It has sort of stayed with me ever since. I'm not a vegetarian - though I did try to be for about a year when I was 15, because I thought it'd make me different and cool and I nearly died because all I ever ate for dinner was Pot Noodles and chips. Also: my other half is a vegetarian, and my daughter is vegan, and from them I've learned a number of things.
1) It's actually easier to give up meat than I realised.
2) I don't want to give up meat because, well... bacon/steak/hamburgers, but I wish I did, because... y'know... animals are nice. Well, some animals. My cats act like they hate me unless I'm feeding them.
3) Some vegans are full-on extremist mentals.
Indeed, if you think gaming has its dramas... it's nothing compared to some of the in-fighting that occurs online in the vegan community.
The cheerleaders of vegan extremism appear to be PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I wrote earlier this week how they'd taken offence to the cow teat-yanking in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch, but it isn't the first time the organisation has generated publicity by taking aim at the games what we play.
Indeed, PETA has even created some surprisingly decent online versions of popular video games, to highlight what they believe is the games industry's pro-animal cruelty agenda. You can try them here.
And now? And now: behold... behold those times that gaming wandered into PETA's sights, like a sweet, innocent, bewildered dik-dik (a type of delicious edible animal).