Table of Contents
THE SEVEN SKUNKS
Everyone loves the story. A vegan YouTuber with more followers than Sun Myung Moon gets caught with egg yolk running down her chin, elbows deep in fish guts while soaking her feet in a bowl of bone broth and is forced to admit that her unconventional diet includes animal products. In the swiftly-issued mea culpa video that follows, she is dragged through the comments like a German-friendly French girl through the streets during The Liberation of Paris. “We love animals so much we’re going to KILL you!” the commentscum screech, hacking figurative tufts of hair from her palsied scalp. “Why can’t you be kind, you sick bitch?”
Edifying? Not even a little bit. Entertaining? Oh, you betcha.
“So much for compassionate veganism LOL!!!” say jubilant bloodclaat bloodmouths, all their wet dreams arriving at once. It proves for good and all that everyone is as bad as each other, all virtue is hypocrisy and any attempt at living a better life is as futile as saying to Russell Brand “hey, maybe don’t make yourself the story on this one?” And it’s not just your regular anti-vegan bores looking on in fascination. Ever since that misunderstanding in the Garden of Eden, mankind has been unable to resist a fall from grace. Post all the inspirational triumph over adversity tales you like, you can’t beat some celestial chode tumbling to earth in ball of flames then landing in a reservoir of shit. The prurient human interest angle guarantees the stories go viral.
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And that presents a challenge for the vegan movement. After all, there’s nothing more damaging than a skunk defector – the turncoat’s coat turn is deadly. They’ve seen the inner workings of veganism up close and first-hand – it’s quite possible they found it not to their liking at all. They think they know where the bodies are buried. That there are actual bodies of sentient beings buried in their guts seems not to bother them at all and they are seldom shy about sharing their stories.
So what’s our take on these rotters? On the one hand, I have a lot of time for reducetarianism, am aware that shaming former vegans is often counter-productive and accept that we are born in sin, failures by design. On the other hand, once you build a certain profile as a vegan, your beliefs and your actions are up for critique. I have already dealt in detail with urine soused fraud Tim Shieff and fish killing Stacey Rawvana (these two recently made a video in solidarity as ex-vegans and it’s exactly as tone deaf as you imagine). Today, I deal with seven other Benedict Arnolds who all seem to be reading from the same script. Close examination reveals seven recurring themes in their behaviour. Commit these seven sins to memory and you will be able to identify them whenever a daft sausage goes over to the dark side. You may even be able to identify them in current vegan influencers, perhaps even yourself. Avoid these pitfalls and you will enjoy the long healthy life of the nourished, the peace of mind of the just and the sexual virility of the well-circulated.
On the real though, let’s get at these filthy animals. Seven skunks, seven sins. Hit it!
Raw Alignment
We begin with a particularly malodorous weasel. Many of you will find it hard to believe that there exists a whiter, more psychopathic white psychopath than Freelee The Banana Girl. I get it. Freelee is indeed a disastrous paleface, a blaring honky, a salty cracker with sodium levels that would send most humans into toxic shock. And only a damn fool would argue that on the Beaufort psychometric scale she is anything other than a solid 12, an unhinged mentalloid, bereft of empathy, insight or compassion – the kind of girl who live streams her own colonics.
And yet the only conclusion you can reach once you get to know Alyse Parker a.k.a. Raw Alignment, is that she out-Freelees Freelee. She truly plumbs depths of depravity and stupidity other former vegans simply can’t reach. Alyse came out as a non-vegan in 2019, around the same time as Rawvana. She had declared herself allergic to mould which, if you’re living in Hawaii like her, is a real problem as it is the unofficial national plant. The symptoms were brain fog, sinus congestion, appetite loss, chronic fatigue and, most cruel of all, sprained vagina.
“I have literally never had a sex drive in my life,” she claimed. It sounded horrible. She expressed deep anxiety about “permanent brain damage” and while The Savage is a great believer in low hanging fruit and open goals, that one’s too easy even for him. But what if there were a simple instant cure, readily available?
