Hey, thanks for the comment, I was starting to think no one was going to respond.
I totally understand your concerns, and if this were a few years ago I’d probably completely agree with you, but I think there’s something to be said about the effectiveness of being controversial and not very politically correct. Lemme explain my mindset behind my behavior if you will.
Think about it this way: The problem with altruism (and I would add veganism to that) in general is that so many people are uninformed/misinformed about it, that reaching them at all is hard enough. If you take a non-controversial message with a much more agreeable tone, that’d probably yield like a 95% success rate, but you’d almost definitely not have that big of an audience (maybe about 10,000). With a more controversial tone, you’d probably have about a 5%, but you’d read a MUCH larger audience of say a million. That isn’t to say that the former isn’t doing great work, but can a person going with a nice-guy approach really have the same impact as someone being controversial?
Of course there are people that are well known without being controversial, but being controversial gives people a bigger chance of finding that person and potentially sharing it with others, and it’s important to not be too over-the-top with your behavior (I think I kept it under control for the most part).
You know how PETA does all those stupid articles like the ones about the Mario Bros. wearing Tanooki/Frog suits, or how they tell people it’s speciesist to use the names of animals as insults, or the many flash-games they used to make? They know it’s all ridiculous, but when they do these seemingly ridiculous things, they quickly spread all around the internet, leading to millions of dollars of free media attention, for things that don’t take that long at all to make.
That all being said though, despite my snarkiness, I think I was overall pretty civil. When it comes to lecturing/Youtube videos I take on the snarky, profane tone, but when it comes to one on one conversations, I’d definitely go with the nice-guy approach.
Hey, I learned about effective altruism from Singer’s Ted Talk, and also reading MacAskill’s book.
I’m primarily focused on animal ethics, as I think it’s an issue that’s often forgotten about. I also have concerns with climate change, but for me it’s secondary to animal issues (either way focusing on animal issues helps with climate change, which is why I believe it to be more important).
That being said, I also make a point in discussing the importance of individual action, and how an unwillingness to accept responsibility is the cause of so many of our issues.
Anyway, I’m working on a YouTube channel that talks a lot about science and altruism.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC92ONewFYpktQa9Nj7erTgQ
I’m working on my next video which directly discusses effective altruism, hope to have it out soon.