I’m not sure there’s quite as much stigma as you think. I definitely agree that a lot of people are like “ugh, vegans” on the internet, but in my experience nobody really cares in real life as long as you don’t bother them. You might get a “well I can’t live without my bacon” comment or whatever, but that’s pretty much the extent of it… Especially if you’re flexible and willing to eat vegetarian or eat meat on the occasion that you do go out… Nobody is going to care. Hell, you can just tell them you’re avoiding meat to lower your blood pressure or something. It’s cool!

I’ve been in groups of people with vegans and nobody really cares… in my experience usually the vegans are chill and maybe somebody else pokes a little fun at the vegans, but that’s kind of the extent of it, despite what it sounds like from online discourse. Maybe people in your friend groups talk shit about vegans and you’re scared of that too, and that’s fair, but for the most part I think people just like the easy punching bag and just don't really know anybody in the group they’re talking shit about… and when they do it’s usually just “oh, that guy is fine, actually, wouldn’t have thunk.”

Anyway, I’m not sure if you’re actually interested in changing your diet at all, but I think if you are you shouldn’t let the vegans convince you not to. If it’s something you want to do, do it :). Even if it’s not something you want to do all of the time it can kind of be fun to mix up meals sometimes and sometimes it’s nice to not have so many choices at a restaurant, and you might even discover something you like that you wouldn’t have tried before… At any rate, don’t be so afraid of the vegans, they can’t hurt you, they have low iron :).