The Truth About “Cupcake Vegans”
Are they harming the movement?
Another day, another shirtless flex by Nimai Delgado.
Yes Nimai, you have muscles and you’re handsome, we get it.
Social media is plagued with these “cupcake vegans”.
Vegans who only post about themselves, the things they enjoy, and their bright, colourful, exciting lives.
And of course, fancy vegan food, hence the term, “cupcake vegan”
The animals? Good luck finding anything about them.
That’s too negative, these guys are about tasty food, sunny beaches, muscles and parties.
But hold up a minute… is there actually a problem here?
Does every post by a vegan need to make a moral point, or have a call to action?
Vegtertainment
In previous posts, I’ve spoken about something I call “Vegan Porn”.
In short, Vegan Porn, is when animal advocates create content that likely has good intentions, but just ends up being entertainment for vegans, likely at the expense of helping animals.
Think aggressive verbal confrontation, name-calling, instigation of fights, that sort of thing.
I call this vegan porn, because like porn, it’s generally addictive and likely has negative outcomes.
But not all vegan entertainment is vegan porn, and not all vegan entertainment is exclusively enjoyed by vegans.
This is where “Vegtertainment” comes in, pronounced “vej-ter-tayn-ment” (yes, I made this word up).
I class vegtertainment as anything that’s intended to entertain vegans, but is harmless.
It doesn’t always do much good, but it doesn’t do any bad. At best, it’s positive. At worst, it’s neutral.
Here’s a good example from my friend Danny Ishay.
Danny’s video is quite harmless, poking fun at how people can be inconsiderate to their vegan friends.
Notice how even non-vegans could watch and find it funny?
That’s because even though the “friends” in the video were being unreasonable, they weren’t made out to be evil, or demonised.
That’s one of the many key differences between vegan porn and vegtertainment.
What’s even more interesting is, if done right, vegtertainment can do a lot of good.
Cupcakes for the animals
I recently spent some days with Kickstarting For Good in Berlin, a program to help pro-vegan/plant-based initiatives by ProVeg. They invited me as a mentor, to support some of their social media projects.
It was there I met Jessica Cruz (not pictured above), founder of the LA Vegan Street Fair and the Vegan Creator Conference.
Jessica’s events are the most cupcakey of cupcake vegan events.
Some vegans, especially activists, look down on Jessica and her events. Some make the same comments as I made at the start of this post.
But, Jessica’s events bring in over 20,000 people, and she estimates around 70% of them aren’t vegan.
That’s about 14,000 non-vegan people she’s bringing to her all vegan events, where they enjoy vegan food and products, learn about how to live a vegan lifestyle, and get a positive impression of our unconventional way of living.
Doesn’t that sound great?
Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here though.
There’s little to no hardline, direct vegan messaging at Jessica’s events, so what if these people just enjoy a day or two of vegan food and leave with absolutely no change at all?
Well, there is the saying,
“You are who you surround yourself with”
And I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
These events, and the cupcake vegans, are doing what I would call passive advocacy.
They help by normalising and promoting veganism. By making it enjoyable, exciting, delicious. Something fresh and colourful.
If veganism feels normal and positive, people are far more likely to move that way. And you don’t need me to tell you how shifts in demand can have drastic effects on the animal industries.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. There is something to be said about tempering expectations.
A word of caution
I think Vegtertainers should try to make veganism normal and accessible to all, not only to the healthy, or the wealthy.
We need to be honest that the average person is probably never going to look like Nimai Delgado, for example, no matter how many avocados they eat.
But isn’t it great that Nimai is out here showing what can be achieved with hard work, supported by an animal-free diet?
Activism vs advocacy
This passive advocacy, this vegtertainment, isn’t activism in the traditional meaning of the word.
Vegtertainment isn’t going undercover to investigate a slaughterhouse, and it’s not blockading the doors of a fashion designer for selling fur, but it doesn’t have to be.
Activism generally refers to direct action, protest, disruption.
Advocacy is more about education and representation.
If we want the world to change, some vegans are going to have to be “normal”, passive advocates.
Trojan horses bringing about change without directly calling for it.
Because if every vegan is an activist, we’ll always be on the fringe of society.
Not everyone has to, or should, be an activist.
But we can all be advocates.
And I think vegtertainment, whether it’s a cooking channel, bodybuilding, or hosting cupcake vegan events, is a valid form of advocacy.
What do you think, could cupcake vegans be helping the animals?
I was getting ready to keyboard warrior this post until I read it all the way through. I thought you were bashing the cupcakes. Great writing.
Excellent article. People like Nimai and Jordan Dranes (aka ConsciousMuscle) need to exist if for no other reason than to point to whenever people claim you can't build serious muscle on a plant based diet.
I used to do a lot of activism back in the day. In recent years, I ran social media channels that were very no-compromise hardcore vegan channels. I started to feel the only people who engaged with them were other vegans and trolls.
Nowadays, I post about other stuff and pepper vegan content amongst it. As a result, I have a lot more non vegan followers, who see my vegan content.
I totally agree we need all types.