"AI vegans" is a pretty stupid thing to call them, though.
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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The label isn't accidental.
It's designed to frame this as a fringe movement, and AI use as "normal".
“Gambling vegans are turning against giving their paycheck to casinos.”
Also kind of frames vegan as bad at the same time...
Better call them meat luddites ;-) ?
Meat luddites sounds like a grunge folk band from Victorville California.
No way! Meat luddites is my lesbian slurpcore band!
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It's a bad label that.
Taking two words and just ramming them together, instead of using the plethora of words are our disposal, doesn't really work in English and probably translates poorly to other languages. All of a sudden, vegan doesn't mean vegan anymore. Dictionaries and thesauruses exist. There are thousands of people who have degrees in English, in writing, in journalism. We don't need to reduce the English language to clickbait words. Because "AI" and "vegan" sound like SEO terms.
At best, if someone hears that, they're going to think, "What, they don't like AI-generated cows?". They'll write it off as stupid. And then you have folks that just see the word vegan, and then they're just done listening. It muddies both terms. And in both cases, it'll largely be viewed as a fringe trend that people who spend too much time online are doing, and it'll likely die off as trends do.
It becomes less a movement/stance/voice, and more "that thing kids put on their social media for a few months because they were all about it for that one summer". It's like if someone said "I'm a racist vegan"... Has a lot less punch than "fuck racism"
why? both are against a horrible industry that 99% of people can avoid but don't.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/discrimination-against-vegans
A shockingly high number of people have a negative view of vegans. And, separately but relatedly, veganism is (unfairly) associated with the far left in the United States. So a lot of conservative and moderate readers will see the word "vegan" and automatically think "this must be irrational leftist bullshit".
Even to some meat-eating liberals and leftists, "AI vegan" will read as "arrogant moral scolds who want to take away your chatbots and think they're better than you because they don't use AI."
I can't tell from the article whether "AI vegan" is a term people are calling themselves or something the media made up. But when mainstream media compares a movement to animal rights or veganism, it's almost never meant to be a positive.
Do gooder derogation. Someone does something good and then you feel bad about yourself. Then instead of trying to self improve, you lash out.
Big sad sack of shit maneuver, really.
Spot on. In German we have a cringe word that is used as a derogative by the far right. It is "Gutmensch" and literally translated means "good human", essentially meaning a person that applies ethics to her actions. How dare they not to be controlled by greed and hate!
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“[Generative AI] constantly steals without consent from absolutely everything, violates privacy, and obtains money from it,” Marc, a 23-year-old AI abstainer based in Spain , told Euronews Next.
“It's a tool of capitalism to maintain worker exploitation or even bring it up to the next level”.
That brings back some of my faith in humanity.
...I need to stop complaining about Gen Z.
Not to nitpick, but why complain about other generations at all?
There are awesome people everywhere and of all ages.. a few goofbags too. 🤷
Fair point.
It was a trend, and I am a monkey on a keyboard.
The kids are alright
great sentiment!
..but the youngest of Gen Z is 20+ years old... definitely no longer kids.
let's please not make the same mistake as with millennials?
edit: i got the range wrong; it's 15 years (~2012), not 10 (2007)...
I am old enough that people in their early 20s still seem like kids to me ;p But I hear what you’re saying
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I prefer the term AI luddites
He says with seething jealousy.
My teen has already been through the hype cycle. Was super into chatbots…until they were not. My preteen has never been even tempted, thought it was stupid from the get-go. From the mouth of babes…!
We don't give kids enough credit.
I remember news bringing up similar stuff when I was young, or like existential worries over TikTok more recently.
But... kids are sharp. They're adaptable. They often sniff out stupid trends faster than adults do, especially artifical ones like AI hype.
But then again they did also fall into using stuff like tiktok and oversharing on it with their names and faces and installing the app on their phone. Not just tiktok but meta stuff like Instagram or Twitter.
I think best balance was during the phase where usernames were used on message boards and people were wary of sharing more beyond that on the Internet, and mantras like be careful what you share on the Internet was more common.
Now days, people are sharing lot of information that marketers and companies had to work really hard to try to get. Now companies get names, voices, and faces given to them without effort.
It's nice to see the pushback against AI over privacy concerns but I hope it eventually leads to also beginning to see that general usage of social media that has become more common place to freely share everything has the same issues.
I think kids are not resistent to addictive design, sadly.
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Comparing the Anti-LLM and LIM movement to veganism is definitely something. Either way, age prohibition is not a good idea; rather, educating people about how to responsibly use technology is.
Both the AI and meat industries are very harmful to the environment.
EDIT: Since people don’t seem to believe me:
Cows emit an average of 220lbs of methane per year, which is about 28x as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 (https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable).
According to the EPA (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle), the average car emits about 4.6metric tons of CO2 per year.
(220lbs methane x 28) x 0.00045 t/lb = 2.772 metric tons of CO2.
Basically, 2 cows have more greenhouse effect than the average American car. And that doesn’t even account for the deforestation caused by cattle ranching (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000595)
Look, I hate AI too. I’m not saying one is worse than the other (that’s probably very hard to determine) but don’t kid yourself about the effect of meat on the environment.
Sure, but we don't call renewable energy "vegan energy"
freedom energy
I think that's oil
In fact, it is the opposite, as it makes one dependent on oil states. No one controls the sun and the wind.
I'm poking fun about this
I failed to notice. 😅
It was done in order to smear people not using AI the same, as the caricature of some vegans. You know, the people equating eating meat with cannibalism and murder. I also wouldn't been surprised if the journalists used terms like "woke anti-AI", or went with the headline "Gen Z cancel culture is hitting AI very hard".
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At least one has a purpose, which is nutrition.
It's entirely intentional, meant to label AI shills as the "normal" people and anti-AI as a fringe group, along with drawing the same negativity that veganism for some reason has among so many people in the US.
Gen Z are:
- AI dry
- AI detached
- AI free
- Anti-AI
- AI incurious
- AI indifferent
- AI aloof
- AI withdrawn
Abstainer would do a lot better of a job of giving credence to people actively avoiding AI usage due to ethical or environmental reasons; the sad reality of using either Luddite or Vegan to describe these people is due to the active negative messaging that people wanting to push unregulated technological change have charged these words with. Despite the negative connotation that Luddite has been charged with; I still use it to refer to myself as a Luddite (who is against unethical technological advancement), must like those who would also abstain from AI Usage in work or personal life settings.
As it's potential to cause harm is great; there are still cases people killing themselves ChatGPT Killed Again-Four more Dead, AI-Induced Psychosis for example. Healthy technological advancement is necessary for the benefit of all human beings, however, what we are seeing with "AI" isn't following that model. It's good that people are standing against AI, since nothing will change unless people fight against Silicon Valley's agenda.
Good to see the kids still have some hope.
I'd rather be AI vegan than AI delusional.
"turning against"
Millennial here I avoid AI like the plauge
Since everyone here is talking about the connection between AI refusal and veganism... How's your approach towards eating animals? I mean there's more reasons to avoid AI. But I think when talking about climate change in specific... I try not to eat too much beef and I try not to use too much AI because both have a large CO2 footprint... And I think it's also ethics considerations in both cases which make something undesirable. Do you do similar things or do you think it's fundamentally different?
My approach is to just not fucking eat them. Pretty easy. Cheaper too.
"thinking vegans want ypu to use ai more often"
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