You know the (painfully lame) joke that meat-eaters tell: "How can you tell that someone is a vegan?"

Answer: Because they'll tell you!

This joke isn't funny, because it's actually accurate.

Vegans talk openly and overly about their lifestyle, it's true. Sometimes it is in your face, or over the top, or just plain annoying. Being vegan should just be a personal choice that one keeps to themselves, right?

Wrong.

Talking about veganism is important. It is far more than just a personal choice. A choice to not consume animal products for food, clothing, or beauty is not a personal choice. Choosing to go vegan is the most selfless thing a person can do because of course it is easier in our society to eat steak, put cream cheese on a bagel, and buy leather shoes. Choosing not to partake in that part of what has become so normal in our society is not easy, but it is necessary in order to live a healthy, and cruelty-free life. Making the decision to go vegan is putting one's morals above one's appetite. An animal does not deserve to die for your fashion or your dinner.

Not only does adopting a vegan lifestyle save the lives of hundreds of animals per year, but it also helps to eliminate global warming and many environmental issues. To consume animal-derived products is saying that your tastebuds and convenience is more important than the future of our planet, the planet that your children and their children are going to be stuck in, destroyed by our generation's ignorance of where our food comes from.

The reality of it is easy to ignore, but it shouldn't be ignored. Before you mock vegans for talking about their lifestyle, you need to open your eyes to how f*cked the agriculture industry is. Your burger came from a cow that was tied by his feet and hung in the air while a man or woman (who is being vastly underpaid) slits its throat. Your chicken nuggets were once a bunch of baby chicks that were tossed by the handful into a grinder. Your cheese that is melted all over those nachos you're eating? Yeah, that came from a female cow that has been artificially inseminated, only to give birth to a calf that was immediately taken from her so that you could consume her milk. And this all occurs inside a factory that releases toxic waste and gases that are totally damaging our planet.

This isn't propaganda, this isn't fake, and this isn't normal. Just because our culture has partaken in these "norms" for so long, doesn't make it right. Murdering a living thing for pleasure isn't normal. If we have the opportunity to change it, why shouldn't we?

Vegans don't need to the shut the hell up. You just need to listen.