No Stupid Questions

Some people feel judged for eating meat if they learn that you're a vegetarian or vegan. As veganism appears more extreme, it causes a stronger reaction.
These people don't like being judged, so they seek to judge you instead. If they can judge you for not eating meat, you can't judge them for eating it, or so they feel.
Some vegans being quite obnoxious in their attempts to convert others, doesn't improve things. Rather, it helps those who dislike vegans to reaffirm their beliefs that all vegans are silently judging them all the time.
All of this is just my theory.

There are some very militant vegans out here on Lemmy, equating eating meat with rape and murder and generally being annoying without actually contributing to the discussions.

They are actively harming their cause. So much so, I suspect them of actually being trolls trying to make vegans look bad.

Or they are just dumb as a brick and don't understand common discourse. That's possible too.

Wait til people find out you don’t drink alcohol! 🤯

Because strident, belligerant activists don't raise awareness, they just make people hate them. I'm sure there's a generalizable lesson in here somewhere.

I think its the extreme. The idea of reducing meat consumption over eliminating it is not met kindly by many vegans and vegan communities. I also see a lot of down play of the nutrient challenge discussion. Now like anything on the internet the extremes tend to be the most vocal. I have personally known vegans who are pretty happy if people are even reducing meat consumption at all or being lacto/ovo pescatarians or such. Its really bad as sometimes the message is if your not going to go full on vegan than your personally responsible for destroying the planet (much like all responsibility for palastinian suffer is because joe bidens the one doing the genocidin) and you might as well eat meat at every meal. The reaction of this for non vegans is very often F these folks and you know what I think I will go out and have a triple bacon cheese burger right now because they taste great.

I generally try not to bring it up, but I know folks that've resumed eating meat and we're welcomed back with high-fives. This argues against the "preachy" argument in this thread. And people don't get criticized the same way over eating unnutritious fast food all the time. My view is that some people feel criticized by other folks' different life choices. When Alice to be in an out group, Betty is confronted with their own life choices.

Same reason people who love fossil fuels hate people who are worried about global warming

It's simple: if you don't shove your ways in other people's faces, it's fine. If you do, it's not.

I don't care if you're vegan, but if you throw a BBQ and man the grill but don't cook any meat because it's not what you want, you're inviting criticism.

To grossly oversimplify things, there are two kinds of vegans...

Type 1 are "healthy living" and "sustainability" vegans. These type are generally benign, polite, helpful, positive, and keep to themselves unless asked. They also tend to not be super militant about their veganism... like the occassional egg from someone's beloved home-raised chickens is fine.

Type 2 are ideological vegans. These types believe that "exploiting" "living creatures" in any way is fundamentally immoral, and because it's a morality issue (e.g. basically religion) the vast majority are very preachy, demanding, and in-your-face about it. They don't consider type 1 to be "real vegans".

Type 2, being the loudest and most abrasive, giving veganism a bad name and ruining it for everyone.

Right. I see what you mean but I think what you're asking for is impossible to ascertain