To me, it’s hard to ignore how this post skates over why some vegans are pushy, and how that makes statements like “There’s a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values” and “If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won’t like you” difficult for them to swallow. If a vegan is “radical” or pushy, it’s probably because they think killing animals is wrong; possibly to a similar, identical, or perhaps even greater degree than killing humans is wrong. And I don’t think anyone trying to convince a serial killer to stop murdering people would appreciate being told “There’s a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values”, or “If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won’t like you.” That isn’t necessarily less true about serial killers than it is about a meat-eaters, but I’m sure it’s intuitive to you that if you said that to an anti-serial-killer (i.e. most normal people), the response would be something like “Excuse me?” I get the sense that your argument is meant to be a purely pragmatic one — “You’re not going to get anywhere with this, and it’s wasting resources you could use on more tractable problems, so you should change your approach or just stop entirely” — but I think that the people who most need to hear that argument (on any subject where it obtains, not just veganism) wouldn’t even realize that’s your argument. They view their bugbear as an extremely important moral problem; insofar as your argument fails to address that perspective, and instead treats the bugbear as a mere cultural difference that they’re “weird” for objecting to, I think it isn’t going to sound like a pragmatic argument that their approach simply isn’t working. At worst, it will sound like you’re saying “Why are you so worked up about murder? Don’t you know that murder is acceptable in some cultures? Why are you so intolerant?” At best, it will sound like you’re missing the point, because it will sound like you’re just saying they would have more friends if they got less worked up about murder. I’m sure you can see why they would not even find that argument relevant, let alone persuasive. They wouldn’t be so pushy in the first place if they cared more about having friends than about people doing less murder.
To me, it’s hard to ignore how this post skates over why some vegans are pushy, and how that makes statements like “There’s a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values” and “If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won’t like you” difficult for them to swallow. If a vegan is “radical” or pushy, it’s probably because they think killing animals is wrong; possibly to a similar, identical, or perhaps even greater degree than killing humans is wrong. And I don’t think anyone trying to convince a serial killer to stop murdering people would appreciate being told “There’s a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values”, or “If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won’t like you.” That isn’t necessarily less true about serial killers than it is about a meat-eaters, but I’m sure it’s intuitive to you that if you said that to an anti-serial-killer (i.e. most normal people), the response would be something like “Excuse me?” I get the sense that your argument is meant to be a purely pragmatic one — “You’re not going to get anywhere with this, and it’s wasting resources you could use on more tractable problems, so you should change your approach or just stop entirely” — but I think that the people who most need to hear that argument (on any subject where it obtains, not just veganism) wouldn’t even realize that’s your argument. They view their bugbear as an extremely important moral problem; insofar as your argument fails to address that perspective, and instead treats the bugbear as a mere cultural difference that they’re “weird” for objecting to, I think it isn’t going to sound like a pragmatic argument that their approach simply isn’t working. At worst, it will sound like you’re saying “Why are you so worked up about murder? Don’t you know that murder is acceptable in some cultures? Why are you so intolerant?” At best, it will sound like you’re missing the point, because it will sound like you’re just saying they would have more friends if they got less worked up about murder. I’m sure you can see why they would not even find that argument relevant, let alone persuasive. They wouldn’t be so pushy in the first place if they cared more about having friends than about people doing less murder.