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News & ArtsTuesday, May 3, 2011
Homo / Teh Internets Google Chrome: It Gets Better
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:29 PM
So good*:
* Not just the commercial, but the whole, huge, amazing thing. Way to go Dan and Terry.
2
Most amazing of all is that the Teenage Suicide 'Epidemic' consisted of two suicides.
Damn.
They just don't make epidemics like they used to......
Damn.
They just don't make epidemics like they used to......
3
Why did Dan not tell us about this!?! A commercial on network prime time is kind of a big deal.
Was he embarrassed it aired during Glee?
Was he embarrassed it aired during Glee?
4
Oh man, I've had a shitastic day, but that makes it pale in comparison. I'm so, so glad Dan and Terry did this project. What an incredible difference it's making.
5
I don't usually see Glee. But for some reason it was on and I am so glad because that was a marvelous fabulous wonderful commercial. You guys have halped so many people, and this was a great great spot to further the message. Love it. Congratulations!
9
I watched the first 10 seconds somewhat resentfully, thinking google is just exploiting a wonderful venture for their own consumer, profit driven agenda (and really do think they're more & more often testing the bounds of their stated un-evil agenda) but was in tears by the end. Bastards.
10
Aw, that's sweet - I love the selections, and that the music wasn't at all swelly-stringsy. (There better be one serious paycheck attached to that!)
13
Nice! I'm a fan of Chrome, and an even bigger fan of It Gets Better. I'm happy to see that they're both getting good exposure together.
14
Hooray for this. I started putting together my own "It Gets Better" video, hit a rough patch where it didn't feel better for awhile, but am now feeling back on track. It'll be after the book, after the commercial - but damn. How can I *not*? Even if it's just one drop in a really big bucket by now.
Dan - thanks for IGBP. This commercial was soooo tasteful, too. Cheers.
Dan - thanks for IGBP. This commercial was soooo tasteful, too. Cheers.
16
I sat on Boyfriend #2’s couch holding hands with his other girlfriend Miss J, and we wept with joy. (Cuz we’re weepers, but that’s beside the point.) Thank you Dan and Terry, and the more than a million others who have contributed to this project. The tide is turning, and IGBP is helping to make the world a better place. As Bensson34 wrote: I have hope.
17
This was genius! It gave me chills. Bravo to Google, Dan Savage, and the It Gets Better family! :D
20
The cause is great, the project is great, the ad is horrible. Google is using the Trevor Project to promote its products? Thats sad.
21
@20: Think how many people were reached tonight through that commercial. And Chrome is a pretty good browser..... :)
26
Hell, even if it's a commercial for a huge, maybe-not-being-evil corporation, it's pretty fucking awesome that Dan and Terry have created a project that can genuinely be held up as an example of the BEST the on-line world has to offer.
And by "awesome," I mean "inspiring awe," not the cheap, trivial meaning the kids usually make of it. It Gets Better should go on your tombstones. Well done, guys!
And by "awesome," I mean "inspiring awe," not the cheap, trivial meaning the kids usually make of it. It Gets Better should go on your tombstones. Well done, guys!
28
Huge, amazing, and impactful ad. I'm so proud of everyone involved - even though I don't know any of them, that other people can be so kind and generous with their stories makes me hopeful and proud to be a person.
30
As I sit here with a dying father and a loving partner, I hope this message gets to all kids out there. Life is going to have some really fucking hard periods, whether you are gay, straight or other. It's also going to have a handful of moments that are so brilliant and pure and wonderful that each one of them makes every moment of pain worthwhile. Don't give up while you're in the moment of pain, because you'll miss out on those moments of love.
34
Mixed feelings. Was very moved by what I thought was an "It Gets Better" PSA airing during Glee. How brilliant, I thought. Was a little slow on the uptake in realizing it was a commercial (and a commercial, after all, for a product I can't use because I don't have the right operating system on my Mac). Still, an overall beautiful effort and a chilling couple of minutes - chilling in a great way.
35
Interesting study about Gay and lesbian youth and suicide:
"An article in the December issue of APA's Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology points to a possible cause of seemingly higher rates of suicide among LGB and transgendered (LGBT) youth: discrepancies between what gay youth report about suicide attempts and what they're actually doing.
