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).