I'm a north American who is currently around a number of vegans and they've all been quite respectful around non-vegans. These jokes/memes confuse me and one of the ways it makes sense to me is that's it's a projection. A mental twist to give themselves a moral high ground or less guilt to justify all their own talking about preparing and eating meat.

I'm more likely to hear a meat eater complain about how difficult it is to not eat meat. Some that I have been around act like it's the only source of protein available. It gives me the subtle vibe that they can't imagine other people in the world can be healthy by eating differently without meat.

Maybe it was true a number of years ago but I wasn't around many vegans back then so I have no personal experience either.

American here, have heard orders of magnitude more people complaining about vegans than I've ever heard vegans complaining.

One of my best friends is a vegan, married to a vegan, and raising two kids who are chegans (like, mostly they're vegan, and sometimes they eat some chicken nuggets at Grandma's). Through him, I have met dozens of vegans. The most I've ever heard a vegan "go on" about veganism is if they're specifically asked about it. Occasionally, you'll hear them bring it up in discussions around related things (like if you're talking about climate change, they may mention that animal farming is a massive contributor, or something to that effect). But mostly, it's just a diet and they do their own diet thing.

The real issue is when someone asks "hey, wanna go to x restaurant tonight?" And they reply "lemme check the menu and make sure I can!" And then the person who originally asked the question wants to pretend like they're Christ on the cross because they're being so put out by the audacity of this filthy hippy to want to eat somewhere they can actually eat, instead of just sitting there and drinking water while everyone else eats.

In Oz, they certainly fucking do.

Went camping, set up the public BBQ, lit it. Vegan comes along and insists that we can't cook meat on it because it will contaminate whatever she was cooking.

She turned a particularly interesting shade of green when I reminded her that it was public, had been used by a bajillion meat eaters, and meat contamination was the least of her worries - given druggies and drunks would piss on it in the wee small hours every public holiday.

She left soon after.

It's do-gooder derogation. People get upset when they see someone else being more moral than them. Instead of trying to either grow themselves or accept their own imperfections, they lash out.

And some people just like being part of the in-group, and see vegans as an easy out-group to mock.

Yeah, it’s the American part that’s the real issue, but they’d rather blame it on the Vegan/Linux/crossfiter/etc thing instead