I was vegan for several years, and I never ran into the stereotypes discussed here. What I did run into are the typical defensive knee-jerk reactions to veganism discussing naive hipsters and faddists, and hypocrisy over what kind of animal products they use. However veganism doesn't categorically mean that those who follow it fall into these categories. In my experience there have been some well-meaning intelligent
people who respect and care about the well-being of animals and want to contribute to this mistreatment and destruction of animals in our food production system as little as possible.
At the end of the day though, and to my point, contributing as little as possible is the best vegans can do. They can never abolish abuse and destruction of animals completely without converting completely to a gatherer living off the grid lifestyle. For those vegans that actually care about animals, I admire their effort to respect them, but just find their efforts to be somewhat misguided and a bit unnatural, hence consuming food, no matter how heavily processed, just because it lacks animal ingredients in it.