The powerful cravings for fish her body produced was all the evidence she needed. She ate a portion of salmon and it had roughly the effect spinach has on Popeye. The next morning, she awoke to “zero congestion, and zero brain fog, zero migraines, zero lack of clarity, I felt the best that I had in probably like 3 years.” Checkmate, vogons!
The symptoms were brain fog, sinus congestion, appetite loss, chronic fatigue and, most cruel of all, sprained vagina. “I have literally never had a sex drive in my life,” she claimed. It sounded horrible.
It may not surprise you to learn that during the vegan years Alyse ate a truly horrific diet. There was the harrowing stage of her subsisting on 1200 calories a day, the ‘eat nothing but fruit all day’ stage and then her underrated ‘crackers and guac’ period[efn_note] What We Can Learn from 23 Ex Vegan Youtubers – Anna’s Analysis YouTube channel [/efn_note]. Basically, if it malnourished you then Alyse was all over that action. Could her fright night of a diet have contributed in some way to the health issues that forced her to abandon veganism? The truth is we will SIMPLY NEVER KNOW. It is a modern-day Mary Celeste.
Don’t get a mistaken idea though – Alyse had absolutely looked into the science behind it all. In her coming out video, she patiently explained to her slow learner public how her plant-based diet had depleted her DHA, the omega-3 fatty acid vital for brain health. And what do we know about fish, apart from the fact that they are awesome and you shouldn’t kill and eat them? They are super rich in DHA.
Now, some of you will be saying “wait, but I thought that getting the daily ALA/DHA requirement was not only entirely possible on a plant-based diet but really quite simple. For starters, there are many vegan supplements available. Furthermore, you can get all you need from a couple of tablespoons of linseed a day as the body converts the shorter chain amino acid ALA in linseed to the longer chain DHA. Bear in mind that “the brain DHA requirement is estimated to be only 2.4–3.8 mg/day in humans”[efn_note] Is docosahexaenoic acid synthesis from α-linolenic acid sufficient to supply the adult brain? – Science Direct [/efn_note] and that there are 2.4 grams (2,400 mg) in each tablespoon of ground linseed[efn_note] Omega-3 Fatty Acids factsheet – Colorado State University [/efn_note] and that even the extremely low posited conversion rate of 1% (more realistic is 3.5%) would see you surpass the requirement with two daily tablespoons of linseed. Also relevant is the evidence that non-fish eaters convert at a higher rate.”[efn_note] Estimated conversion of α‐linolenic acid to long chain n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids is greater than expected in non fish‐eating vegetarians and non fish‐eating meat‐eaters than in fish‐eaters – Wiley Online Library [/efn_note] Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing.
So yeah, Alyse is everything wrong with everything among influencers. She once famously said “I’ve never, ever, ever been the person to research and research and research before doing something,” and on this at least we can take her at her word. She also delights us by letting us know that post-salmon she “has a sex drive now!”, giddily pleased with herself. She finishes her coming-out video with “we are more than the food we eat – let that sink in”. Condescension from this lackwit goes down like pork hot dogs in the PETA canteen. How could she possibly make things worse?
![I Tried The CARNIVORE DIET For 30 Days [ex-vegan]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L5FxTpkiVMI/hqdefault.jpg)
Just spitballing here but she could make a video entitled “I tried the Carnivore Diet for 30 days + here’s what happened… ✩”? Yep, Parker decided to jump on board the Jordan Peterson bandwagon – that clinically depressed father figure for incels too pussy to call themselves alt-right. Peterson claims that his all-meat diet cured his depression and as worthwhile evidentiary claims go, that’s the kind that really isn’t. His daughter Mikhaila appears in her underpants promoting her beef chomping project, charging $120 an hour for her “consultancy” on the “diet” (please assume I’m doing Lucille Bluth air-quotes as I drink martinis there because, on the low, I am). Mikhaila’s not the only one making coin from carnism. Alyse’s video is sponsored by ButcherBox – an organic grassfed beef company who sponsor Joe Rogan among others. If you’re gonna sell out, don’t eff around with half measures. Go hard or go home.
Parker decided to jump on board the Jordan Peterson bandwagon – that clinically depressed father figure for incels too pussy to call themselves alt-right.
