I hate to sound overwhelming

Yes, as vegans we know people should see pictorial evidence of the ‘horrors’ but that’s a million miles from them wanting to see it. And if they don’t want to see it, that means they’re not giving us permission to show it. When we thrust facts and pictures in front of them we do damage not to their sensibilities but to our friendship with them.
“It’s a free country, we’re free-willed people”. When this deeply held and highly treasured right coincides with getting what we want we have a fortress mentality. So, if it involves food we protect our right to that food passionately. We often don’t realise the damage we can do when we heavy people over their food. We think getting heavy will work. I don’t.
In their heads, omnivores know pretty much where they stand in their own world. They are doing their best. But that’s been somewhat skewed by the fact that standards have slipped. Their ‘best’ is no longer very convincing - condoning cruelty, etc. You’d think the shame of it would turn people to better ways, were it not for being lulled into a false sense of security, from the wide mutual support of others, practically ALL others. So, why should anyone worry about vegans and their pushy proselytising?
An omnivore can dislike us for that reason alone. But overall, vegans are, if anything, just a minor irritation to be brushed away, like a fly on the shoulder.
What’s the upshot of all this? That I don’t think we can reach people directly, head on. To most people we’ll always be weird. Even if we could get people to take us seriously it wouldn’t get us very far, since we’ve been effectively silenced by the media. And these days if you don’t read about it or hear about it a lot it just can’t be that important.
Vegans have never had the freedom to disseminate ideas. Since we’ve never had a stage to speak from it’s all the more galling to see how the Animal Industries have monopolised the whole stage anyway. That’s mass media for you. They are the friend and the client of the Animal Industry who in turn uses the media to continually pound home their point; we, as potential customers, are daily reminded in books, papers, TV and radio, that the wonderful products on offer are ‘so available and so good for us’. They don’t need to get into too much detail because it’s what people want to hear anyway. Nor do their words need to be too convincing since we so readily identify with the good-looking people they employ, who’re using the products already. Self-identification sucks us in and any misinformation is slipped in almost subliminally. So, in the end they know we will buy their product because we’re convinced we can’t do without it … and so business continues uninterrupted.
You’d think that the level of lies and nonsense couldn’t possibly last for much longer (... we can only hope it won’t) but for the present, things don’t look too good for the animals. We can’t help being pessimistic about the scale of things in this very david and goliath situation. The Animal Industry’s message is constantly being freshened up with expensive promotions whereas our message looks stale and it’s easily forgotten. They have all the advantages, we have almost none. To help them secure their advantage, they pay actors big money to promote their products (often glamorous and articulate celebrities). And this is successful, up to a point. They sell to people who want to believe what they’re being told. Successful advertising of animal products talks fondly about familiar daily items of favourite foods. (Or shoes or whatever). That’s somehow comforting (but not to vegans of course)!
Is that depressing for us or what? Our need for friends - it’s a depressing thought that we have to be friends with people who’ve been so easily manipulated.