this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Just because this is a meme community it doesn't justify joking about factory farming, especially when "hitting from above" and siding with the stronger opponent.
More metal for your enjoyment.
yes it does
Firstly, punching down doesn't make something unfunny, it just usually is unfunny. When I do it, I find it very funny, and so do a lot of people in the audience. Secondly, I'm making fun of vegans, the farm animals are just collateral damage. Thirdly, they don't count because they aren't human beings. Fourthly, there is nothing wrong with siding with the strong, otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to make jokes at the expense of people like pedophiles and Nazis, who are on the fringes of civilized society and reviled by all.
Argument Clinic sketch flashbacks
I have to admit, you do have some comical traits come to think of it.
As a vegan, no offense taken even if I don't find your lines especially funny. But by proxy, I'm taking offense on behalf of the "farm animals", because if I don't, who else would?
I'm just always baffled by how easily carnists turn a blind eye to animal cruelty. Or turn it into a "comedy show" like in this case. Ofc, part of it is the whitewashing and propaganda spouted by the meat and dairy industry. Another part is that people don't want to think about it because it would compel them to re-think their consuming habits (and people tend to be lazy, myself included).
Speciesism much?
You've got it all backwards, man. Veganism is about reducing harm, not increasing it (compared to what pedos and Nazis do). Funnily you bring up the topic of Nazis into this, as we, as the oppressors, are the stronger opponent and there's a Holocaust 2.0 ongoing, only it's nicely hidden from the public view.
That's fine by me. I'm not out specifically to offend anyone, I'm just making fun of the dumb argument that's cropping up in the comment section of the meme community. When I saw a meat-eater also being dumb in this comment section I made fun of him just the same.
I suppose I can respect that even though I don't agree with most of your viewpoints.
If you insist on being serious here, I'll throw you a bone and engage with this one in good faith. I certainly think factory farming is unethical (I wish to put a stop to it, even) and that killing animals is bad. And I'll admit that I'm biased because I do not work in agriculture and I find meat tasty.
My take on the subject is that if you're going to eat meat, go ahead, just be knowledgeable about where your meat is coming from. The fact that something had to die in order for me to get my daily sustenance is a fact of life and has been a fact of life ever since the first animal appeared and decided to take a bite out of the first photosynthetic plants. Factory farming is horrible for the environment and is a travesty of consumerism which does harm to everyone involved in it except whoever owns the factory, but the way we produce protein plants is bad for the environment as well, especially if farmed at the level needed to sustain a civilization. There are other theoretical methods which utilize modern technology, but once those become viable, we're probably also close to the point where we can just grow meat in a test tube, so there's no point in discussing those unless we bring that into it as well.
If you're worried about speciesism, which I'm not but you seem to be, there's also the fact that by saying you'd prefer to eat plants instead of animals, you're putting plants lower on the totem pole than animals. Logically, if we wanna live as ethically as possible, we should just kill ourselves so that we don't have to eat anything, or synthesize all of our nutrients and put it in a smoothie like those people from WALL-E.
Either that or we could subsist entirely off of fruit, like some type of bat, because fruit evolved for the purpose of being eaten. Not really possible right now and I'm not gonna stop you once it is, but at some point you have to make compromises. I'm simply willing to compromise at a closer point than you are in how evil I'm willing to be. Eliminating evil from the world is impossible, so you must be able to be content with a harsh and cruel world or you will not be very mentally healthy.
Humans were also built to eat meat. Maybe not as much as we do these days, but meat is still a natural part of our diet. The reason we have sharp teeth and front-facing eyes is because meat eating is what we evolved for. Human beings are still apart of nature even as far as we've come today, and throughout history, attempts to completely shut out our nature have usually come back to bite us in the ass.
There's also the fact that there are so many things I'd rate higher on the totem pole of evil (I can list some of them if you want) in modern society, and things I simply need to deal with with much more urgency, that I and many others ain't got time to worry about farm animals.
Yes I'm incredibly speciesist.
