How I baited the media into showing slaughterhouse footage to over 200,000 people
How a media stunt got covered on some of the biggest websites in the world, and ended with hundreds of thousands of people getting their first glimpse inside a slaughterhouse.
On July 3rd I woke up on the floor of a friend’s house in Louisville, Kentucky. I looked at my phone, then my email, and knew something big was happening.
In a few minutes I was on the phone with an IT guy monitoring the server hosting a certain website – one that was getting some staggering traffic.
“I’ve never seen anything like this…” he said.
“Where’s the traffic coming from?” I asked.
“It’s coming from…. everywhere. At this rate, you could hit half-a-million visitors by midnight.”
Fox News. The Observer. Gawker. Boing Boing. The LA Weekly. Daily Mail. Yahoo News. MSN. The New York Post. Some of the biggest sites in the world were covering a stunt that went bigger than we ever intended. Our plan had worked a little too well.
ExVegans.com was mainstream news.
From concept to mainstream news in 30 days
It started out as a late night joke. It evolved into a rough plan to bait the non-vegan blogosphere into watching slaughterhouse footage. And it turned into something much, much bigger.
In the end, it became the best vegan education effort I’ve ever been a part of. The results say it all: Redirecting over 200,000 visitors of mainstream news sites to a video of graphic slaughterhouse footage, and in the process creating an untold number of vegans and vegetarians.
Here’s the story.
Disclaimer in the interest of accuracy: My role in ExVegans.com was a supporting one, and I can’t take credit for site design or content. The opinions here may or may not represent those of all the parties involved.
The plan
The idea came late one night in a discussion about the online vitriol caused by author Alex Jamieson announcing she was no longer vegan. The tremendous buzz from this ho-hum development indicated there was a huge amount of pent-up animosity towards ex-vegans. The amateur trend-spotter in me saw potential for a viral phenomenon.
The concept was a user-submitted site of former vegans called “The Vegan Sellout List.” Users of the site filled out a form describing a former vegan (including their city, years they’d been vegan, and the story behind their rise and fall from veganism), and submitted the entry for approval.
Approved entries were added to the site. The front page displayed a rollover map where viewers could click on a state and view all the ex-vegans in that state who had been added to the list. You could call it an online directory of former-vegans,or just a vegan gossip site. As a concept, it was fairly simple.
(This idea is not new. There have been two previous attempts at such a site that I’m aware of. Both got little traction and came and went quickly.)
“The Vegan Sellout List” was offensive. It was provocative. It was shameless. It was impossible not to have an opinion on. And it would be impossible for the blogosphere to ignore.
The inspiration
To understand the strategy behind the site, you have to understand the work of a man named Ryan Holiday. A self-identified “media manipulator”, Holiday gets paid huge retainers by celebrities and companies to manufacture totally staged controversy, then provoke the media into 
covering it, which in turn generates massive publicity for his clients.
I read Holiday’s book Trust Me I’m Lying, and immediately saw the massive potential to apply Holiday’s approach (using contrived controversy to generate huge media) to my work for animals. I insisted several friends read the book, and the response was always the same: Why isn’t the animal rights movement doing this?
In its most basic form, Holiday’s model involves what he calls “chaining”: Creating fake & contoversial news, provoking small blogs into covering it, which is in turn covered by larger blogs, moving “up the chain” until it becomes mainstream news.
My lips are sealed as to what happened next, but immediately after reading his book a couple of us used Holiday’s blueprint to generate coverage for animals in a major media market, bringing a spotlight on an urgent issue that impacts millions of animals. (Again, I’m being intentionally vague.)
We were hooked. And we decided to follow this stunt up with a more ambitious project: ExVegans.com.
Taking it viral
Taken straight from the Trust Me I’m Lying playbook, this was the blueprint:
- Get the vegan community talking about ExVegans.com.
- Parlay the buzz into coverage in the non-vegan blogosphere (provoked via anonymous emails, a provocative press release, etc.)
- Exploit the controversy to move it “up the chain” to bigger sites until we hit something that generated serious traffic from the non-vegan demographic.