The article, by Cornell University's Ritch C. Savin-Williams, PhD, reports on two studies that conclude that even though sexual-minority teens are more likely than heterosexual youth to report suicide attempts, half of those reports are false--that is, the young people had thought about suicide but hadn't acted on it. In addition, Savin-Williams found, many of the true attempts the young people reported weren't life-threatening.
"When you ask in-depth questions about suicide attempts, the responses you get account for the rate differences between heterosexual and sexual minority youth suicide," Savin-Williams says. "The heterosexual youth had hardly any false attempts, while those with same-sex attractions had a lot of them."
In one of the studies, 23 percent of 83 young sexual-minority women said they'd attempted suicide at least once. On further questioning, though, 29 percent of the reported attempts turned out to be false, and 80 percent of the true attempts were not life-threatening, Savin-Williams writes. The one exception was a small number of young women who were part of a support group, whose rate of actual suicide attempts was much higher than others in the sample.
In the other study, Savin-Williams compared reported suicide attempts in 126 young sexual-minority young people and 140 young heterosexual men and women. Again, while sexual-minority men and women were far more likely to report suicide attempts than heterosexual subjects, the two groups showed similar rates of true suicide attempts.
The findings suggest that gay youth are vulnerable to the media's and researchers' well-meaning but negative depictions of gay youth as highly troubled people heading on a collision course with life, Savin-Williams maintains.
"There's a script we have in our culture--a 'suffering suicidal' script--that these kids have picked up on," he says. A better approach for researchers, teachers and other youth workers, he believes, is to treat all young LGBT people as ordinary kids with great potential, unless they show research-based or visible indicators of suicide risk."
More...
"An article in the December issue of APA's Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology points to a possible cause of seemingly higher rates of suicide among LGB and transgendered (LGBT) youth: discrepancies between what gay youth report about suicide attempts and what they're actually doing.
The article, by Cornell University's Ritch C. Savin-Williams, PhD, reports on two studies that conclude that even though sexual-minority teens are more likely than heterosexual youth to report suicide attempts, half of those reports are false--that is, the young people had thought about suicide but hadn't acted on it. In addition, Savin-Williams found, many of the true attempts the young people reported weren't life-threatening.
"When you ask in-depth questions about suicide attempts, the responses you get account for the rate differences between heterosexual and sexual minority youth suicide," Savin-Williams says. "The heterosexual youth had hardly any false attempts, while those with same-sex attractions had a lot of them."
In one of the studies, 23 percent of 83 young sexual-minority women said they'd attempted suicide at least once. On further questioning, though, 29 percent of the reported attempts turned out to be false, and 80 percent of the true attempts were not life-threatening, Savin-Williams writes. The one exception was a small number of young women who were part of a support group, whose rate of actual suicide attempts was much higher than others in the sample.
In the other study, Savin-Williams compared reported suicide attempts in 126 young sexual-minority young people and 140 young heterosexual men and women. Again, while sexual-minority men and women were far more likely to report suicide attempts than heterosexual subjects, the two groups showed similar rates of true suicide attempts.
The findings suggest that gay youth are vulnerable to the media's and researchers' well-meaning but negative depictions of gay youth as highly troubled people heading on a collision course with life, Savin-Williams maintains.
"There's a script we have in our culture--a 'suffering suicidal' script--that these kids have picked up on," he says. A better approach for researchers, teachers and other youth workers, he believes, is to treat all young LGBT people as ordinary kids with great potential, unless they show research-based or visible indicators of suicide risk."
38
PS You guys probably got the same one, but I just got an email from the IGBP, with a link to send this to others...if you didn't get it, just go to the IGBP site to post it elsewhere or send it along...
40
Wow. Teared up and got goosebumps. Amazing awesome...wow...thank you Dan and Terry...what a fabulous thing you've done!
42
@35 - No doubt that there's a reinforcement loop, but that's an exceptionally bold claim that summarily eliminates all other potential causes. Furthermore, as you describe the study, it's a snapshot. Why don't you ask the kid who just came home from school being taunted for his perceived sexuality all day and told he's going to rot in hell, only to have to front to his parents out of fear of being kicked to the curb that his feelings are really just the result of stereotyping and media attention, and not the constant abuse.
Do battered partners stay in bad relationships because we have a cultural narrative that says DV survivors are too weak to leave?
Do battered partners stay in bad relationships because we have a cultural narrative that says DV survivors are too weak to leave?
