My local TV is doing a story on "bugchasers" - men who want to get AIDS

[undeterred]

I can't even begin to understand this.

[Placebo]

1. Why do they want to get it???

:wtf:

[Deja Q]

2. Simple.

1a. Tired of the games others play.
1b. Tired of the risks. They just want it so they needn't worry.
2. Depressed/suicidal/et al.
3. They view AIDS as part of "the culture" so they want 'in'. :(

:shrug:

[Placebo]

3. These people need help!

All those reasons are friggin' insane. How can STAYING ALIVE not outweigh them all?

[Deja Q]

7. Not that I'm a bugchaser,

but I can empathize.

There are many reasons for the underlying conditions for 'wanting' it; most of them not being "acceptance". Especially for depression... the ambient environment one was raised in. It's made many a broken man.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. Because they are pathological. Anyone who would seek out this disease

....needs to be institutionalized.

I have HIV and I hate it. It's a constant burden that is psychologically devestating.

[Placebo]

8. Agreed!

This is in no way an "acceptable" psychological problem, this is a matter of life or death! These people NEED help, whether they like it or not.

[u4ic]

5. !

Are they bored of extreme sports? :wtf:

[Whoa_Nelly]

6. So twisted...and that's what why they seek this...I think

It seems so pathetic, so sad...


Read this Rolling Stone article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939950/bug_chasers/

Bug Chasers

The men who long to be HIV+

Carlos nonchalantly asks whether his drink was made with whole or skim milk. He takes a moment to slurp on his grande Caffe Mocha in a crowded Starbucks, and then he gets back to explaining how much he wants HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be "the most erotic thing I can imagine." He seems like a typical thirty-two-year-old man, but, in fact, he has a secret life. Carlos is chasing the bug.

"I know what the risks are, and I know that putting myself in this situation is like putting a gun to my head," he says. Some of that mountain music that's so popular is playing, making the moment even more surreal as a Southern voice sings, "Keep on the sunny side of life" behind Carlos. "But I think it turns the other guy on to know that I'm negative and that they're bringing me into the brotherhood. That gets me off, too."

<snip>
Carlos is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them. The men who want the virus are called "bug chasers," and the men who freely give the virus to them are called "gift givers." While the rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it. HIV-infected semen is treated like liquid gold. Carlos has been chasing the bug for more than a year in a topsy-turvy world in which every convention about HIV is turned upside down. The virus isn't horrible and fearsome, it's beautiful and sexy -- and delivered in the way that is most likely to result in infection. In this world, the men with HIV are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to get the virus -- to "get knocked up," to be "bred" or "initiated into the brotherhood."



more at link

[JackDragna]

9. People who willingly spread this disease..

..are criminals of some sort. Not murder, perhaps, not anymore, but of some sort of endangerment.