- Pull a “bait and switch” and put slaughterhouse and factory farm footage front-and-center on the site, making it impossible not to watch.
There was never a question that something this controversial would generate major buzz. The trick was whether it was provocative enough to get mainstream coverage.
From the beginning, we agreed to call it a success if we got covered by Gawker. That was the prize. This kind of sensationalism is exactly the kind of thing Gawker loves.
In a matter of weeks, Gawker ran the story.
We never anticipated it would get even bigger than that.
The calm before the storm
The site had barely gone up when, on June 10th, the online water-cooler for ex-vegetarians & vegans – LetThemEatMeat.com – did an article on ExVegans.com. The piece was (of course) critical but (impressively) non-hostile, and drove traffic to the site from a few dozen unique hits a day to over 1,000.
…and then came the storm
From Let Them Eat Meat, everything followed the Ryan Holiday trajectory to the letter, moving up the chain to bigger and bigger blogs, before blowing up into mainstream news. The exact chronology is a little fuzzy, because I wasn’t directly involved in site maintenance and hadn’t monitored traffic or incoming links in almost 2 weeks. So I really don’t know where it started.
All I know is, the site went from 5,000 unique views a day to several hundred thousand (or more) in 72 hours.
Once sites like Jezebel and Boing Boing picked it up, the traffic tidal-wave began crashing the site. We weren’t prepared for the media onslaught. At points, the server was showing nearly a thousand unique views each minute.
Fox News. The Observer. The New York Post. Rush Limbaugh. Yahoo News. Slate. 
Some of the biggest websites in the world were linking directly to ExVegans.com.
As an animal advocate, what do you do if you have a massive mainstream audience willing to give you a few seconds of their time?
Pull a bait-and-switch and show them slaughterhouse footage.
The bait-and-switch
I took all the traffic, visitors estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and redirected them right to a video called “Meet Your Meat.”
Cows strung up and having their throats slit. Chickens packed six to a cage in egg farms. Pigs wasting away in small metal crates. It was exactly the kind of images animal advocates spend our lives working to force into the eyes and minds of the public.
I redirected the URL, and in a moment I had some of the biggest websites in the world linking directly to graphic footage of slaughterhouses and factory farms.
A simple (and offensive) site had succeeded in bringing the slaughterhouse to America’s living room.
The critics
I’ll admit I haven’t monitored online chatter about ExVegans.com from within the vegan sphere, but after 19 years in these circles I have no doubt there was massive condemnation, and that a ton of people were groaning the ExVegans.com stunt “made us look bad.”
I’m not going to spend more than a few words defending the site, for two reasons:
- It is vindicated by the results it achieved.
- You either get it or you don’t.
Most vitriol the site received was probably predicated on a false assumption: That ExVegans.com was somehow intended to promote veganism through public shaming. It should be obvious, but for those who don’t have a clue, I’ll spell it out: That wasn’t the point.
I will not defend the concept of ExVegans.com. In and of itself it offered nothing positive to the world. It didn’t even pretend to.
What I will defend (and I doubt many critics will argue with) is the outcome: Hundreds of thousands of people baited into watching horrific footage of the suffering behind their “food”.
This massive outreach victory, to me, is all that matters.
What could have been done better
First, being prepared for the traffic before it happened. Getting “Meet Your Meat” onto the front page of the site would have generated more views (and less confusion) than redirecting to a third-party site. In the end, the traffic brought down the server and a URL-redirect was the only option.
Maintaining full oversight over the content. While I had an editorial role, I wasn’t behind updating the site. Some of the entries submitted were a little too offensive and really shouldn’t have been posted. Same for the “Mission Statement” (the most highly-trafficked page on the site), which should have been better worded to resonate with a mainstream audience. (It could also be argued the over-the-top language was responsible for the media coverage, so this may have been for the best.)
Stricter fact-checking. Some of the ex-vegan submissions had errors, either through a deliberate effort at misinformation by the (anonymous) submitters, or honest mistakes. Either way, allowing inaccurate information on the site was inexcusable.
