Why don't young gays today show any curiosity about the AIDS epidemic and the hundreds of thousands of gay men who died?

That was a ghastly period in history. Why would any young vibrant person want to waste their time thinking about that?

I agree, OP, but mainstream culture has largely forgotten about the consequences of AIDS. The extent of losses are not well documented in mainstream media, not discussed, and (as far as I can tell), not taught in schools.

Gay lives didn't matter much then, and don't matter much now, apparently.

You are a pathological OCD cunt, OP. People memorize, recognize, and compartmentalize grieve in their own way. They don't have sob night and day like you do everyday to feel the magnitude of loss during the AIDS epidemic.

In my 20's and I am aware but why would I want to obsess over it? Do you obsess over the black plague?

Why don't eldergays care about the horrors of the Vietnam or World Wars?

And why didn't those of the Silent Generation care about the horror of the Civil War?

Why do young gays not care about tuberculosis or polio?

Generations move on as threats pass. I will always be vigilant about HIV, but for young ones growing up in a blase-pharma world of "Prep! Pep!" and TV ads for Kaletra/Discovy/whatever, why should they live in the past? Being totally sincere.

We do care but you can't expect the same level of emotional involvement from people who never experienced it. I read How to Survive a Plague and I've read Wikipedia pages about AIDS. I think it was very sad and I think Reagan, Bush and Koch are basically murderers. What more do you want? Do you want me to go to some 60 year old gay man's house and say "tell me about your friends dying in the 80s"?

Case in point: trying to document an actual number of fatalities among gay men due to AIDS.... well, good luck. The statistics are few and far between and all over the place. And do NOT trust the CDC on this... it was not their finest hour, to say the least.

Can OP be this dense? This navel gazing?

[quote] I agree, OP, but mainstream culture has largely forgotten about the consequences of AIDS. The extent of losses are not well documented in mainstream media, not discussed, and (as far as I can tell), not taught in schools.

Welcome to MAGA Amerikkka!

If young gay men want to believe that the rest of the world would not AGAIN stand by with contempt as they perished from an unacknowledged plague let their lives be their lesson.

I'm 36 and my generation was hit over the head with AIDS History to the point where it became too much. It's a very bleak history about a gross disease, and an overall depressing message to gay men, so I don't blame younger people for not being that interested. It'd be like reading everything you can about a horrible fatal car accident from before you were born.

HIV was an apocalypse. Pain and loss on this scale is not comprehensible in its totality. In other words it's too much to process, especially on an emotional level.

We were emerging out of a cultural darkness, celebrating our freedom and the joy of sex, and within 10-15 years it was mostly over and a multitude were dead. It takes at least a generation to sort and understand this kind of whipsaw. The other fact: we are a youth and pleasure obsessed bunch. Death and dying are a total buzzkill.

I have advanced hiv and really don't care about that. I'm glad they don't have to think about it, why rehash something so traumatic?

Tritherapy hasn't rebuilt your t-cells about 200?

Young people don't seem to care about history at all. Any history. And what they do know about, they get wrong.

Young people know HERstory!

Marsha P. Johnson invented the protease inhibitor, OP. What more do you need to know?

It doesn't affect their life in any material way, so why would they? It's like thinking about any other historical tragedy, like the Holocaust or WWI. That's why I like that we have the World AIDS Day, so we can collectively contemplate it and pay our respects then. Also, they're not responsible for shouldering this trauma and I'm really not a fan of this inherited trauma mentality that seems to be so in vogue currently. They're already burdened by being in the minority, reviled by most of the world's population, they have enough on their plate.

When I was a kid in the 80s I didn't really spend much time thinking about people who suffered in the Great Depression.

I know it's hard to believe for those of us who are older, but the 1980s are ancient history to Gen Z. They have absolutely no connection to that time period.

These kids today barely even know who Madonna is, why do you think they would care about the AIDS epidemic?

What you want, Op? A statue next to the Viet Nam memorial in Washington? It was a sad time, yes, but nothing to memorialize. They were victims to a plague, not heroes from war.

OP, you're like our grandparents, who were extremely fearful of catching diseases like tuberculosis and polio, along with STDs like syphilis and gonorrhea. We aren't so concerned about them, because they're easily treatable today, like HIV.

OP, I'm 56, and I lived in New York City and Boston and the surrounding metroplex from 1984 through 1996, the worst years of the crisis. But I do not demand other people of another generation kowtow to me as a result, nor that they have to have a curiosity about what I went through.

You are sounding here both entitled and self-centered. The world does not revolve around what you or I experienced, nor what our generations of gay men went through.

Get the fuck over yourself.

What R15? What a grossly obtuse statement.