From Nazis' perspective, they're simply making the world a better place by getting rid of their, you guessed it, oppressors. Making fun of Jews would be punching up if you go by their logic. Meanwhile, making fun of pedophiles also implicates those who are simply unfortunate enough to be stuck with the illness and don't actually cause any harm.
How do we decide who's perspective is better when we declare who we can and can't make fun of? If we go by popular opinion, then clearly we're allowed to make fun of farm animals, and if we do what I do and ignore whatever power structures people have made up and internalized, we can just judge jokes by whether they're funny or not.
I wouldn't put factory farming on the same level as the Holocaust. Despite using similar technologies and methods, factory farming has an actual goal, that being to ensure that people get fed and that civilization doesn't, y'know, collapse due to famine. Meanwhile, the Holocaust was motivated purely by hatred and a desire to remove an entire ethnic group from the face of the Earth because the perpetrators made up a conspiracy theory about them.
Hey, we're exactly the same in this respect! The only difference being other talking the talk instead of walking the walk.
Ah, the good ole "circle of death" a.k.a appeal to nature fallacy.
We have to feed the animal mass, hence the double impact on environment. Your argument is actually in favor of veganism, not against it.
To live and be dead at the same time? That sure sounds logical. Veganism is about reducing harm done to animals as much as is practically possible.
Some people choose even closer point than you in how evil they're willing to be. Without going into gory examples, I guess you'd just be content with it? I mean even if it's not illegal doesn't mean it's right, right?
Yes, exactly like lions.
"When humans eat flesh, we don't actually tear it with our cuspids. Instead, we soften meat with cooking and then pre-tear it with utensils before grinding it down with our flattened molars, which are particularly well-suited for chewing vegetation." Source
You buying your meat at the store, nicely vacuumed has nothing to do with nature. Despite any lion fantasies.
This is an example of the laziness I was talking about in the earlier comment.
Now this is not lazy. It's 4D chess or something. Anyway I've lost the plot already.
You could try that at a comedy club. (A place not run by Nazis ofc.)
Yes, that's unfortunate. Hope they get the treatment they deserve.
Factory farming has a goal alright. It's to destroy the global ecosystem and bring profit to multi national corporations while doing it. In fact, if most of the population went plant based, the soil would be used to grow stuff that could be utilized straight by humans, thus removing the animal from the equation. Also, there would be enough of food to easily feed the whole world population.
Something being natural makes it more sustainable.
Depending on how much meat you're producing, you can do it in a manner which isn't that damaging to the environment. Chickens don't require that much food but they produce enough to feed a family, and cows can live off of grass if you don't try and produce too many of them.
Killing ourselves would be a great way to do that, yes. Humanity is the world's single most prolific and destructive invasive species.
Well yes, obviously, if I was less moralistic then I'd be able to be content with much more evil in this world, however, some evil can be greatly reduced without inconveniencing civilization very much (unlike removing meat from the human diet), so there's no need to be content with it.
This does not disprove my main point that humans evolved to eat meat.
Yes, that's why I wish to go hunt deer or something. The meat will probably taste better and procurement will be much more fulfilling than your average grocery trip because the thrill of the hunt is what our minds and bodies long for.
It is the biological imperative of all living creatures to be as lazy as possible.
The point is to show that your logic on who it is and isn't ok to make fun of are easy to distort.
The reason why you'd be removed from the premises is because the audience doesn't like your joke, which is what I'm proposing we use as the arbiter of comedy here instead of what direction you're punching in. And if you did somehow make a funny joke about Jews, which I've seen examples of, then people will probably laugh at it.
Then why do we still make fun of them? According to your logic, it'd be considered punching down, since non-offending pedophiles objectively do no harm and are a marginalized group. The answer, of course, is because they can be a source of good jokes, and because you don't hear them complaining about it, or anyone complaining on their behalf.
I don't think corporations care about the first part, and the way they actually get the second part is by feeding people.
We don't need to remove the animal entirely from the equation in order to have a good-enough supply chain.
There already is, the fact that anyone starves is a failure of logistics, not the fact that we eat meat.