In the end, all of this was trumped by the results: At least 200,000 mainstream omnivores baiting into viewing slaughterhouse and factory farm footage.
The future of ExVegans.com
The media-storm has passed, and I consider the entire stunt to be “mission accomplished.” Best to walk away from things while they’re still on a high note.
The site is still getting serious traffic, and all of it is redirecting to “Meet Your Meat.” That’s where it will remain… for now.
Ultimately, where it goes is not entirely in my hands. There is some conflicting discussion, and those who designed the site are not bound by my input. If it is ever brought back, I asked that the webmasters do it transparently and in their name to avoid any confusion as to my role.
That’s where my part ends. I’m bowing out of this while the animals are still ahead.
-Peter Young
Endnote: Overselling my point
And if you’re a vegan who is still upset the coverage made you “look bad,” I’ll put money on one thing: Before last week, you believed the temperature in Hell would have to hit 32 degrees before FoxNews.com would ever link to this:
I have to admit, when I first saw the vegan sell-outs site I laughed. People were talking about it everywhere — it just blew up. Some thought it was a good idea, others didn’t. Personally, I thought it was a silly website that had the capability of making us look like elitist assholes and had gotten way more attention than it deserved. It seemed to me like a silly little site created by some angry vegans who needed to vent some frustration. I didn’t feel like wasting my time discussing it with people because I felt that giving more attention to “ex-vegans” than they already get is unproductive. But I left it at that. Didn’t bother me too much either way.
But after reading this, I can’t tell you how pleasantly surprised I am by the way the entire thing unfolded. It was coordinated and handled brilliantly. It turned from a frivolous, silly joke of a website (in my view) to something that has actually helped animals by helping people, who before this incident may not have known better, to look behind the slaughterhouse walls and meet their meat. They will never again be able to say they didn’t know. This is truly amazing stuff you’ve done. Bravo and thank you.
Beautifully said Vegan Rabbit. My sentiments exactly.
+1
Bravo indeed!!
So so clever. Congratulations for exposing the mainstream to the suffering that they choose to ignore ‘because it tastes good’. Thank you so much.
Nicely done.
I just want to say thank you so much! What you did is amazing. You are very wise to have called upon tactics and strategies you read about in that book and apply them to animal rights. That’s impressive and you pulled it off almost flawlessly.
I must say, I thought the site was completely real, but after seeing the linkage to the slaughterhouse video, I felt like something may have been up 🙂
You are a hero to animals. You have done far much more good for animals in a month or so, then I have probably done in years.
Thank you again.
Hahaha! What a wonderful backflip. 😀
Many vegan blogs were furious about the site. Repeatedly I was told, that I should be mad at how bad it makes us look. But meanwhile, when I am told that I should be outraged, I tend to be very calm and wait and see how things develop. This is the first time that this tactic paid off. 🙂
LOL. What a stunt! Got to read that book. Seriously.
And before I forget: Thanks a lot for bringing the truth into hundreds of thousands of homes.
Genius!
My wife and I saw this and just dismissed it out of hand. Now we’re glad it was an endeavor that brought about some good.
much much more damage then any good – the animal abuse videos are getting out slowly but the few people who saw this site will not want to be vegan ever – and some vegans who saw it would less likely stay vegan
I received the link for ExVegans.com from one of my facebook animal rights friends… started checking into it and thought to myself…..man, this site is going to blow up in our vegan faces……
But to see where this went? Very, very impressed!!!
Awesome job you guys…truly awesome…and mad props for bringing the horror and atrocities of the slaughterhouse into view of the average, meat eating/dairy using consumer!
Keep it up…all of us are behind you…and would jump in and help in a heartbeat if you need us!
As a vegan of 20 years, I’m impressed, great tactic and tech skills! And fantastic exposure, 10 out of 10!!! Well done!!!
You had me hook, line, and sinker. I was among those disparaging this site for its apparent attempt to “shame” people into becoming vegans, but now that I see your game, I can’t help but applaud its brilliance. Well done, friend.
So this really happened…www.foxnews.com redirected to “Meet Your Meat”?
