Beyond "It Gets Better"

Has the "It Gets Better" campaign actually contributed to teenage suicides? Because one thing is certain: It sure isn't preventing them.

"It Gets Better" introduced the notion of suicide—that people were doing it as a means of escape—to children who may not have heard of it before. How many kids even knew that killing yourself was a thing before they saw Kim Kardashian talking about it on YouTube? I'm not saying that "It Gets Better" is directly responsible for the suicides that have occurred since its prevalence in social media, but introducing such heavy concepts via popular, tween-friendly, and, to be frank, incredibly stupid celebrities to any unsupervised kid with a computer wasn't very smart. Even though people were saying "don't kill yourself," anyone with half a brain should have realized that seeds can be planted in all sorts of tragic ways when you're attempting to communicate with young, underdeveloped minds.

Even if "It Gets Better" hasn't been responsible for getting kids to consider suicide (and again, I'm not saying it has--directly), it's at least been utterly useless. Instead of encouraging children to cling to an empty, worthless, meaningless catchphrase (which has now become nothing more than a silly meme), is there something else we can do to prevent them from killing themselves? Because despite my cynicism, I really don't want children to kill themselves. I don't want anyone to kill themselves! Is there anything effective that anyone can do?

To start, we should look at why "It Gets Better" didn't work. Quite simply, it was a lie. "It Gets Better" being inherently false should have deterred people from perpetuating it in the first place, but it didn't. I guess people wanted to believe it could be true. People always want to believe in the good. People always want to think that everything is always going to be OK eventually, but of course it never is.

Even the most objective person can not deny that life is truly horrible. And you know what? It gets progressively worse as you get older. Once you pass 30, the only thing weaker than your sense of self-worth is the decrepit bag of flesh and bones you call your body. To be honest, I would much rather go back to the simpler days of being called a faggot in high school than deal with holding down a job, paying bills, and maintaining shitty relationships. Being bullied as a teen was a walk in the park compared to the misery of trying to survive as a functioning adult. Jesus fucking Christ.

So maybe that's how we can help gay children. Tell them that things actually get worse, and that they should cherish the simple horror of being called dumb names while they can. 20 years from now, they'll be lucky if anyone even realizes they exist, much less goes out of their way to bully them. Let's stop lying to gay children and start treating them with some dignity, please. Let's tell them what life is really like once they finish high school, and that their teen years will end up being the best years of their lives. Live in the moment, kids, no matter how horrible it is, and know that the pain of being called "fag" pales in comparison to being fat, sexually deprived, spiteful, bored in a loveless marriage (if you can even legally get gay married, which you probably can't), and trapped in a dead end job (if you're even employed, which you probably aren't).

These kids today don't know how easy they really have it. Let us not lie to them about how great things are going to be, but rather let's tell them to suck it up and realize how great things are right now. These assholes on the playground are nothing compared to the evil bosses, cheating boyfriends, and backstabbing friends waiting in the wings. Yes, being a kid, especially a gay kid, is awful. But being a gay adult is even awfuler. At least as a kid, you haven't developed the demoralizing self-awareness that will ultimately kill you from the inside out.

In short, killing yourself at 14 is a waste. If you have to do it, at least wait until you've truly lost everything as a fully realized, adult failure! At least then it will have really been worth something (i.e., nothing).

Follow Me

Follow me, like me, retweet me, comment me, @ reply me, reblog me, favorite me, indulge me, forgive me, love me, please don't lie to me, take me away from here, make me a better person, tell me that everything's gonna be ok, promise me that there is more to life than this, kiss me.

Mario Brothers

As a way to cope, I've started playing the video games I used to play when I was a pre-teen.

"The Laughing Heart"

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-Charles Bukowski

[via]

1984

"$1500 To Lay There And Get Rimmed?"

"Yeah, $1500. And then I have to spend the night."

Part of a conversation with an escort friend of mine. He gets paid $1500 to spend the night with old men (I don't mean that as a slight; most of the men are extremely aged) and sometimes have sex with them. Sometimes, like the time we were talking about today, he only has to lay there and have his ass eaten.

