Asshole-ing Their Way To Renown
"PETA doesn't shoot themselves in the foot because they're stupid. They shoot themselves in the foot because they're traveling up an incentive gradient that rewards them for doing so, even if it destroys their credibility," writes Scott Alexander in a 2014 post on SlateStarCodex:
Some old news I only just heard about: PETA is offering to pay the water bills for needy Detroit families if (and only if) those families agree to stop eating meat.Predictably, the move caused a backlash. The International Business Times, in what I can only assume is an attempted pun, describes them as "drowning in backlash". Groundswell thinks it's a "big blunder". Daily Banter says it's "exactly why everyone hates PETA". Jezebel calls them "assholes".
Of course, this is par for the course for PETA, who have previously engaged in campaigns like throwing red paint on fashion models who wear fur, juxtaposing pictures of animals with Holocaust victims, juxtaposing pictures of animals with African-American slaves, and ads featuring naked people that cross the line into pornography.
People call these things "blunders", but consider the alternative. Vegan Outreach is an extremely responsible charity doing excellent and unimpeachable work in the same area PETA is. Nobody has heard of them. Everybody has heard of PETA, precisely because of the interminable stupid debates about "did this publicity stunt cross the line?"
While not everyone is a vegan, most people who learn enough about factory farming are upset by it. There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren't any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. Their problem isn't lack of agreement. It's lack of attention.
PETA creates attention, but at a cost. Everybody's talking about PETA, which is sort of like everybody talking about ethical treatment of animals, which is sort of a victory. But most of the talk is "I hate them and they make me really angry." Some of the talk is even "I am going to eat a lot more animals just to make PETA mad."
I would guess that joining PETA is, in part, a way of making up for how our society is vast, transient, and highly fragmented (as I explained in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.") It's a way for people to belong, to signal that they are of a certain tribe, and to virtue-signal for being in it.
Remember when they couldn't say where they sent adoptable animals?
Radwaste at January 27, 2019 10:53 PM
PETA has long had a reputation for being Star F*ckers. The leadership is made up of a bunch of wannabe socialites who using the organization to fund expensive travel and partying.
That's why their campaigns are so 'edgy' - they're trying to impress their friends in the fashion and entertainment community.
When they've actually tried to do something concrete, like run shelters, it's been a disaster. So it's probably better that they stick to sexy photoshoots and publicity stunts.
marlo at January 28, 2019 9:27 AM
It's high time that outrageous lefties start being no-platformed, disemployed, publicly confronted by mobs, called "Nazis" and other vile names, and subjected to all the other nastiness that they are already doing to well-behaved Republicans such as Tucker Carlson. They changed the rules; we have no choice but to respond in kind, or they will continue to win. In effect we are in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, with all the same stakes as the original for both individuals and our country.
And after Antifa and BAMN, PETA members are the most deserving targets.
jdgalt at January 31, 2019 9:34 AM
" There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren't any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists"
I'm a pro-factory=farming advocate. Without factory farms we'd be back in the days when only the well to do had access to quality sources of protein, and the working class ate mostly bread and cabbage.
I don't understand the objections to the Detroit water bill initiative. PETA is essentially a religion, and religions have used charity as a moral carrot and stick for centuries.
bw1 at February 1, 2019 6:43 PM
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