"It Gets Better" video from Google employees

This is pretty great. A video contribution to the "It Gets Better" project from employees of Google. Video Link.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

Apparently it’s easier to be a gay guy at google than a lesbian. where my girls at?
Anonymous

I cried before the end of the video. I am a straight 56-year old woman who has 7-year old twin girls. I hope that I can teach my girls that it’s o.k. to be who you are no matter who that is. My heart aches for all of the gay people who are afraid to let people in and know who they are. I am so glad to see this video and to see all of the stories. To all of you in the video and to all of the millions of others: Thank you for being who you are and sharing it with the rest of the world!
SamSam

I posted a really good video in the Submitterator, which unfortunately didn’t get picked up: http://boingboing.net/submit/2010/10/councilman-gives-a-brave-emotional-it-gets-better-speech.html

A representative on the Fort Worth City Council gave an emotional speech in a council meeting on the recent suicides of bullied gay teens, and recounts his own history of being bullied, telling kids that it gets better.
- Kimmo
  
  I posted a really good video in the Submitterator, which unfortunately didn’t get picked up: http://boingboing.net/submit/2010/10/councilman-gives-a-brave-emotional-it-gets-better-speech.html
  
  A representative on the Fort Worth City Council gave an emotional speech in a council meeting on the recent suicides of bullied gay teens, and recounts his own history of being bullied, telling kids that it gets better.
  
  Highly moving stuff. But not only does it put a lump in my throat, it makes me fucking angry.
  
  All this pleading with ostracised teenagers to hang in there is such a bandaid… look; I’m straight and Australian, and I have a not inconsiderable amount of boiling fury at the oppressive religious bigotry ascendant in the American South – surely there’s plenty more righteous outrage to be found closer to home, just waiting to be tapped and channelled.
  
  It’s high time the famously neither Moral Majority was given an Ethical Extermination. Those poisonous bigots need to know their idiocy is intolerable.
  
  Just try to imagine growing up in a world where weirdness is a virtue…
  - Cowicide
    
    Just try to imagine growing up in a world where weirdness is a virtue…
    
    Yep, that’s pretty much what it’s like growing up in America if you’re not one of the many brainwashed amongst us.
- osmo
  
  I posted it to submitterator too… It damn well made me cry out loud infront of my computer. Still does.
  
  You must be dead inside if it doesn’t – especially when he tries to just gather himself to be able to speak at about 06:00
- redesigned
  
  @SamSam – thanks for sharing that video, i’m still crying. that was the most powerful, heart felt, it will get better video i’ve seen yet. these videos give me hope for the the LGBT community and for the world as a whole. we need more messages of love and acceptance like these.
  
  also – a big hug and thanks to the families of teens who have killed themselves because of dealing with these issues, who have been brave enough to come forward and share their personal and painful stories. so often they go untold. i know how painful it must be to come forward into the public with such a story, but it is exactly that sort of bravery that is bringing this issue to light and saving the lives of other teens. i only wish your child could have heard these messages of love in time to save themselves. thank you.
Eric Ragle

I wish there were a way that I can reach out to LBGT people in my community and let them know that, although I’m straight, I care. Where I live (rural Tennessee) it may not get better until they find a way to leave, but in the meantime, at least some people care. I don’t know how to help, or what I can bring to the table, but I care.
franko

@SamSam – i saw that video last week sometime, and it is indeed the best one i’ve seen. if it doesn’t move you to tears, i don’t know what would. this video from google is also top-notch. as someone who was bullied in school for being gay, i can’t express how much i love this campaign.
Cybe

Where is Google going to sell those cool robot shirts? Looks like a good fundraising idea.
Anonymous

respect to google for that
Anonymous

It is so sad to think there is a need for these videos. HOW, how the HELL can we (generalizing all people) still be so stupid that THIS needs to be said.

That we need to tell kids not to KILL themselves because they are “different”

It is an immensely sad, sickening and depressing state we are still in.
- Cowicide
  
  It is so sad to think there is a need for these videos. HOW, how the HELL can we (generalizing all people) still be so stupid that THIS needs to be said.
  
  To counteract all the worthless, stupid people that on a daily basis try to convince these kids they are worthless. And, you’re correct… it is sad that there’s a need for these videos at all. But the sad reality is that there is a need for these videos and anyone who makes them really needs to be commended for it.
Anonymous

This is a great campaign. But now we need a new campaign to go a long with it.. The We Can Help campaign. I know I know I’m anonymous, but I keep registering and forgetting my password. Plus I don’t have all my $#!! together in terms of what a We Can Help campaign would look like, but I’m thinking some scholarships might go some way to helping, maybe an exchange program? I dunno.

