If you’re like most people (vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore), you’ve likely considered how societies arbitrarily discriminate over the type of meat they find acceptable to consume. We’ll eat cows, chickens, fish, and even adorable little pigs all day, but dog or whale meat revolts many of us. It varies from culture to culture based on many factors, but the United States is one of the pickiest when it comes to the animals we use for food.
To point out the hypocrisy of these distinctions, and to show that all animals deserve to be equal, PETA pulled a prank on some unsuspecting subjects, and I think the animal rights group got exactly the reactions they were hoping for.
Here’s the footage of the purposeful ruse:
PETA gathered a focus group to taste and discuss a “new brand of milk” that was coming to the marketplace. Once everyone had sampled the product, they were informed (falsely) that the milk they just drank came from a dog. As you would expect, some subjects were angry that important fact had been kept from them while others were disgusted that they’d just (presumably) drank dog’s milk.
In reality, they weren’t drinking dog’s milk. Because this is PETA we’re talking about, they weren’t even served cow’s milk. They were given soy milk. Frankly, I’m surprised that a few people weren’t repulsed by THAT revelation itself, but the prevailing sentiment was one of relief.
The director of PETA explained the purpose of the deceptive exercise succinctly, saying, “Humans are the only species on the planet that drinks another animal’s milk, and cows’ milk is no more natural for us than dogs’ milk. When it comes to drinking milk past breastfeeding age, plant-based is best.”
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.