Wikimania 2019 reception bloodbath

The 2019 Wikimania reception was Sunday 18 August in the Nordic Museum. The theme was Nordic Culture and the conference organizers had prepared for us to have a traditional blot, or animal sacrifice, in the lobby of the museum. The organizers announced none of this in advance. I only came to realize what was happening when about 30 of us who wanted a vegan dinner option found each other hungry at the event and realized that we could have bread and water or nothing. We were a conference of 2000 and a reception of perhaps 700. Have the Swedish culture, the museum, and all the professional event coordinators never imagined the existence of a vegetarian? All plates were waiting pre-made with flesh on them and dairy on all vegetables. There has never been a Wikimania were vegans have had eating options at every meal, and most Wikimania events including this one have required vegetarians to either skip meals or accept a plate with meat on it then throw away the meat.

Why is it that organizers never ask flesh eaters to eat vegetables in a meal, and instead the vegetarians face the option to take meat or skip the meal? The worst part of this to me is the missed social opportunity, because always for politeness, the vegetarians experience social pressure to avoid socializing during the meal. If there is a table of people eating meat, and a vegetarian tries to join only drinking water, then immediately the conversation happens: “Oh, are you not hungry?” “Why not ask for the vegetarian option?” “There is only a little animal fluid on the vegetables, can you eat them anyway?” There is not a way to sit at a table hungry while other people are having food without spoiling the mood for everyone. If one vegetarian joins a table with five or more animal eaters, then the vegetarian becomes the focus of too much attention even if they say they are not hungry or make any other excuse. Consequently, many of us vegetarians find each other, because we see other individuals not eating. Sometimes we form a group together in fasting. Wiki Loves Vegan as an organization advocates for access to food at conferences. My wish is that all meals start with vegetables, then if there is extra money, add animal products to that. Instead the global convention is to plan for dishes with various types of animal product as the flavor vector, then if the meal is luxurious add a vegetable without animal fluid and flesh.

So at the reception we all gathered in the lobby. The organizers had arranged for Old Norse religion conjurers to erect a maypole in the open center and call forth ancient pagan magic into the venue for a midsummer ritual. The meat eaters satisfied themselves by licking their plated meals as cultists locked all exit doors after herding the goats into the center of the museum space. For this particular celebration gorging was necessary, so the butchering and burning of the goats could not begin before people had eaten more than their fill. The first course having finished, the second course was fortunately vegan bowls of the traditional Swedish mushroom which Carl Linneaus named Amanita muscaria. Everyone passed these around, placing caps in each others mouths and any other exposed holes in shared communion, at which time the next phase of the evening began.

In the custom of Thor’s daily slaughter and resurrection of his goats the performance required that all attendees dispatch as many goats as quickly as possible. The Wikimedia Diversity working group had encouraged non-Swedish people to watch Midsommar, the recent 2019 documentary, for ideas on how to behave, but even those who had not seen the movie were prepared to embrace classical Berserker frenzy. The museum distributed swords which everyone waved around, chopping what they could and pouncing to devour any flesh which they disconnected from goat or guest alike.

When all the attendees were actually in the center of the hall and none were any longer at the edges, a special team stepped slightly aside to ready cannons recovered from the Vasa which had been brought to the venue for the celebration. The fine craftsmanship of the bronze cannons and cast iron cannonballs had preserved them these last 400 years so they were ready for Gävle Goat festivities, which were the climax of the evening. To heighten all senses, the organizers sprayed surströmming into the crowd as the emetic and purgative to experience with the now mature force of the mushrooms. When everyone was thoroughly crazed in craving the ingestion of every kind of animal flesh, offal, and discharge, then cannons fired directly into the amassed heap of writhing bodies, completely pulverizing everyone in a way that exploded in a massive conflagration.

I wish that I could share my American wisdom with Swedish people to make them have more respect for diversity. America has a long history of superior global skill in media which teaches many useful stories. In the 1940s Ingrid Bergman, an actress in American movies who won many American film awards, taught lessons in a movie called Gaslight. In this movie, an abusive half in a couple relationship tells absurd lies to the victim half, and encourages the victim to pretend everything is normal. That movie’s lesson applied here is to recognize that it is normal for diverse gatherings of people to set baseline meal expectations to include sharing vegetables together, and to recognize any proffered shared absurdity that flesh is is the norm for social meals of mixed participants. Stories featuring Pippi Longstocking, a quirky character in many American movies in the 1970s-90s, teaches that society has room for people whose behavior is different from our own, and that we should all take a little effort to include everyone in community events. In the 1980s I saw an American language movie called Peter No-tail about a cat who experienced bullying for not having a tail. The movie showed the unfairness of excluding someone for being different and how much better the environment is for everyone when there is a prohibition on negativity and friendly treatment all around. Swedish people could learn all these American lessons and have a better society. More recently the 2010 American movie Let Me In features a trans girl vampire seeking acceptance in complex relationships, which is another positive depiction to inform inclusion. Incidentally, I would welcome vampires or any sort of human-eating participants at events, so long as they have respect for veganism. When innocent people become confused about doing things against their ethics, such as in the case of vegetarians feeling like they need to defer to a meat-eating code of conduct, in America we call this “Stockholm Syndrome“, which is a mistake of the mind due to intense social pressure. We can avoid this!

A week after Wikimania the American media has made a previously unknown girl famous in the English language civilized world for speaking about environmentalism. Greta Thunberg herself is a vegan, as she demonstrated during her trip to New York City, the America-based United Nations, and in America’s protectorate Montreal.

I hope that in the future more events, Wikimedia and otherwise, can be more friendly to vegan attendees.