This clickbaiting douchebaggery calls to mind The Madness of Tim Shieff when he decided that the most vegan thing he could do was kill an animal with his bare hands then eat it. Particularly nauseating is how pleased Parker is with herself. “I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life!” she gushes, confirming our suspicion that no matter what the subject, situation or location, it will always be all about her. She makes a series of claims about the health benefits of the diet which are all bogus and insane, purely based on anecdotes from the mentally ill. A black hole of narcissism, Alyse will never take responsibility for promoting this dangerous bullshit[efn_note] I’m a Registered Dietitian and I Really Don’t Want You to Eat a Carnivore Diet – Self.com [/efn_note].
Keen to avoid accusations of somehow contributing to the suffering of animals, Parker makes clear she is not in any way supporting factory farming. Everything from ButcherBox is organic, locally sourced where possible, grassfed and pasture raised with Bible classes in the evening – the usual rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic foolishness. She backs the video with a joy-filled optimistic funky bass track which calls to mind Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine playing in American Psycho. It’s the perfect banging soundtrack for a cow Holocaust. Congratu-fucking-lations, Alyse. Let that stink in.
Stella Rae
Stella Rae is one of the lesser-known sociopaths in this menagerie but she was quite well known enough to be covered by PETA in 2019, shopping for the “perfect vegan wardrobe” and has always had a pretty sizeable YouTube following (207K as of May 2020). A slim, attractive cracker in the grand white psychopath influencer tradition, Stella came into veganism with a background of disordered eating and immediately threw herself headlong into raw vegan lunacy. The established template of bikini shots punctuated by impeccably crafted platters and ineffably drafted platitudes proved a big success for Stella as she attracted fans like Leonardo DiCapreteen attracts 19-year-old underwear models.
Stella attracted fans like Leonardo DiCapreteen attracts 19-year-old underwear models.
Stella outed herself as a skunk in late January 2019 after four heady years of influencing, explaining to her followers “I was still promoting myself as a vegan online and I kinda felt like I was lying?” No need for the upward inflection question-mark sweetie, you were lying. In an emotional cri de cœur, she came clean on the deteriorating quality of her poo plops. The Savage is not a dietician yet he feels fairly confident in saying that if your dumps get worse after turning vegan, then you are absolutely doing something wrong. A wholegrain plant-based diet is generally the golden ticket to the Mount Olympus of Number Twos.
Worse was to follow. Celery became as bloated as the corpse of a Titanic steerage passenger after three days in the Northern Atlantic. So bloated, in fact, that she felt like she couldn’t wear crop tops. Shit-tier stools were one thing but the influencer’s right to flash six inches of midriff was inalienable. Right then and there, Celery decided to eat some salmon which cured her quicker than a good kick up the arse would cure 98% of middle-class parenting issues. She has always said that the most important thing to do is to “listen to yourself and your body and your intuition”. Well, OK but have you noticed how it’s always salmon and never, say, a dirty smelly mackerel? Like, if your body is sending out cravings why isn’t it asking for seven ounces of that greasy dead-eyed bastard. It’s nutrient-rich as hell, after all. I suppose it just isn’t quite as tasty or glamorous as its upstream swimming cousin. #prayformackerel
Celery doesn’t mention seeing a string of doctors and specialists and it’s a fairly safe assumption that such consultations never happened. And low hanging cheap shots aside, plenty of vegans do experience digestion issues, including bloating – there’s even excellent online advice about them. One way or another, there’s pretty much always a solution where you stay healthy and stay vegan but it’s not going to involve just listening to yourself, your body and your intuition. We must be aware of the distinction between ethical vegans and ones who just want to fit into the same drawers they had when they were 16. Stella’s performance? Less than stellar.
Bonny Rebecca
We take a trip over to the beautiful gigantic corgi’s head that is Australia. Much like her countrywoman Freelee The Banana Girl, Bonny Rebecca is a slim caucasoid conventionally attractive blonde who made her bones promoting a restrictive vegan diet that would only appeal to orthorexic goons who pop a boner every time a Belsen documentary comes on The History Channel.