After we spoke, the idea of writing about a sex worker lazily flopped around in my head. How unique or relevant a thing could I make that? Writing about someone who trades sex for money in a down economy! No. I bore myself every day.

The other thing I do every day is repeatedly say the words "What the fuck are you doing" to myself. I think if you're someone who, daily, says to himself "What the fuck are you doing," you're probably doing the wrong thing in life. So as the thought of writing a ridiculous trend piece about gay hookers and the mantra "what the fuck are you doing" both came to me at about the same time, I thought about trying to write about something else.

I thought about writing about writing on the internet. Is any of the writing on the internet good? No. Do people buy books? Should I try to write something not for the internet? Do people read books? The Help is a popular movie. Is having your book turned into a movie better than having your blog turned into a book?

Being a blogger or an internet personality who "writes" doesn't make you a writer, of course, if I can be a snob for a moment. Most writing online isn't writing but rather a string of terse sentence fragments loosely connected by LOLs and OMGs! and "What Do U Think!?" And that last one, the one soliciting reaction in the form of "comments," is the real downer. Today, we write less because we have a cogent point to make or an entertaining narrative to share, but rather, we write because we want to really get some commenters fired up!

Page views, favorites, retweets, likes, comments, shares, and reblogs are where it is at, you guys. The goal in blogging, or at least a new mark of successful blogging or being a successful blogger, isn't to be "good." The goal is to have whatever you wrote be so hated or so outrageous or so controversial (when, in fact, it's not controversial at all) that it--or better yet, you!--becomes a comical meme of sorts. Whatever idea or story you published is more valuable to the internet if people can really really hate it or really really make fun of it. Take the truly dreadful piece from Paul Aguirre-Livingston, "Dawn Of A New Gay." Livingston's attempt to proudly define an entire generation of gay men as apathetic hipsters pissed literally everyone on the internet off. It also brought in the most comments the site that published it had ever received on a single article. Was this horrifying piece of writing intentionally horrifying in an effort to attract all the h8ers? Probably not. But being horrifying is all the rage. We have proof.

Again, this notion of hating the internet and the "death" of writing is entirely pretentious and, let's be honest, my own blogging and my own comment wars have contributed to the demise in a small way, probably. But I miss quiet consideration. I miss thinking about something without the use of an emoticon. I miss reading something and not engaging in a fight with a stranger over it before I've even had time to process what it is I just read. And we are all to blame: the writers who do the bad writing and the readers who do the bad reading.

I think about what it would be like if the internet just turned off all its comments. No debate, no praise, no hate, nothing. It would kill the people who live off of the attention they receive online. It would infuriate the people who are infuriated by the things they read online. I guess it wouldn't be the internet anymore.

What are some things that people could write about that wouldn't result in comment wars or "controversy"? What are some topics that aren't stale trend pieces written about everywhere that would make for a unique reading experience? Considering how short and how precious life is, what is the most effective, valuable way to spend one's time while surfing the net? What do you think?

A Serious Question

How do you criticize the exploitation and ultimately shallow message of a campaign that is intended to prevent people from killing themselves without seeming like you don't care about dead people? Because I do. I do care about dead people and I wish they weren't dead. But "It gets better" is the new "Just say no." Well-intentioned but ineffective. Such pie-in-the-sky, touchy-feely rhetoric sounds good, but what about right now? What can we say to people about how to make their lives better right now, in the moment (when it matters most!), as opposed to making them believe that if they're patient, it'll be OK later on. Eventually. Someday. If there's one thing I (think I) know about people, it's that they're not patient, especially in today's reliance upon instant gratification. Everything must be instantaneous. Everything must be tangible. Everything must be right now. Not five years from now. Not five hours from now. How do you tell someone that there will always be bullies and there will always be bullshit and that's part of life without seeming like a bully yourself? How do you criticize something so well-intentioned without seeming like a bully? Can you say anything? Or should you just keep your well-intentioned cynicism to yourself?

