Today in vegan-blogger drama, beloved (former) raw vegan influencer Alyse Parker declared that she was going “full onnn carnivore.” Meaning, not only would she begin eating meat, but she would only eat animal products — “a.k.a. only meat, seafood, + eggs” — for a full 30 days as she adopts the so-called “carnivore diet.” She made the announcement with an Instagram post; in it, she’s posing in front of an uncooked slab of steak.
Parker, who between her YouTube and Instagram profiles has over a million followers, built her social-media kingdom on her raw vegan lifestyle, including a website — raw-alignment.com — where you could purchase apparel, sign up for her “alignment accelerator” (a sort of online life-coaching program), and vegan retreats. Her YouTube channel also includes her not-diet-related lifestyle videos, such as using a fertility tracker as “birth control,” the pros and cons of dreadlocks, and shooting down rumors that she doesn’t shower.
Her status as a vegan paragon had recently gone up for debate, though, after her followers found that she was pinning recipes of egg-based dishes on Pinterest. And this past March, Parker herself confirmed that she had quit veganism in a video titled “I am not vegan,” claiming it had caused her health issues because of mold exposure. In a follow-up video, she explained that she’d begun eating meat again, and in an August video titled “Goodbye Raw Alignment. HELLO Alyse Parker,” Parker completed her rebrand from raw vegan influencer to a straightforward lifestyle influencer.
The March announcement caused extreme backlash amongst her followers, who accused her of holding off on going public so that she could continue monetizing her audience; specifically, she didn’t announce it until after running a vegan retreat in Australia. That criticism has only intensified since her announcement last week that she would exclusively be eating animal foods. Her audience as accused her of hypocrisy, and being “so out of alignment it’s ridiculous,” among other things.
So far, though, Parker still has a massive following on social media, and is only the latest in a long list of vegan influencers who have defected from the diet. She, at least, seems to have gotten ahead of any rumors and managed to rebrand to without much fallout. A worst-case scenario recently unfolded when vegan blogger Yovana Mendoza Ayres (Rawvana), was caught eating fish in another person’s vlog. The vegan influencer community was shaken by the scandal, and Rawvana faced an onslaught of vicious criticism for her “crime.”