One thing you can say about Bonny is that she is sincere and that she did try a bunch of remedies for her ailments. You can say the same about her vegan borefriend Tim, who seems to have the constitution of a Brontë sister and has spent most of his adult life closer to death than a husband of Carole Baskin spotted booking a flight to Costa Rica. These two definitely tried – they just weren’t very smart about it. Bonny and Tim were friends with Freelee The Banana Girl and followed her high carb low fat, 170-servings-of-fruit-a-day lunacy. Between them, they suffered from insomnia, anxiety, chronic pain, acne, IBS and multiple food allergies. Clearly, intervention was needed.
Tim, who seems to have the constitution of a Brontë sister and has spent most of his adult life closer to death than a husband of Carole Baskin spotted booking a flight to Costa Rica.
So while Tim spent months bouncing on and off antibiotics, Bonny generally preferred to take counsel from naturopaths and practitioners of functional medicine. Here’s where the trouble begins. Those cranks chat a lot of shit but their practices don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. Bonny was diagnosed with leaky gut syndrome. While leaky gut absolutely exists, leaky gut syndrome is a contentious diagnosis pushed by practitioners of alternative medicine. The theory behind leaky gut syndrome is that symptoms arise as a result of the immune system reacting to germs and toxins that have leaked through the gut wall into the bloodstream. The Canadian Society of Intestinal Research however, states “this is all speculation, as scientific studies do not validate any of these claims.”[efn_note] Debunking the Myth of ‘Leaky Gut Syndrome’ – The Canadian Society of Intestinal Research [/efn_note]
As Unnatural Vegan points out, this consultation of functional medicine quacks is a common trend among former vegans. In 2014, The American Academy of Family Physicians placed a moratorium on medical educational credits for Functional Medical programs citing “a lack of accompanying evidence existed to support the practice of Functional Medicine”, even identifying some treatments as harmful and dangerous[efn_note] AAFP: Functional Medicine lacks supporting evidence; includes “harmful” and “dangerous” treatments – Science Based Medicine [/efn_note].
It’s probably not surprising that animal products are the only thing that Tim can keep down these days. His guts are as shot-to-shit as Sonny from The Godfather’s after he had that run-in on the causeway. Without access to medical records and a dearth of scientific literature exploring what happens when you eat a bunch of dumb shit even a lab rat would turn his nose up at, it’s impossible to tell definitively what their major malfunction was. Mic the Vegan takes a good stab, offering fructose overdose, excess B12 and parasites as possible culprits. We may never know the specifics on what turned Bonny and Tim’s intestines into faecal linguine but we do know that it was hastened by their terrible decision-making based on their lack of education. As frustrating and dimwitted as Bonny undoubtedly is, you feel bad for her and her acne-blitzed, diarrhoea-stinking husbland. They are dimwits trying to do the best thing, stymied only by limited horizons and their shit brains.
KalelKitten
Kalel is kind of a big deal. 1.86m YouTube subscribers, 600K Instagram followers and another 385K on Twitter make her the kind of girl that brands just fall over themselves to sponsor. A potent mix of DIY fashion hacks, lifestyle advice and cosplay outfits saw her popularity rocket as she blazed a trail for conventionally attractive girls like her to do exactly what they were already doing. She may have lied about being of Native American heritage, making herself the Cherokee Rachel Dolezal; reneged on her promise to never undergo rhinoplasty and generally engaged in increasingly baffling influencer drama but her profile only grew higher and her veganism was very much part of that. She worked several times with PETA and was a vocal animal rights advocate. Good for her.
