Moving the Message: "It Gets Better"

Something amazing happened tonight. Despite the fact that I had recorded "Glee" on my DVR and was able to skip through every single commercial that aired, I literally stopped and rewound to watch this commerical for Google Chrome:



Mary Anne has already talked about Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" campaign, so I won't go too much into it other than to say that it is a message that many teens, especially those struggling to accept or be accepted in their sexuality, needed to hear.

This commercial, which ends with the tagline, “the web is what you make of it”, shows a sort of timeline of this movement, beginning with articles written in the New York Times about the suicides of a number of gay teens – one article calling it an “epidemic” – and ends with the comments that are being left on the It Gets Better website from teens and others who have been moved by the message.

The thing that struck me about this commercial was how Google demonstrated how someone can take action and have their cause and message spread far and wide via today’s social media tools. What started as a YouTube video of Dan and his partner, Terry, explaining how they, too, had had a difficult time as gay high school students has grown to include videos from the likes of Woody from “Toy Story” assuring the viewer that, “You’ll be fine, partner”.

I loved this commercial – for its message and its content. It was truly inspiring and empowering to behold. It stopped me in my DVR tracks.