Anatomy of a Fad

Last year's gospel is this year's heresy. Veganism is no longer the future.

Morning Underground by Weaver Hawkins (1922)

At the ancient age of fifteen, I made a firm and lifelong commitment to look and act like an utter buffoon.

Radicalised by Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP, we tearaways pilfered pounds and plundered boxes of peroxide to bleach our hair. Council-estate wisdom told us to wrap our heads in tinfoil.

The first experiment transmuted brown locks into a shade of orangutan. Horrified by schoolyard accusations of 'Ginger!' we'd lather up again. After an hour or so, our tin-foiled skulls smelt like microwaved hotdogs. We'd dive under the tap, eager to find the most promising of signs: a roadmap of blisters crisscrossing one's scalp. The desired look? Hair too blonde for the Third Reich.

Ambition provoked this semi-permanent self-mutilation. Climbing the social totem pole demanded courage, cunning, and two boxes of mutant-strength bleach.

We ascended the storied ranks of the rebellious classes. But this utopia, like the one in The Beach, collapsed under the weight of idealism. As with bankruptcy, the line between rebellion and conformity came gradually and then suddenly.

Monday tormented us. Sat in the school assembly hall, gripped by dread and primitive fear, we'd watch helplessly as another freshly bleached pleb waltzed through the door. Within two weeks, we knew the game was up. The middle-class Simons and Olivers had revealed their salon-professional blonde streaks. Paradise was lost.

Back then, we dodged the swivelling meat hooks of the social media Truman Show. Stupid kids bleaching their hair for stupid reasons was just that. Today, I suppose, some fanciful obsessive would declare our escapades an unconscious yen for Lebensborn, or some such piffle.

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But what we once called a fad now paddles in hallowed waters. Observe modern trends, and you'll often find more than a hint of the religious and the fanatical. Veganism, for example, is no longer a dietary choice but an all-encompassing philosophical movement destined to right all earthly wrongs. Or at least it was.

According to everyone, the vegan revolution is on the wane.

Here in Great Britain, the sandwich chain Pret a Manger abandoned its all-veggie stores. Corporations have shelved their vegan ranges. Some restaurants have 'admitted defeat' and reintroduced meat to their menus. In the last four years, Beyond Meat has watched its market value dissolve by 95 percent.

Last year, billion-dollar fake meat companies claimed the end of meat was nigh. This year, those firms edge closer to the chopping block. The vegan bubble has burst.

Of course, the Vegan Society denies that. But Santa will always remain staunchly in favour of Christmas.

In The Guardian, one writer laments the rise of 'fair-weather' vegans. These interlopers, she claims, killed the vegan revolution with their Instagram-ready jackfruit selfies.

Last year's gospel is this year's heresy. Veganism is no longer the future. The glorious revolution was, it seems, humans doing what humans do—status-addled monkeys distinguishing themselves for social profit. There's precious little kudos in doing what everyone else is doing.

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Many of my friends succumbed to the vegan trend. Over a few months, I'd watch them descend from well-meaning opponent of factory farming to 'Meat is Murder!' maniac. As veganism mainstreamed, their convictions concentrated. The more vegans, the more fervent and more demented their preaching and prattling.

As an avowed armchair psychologist, I thought this grubby spectacle was what therapists call 'the presenting problem.'

Patients often present their overweening boss as the problem, only to gradually unspool the real issue: their wife is shagging her personal trainer.

Our remarkable capacity for self-deception, which corrodes any argument for intelligent or even sympathetic design, causes us no end of grief.

Many of those devotees later renounced their veganism. Perhaps they've divined a more doctrinaire faith in which to purify themselves and with which to beat others over the head?

For the fanatic, at least, that is the appeal of such movements, no? Zealots relish the chance to feel righteous whilst acting wicked. Any movement offering the chance to feel good whilst being bad won't struggle for members.

Pro-tip: Avoid anyone with 'Be Kind' in their bio with the same diligence you would a sneezing rat.

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Despite their protests, I suspect the militant wing of the vegan community takes quiet relief in their fading star.

To be clear: I'm referring to the extremity. Many vegans, I dare say, have a point. The barbarous logic of eating some animals and not others also troubles me. But you know the type to whom I refer. The kind to invade restaurants and harass diners. The kind with whom no compromise is possible, and from whom no compromise is desirable. The kind whose beliefs excuse their primitive need to swing fists and spit in faces.

Their literature reads like religious scripture. The true believers talk of epochal shifts, the right side of history, of cosmic alterations in consciousness. Of course, only the devout attain this deified state through penance and sacrifice. To prove their faith, the extremists abuse and violate non-believers. They may claim their beliefs are inevitable, but the last thing the fanatic wants is the pallid soup of compromise. They'd starve to death.

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If anything upended the vegan trend, it was the fanatics whose militant aggression tarred all vegans with the Bedlam brush.

When asked to describe vegans in few words, many reply with preachy, obsessed, fanatical, pious, or holier-than-thou.

In a telling statistic, we learn the truth. When companies label their products as either vegan or plant-based, customers buy less of those products.

In a study at the University of Southern California, researchers asked participants to choose gift food baskets. Just twenty percent chose the baskets labelled as vegan. Forty-four percent opted for the same basket labelled 'healthy and sustainable.'

Yes, many vegans are ethically motivated and do not bother a soul. Good for them. But veganism's image problem stems from its dalliance with nutters. Nothing clears a room or depresses a mute button quicker than a pious lecture on the 'murder' of meat.

Orwell said the same thing about socialism. The mere mention of veganism conjures a mental image of an unsexed martinet screaming and spitting at the unbelievers.

Perhaps the Terrible Twenties’ defining characteristic is chaos. For that observation, I win no Pulitzer. During such crisis periods, many glom onto movements promising purity and order.

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In various guises, the narratives of sacrifice and redemption are everywhere one looks.

Frequent any haunt favoured by the young, and you'll encounter a world in which the ordinary is extraordinary. Visit an artisanal coffee house. Admire the self-same 'authentic' décor. Witness those contrived old typewriters dangling from exposed rafters. Ingest the corporate authenticity.

Twee names adorn these jaunty establishments. Without fail, they settle on a verb. This place is either 'Grind' or ‘Filter.’ Peruse the menu. That cortado, its price bleached of pound or dollar sign, is no mere marriage of espresso and milk. It's a journey. Your sacrifice of £4.90 will right all fashionable wrongs.

Look above. Scrawled across the wooden beams are the words: Filter Coffee: Changing the World—One Cup at a Time. Click the QR code. Scroll the website. Sift through Filter's ten-point charter of inclusivity. Filter's mission statement confirms its convictions. Filter does not discriminate based on race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, nationality, or disability. We believe, says Filter, that great coffee is for everyone.

Strip that statement to skin (of any colour, of course) and bone (of any density, of course). What do you get? Filter sells coffee to whomever will pay the fanciful price scribbled on the chichi menu.

Hardly Das Kapital, is it?

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