I wonder what makes you think you didn’t do more harm than good… The Young Turks, for example, railed against veganism as a result of this lie, & inspired thousands of anti-veganism comments, burning in many minds the idea that some vegans are actually threatening violence against ex-vegans. What makes you think these big news sites are going to pay equally as much attention to disclosing that it was a hoax? Do you think you can just undo a lie at the drop of a hat, & undo the impression you’ve made in those very many minds? You lied, making vegans look bad, now you’re claiming the net result was good because you posted ‘Meet Your Meat’ on the fake site… it looks like Ex Vegans shut down & left up a video in it’s wake… think a little bit more about the value of truth, & what unforeseen consequences come from lies.
I understand your concern. It’s a legitimate concern. That same thought did cross my mind briefly. The thing is, that website didn’t make non-vegans think anything different than what they already think of us. Sure, maybe it reinforced that view or (to some people) proved that it was a correct assumption to make about vegans, but when you weigh that against the outcome, whatever damage may have been done is grossly outweighed by the good that came out of it.
There are countless negative articles about vegans on various sites. If people want to read an article that makes them somehow feel superior to “judgmental, pushy, preachy” vegans so they don’t have to examine their own faults, they have many articles to choose from. Thank goodness there is at least one instance of good coming from such articles.
I’d be very interested to hear how you would go about getting over 200,000 people to watch Meet Your Meat in just a few days. Maybe you would care to enlighten us how you would do it better?
That’s just the issue: how much of the video did those 200,000 people watch? They weren’t expecting it, they were ambushed. I’d say very, very few would have watched much of it at all. And the reinforcement of negative attitudes towards vegans and veganism you’ve mentioned is more than just an unfortunate or irrelevant by-product – it’s really damaging, and alienates people from making kinder choices for animals voluntarily.
Exactly. Plus, who is interested in ex-vegans? Vegans! And people who have nothing better to do than click on a link from Fox News. 200,000 people is nothing. A cat chasing it’s tail could get that in an hour on youtube.
Meat eaters will never stop eating meat. Rather than click baiting and shock tactics which are going to push most people to defend their own ideas more staunchly the vegan lobby should be working at reduction efforts like ‘Meat free Monday’ and reduction in factory farming like ‘Make it possible’.
Extremists trying to convert moderates never works.
Well this meat addict stopped eating meat and human slavery is now illegal, after a time when everyone said human slavery will never end.
Yes, George, let’s just be less cruel to animals but keep them prisoners.
Here are some “extremists” who have changed the world–including moderates:
Mahatma Gandhi
Eleanor Roosevelt
César Chávez
Nelson Mandela
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Desmond Tutu
Oscar Arias Sánchez
Muhammad Yunus
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
José Ramos-Horta
It was an excellent idea!
Self-righteous pseudo-progressives like the Young Turks have always been anti-vegan and will remain so regardless of what we do. They’re not the audience for this.
Thank god you weren’t trying to shame people into being vegan, but instead trying to disgust them into being vegan. I guess that’s… better? Well, it’s different. I guess.
It’s not listed on Snopes.com yet. I suppose it’s just a matter of time before Meet Your Meat will receive even more views.
How do you know how many people actually watched the video? I didn’t watch it after the redirect.
I’d have to agree with this comment. I don’t know what your measure of success is, but is it that people saw the video, or that x-number of people became vegan afterwards? How can you tell?
Simple, yet absolutely brilliant!
There seems to be a basic assumption here that seeing a video will magically turn people vegan or make people think. If that’s all it took, we’d live in a very different world. Watching one video will very, very rarely be enough to undo a lifetime of indoctrination. Far more often, people will pass it off as sensationalism and go on with their lives, accepting the status quo – or satisfy themselves by buying “happy meat” and switching over to those more efficient light bulbs.
This comment will undoubtedly get a dozen anecdotal responses of “I saw it six months ago and went vegan immediately!” If that’s you, realize that you are, by far, the exception.
200,000 people saw at least the opening few seconds of slaughterhouses and factory farms.
