John Reel’s Blog

While my previous post on banning “Is this a scam?” marketing got a lot of positive feedback, and I hope it will get people thinking and changing their affiliate agreements to stop people from using those tactics, it also brought up the topic of this post.  Who am I to be suggesting that other people change, when I’ve done some questionable things myself?

I’ll start with an aside:

I’ve been vegan for 21 years.  As anyone else who has pursued this alternative lifestyle can attest, people often get defensive just at the mention that you are vegan or vegetarian.  They seem to feel that my choice is an attack against their choice to eat meat, and they attack back.  I strongly suspect that they know that there is a lot of merit to my lifestyle choice, and they feel the need to defend their choice because they know it has ethical, environmental, and health implications that they aren’t comfortable with and don’t want to think about.  My existence makes them think about it.  (Personally, I don’t care one bit what they eat.)

When they ask why I’m vegan, I answer that I don’t like eating animal products.  It grosses me out, and that is the real reason I became vegan.  If they ask for other reasons, and they really want to know, I tell them about the way animals are factory farmed, the way they are treated, the chemicals that are put into them, the health ramifications of that way of farming on us, how the environmental impact of our species eating animal products is worse than the environmental impact of cars, how eating meat is not sustainable with our population growth, how rain forests are cut down to make room for grazing cattle, etc.  I guess I haven’t figured out how to answer their questions in a way they like, because this can really get them on the defensive, despite all the research that backs this up.

One of the arguments that people tend to give when attacking me for being vegan is that I’m the pot calling the kettle black.  They’ll start asking me questions like, “do you drive a car?” to catch me in an ethical conundrum, to make me into a hypocrite, and thus negate all of my reasons that being vegan is a better lifestyle for the planet.  If I don’t use a car, then they’ll search for something else, until they find something that makes them feel that they have put me in my place.  The look of relief that I see on their faces when they find something is profound.

If you don’t agree with me about being vegan, then fine.  I really don’t care.  But, we can choose to do something positive for our world, or we can choose to justify a lifestyle by saying, if you can’t live in perfect harmony with the world, then there is no point in trying.  To make a difference, some people may choose to be vegan, some may choose to telecommute instead of driving to work, some may choose to give money to charity, some may run for office, vote for the green party, or choose one of a hundred other things.  I made my choices in ways that I can reduce my impact on the planet, and continually try to reduce my impact and improve the world in small ways.  Your choices are probably different than mine and I’m okay with that.  I don’t judge even if you have no causes or beliefs that I can identify with.

Back to my previous post:

I find a lot of people cross lines in this industry of Internet marketing.  It encourages and rewards corruption, dirty tactics, and unethical behavior. I’m looking at the lines I’ve crossed, am not happy with it, and have changed. This particular rant on “scam” marketing is the first of many to come in an attempt to challenge other people to help us all clean up our acts and show people that Internet marketing can be done better, and more profitably - without resorting to these tactics.  You may agree or disagree, and that is fine.  All I hope you’ll do is consider and take action if something I suggest resonates with you.

What I hope you will not do, is to say that because I’ve crossed lines in the past, I have no right to grow, change for what I think is the better, or to put ideas out there on what we can do differently.  If that were the case, nobody could reflect and change.

Thank you,

John.

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