44
@20, it's funny how people can look at the same thing and see something completely different. You see Google as using the It Gets Better Project to promote it products, but what I see is Google as using their huge bank account and name recognition to bring attention to a worthwhile cause that a lot of people might not have heard of before.
45
@44, I suppose it's an example of what the biz types used to call "synergy", and what we think of in the broader culture as a "win-win". Sure, there's an exploitation going on, but it's mutual, and it does have a genuinely higher purpose than the usual ads would.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/techno…
In the same way, @35 and @42 refer to different sides of the same existing situation. Both are true, but not equally important at the moment, I suspect.
Best I can tell, the study doesn't claim to be definitive, but serves to suggest a possible downside to kids if suicide prevention messages devolve into smarmy solicitude. Not too difficult to see there may be something to that. But that has to be set against the benefits unfolding before our eyes.
Kids are self-reporting on YouTube that the experience of watching these videos, and the very fact of this trove of supportive messages, has helped them. Though the study suggests kids may or may not overrate the truth of that (teen drama is what it is), it's undeniable that because kids are expressing relief there in fact is some for them. That's always welcome in a teen's life, no?
Add to that the huge numbers of adults also reporting genuine relief themselves from the anxiety all the suicides have caused them. Huge numbers of grownups believe they've been able to help kids who are or will be hurting by the simple act of putting up for display the videos they've taken of them talking about themselves supportively. And millions more adults would never post a video but are delighted and relieved IGBP continues to grow.
Add to that the cultural power of uniting LGBT kids and adults and allies in a high-profile mutual support effort under the banner of altruism, and it's clear we're all well on the beneficial side here.
So proud of these fellas!
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/techno…
In the same way, @35 and @42 refer to different sides of the same existing situation. Both are true, but not equally important at the moment, I suspect.
Best I can tell, the study doesn't claim to be definitive, but serves to suggest a possible downside to kids if suicide prevention messages devolve into smarmy solicitude. Not too difficult to see there may be something to that. But that has to be set against the benefits unfolding before our eyes.
Kids are self-reporting on YouTube that the experience of watching these videos, and the very fact of this trove of supportive messages, has helped them. Though the study suggests kids may or may not overrate the truth of that (teen drama is what it is), it's undeniable that because kids are expressing relief there in fact is some for them. That's always welcome in a teen's life, no?
Add to that the huge numbers of adults also reporting genuine relief themselves from the anxiety all the suicides have caused them. Huge numbers of grownups believe they've been able to help kids who are or will be hurting by the simple act of putting up for display the videos they've taken of them talking about themselves supportively. And millions more adults would never post a video but are delighted and relieved IGBP continues to grow.
Add to that the cultural power of uniting LGBT kids and adults and allies in a high-profile mutual support effort under the banner of altruism, and it's clear we're all well on the beneficial side here.
So proud of these fellas!
48
Even though it's a commercial... all the work you put into It Gets Better and all of your endeavors keep me from losing all hope in humanity... even after you post news about gay bashers, religious nuts, and misogynists.
So thanks for that.
So thanks for that.
49
I felt proud of Dan and Terry for starting it and reaching out to our young ones.
but the guy who said "I dont even know you and I love you" is what started my household weeping.
I am so happy to be alive in this time.
but the guy who said "I dont even know you and I love you" is what started my household weeping.
I am so happy to be alive in this time.
50
I love the commercial and I would support it by using Chrome, but has anyone figured out how to turn off the automatic spellchecking on a Mac? Until this is possible, I'm sticking with Firefox. (But yay for It Gets Better.)
52
I'm a little emotional about this this morning and very proud. I'm so happy our teens and young people are being helped by this project. Please continue to share the love and give someone 2 minutes of your time. You just never know how much it may mean to the other person. It may make their day, week, year, life. Make it better for everyone.
54
Hey, Canuck and Lissa, good morning you terrible people! @50 what do you mean by "automatic spellchecking" - is it that as you begin to type it likes to offer you suggestions about what the rest of your search term may be? Google calls those auto-suggestions, and here a Google employee explains how to undo them. No, of course it's not intuitive....
If it's something else I might be able to figure it out still. Though I just switched back to Firefox after a yearlong Chrome experiment (talk about relief!), I do still have it in my apps.