The other thing I’d like to say, as a transgendered person who was able to function in my assigned birth, is that sitting a bit outside this issue, feeling sometimes like I was a girl and sometimes like I was a boy I know that it’s not just gay kids that need to hear these messages.

Life is hard and lot’s of kids go through really bad stuff. I found out later as an adult the kids who bullied me in primary school (for being a scifi nerd, not because I’m transgendered) were actually being sexually abused by an adult. I don’t know if life got better for those kids or not. But maybe this message needs to be broadened because I think straight kids might need to hear it can get better for them too. It would be nice to see the It Gets Better Campaign turned into course curricula in middle and high school. Perhaps developing that curricula could be part of a We Can Help campaign.

Don’t get me wrong It Get’s Better should never stop. It’s too important and using pop culture may be the only way to get through the dense layers of bigotry that isolate the teens who commit suicide.
Osno

That was beautiful
mlharris

Cybe, I had the same thought! The shirts are here: http://www.googlestore.com/Wearables/Android+Pride+T-Shirt+-+Black.axd
mlharris

Oh! Ladies version too! http://www.googlestore.com/Wearables/Ladies+Android+Pride+T-Shirt+-+Black.axd
Bloke_IN_Italy

Lovely video – inspiring stuff. Somewhat spoiled by a totally invasive Zynga “Frontierville” ad that started playing at full volume while I was half way through the video. :-( Didn’t really “go” with the reflective perspective of the video. Ho hum.
Anonymous

Personal admission: as the same time I was totally in the closet and surrounded by fundamentalists who were very anti-gay, I also participated in the same behavior in order to cover my sexual orientation. The gay bully can often be the gay man in hiding.
- hassenpfeffer
  
  @Anon #23: NO, you’re joking. Sen. Larry Craig? Ken Mehlman? Ted Haggard? George Rekers? Eddie Long? Say it ain’t so!
  
  I kid with love. Congrats on your courage and your separation from the Dark Side.
- Cowicide
  
  Maybe you should do a YouTube video about it? Make good on your past sins sort of thing?
Grognard

I was bullied at school for being a red-head… :(
- Ant
  
  A female or a male? :P
Major Variola (ret)

Teary.

Folks should do this for teenage depression too. Depression
is often a lethal disease –and modern meds can help without
slowing you down. Often unrecognized.

Maybe obesity too. Which is obviously recognized.
- hassenpfeffer
  
  I second this, having been in ALL of the listed categories.
Major Variola (ret)

Teary.

They should do this for youth depression too.
- hcovitz
  
  This also occurred to me, that this message is great for people with depression.
glimmung

Good to see.

Thanks to Google peeps for doing it, and Xeni for pointing us at it.
voracious32

Do they sell those Android LGBT shirts to the public? I’d get one.
Anonymous

I wish someone had been around to tell me this when I was in that really negative place. From experience, I know that it actually does get better. I was bullied for being gay in high school, and now that I’m in college, working on a degree in Computer Science, I’m somewhere that I thought I’d never get. Say what you want about Google, but this video was tear-inducing if nothing else.
Anonymous

This is awesome.
benher

How wonderful of Google to bring this project to life.
There’s too little hope in this world – and no surplus of support.

Very moving.
bassmastermarkiep

This video is wonderful and important. I am a middle-aged evangelical Christian guy who is deeply saddened by the non-loving behavior of way too many of my church-going cohorts. We are called to love. Period.
Anonymous

I think the We Can Help campaign is a great idea.

We need to encourage gay teens to hang on in there but we also need to be tackling the abuse they’re facing.
Anonymous

a touching video, for sure, but I’m not terribly surprised that Google employees are happy with the way their lives have turned out.
- aguane
  
  a touching video, for sure, but I’m not terribly surprised that Google employees are happy with the way their lives have turned out.
  
  I think that’s kind of the point …
Datura Greenleaf

This is a wonderful video, and a really great project.

But I feel that its only part of the story. I think its a little unfair to say to children/teens “it gets better”, without adults/teachers/parents putting in the effort to make it better.

Its not fair that these young people should have to do all the hard work of gritting their teeth and surviving high school, when there isn’t a similar effort taking place to make their experiences better. Until bullying is taken seriously by schools and not shrugged off as “kids being kids” or with the excuse that “bullying hurts the bully too”, nothing is going to change.

And for some people it doesn’t get better. Some people go through their whole lives being ridiculed and shamed for things that they cannot change about themselves (being gay is just one of these things). How can it get better when your government refuses to even acknowledge the basic human rights of gay people?