She may have lied about being of Native American heritage, making herself the Cherokee Rachel Dolezal but her profile only grew higher
In 2018 though, she confessed that she had been complementing her diet with pasture-raised eggs and small amounts of meat. In itself, this isn’t such a big deal. If everyone ate only pasture-raised eggs and small amounts of meat, wouldn’t that be something grand? The devil though, is in the detail and the message. After suffering from depression, forgetfulness, hair loss, toxic levels of testosterone and pathogenic fungus (!), Kalel had a series of tests run which identified deficiencies in iron, zinc and lysine. OK, so supplementation’s the answer, yes? Kalel wasn’t trying to hear that. “I could have taken supplements…but I just feel if you have to supplement so many things, is it really the diet your body is designed for?” [efn_note] YouTuber Kalel No Longer Vegan: Admits To Eating Eggs And Meat – Plant Based News [/efn_note]
We can certainly agree that if you refuse to supplement then veganism is definitely not the diet for you or indeed anyone. Vegans, cucknivores and everyone in between should be supplementing. It may be that Kalel frequently uses poor judgement in her life choices in general. She somehow managed to turn her 2 million follower gravy train into an empty bank account that saw her removed from her apartment for paying her rent three weeks late. You can’t help thinking there’s more to the story than that. Couldn’t a friend or relative have helped her out? Then you remember – she doesn’t take supplements.
Virpi Mikkonen
You knew that the Daily Mail was going to love this one[efn_note] ‘My vegan diet brought on early menopause’ – Daily Mail [/efn_note]. Finnish blogger and cookbook author, Virpi ‘Vanelja’ Mikkonen was part of the great 2019 Exodus of Former Vegan Dissidents that thrilled cucknivores everywhere. Virpi had 160K followers on Instagram promoting a grain free, gluten-free, largely raw vegan diet. Her breaking point came when her periods disappeared, sending the conventionally attractive 37-year-old into a tailspin that ended with her in an animal bloodlust frenzy that would put Vlad the Impaler to shame. Virpi knew that the onset of menopause at 37 was as good as a death sentence. If you lose your ability to reproduce as a woman you may as well hang yourself. There was only one other legitimate option open to her: consult a specialist in Chinese medicine who could diagnose her with a ‘yin deficiency’ so he could prescribe a litre a day of bone broth and eggs to restore her womanly purpose.
Virpi knew that the onset of menopause at 37 was as good as a death sentence. If you lose your ability to reproduce as a woman you may as well hang yourself.
‘It’s amazing. I feel energetic, motivated. I’m sleeping better, the hot flushes and aching in my body have stopped.’ She said that when her periods returned, she danced around her flat in ecstasy. The tortured and slaughtered cows? They could suck a dick a day until they died.
“I like to follow the natural approach,” said Virpi and if ever there’s a sentence guaranteed to alarm bells, raise red flags and trigger bullshit detectors then that’s the one. A quick look at her vegan diet reveals that she excluded whole grains and subsisted on celery, chickpeas and cucumber. The Savage is not an OB/GYN and his relationship to Virpi Mikkonen’s reproductive system is tangential at best. But given that underweight women are at high risk of early menopause [efn_note]Underweight women have high risk of early menopause – Clinical Advisor [/efn_note], being in permanent caloric deficit seems a more likely culprit.
Can we so easily dismiss Virpi Mikkonen as an ignorant yin-deficient hippy sausage? I believe we can. Next!
KasumiKriss
The name KasumiKriss won’t ring too many bells but she is included here entirely on merit. A conventionally attractive vegan YouTuber, Kasumi made her big splash in 2018, announcing she was quitting her vegan diet after how appallingly unhealthy it made her. “Looking back at older pictures. I think I fell into an eating disorder for sure. I was delusional. I got insecure. I lost my hair, my boobs, my muscle, my hobbies and my sane mind. I lost myself.” Jesus. It’s amazing she poisoned herself for so long. And after she quit? “Now it has been 3 weeks not vegan anymore. I feel freed from all the restrictions, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. I am very grateful to feel alive again.”
If Kasumi legitimately did lose her tits as a result of her diet then that is absolutely not something to laugh at. There are a few more humbling sights than a previously attractive influencer stumbling rackless through her YouTube videos as her fans unsubscribe in their thousands. Small wonder she was suicidal at the prospect of the rest of her life as a grotesque no-titted freak whose only future lay in a carnival sideshow or perhaps as a cautionary tale for anyone reckless enough to attempt an ethical dietary change.
Like so many maniacs before her, Kasumi lost her period on her raw food diet. Of course, Freelee doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with losing your period as menstruation is “toxicity leaving the body”[efn_note] Your period is not ‘toxic’ or ‘unhealthy’ – Babe.net [/efn_note] but that’s because she is, as discussed many times previously, a white psychopath.
