Yup. And I would fuck with them. But you can’t bait them.

So, there’s multiple ways to troll. The method I’m using here is baiting. That’s where you dangle something to elicit a response from your target audience. The bait has to be something that will set off relatively reliable chains of thought to draw out a relatively narrow range of possible responses.

That’s why religious zealots works better than most zealots, or something like religious crazies, or maybe just crazies.

You have to ride a line between an implied insult and an outright insult most of the time with baiting. The closer you get to a direct insult, the more you shift the probable responses into aggression and insults, which isn’t fun for anyone.

With the amateur detectives, there isn’t really a good bait. You can’t draw them in with short and pithy word choices, you’d have to pick specific sub-groups or individuals to make a good bait. Like, maybe something along the lines of armchair cops as an example of why it wouldn’t work. There’s no cohesion to the group, there’s no underlying ethos.

In the specific instance of the documentary, they didn’t go after anyone and everyone either. They didn’t go around to cat meme subs and removed about it being abusive to put hats on cats. Those amateurs were after a single person who committed a specific set of crimes.

Contrast that with rude vegans (the target of my bait). They’ll show up when meat is mentioned, or when non-industrial farming is discussed and intrude on the discussions.

It’s an entirely different way of thinking. Vegans, by virtue of having a semi-dogmatic set of beliefs actively seek out non believers and hassle them in one way or another. The rude ones; I’m aware it isn’t every vegan, and it’s pretty rare to run into offline. This also isn’t referring to direct action and protest irl, that’s a different thing than the kind of behavior that makes vegans easy to bait.

If you want a better comparison, instead of amateur detectives, you go to christians knocking on doors, or complaining if you leave a comment like “Jesus fucking Christ”. That is much more like online vegan rudeness than the armchair cops.

And, again, that’s why using “religious zealots” is so effective it’s at least partially true, and it goes right to the kind of thinking that the rude vegans indulge in. They’re are a lot of vegans that treat it just like a religion. And when that’s the case, you’re going to have individuals that are prone to zealotry involved. It’s inevitable when there’s a movement, an ethos involved.

You know the term carnist? That’s perfect example. It’s a divisive term, and it directly functions to form an ingroup/outgroup barrier. Infidels, carnist. You see what I’m getting at? Those two words are used the same ways, and they serve the same function.

So, if you want to troll a group with bait, there has to be a bait that will work. You can bait christians, muslims, buddhists, and any other religion. There’s a ton of ways to do it. Vegans work the same way in terms of trolling. You dangle something that the rude ones won’t be able to resist.

For the armchair popo, there isn’t a bait that would be reliable. I’d have to use other methods. It would be harder, it would take more setup, and the chances of failure would be higher too. That means I’d really have to resort to condescension and/or sarcasm. Which, I would if any of them ran around bragging about it and I ran across it, but I haven’t run across any of them.

Now, get ready, you’re going to love this. I agree with them. Anyone abusing an animal is an asshole, and I would be fine with any of the terms listed being applied to them. The person that for what the documentary was about? They were batshit, and needed to be put in a cell away from anything else for a very long time.

That first fight I mentioned? Dude was kicking a puppy, and my punk-ass six year old self jumped him before my dad even knew what was happening.

Here’s where a vegan is going to try and make a case that any animal farming is abusive by default. That’s the gap that can’t be crossed. I grew up in farm country, if not on a farm. I’ve worked on smaller farms, I’ve helped family on their farms. The issue is industrial farming, that’s where humane behavior disappears, and that’s where I draw my line personally. I’m lucky that I can source my animal foods from people that treat their animals well, and not like a commodity alone. If not, I’d be vegetarian. Not vegan, because the kind of shit vegans stretch to be a bad thing is (and I’m trying to express my opinion, not be insulting, even though it’s insulting when it’s expressed outside my own head) inane.

But, here’s the rub. I don’t go bothering other people online about my preferences. I protest mainly with my wallet, though I did engage in peaceful, non obstructive protest in my younger days regarding industrial animal farming. I’ve also engaged in non peaceful, obstructive protest against other things, but that’s a big tangent and this is already super long.