PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have often been mocked on social media for some of their suggestions in the past, and their most recent promotion looks set to be one of those. In a recent post the animal rights organization claimed was aimed at reducing and eliminating "speciesism," they asked readers to stop using certain age-old "anti-animal" English idioms in favor of newer, modern alternatives.

PETA offered up their own recommendations to replace phrases such as "Kill two birds with one stone," explaining their reasoning behind the proposition by writing, "Words matter, and as our understanding of social justice evolves, our language evolves with it."

The Daily Mail reported comments of PETA spokesperson Emily Rice, who similarly claimed the new suggestions would go a long way towards eliminating "speciesism" from day-to-day conversations. "Just as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic, or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start 'bringing home the bagels' instead of the bacon," she was quoted saying.

"With so much negativity in the world, why not lighten up, smile a little more, and use language in a way that encourages being kind to animals?" she added. In the much-criticized post, the organization asked people to replace "Kill two birds with one stone" with "Feed two birds with one scone"; "Be the guinea pig" with "Be the test tube"; "Beat a dead horse" with "Feed a fed horse"; "Bring home the bacon" with "Bring home the bagels"; and "Take the bull by the horns" with "Take the flower by the thorns."

Twitter users used the opportunity to make their feelings about PETA's suggestion known quite clearly. "You’re undermining actual discriminatory language with this post," one wrote, while another posted, "You killed all of us with this one tweet. Oh, instead I should say 'You fed all of us scones with this one non-ornithologically named social media platform message.'"

Others made jokes about what they felt was a ridiculous recommendation. "Probably should ban the term 'Scapegoat' as well. Stop all them people who go around unfairly blaming actual goats for stuff," one user tweeted.A second commenter wrote, "Plants have feelings too. What about the ingredients in bagels and the flowers who’s thorns we’re grabbing? We need to remove veggieism from our vocabulary as well." As the furor around the post reached critical mass, PETA put up another tweet that read, "To the haters: with so much negativity in the world, why not lighten up and use language in a way that encourages being kind to animals?" 

They also doubled down on their previous suggestions, asking people to contribute with their own "anti-speciesist phrases" and giving two more examples: "Curiosity thrilled the cat (not killed)" and "Eat snow (not crow)."