There are a few more humbling sights than a previously attractive influencer stumbling rackless through her YouTube videos as her fans unsubscribe in their thousands.
So far, so predictable. But this is where it gets gnarly. Not content with being too big a dum-dum to follow a simple diet correctly, Kasumi has done a full 180 and become an evangelist for animal products, ancestral health and assorted paleo idiocy. She now declares that veganism is bad for everyone to her ever-dwindling audience of cucknivores and incels. You can find her on Twitter sharing photos of the raw calf liver she eats. That must be offal for her (and not much better for the dead toddler she stole it from).
How predictable then that she has simultaneously thrown herself headlong into the anti-masturbation cult NoFap. Her YouTube is now one NoFap video after another, placing her alongside such luminaries as alt-right goons the Proud Boys who have a strict no-wanks policy when it comes to their second degree initiation. Kasumi won’t touch her fanny but she’ll go down on some raw liver in a heartbeat. Freud would have a field day.
Moon and Rock
If you have never heard of Moon & Rock then consider yourself lucky. Soy boy made flesh Evan Rock and his inspo platitude generator wife Meagan Moon have been in the wellness space for a minute, pushing a brand of unbearably smug new-age spirituality while flogging their shitty e-books, shitty potions and shitty jewellery. Testosterone can’t ever remember encountering Evan and Meagan is the kind of girl who finds Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop too science-y. You can imagine Meagan watching Harry Enfield’s I Saw You Coming sketches and making a note to pop in when she gets the chance.
OK, that’s the anti-hippy hate speech out of the way. A quick browse of their YouTube channel reveals a dearth of vegan-related material. Where is the 90-day juice cleanse and why don’t I smell baked sweet potato? What you will get is terrible videos with titles like ☆ DIET IS NOT EVERYTHING ☆ and other creepy passive-aggressive answers to questions nobody asked along with beyond shite songs from Evan and his even more annoying mate Charlie about jackfruit and living in abundance. No Lentil and Rice Wellington on the beach, however. Whagwan?
Testosterone can’t ever remember encountering Evan and Meagan is the kind of girl who finds Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop too science-y.
Most of that stuff’s been deleted now but they did indeed do all of the stuff you would expect of them, exactly the wrong things for exactly the wrong reasons. They began on a raw vegan fruit-based diet and Evan in particular worked his way through a series of unhealthy dietary fads. He tried at least one juice cleanse, fasted and dipped his toe in One Meal a Day. In time, they both felt unwell and correctly identified their horrific nutritionally deficient diet as the culprit. By now, you know better than to ask if they tried the many readily available plant-based solutions to their deficiencies. As sure as eggs is eggs, they started gorging on ghee, raw organ meat and, yes, eggs.
But did it work? Yeah, of course it did. The nutrient-rich foods pulled them from the edge of malnutrition into something approaching functional health. Poon & Cock interpreted this as cosmic revelation of their manifest destiny to eat meat, become part of the circle of life and take further steps on their journey towards oneness with the universe. They are living their truth and who among us could argue with that? Who would listen?
So those are the seven skunks but what have we learned from them? In the way that they think, absolutely nothing but in other ways, oh so very much. It may be a tale told by an idiot but there is much to be gained from their mistakes. Stay alert. Control the skunks. Stay vegan.
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
1. They misunderstand their pre-existing conditions
Many of these people have something quite seriously wrong with them before they began their vegan diet. It might be disordered eating, a gut complaint, kidney stones or clinical depression – the list is a long one. No one’s shitting on anyone for having an illness – we don’t get to choose our maladies, unless you’re wokescold psychopath Jameela Jamil. What having a pre-existing condition does entail is a responsibility to yourself and your nodding dog shitsack public to have a full understanding of your illness, its underlying causes, its triggers and what mitigates it. This understanding is to be based on the currently available science, not your bullshit intuition, not Doctor Axe, not Chris Kresser or Rawvana.
