I feel the same way about "bug hunters" in the gay community, those HIV-negative men who actively seek out poz guys to infect themselves. While HIV has become a "manageable" disease, the only reason I can see behind this insane behavior is that none of these guys lived through the 80s and 90s and watched their friends drop like flies; that none of them attended multiple funerals weekly for once vibrant young men who could've gone on to do so many wonderful things if their lives had not been cut short.
Is that still happening with young gay men? I think that was going on in the eighties because for some it was motivated by survivor's guilt, for others a sense of wanting to "belong" to a group of men who were thought of as heroes, or martyrs, or rebels or "real gays" or fatalists, or "special" or something I can't describe precisely. Sad if it is still a thing.
Sadly yes. It's still a thing.