staples like oats, wheat, potatoes, beans, peas, lentils and frozen/canned veg imports for things the UK cannot grow well year round and expanded greenhouse, vertical, protected and seasonal horticulture. The UK already imports a lot of food, and its own 2024 food security report frames food security as a mix of domestic production, imports and supply resilience, not total self-sufficiency.

The best news however is that YOU going vegan isn’t going to cause a supply shock! You can do your bit and choose not to participate in a system of unnecessary violence and slaughter, and so could everyone in this thread, while advocating for a sort of change we know won’t happen overnight. 

Edited May 8 by Bebe

[Bronco 21,470]

2 hours ago, apollorowling said:

I'm not going to comment this time, or I'll get sanctioned again. Love you guys 🤣

Love to @Broncoand @Ladle Ghoulash

Why do you think I've stuck to memeing