I hope some people read this comment because it is a bit of wisdom someone that a vegan friend once shared with me when I considering being vegan but was overwhelmed by how extreme the diet felt:
It is the effort.
Making veganism seem frightfully strict does nothing to encourage people to take on the diet. This "you are vegan/vegetarian" or "you are not a vegan/vegetarian" is too "all or nothing" and it frankly makes people think that the diet is just too hard. Its not!
Please if any vegans or vegetarians are reading this, try to calm down on being so harsh in your definitions because quite frankly wouldn't you rather have 50 people doing their best to eat as vegan/vegetarian as possible than have those same people be so scared that they will do the diet wrong or look foolish that they then continue to eat meat and animal products 100% of the time.
Encourage people to do the best they can. It is the effort.