I was walking down Swanston st and I was shocked to see quite an unconventional sight.

A line of eerily masked still figures shrouded in black fenced the side of Flinders St carrying open laptops and phones. They were wearing Guy Fawkes masks so I assumed it was something to do with the online hacktivist group Anonymous. Turns it out wasn’t them, but it did have an anti-establishment sort of vibe. They had created an attention grabbing scheme piggybacking off the well established internet vigilante groups.

I had come across these confronting vegan videos before on Facebook and I found them quite invasive of my casual scrolling. One minute I was looking at my friend’s birthday party album, the next I was watching a chicken being strangled to death through the lens of a hidden camera.

To me, exposing highly disturbing content can go two ways; either your attention is forcibly attained then you proceed to try and find out what the issue is, or it completely shuts the you down as it is ‘too much’ to swallow.

The protest had brought this idea into the context of a busy street. They were literally screening graphic images of animals being killed on their laptops holding them open for the public eye.

I’ve noticed that vegans typically get a bad (tofu) wrap for being too insistent and boisterous about their seemingly cleaner lifestyle. I struggled not to roll my eyes when my friend declared that she had found enlightenment through a revolutionary salad that looked like an angel’s garden.

As a desperate media student hunting down things to blog about I was excited to pursue these masked plant eaters. I noticed that passerbys watched from the corner of their eyes as they briskly paced away from the group. Then something strange happened. A lady holding an iPhone filming the process took off her mask and basically humanised herself. I talked to her for a bit and some other curious people started asking questions. Another lady took off her mask and laughed, “its ok we aren’t scary!”

The striking scene of uniform masked people in a line had done a good job of intimidating but hadn’t allowed people to approach them for information; which I think is vital if you’re trying to convert/convince people.

I was lucky enough to talk to the guy who organised the whole protest and he certainly had a lot to say. He passionately urged that no decent human would run rampant in the streets stabbing dogs or kicking pigs, yet we allow this to happen by acting as passive consumers. We blindly fuel the the industry without questioning their methods.

The main message is that if we as consumers don’t see what goes on in the slaughter houses we don’t feel like a part of the atrocious crime of the cruel killings.

One thing I found strange about this whole set up was the stark contrast of ideas they were selling. The clean and happy vegan lifestyle  vs  the dark images of graphic animal slaughterings. I was handed a pamphlet with a smiling lady who looked like she was a modern snow white; friends with the happy forest creatures and one with nature.This tactic of shocking people with horrific imagery then providing a pleasant alternative is quite clever and well thought out. I definitely did a double take on my way to McDonalds and have since flinched a bit at my ham sandwiches. I think that I’m on my way to part-time vegetarianism if anything.

In the past there has been controversy about whether or not it is ethical to use shocking photos/ videos without a warning in the news. But now with the fusion of social media and hard news: that barrier of protection has been removed.  Now no one is safe from seeing shocking content even in their facebook feed. Perhaps we have already become desensitised.

They handed me a business card with the title of a vegan documentary.