A seemingly harmless birthday prank turned into an obscene tragedy last weekend as a self-confessed vegan ate a cupcake topped with M&Ms, yet refused to accept her resultant status as a mere vegetarian. Pandora McGherkin’s presence at the local birthday celebration sparked outrage from party-goers, who feared the newly vegan attendee would spoil the proceedings by enquiring after ingredients and feebly abusing fellow patrons.

Two guests attempted to make everyone else feel comfortable by offering McGherkin a treat. She accepted, ignorant of the animal products therein. “My aunt told me M&Ms had red beetle juice in them,” says Lachlan Liberty, one of the sweets-supplying Samaritans. “When she announced she was vegan at my mum’s 40th birthday, the family was astounded. I never saw my aunt again.”

Events became truly disturbing when McGherkin, upon being told the truth of her masticatory treachery, retorted that it was “only” her second day of veganism and as such she “wasn’t too familiar yet” with its intricacies, declaring she would “do better from now on”.

“I just can’t believe she could still claim it,” says an inconsolable Phoebe Forthright. “I miss the old Pandora – without the hemp clothes and the constant daisy chain neck rash. We thought we could cure her malady by showing the error of her ways and candidly calling out her naiveté in a public setting.”

McGherkin is presently uncontactable for comment, as she now lives in a secret hermitage in the woodlands behind her parents’ house, where she keeps the door locked and only communicates via Pinterest.

This horror comes within weeks of numerous claims against vegan imposters, from high-falutin so-called violinists to your run-of-the-mill gimp coming under attack in a less than balletic fall from grace. This general trend of lacklustre veganism may be caused by an increase in the movement’s popularity, according to Hermes Hangerford of the Network Against Zoological Ingestion Imposters.

“Being vegan is just another way kids rebel these days,” he says. “This false empowerment – that people can enact change without money or a political majority – it’s absolute garbage. It’s nonsense. It’s all twatty nonsense… No one in our organisation is vegan. But we cannot stand the idea that there are people out there who are falsely claiming to be. Unless you are a true vegan in every sense of the word, you are a liar and a coward.”

Hangerford implores that we maintain resilience against these amateur vegans, as our society’s fundamental values and ideals may be at steak.