What is w olds making these generalizations about people younger than themselves.

Jesus.

So, Op. Do you want a memorial for everyone who has died of Covid?

Oh no, not grandma!

How does asking why younger gay men aren’t curious about the AIDS crisis equate wanting someone to be obsessed with said crisis?

OP, the first few posts explained why the younger generations aren’t curious: they are far too stupid to look past themselves into anything that doesn’t directly affect them; completely devoid of empathy. Imagine comparing AIDS to the bubonic plague…no.

I am of the same AIDS generation too, r27. And I consider both you and OP narcissistic for whining about people of younger generations be interested in this when it happened before they were born. Again: get over yourselves.

[quote] Young people don't seem to care about history at all. Any history. And what they do know about, they get wrong.

I never asked my grandfather about all the venereal diseases he and the other GIs got from fucking French whores in WWII. Why would I have cared?

OP said only that young gays were oddly incurious about the AIDS epidemic and that's it -- he didn't say he wanted them to obsess over it or "carry trauma" or make it the focus of their lives

Fran Liebowitz famously said that AIDS killed of all the gays of taste and talent and responses to this post prove her right

OP, in literature there’s been a rich examination of AIDS history within the last two years I nonfiction and fiction, both adult literature and young adult literature.

YA Books:

When You Call My Name

Aristotle and Dante Dive in to the Waters of the World

Adult Fiction:

My Government Means to Kill Me

Kingdom of Sand

Nonfiction:

Let the Record Show, an oral history of ACT-UP

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

And thise are just the ones I’ve read or off the top of my head.

Because it's not on TikTok

Go to 19:25 to hear Fran Lebowitz explain how AIDS killed off the best gays and left us with the junk culture we have now.

[quote]Why don't young gays today show any curiosity about the AIDS epidemic and the hundreds of thousands of gay men who died?

That's because they live in the present. You USED to do that.

R27 that's insane. Failing to emotionally connect with something that predates your fucking birth does not mean you are "completely devoid of empathy". Give me a break you drama queen. When was the last time you cried over ww1? Never? Wow you must be completely devoid of empathy.

[quote] OP said only that young gays were oddly incurious about the AIDS epidemic and that's it -- he didn't say he wanted them to obsess over it or "carry trauma" or make it the focus of their lives

Here's what he actually said, since you're trying to spin it differently:

[quote] Why don't young gays today show any curiosity about the AIDS epidemic and the hundreds of thousands of gay men who died? To them it's like it never existed. Anyone ever 40 still carries even some trauma from the 80s and 90s as we watched our friends and family die ....[bold]it's infuriating how little these young gays seem to care.[/bold]

He was overtly bitching that they don't care. You are painting his initial post as if he just posed an innocent casual question: "saying only" that they were "oddly incurious" absolutely does not characterize his original post ; rather, he said explicitly he was "infuriat[ed]" that they don't ask.

I think it’s agenda pushing. Can’t talk about AIDS because it makes gay men look bad. And we can’t have that lest we be called right wing MAGA people.

R1- Anytime anyone on Datalounge says - GHASTLY

Gloria Upson comes to mind.

What are you talking about, r38? If gay people can't talk about AIDS then how do you explain Pose and It's a Sin? Only a hardened, unreachable homophobe would think AIDS makes gay men look bad.

You're clearly intending this question to be addressed to someone other than me, r40; I said nothing whatsoever about AIDS making gay men look bad.

ALSO OP:

Why don't young gays have blond hair?

I know three gays under 40 and they are all brunettes.

Barbara Bush said it best, “Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?’”

But seriously you have to shift perspective. In 2022, 1992 (end of AIDS era) was 30 years ago. That’s like Back to the Future timeline.

R6 is why I have zero faith, belief, trust, or interest in gay men beyond my husband

What are you talking about r44? I learned about the epidemic, I hate the politicians who ignored it and I feel sad about all the people died. Please tell me how I'm failing as a human being. I didn't say "AIDS? What is that and why should I give a shit".

I still have PTSD after living the AIDS epidemic and I’m a bit obsessed that people don’t even understand what it was like to live through that. When every scratch you got you thought could be ks, where you heard someone you slept with was now sick and you tried your hardest to remember what sexual acts you did with them, and now, that you’re older, you don’t have many good friends around. But I think a lot of people on this thread make good points. You can’t dwell on the past and the youth probably shouldn’t.

Maybe it’s just the great injustice of all that keeps me up at night still.

They should know enough about it but obsess? The one good thing is that young gays now don't have to obsess about it

[quote]Why don't eldergays care about the horrors of the Vietnam or World Wars?

