Don't Feed The Vegans!

The funny thing about Facebook is that it's remarkably true to life, without being in fact anything like life at all. You exist, in that digital world, as a combination of what you look like - your profile picture - the things you say, the things you do, and more often than not, the things and people you claim to like.

I mention this because today, for the first time, someone I don't really know from Adam disbelieved me when I said I'd done what I've done so far. They laughed at me, saying "Oh yeah, and your hair's grown back as well hasn't it, go on, show us a picture..." and intimated that I'd then be running off to Photoshop to "draw some black wavy lines on my bald head", so unbelievable was my claim to have lost near-as-damnit 80 pounds (OK, my maths was a handful of pounds out) in the last year.

d smiled when I told her this, assuming that this was a nice little encounter with people who, seeing me now, couldn't believe I used to be 20 stone and change.

Nnnnnnotsomuch.
See...if I've inherited anything from my mother and my grandmother, it's this - I'll talk to anyone. They (and, come to that, d) will begin conversations with anyone, which is not me. But if there's a conversation started, I'm happy to jump in with anyone.

Couple of days ago, I got into a conversation with a 'Facebook Friend' about vegetarianism. He was a vegan guy, and I thought it was quite a solid, rational discussion myself - and the leader of the discussion seemed, yesterday, to think so too. Then today, we continued talking about it. He'd put up a picture of a couple of dead piglets, and basically was ridiculing the idea that 'carnivores call vegans weird, and yet they eat pigs anuses in skin-tubes...'

I said "But Meat is tasty..."

And then the world exploded. I was called a twat, a moron, a scumbag, and someone who 'carried the mark of their evil with them' - hence - get this, it's a demented one - I was fat and bald because I was a filthy meat-eater. Oh, and threatened. If I'd said that in 'the real world', I was told, I'd be eating through a straw.

The whole 'disbelieving Disappearing' thing came about because of that business of carrying my evil with me - the evil of eating meat you understand? The remarks became personal, and someone told me that, instead of showing what a nasty, evil human being I was (with a sarcastic sidebar that my parents must be really proud of me), if I got my fat arse to a gym, I'd be a better person.

Which is when I mentioned that I had in fact got my fat arse to a gym, and had lost nearly 80 pounds in a year - rather ironicaly given the conversation, by reducing my carbs and increasing my protein (which meant increasing my meat consumption), so the healthy version of me they were talking to was not the same as the version of me they thought they were talking to - the profile version of me. Annnnd that's when I got the disbelief about having Demi-Disappeared on a meat diet. Such a concept was so monstrous, so unthinkable, it had to be a lie to these people.

I should say - I have buggerall against veganism if that's what floats your boat, but all in all, it was weird and rather disturbing to wander into a conversation, say something obvious, and then get my head well and truly bitten off...

Especially by non-meat-eaters.