I don’t want to sound like I’m deliberately trolling, but I have been prodding a bit to try to get some kind of reaction that I hope sheds light on the OP question.

What we’re hearing repeatedly, is that if someone advocates about a car-free lifestyle, or the environment, or even for no TV, people react in anger or annoyance because they find the person as smug, or having an agenda, or they are somehow doing it wrong and would get the message out better if they could find a more palatable way of doing it.

Frankly, I’m a little skeptical of these explanations, and I think there is more to it. I think that people are already primed to react that way or interpret that way, and therefore they have pretty low threshold to react negatively. Basically as soon as they start to hear the message, the reaction is “Oh, oh, hear we go again, that same old smug, self-important enviro-whacky global warming cars are evil crap as usual” before the person even has a chance to make a case. In essence, just speaking up, automatically means you’re smug or “doing it wrong”.

But, that could just be me.

Anyway, just puttin' that out there.