I'm an eldergay. And any time someone brings up the Vietnam War I say a silent prayer of gratitude that I had such a high draft number. I was also a college student, but at least I no longer had to have that deferment, or worry whether I'd have to out myself to avoid being shipped to SE Asia.

As for WWII, I became obsessed with knowing more about the Holocaust. I read Anne Frank's diary while I was in grammar school when I had issues with an anti-Semitic nun. I've always been sensitive to anti-Semitism.

But I don't expect anyone who wasn't alive during the 1980s or '90s to think that much about AIDS. It's not something that exists in their memories. I survived it, and I don't like to talk about it. I moved from the city I lived in those days because it made me sad, all the people who no longer lived there with me, one in particular.

No one owes my generation that kind of tribute.

For the same reason they're not interested in anything else. They were never taught how to be inquisitive. They have little desire to know about anything that isn't right in front of their noses.

Don’t worry, OP. They’ll be dealing with the effects of climate change long after we’re gone.

[quote] Also, they're not responsible for shouldering this trauma and I'm really not a fan of this inherited trauma mentality that seems to be so in vogue currently. They're already burdened by being in the minority, reviled by most of the world's population, they have enough on their plate.

Forget being reviled by the world. How do young gays build the resolve and esteem needed to move through life and overcome the crippling self-loathing that IS their only inheritance? Gay is who we are not just what we do. Are young gays supposed to view Aaron Schock or Peter Thiel as role models?

Since schools aren’t allowed to say Gay anymore, they can’t teach about AIDS

Looking back is painful but there are lessons to be learned from the past. The Pulse nightclub shooting targeting LGBT occurred in 2016. Eight years later, in 2022, the same state passed a "don't say gay" bill. We are under siege by reactionary political, cultural and social movements intent on turning back the clock and especially targeting LGBT. Knowing a little something about this cruel, contemptuous and outrageous world's history could be of some use in the future.

Jewish people don't say "Oh, the Holocaust was 100 years ago, just forget about that."

It's history. It's gay history. It decimated an entire generation of men, in much the same way as wars.

I would think at least an idle curiosity would be a good thing.

Like a spoilt child, they never care what their parents sacrificed to get them where they are today. SAD ....VERY SAD.

Because they think you elder gays are going to be around forever. The same way we thought of all the WWII vets who were in their 60s, suntanned and active, running around during the AIDS epidemic. Those guys are few and far between now and a lot of wish we'd asked our uncles and aunts what they did during the war.

R56, were our aunts and uncles gay?!

As if many of us truly cared about the problems gay men who were older than us had gone through when we were young gay men facing our own problems.

A little perspective. Until the 100th anniversary and then COVID, The Spanish Flu was all but forgotten except to historians. It barely merited more than a footnote in most American History textbooks. Families who had members die from it, usually weren’t aware that it was the cause. People would wonder around in cemeteries and see plentiful death dates of those years and assume it was WWI related. 100 million people died globally form Spanish Influenza, more than all who died as a result of WWI, and more Americans died from it than the Americans who died in WWI, WWII, Korean War and Vietnam combined.

People who survived it like FDR and Walt Disney, never spoke about it. We know about FDR and polio, but not Spanish Flu. Few artworks, literary, musically, performing or visual were made in conjunction with the illness and death. Few if any memorials were ever commissioned to honor the dead. It’s said within 25 years people basically stopped talking about in and remembering it at all despite the huge impact it had, especially on population numbers.

AIDS has killed 32 million so far. There are memorials in most major cities with large Gay populations, the quilt remains the largest memorial ever created and continues to grow. Major artworks focus on it, the most prominent being Angels In America , which especially as a two part play has had an unprecedented number of revivals and major production and continues to gather awards. Performing arts has created extensive works related to AIDS, especially in dance. Visual artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring, Felix Gonzales-Torres and others have it as one of the central themes of their work. Popular music and films have made about it, that are now part of the cultural records of those fields. Extensive literature, both fiction and nonfiction has been written about it or inspired by it. There is little fear that people will forget AIDS or it will be buried in history like the Spanish Flu.

R11 exactly- I’m 33 and learned about the AIDS crisis in elementary school, before I even knew what it meant to be gay (let alone that I would end up being gay). The fear was instilled in me so deeply that I refuse to ever bareback, and very very rarely have anal sex at all.

^^^ So, R60 do you thing you would have been better if you had not heard about AIDS or anything gay until you hit 13 would have been preferred?

I know a gay couple, so scarred from the AIDS epidemic that, while they are absolutely monogamous and HIV-, they still use condoms with each other every time.

R61 I was a particularly late bloomer, so I don’t think different timing would have made a difference. My point is that millennials were taught these things before adulthood.