I feel like were talking at cross purposes. I never said anything about you. I made an assumption on how vegans behave on twitter and why (which is the purpose of this thread).

Your friends are obviously nice people (and your boss isnt) - but that doesnt really apply on twitter where you interact with strangers. People on twitter care about being recognized as vegans, while they dont care too much about being recognized as vegetarians - thats what the data suggests and what we should discuss about.

To me your experience of getting hate from meat-eaters while your vegan friends dont care was a good example of how even in the best case (the best case being you in a progressive circle of friends) you dont gain anything by self-describing as vegetarian. Then I transposed your real life scenario onto twitter and my argument was that twitter just makes everything worse - so your experience of being a self-describing vegetarian on twitter would be even worse than it is IRL.

As were both vegetarians with a big circle of vegan friends I think were allies here and shouldnt get on each others throats.

btw I have a very good recipe for vegan german potato salad (the one with vinegar/oil) - basically from my grandma but changed a bit to make it vegan (she didnt taste the difference and if grandma doesnt taste it nobody does) if you are interested.