Have you tried Discord? I’ve met a ton of people on Discord servers or in games that have a focus on Discord, and we talk at length on a regular basis, both in text and in voice. Hell, sometimes I’ll sit in a voice chat with them and talk about nothing in particular all day or literally just sleep in digital proximity.

Instagram or any social media with DMs is probably shit for chat because it’s literally not intended as a chat client. That’s a function that’s tacked on as an afterthought and usually pretty poorly.

Something like Discord, Element, or IRC is probably a way better bet. It’s the same as trying to hold a conversation over email or Livejournal in the late 90s or early 00s rather than using an AIM, ICQ, YIM, or MSN client. Or like, IRC or even Palace or just some small web-based Java chat. You’re just kind of doing it wrong, I think.

I quit eating meat for a year once and it was pretty shit for my mental health. I do try to avoid the worst of factory farming as much as I can, though. Organic eggs (in my state regulations on organic eggs include a number of anti-cruelty measures), minimal chicken to reduce the death to meat quantity ratio, things like that. But also, I personally don’t feel as though the suffering inflicted on insect populations or rodent populations, or the damages of large scale farming, or the cruelty involved in transporting bees for pollenation are particularly okay either. I’m not really sure there’s such a thing as effective veganism in modern society unless you’re growing your own food at home, and I don’t have the energy, financial security, or access to land for that.

Nearly every product we consume leads to suffering and destruction. I don’t think being short of the point where you’re willing to radically change your lifestyle means I should deny that, though, even if all my spoons tend to be spent on shit like dragging myself out of bed and ensuring air quality that triggers my asthma and allergies as little as possible.

Humans are a mess. There’s a substantial cost in physical and psychological resources and energy to dwindling the impact of that mess, but there’s very little cost to at least acknowledging it and advocating for growing as a species.

I’m not vegan, but I find it absolutely wild that anyone thinks being kind of annoying sometimes comes anywhere near the level of moral or ethical bankruptcy involved in being complicit in the mass torture of animals for the sake of convenience. Like, okay, yeah, it’s not like we have the option of just deciding on behalf of powerful capitalists to just end factory farming. But deciding to at least try not to participate in it by changing your diet is at least something.

Don’t worry about being a “good vegan” if that means having to tiptoe around the fact that the rest of us fuel immense suffering both monetarily and through social normalization. You’re trying, and that’s great.