2. They obsess about their journey
Everyone’s on a journey these days. You might be a reality TV show contestant on a redemption arc, a marketing forum member tentatively beginning a $10 to $100,000 a month thread or even a dickless journalist embarking on Jordung Peterson’s 30-Day Carnivore Challenge. But of all the people on a journey (everyone) no one is more on a journey than the Internet influencer. They’ve been on more journeys than Jill Dando (RIP I cri everytiem).
What this journey isn’t though is a Get Out of Jail Free card when your vegan journey switchblades into your carnivore journey. Try telling Virpi Mikkonen, Tim Shieff and Raw Alignment that. Every one of them has given a different version of the “it was just my journey” defence but it really won’t wash. When you ruthlessly cultivate these large followings of the impressionable and often vulnerable as the above all did, you don’t get to say you were “present but not involved” when you turn on a sixpence, recommend dangerous diets, sell dangerous products and lie through your teeth as you monetise your derangement. If scrutiny is a problem for you, then you’re in the wrong game.
3. They fall prey to the appeal to nature fallacy
Check out the smiling blonde in the lotus position – eyes closed, a barely-there bikini and a beach as virgin as a Ben Shapiro fanboy. Truly this is Eden – she looks like Eve after a juice cleanse. Surely this is how nature planned it? What a seductive idea that is. Whether it’s Rawvana refusing to take antibiotics for her gut condition, Rock and Moon intuitively obeying Mother Nature’s plea that they eat raw liver to cure their acne-splattered faces or Tim Shieff guzzling piss from Gaia herself, former vegans are slaves to the idea that there is no other God but nature and that dissension from this idea will lead to calamity and death. Welcome to the appeal to nature fallacy.
We don’t have to extend ourselves too much on this one. Not all natural phenomena are good. We can place earthquakes, floods, plagues and famine in the bad guy camp without a problem and many unnatural phenomena like vaccines, ventilators, incubators and vibrators save lives. The people on the naturalistic tip will universally decry synthetic chemicals, apparently unaware of the fact that the most deadly chemical compound on the planet is naturally occurring.[efn_note] Natural vs. Man-Made Chemicals – Dispelling Misconceptions – CompoundChem [/efn_note] This helps explain why they spend so much of their time swerving dangers that don’t exist (microchips in vaccines) and careering headlong into ones that do (malnutrition). The moment your favourite influencer starts arbitrarily badmouthing chemicals, it’s time to start backing away.
4. They take the fast track
The boiling sea that is the wellness niche throws up bad ideas like coked-up ad creatives brainstorming the latest Pepsi campaign. These sappy frauds are very big on fasting at the moment it and will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that many of the headline former vegans embarked upon a 30-day water fast with Doug Graham. It isn’t so much that Doug “Jim Jones” Graham is one of the worst people on the face of the earth (although that’s part of it), nor is it that he’s a B12 deficiency denialist[efn_note] Comments on Doug Graham’s B12 Statements – Jack Norris RD [/efn_note] (though that doesn’t help), it’s more how Leah Branster, a woman attending one of his retreats claims she nearly died after she developed extreme symptoms Graham discouraged her from seeking medical attention for.[efn_note] This means raw: extreme dieting and the battle among fruitarians – The Guardian [/efn_note] Could this be somehow related to the evidence that prolonged fasting can lead to “anaemia, a weakened immune system, liver and kidney problems, and irregular heartbeat”?[efn_note] Diet Myth or Truth: Fasting Is Effective for Weight Loss – WebMD [/efn_note] Sounds like another one of those enduring mysteries but if actual medical doctors are telling you that that thing you’re thinking of trying that sounds like a really bad idea is, in fact, a really bad idea then it could be a thing best avoided.
5. They lie. A lot.
We should not be giddy aunts about this. If you’re an influencer, you’re in the lies business. That fake tan covering up your pallid complexion, that bleached smile masking your clinical depression, those fake tits enabling your body dysmorphia, that immaculate plate, that foxy sierra filter, that hateful borefriend who you’ll expose as a gaslighting abuser in six months’ time – deception is in your DNA. We, your adoring public, understand this. You don’t go to an influencer for the unvarnished truth, even when they’ve hashtagged it #nofilter. That’d be like ordering food at McDonald’s and expecting your Big Mac to resemble the miracle of food engineering photographed on the menu. Nobody is clutching pearls here.