Those 200,000 came from mainstream sites, which put veganism in a bad light. How many people who were at those mainstream sites simply read the description and criticism of Exvegans.com without actually clicking it? I would guess over a million.
So 200,000 saw horror without wanting or expecting it, a percentage of them perhaps went vegan and another percentage of them got put off by vegans showing them a horror show. An additional million never saw the reality of the slaughterhouse and were strengthened in their conviction that veganism is only for crazy people.
What a victory for animals!
+1
The framing ‘ex-vegans’ provided to those clicking through is that vegans are vindictive assholes. Not a great ‘positive change’ frame of mind. Then those 200,000 people who clicked were tricked into watching at least the start of some graphic slaughter vision. Defensive omnivore time.
I’d lay (imaginary) money on the number of people who watched even a significant proportion of the video at very low. The vast majority probably closed the window or clicked away as soon as they realised they weren’t getting what they expected. Some probably did make a snap decision to become vegetarian or vegan. But many more would have been hardened in their alienation from voluntarily making compassionate choices for animals.
It’s all rather dramatic.
I have to disagree that using these tactics turn people vegan is a good thing. I don’t understand why people have to be so critical of others. I mean you don’t see us meat eaters saying “oh the poor living veggies and fruit that they pick before its ready to fall off the bush”. Everything we eat has LIVED at some point and we’ve killed it. I’m sure half the vegan burgers and stuff is processed so much its probably a prime cause of cancer. But the government isn’t going to care about that because they are selling. not to mention this: I know someone who tried to be vegetarian and almost went crippled because he developed a condition in his legs. Being vegetarian is fine for some people but not for everyone. If you read about blood type diets. Type O people can become very ill from not eating any meats. They are tired and sickly and never feel overall well. If you look at statements from Type O people who started eating meat after being vegetarian they actually felt a lot better and had a lot more energy. Right now I only eat meat, fruits and veggies. I’ve never felt better in my life. I have been able to quit taking a pill that I had to take twice a day to regulate my sugars. So being vegetarian is fine for some people but for others…..it’s creating more sickness. So if guess if turning someone vegetarian and making them feel tired all the time is what this is suppose to achieve……then great for them. They saved a chicken at the expense of a persons overall health.
I so wish all copies of that silly diet were stamped “garbage”. Seriously, one might as well claim “Eat for your eye-color” and it would make as much (non)sense.
It’s been discredited time and again.
Here’s a link to a well-written example of such:
http://www.vegsource.com/articles/blood_hype.htm
That has all been debunked. Instead of believing every stupid anecdote, why no do some actual research?
Just admit that you don’t care enough to be vegan. But don’t come up with all the bs excuses that have nothing to do with reality. Veggie burgers have carcinogens and meat doesn’t?? You’re still spouting that Type O blood (which I have as a long-time vegan) bullshit?? Give me a fucking break.
A scene from Stanley Kubrick’s movie “A Clockwork Orange” springs to mind:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1145485568/tt0066921?ref_=tt_pv_md_2
While I support the vegan cause, I guess the chances that anyone instantly went vegan after being force-fed the first seconds of “Meet your Meat” are as rosy as the chances of a smoker instantly quitting smoking after being shown a depiction of lung cancer.
This was an intriguingly well laid out prank. No less, no more. Congratulations!
Brilliant!
I was also among the skeptics, and some of my friends in Denmark talked about the site and how damaging it were, among these both vegans and anti-vegans, and I generally agreed.
But reading this I’m inclined to evaluate it actually did more good than bad – awesome – but I think it is a bit sad that the information on the site on people was actually true (instead of all made up), and I also hope the site won’t go back to being what it was, but only seriously this time, but that it will either continue directing people to meet your meat or something similar, be used for something like articles and talk about why people quit veganism and what can be done to minimize it, or shut down.
I doubt if the intention was to “magically” turn people vegan. But it most likely made some people change their cruelty lifestyle…It was simply a brilliant idea that got a lot of news coverage for animal liberation, which is more than a lot of so-called animal rights activists are doing.
Sad to see all of this cruelness to animals.