Not All Christians Are Anti-Gay, But Most Anti-Gay People Are Christian

Ann Althouse defends Christian fundamentalists.



Fine. Althouse is right. But I stand behind the title of this post.

Going through the comments on Althouse's post, I see this:

Nice job, Professor, of describing the Christian perspective on homosexuality as it usually is and always ought to be. Thank you.

By "Christian fundamentalists" it sounds like Bazelon thinks she means all denominational and non-denominational Christians who have not embraced active homosexuality as heriditary or congenital and a preferred quality for clergyhood. Is there any thinking going on among the journalistic left?

Ha. A comment criticizing an individual for lumping "all" people from one group together uses that individual to criticize and lump all people from another group together. Is there any thinking going on?

This one's good:

Thank you so much. I am a Christian, and in a very blue area even admitting you go to church is seen by some as an "I'm a hateful homophobe" sign. Thank you for articulating what many Christians cannot, Ann!

Oh, boo hoo.

Poor Christians! Always being misjudged. Spare me the persecution complex. I don't know of anyone who's killed himself after being bullied for being Christian. Do you?

You know what? I'd like to hear more from the "good" Christians. If they called out the "bad" ones--the ones who've perverted the faith and who preach hate (and I don't mean calling gays "sinners," I mean pure, unadulterated hate speech)-- more often, maybe they wouldn't be lumped in with them and be misjudged?

Obnoxious gay people misrepresent me all the time and I call them out on it every chance I get. Why can't true Christians do the same to their misguided fellow Christians?

You don't get to complain about being stereotyped if you aren't doing anything to inform people that the stereotype is wrong. Sorry.

"I Can't Breathe With You Looking At Me."

Devastating; Happy

There is nothing more heartbreaking than wanting to open your mouth when you can't.

Today was a great day though. Some days are better than others, and today was one of them. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing other people happy. I loved today.


Someone thought this would be charming; to make a sitting area in the lobby of a building where only eight people live and where no one really has any visitors. And if they did have visitors, they wouldn't sit and wait in this weird hallway. They'd just come upstairs. Or wait outside.

Putting the chair and table there makes everything sad and lonely. As if someone should be there, but they're not. Without the chair and table, this was just a few yards of space I walked through to get to my apartment. Now, it's a painful reminder of how devastatingly empty my life is.


I went to Safeway looking for Viennetta, but instead found this brazen instance of copycatting. How can Nabisco think they can get away with this? If I were Mother's (or Kellogg's, the distributor), I'd be...devastated.




Maybe you've seen these. If you're lucky, you haven't. Most grocery stores have "buffets" now. How long was that macaroni and cheese sitting out? Being kept warm by, uhh, lights, I guess. The other stuff, some kind of chicken and some kind of olives, didn't offend me due to the lack of coagulation. And the lack of cheese. What kind of health code violations do you see here? If you're stupid enough to actually serve yourself something like this, don't you then deserve whatever kind of food poisoning or upset stomach you end up with?

All this, and I still couldn't find any Viennetta.


The worst kind of food of all foods, however, are raisins. Worthless, arrogant raisins. "Fitness Award"? You weren't good enough to be grapes, so don't flatter yourself.


Saw this lone stalk of broccoli discarded atop a pile of beef, and it reminded me of how throughout my childhood and even today during my adulthood I have always struggled to make friends and to fit in with people.


It occurred to me (as I'm sure it has to others) while using the self checkout machine that I could very easily pretend to scan one of my items and then toss it in my bag without paying for it. Even if I were caught, I could say, "What? I was sure I scanned it??! I'm so embarrassed!" And half of that statement would actually be true.

But no, I paid for everything. I couldn't find any Viennetta, though. Breyer's stopped making it in the 90s, and if you want it now, you'll have to go to a specialty bakery or just go to a Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream cake, really.


Safeway sells books. Dollar books. The Way Things Ought To Be. Who is he to say how things ought to be? I'm not sure enough of anything to say how things ought to be for me, much less anyone else.

Don't try to dictate other people's happiness. Let them find it on their own. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing other people happy.