But there are still sins of omission we can’t countenance. If you’re actively presenting yourself as a vegan, profiting off AdSense, affiliate links and promoting your own bullshit products to your vegan subscribers while eating animal products, you are scamming your people. While it is true that there is no obvious tipping point where a sneaky nibble on a cheese wedge becomes a daily raw liver habit, if you claim months later that your raw vegan diet was half killing you while you were profiting at the time from saying the exact opposite, then you are a lying liar lying and no amount of chutzpahing about journeys, epiphanies and adventures can redeem your sorry deceptive arse.
6. They listen to their bodies
Your body is like that reckless roommate you had at Uni. Sometimes you need to listen to him. Like that time he told you about the pool party where there’d be weed, poontang and good times aplenty. You’ll be glad that you listened to your carefree funtime buddy. Other times you need to not listen to him. Like that time he told you about the illegal rave peopled by warring members of the London grime community where you’d be the only two crackers there. You’ll be glad that you disregarded your feckless reckless buddy.
This, you know implicitly. Such knowledge sets you apart from small children and fools. You are capable of exercising discretion contingent on context, risk and reward. So in the same way, when your body is telling you “that’s enough Doritos, you fat c*nt,” it’s a good idea to pay heed yet if it’s telling you “you could finish off that 3-day-old leftover kebab now,” it’s a good idea to cock a deaf ‘un. You know that people like Moon and Rock love listening to their body because they never stop telling you. Those tubs on My 600 lbs Life never stop listening to their cravings – it hasn’t worked out so well for them.
7. They love to go raw dog
Don’t worry, this is not any expose of their desire to engage in heteronormative intercourse without prophylactic contraception (the data is shaky on that one). This is more about how many of these chumps engaged in the kooky fringe that is raw veganism. Virpi Mikkonen, Rawvana, Raw Alignment, and Tim “Flat Earth” Shieff all engaged in this wackjob nonsense. It sets you on a path where from the outset, food will not always be easy to find with a lot of pseudoscience attached to it. A major populariser of raw foodism is David ‘Avocado’ Wolfe and even among the cranks and dingbats of naturopathic medicine, Wolfe is a real piece of shit. Apart from demonising life-saving cancer treatments, he has long been on the vaccines cause autism cattle truck. In related news, Wolfe is a Flat Earther who believes gravity itself is toxic.
The basic premise that cooking kills off certain nutrients is only a half-truth as it also increases the bioavailability of others[efn_note] A review of the impact of preparation and cooking on the nutritional quality of vegetables and legumes – International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science [/efn_note], and raw foodism is best seen as a creepy cult for purity-fixated maniacs with a dropout likelihood of a Geldof attending rehab.
Epilogue: Love the sinner, hate the sin
That’s about the size of it, boys and girls. Skunks gon’ skunk and it’s all you can do to be aware of their filthy smelly ways and raise awareness in others. None of the above should be interpreted as a greenlight to chase these doofuses around the Internet, post their home addresses, make death threats or send them Tiffany’s boxes filled with shit, teeth and hair. Mockery of their idiocy is perfectly fine (and in the case of Tim Shieff and Raw Alignment, practically mandatory). They got the plaudits for doing the right stuff, they can stand a few brickbats for getting it wrong.
Be aware though of the dangers of playing the man, not the ball. It’s ultimately a battle of ideas and bad ideas linger long on after their proponents have gone. When Tim, Alyse, Kasumi, Virpi, Poon and Cock join their forebears in Hell the Universal Consciousness, water fasting, urine therapy, raw foodism and Jordung Peterson’s cucknivore diet will remain. That puts the responsibility on us to scrutinise all ideas, particularly our own and any that claim to represent us. Sloppy, delusional, pseudoscientific quackery has been a problem in veganism from the get-go and if we’re not willing to interrogate these beliefs then we’re going to end up with more calamitous dropouts like the ones discussed here.
So love your enemies. Love them until they are ash.