Turning off Auto-Suggestions (also see Reference 1)http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Ch…
1. Clear your browsing history
2. Click the Tools menu
3. Select Options
4. Click the Under the Hood tab and find the ''Privacy section
5. Deselect the 'Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar' checkbox.
6. Click Close.
If it's something else I might be able to figure it out still. Though I just switched back to Firefox after a yearlong Chrome experiment (talk about relief!), I do still have it in my apps.
55
42
Most; if not, literally, all; kids are taunted and teased about something by someone.
Fat, pimples, brainy, skinny, dumb, wrong religion, wrong accent, wrong colour, wrong sport, etc., etc...
Many of them come from crummy homes and don't find refuge or support there.
Some of those kids will crack under the load of their particular burden, most won't.
The cold hard fact of life is that life is hard and you have to toughen up to some extent to survive.
The good news is that the great majority of kids, whatever they are bullied for, will cope and get/be strong enough.
This is true of ALL kids.
The problems with IGB are that it
>Glamorizes the suicides of kids who are gay (or who homosexual activists can suggest in any small way were brushed by the gay...) and focuses HUGE attention on them, which is exactly the opposite of the way teen suicide should be handled
and
>it throws all of the responsibility onto some great malicious evil out there and absolves the kids of any responsibility to cope themselves.
"You're gay?! Oh-poor dear; it's a miracle you haven'y killed yourself already..."
Teen depression is real but it is treatable.
Creating a ghetto of Cool Gay Kids with Special Needs and blaming everything on the Bad Bad Christians is poor mental health care.
Most; if not, literally, all; kids are taunted and teased about something by someone.
Fat, pimples, brainy, skinny, dumb, wrong religion, wrong accent, wrong colour, wrong sport, etc., etc...
Many of them come from crummy homes and don't find refuge or support there.
Some of those kids will crack under the load of their particular burden, most won't.
The cold hard fact of life is that life is hard and you have to toughen up to some extent to survive.
The good news is that the great majority of kids, whatever they are bullied for, will cope and get/be strong enough.
This is true of ALL kids.
The problems with IGB are that it
>Glamorizes the suicides of kids who are gay (or who homosexual activists can suggest in any small way were brushed by the gay...) and focuses HUGE attention on them, which is exactly the opposite of the way teen suicide should be handled
and
>it throws all of the responsibility onto some great malicious evil out there and absolves the kids of any responsibility to cope themselves.
"You're gay?! Oh-poor dear; it's a miracle you haven'y killed yourself already..."
Teen depression is real but it is treatable.
Creating a ghetto of Cool Gay Kids with Special Needs and blaming everything on the Bad Bad Christians is poor mental health care.
56
woot, gus, terrible people unite! So, before I told my son to turn auto-correct off his hand-me-down iPhone, he sent me the following text:
"Me and some friends are sodomy at the mall. Call you later!"
Of course, I texted back, "Some friends and I."
"Me and some friends are sodomy at the mall. Call you later!"
Of course, I texted back, "Some friends and I."
57
@55 essentially confirms that @35 is his new registered identity (one of a number). But I will give credit for attempting a more diplomatic approach.
60
Canuck, too perfectly dry. "Sodomy at the mall" sounds like one of those band names you think up and then decide against.
63
I love the ad. And I was all weepy, too, until this comment --
-- completely cracked me up. I know it was unintentional, but thanks, @26!
It Gets Better should go on your tombstones. Well done, guys!
-- completely cracked me up. I know it was unintentional, but thanks, @26!
64
Lissa, on my Mac desktop and laptop Chrome didn't handle streaming media (Flash video, html5, silverlight, what have you) as reliably as Firefox, and the damn browser was so slow to actually shut down after I closed it that I frankly felt almost insulted, like Chrome was saying yes, yes, you want me to leave but hang on, what's your rush, I'm still collecting your activity details for future sale to some marketing partner we're just sure you'll be happy to meet....
Plus Google is for profit and Firefox is nonprofit. I'm pretty easily had on that front....
Plus Google is for profit and Firefox is nonprofit. I'm pretty easily had on that front....
65
Irena @63, my daughter once said to me, "That song 'Brown-eyed Girl' always reminds me of you, we should play it at your funeral!"
66
This commercial was the best part of last night's Glee. I kind of can't believe it aired on national TV. Awesome.
68
Canuck, that was so very thoughtful of her! What a nice thing to, er, look forward to...?!
Honestly, this is why I don't have children. It would be an 18-year-long anxiety attack.
Honestly, this is why I don't have children. It would be an 18-year-long anxiety attack.
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