Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohkine | Hacker News Reader

Being trans is not a 'radical subculture'

I think he's referring to "people who commit suicide virally" not just Transgenders.

Which is also not a radical subculture.

This is not true. On tumblr, you can get bubbled with everything you say/do/are. And posts glorifying self-harm and suicide are still happening.

Neither are programmers that don't explain themselves when they say "YOU'RE WRONG. I KNOW WHY BUT I WONT TELL YOU!"

In other words you fit perfectly here :)

killing yourself is a pretty radical solution though.

And that may be obvious to an adult or someone with a fully developed mind but let's not pretend that when you were this age everything felt 100x more important than it was looking back. This is always going to be the case but it get's better as you get older. At that age being ostracised by classmates and/or parents can feel like the end of the world.

Of course, that's the point. When that teen is in their Tumblr bubble, and all the other teens in that bubble say, "yes you're right, this really is the end of the world", is it any surprise that some of them take radical self-harm actions?

That's a very good point, still I worry about destroying, infiltratration, censoring these "bubbles". We don't know the stats of kids who were considering (or had resigned themselves to suicide) who then found such a bubble that gave them the support they needed to keep living. What I'm saying is the effort to stop this from happening may have worse consequences than doing nothing or rather working to fix the root issue instead of playing whack-a-mole when it is finally staring us in the face and we can't ignore it any longer (See: War on Drugs).

Saying it gets better may work for a little bullying. Telling a transgender teen that "it gets better" is an obvious lie.

How about saying "It gets better" to a gay/lesbian kid? (Real question, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it)

At least in the western world, I think that's significantly less of a problem as much more progress has been made for example when it comes to marriage or representation in the media. It also appears that "peak resistance" has been overcome and further progress is inevitable.

Even so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone can escape school, escaping a country, state or just city for a more accepting environment is a lot more difficult.

While I 100% agree that gays/lesbians have it "easier" than trans I wouldn't come close to acting like it's no longer an issue. Trans rights still have quite a way to go but I really do believe that it will get better. It's not going to happen overnight but I do believe it will happen so I don't consider it "an obvious lie". Thanks for the response!

I think he never intended to say that, still his statement right. Tumblr as well as like reddit are good discussion platforms for subcultures.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com