Why Do Vegans Love To Tell People That They're Vegans?

There's an old joke: "How can you tell if someone's a vegan?" "Don't worry, they'll make sure you know." Spend enough time chatting with a vegetarian or vegan, and it'll most likely come up in the conversation. So why is this such a phenomenon, exactly? We asked around and got a few responses from vegans themselves.

"Ha! Well, to defend myself, I never really went out of my way to bring it up — only when food was a topic of conversation. And it's kind of like everything else in the world now; everybody wants to share everything. You can say the same with people who are gluten free or are on a specific diet...It's like the 21st century struggle."

"There are some funny comics that show that. Vegans always announce "I'm VEGAN!"  I do that in my groups to keep peeps on their toes. And it's really not true. I think everyone else starts up a discussion. Most vegans don't actually do that, but when the pizza's being ordered..."

"In our society most people have depended on and grown up eating animal products, so when one makes the change to exclude those items from their diet it can be a drastic change, as a large portion of foods are centered around animal products. I guess maybe because it's such a big change, and because it really does make one feel noticeably better in a bunch of different ways they want to tell it to the world to show that anyone can do it/prove that it can be done. I personally think it's pretty exciting but I don't like to randomly announce that because of the constant joke going around about how vocal people are about it. I think normalizing the lifestyle is a better approach because then it seems less like a pariah than other diets, and more as something that anyone can try if they want to."

If you're a vegan, do you wait until it's brought up to mention it, or are you forthcoming about it?