I hear that. It's an alien concept and for many of us, it's an alien form of protest. I mean, for many of us, yes it raises questions in that it's shocking, but it's hard to understand and empathize with. I am dissatisfied with a great many things, but self-immolation doesn't come to mind, particularly in regard to political things. I am wary of attributing self-immolation to a Buddhist mindset, to the point where I don't do so, but I wonder if it's the Western analog of rioting, in a way. Burning flesh smells wicked gross though. I've been to a clinic with my father when he decided to get some moles excised and man, I felt like puking.
Side note, because @humanadon@ we've talked about poetry before, I actually had read about the self-immolation going on in Tibet about Chinese rule and written a poem about it a few months ago. I kind of wanted to respond to the author of this and let him know some people are aware of what's going...but I also would have felt hipster and pretentious doing it. I think self-immolation is an extremely violent way to go. Although, according to my reading, you stop feeling pain within a matter of minutes as your nerve endings die, and you generally die from suffocation as opposed to burns.
I think that the whole - shall we say - meme of claiming you have known something, especially knowing it first, or knowing it before a majority of people know about it, has become a trope and perhaps even one of the defining characteristics of "hipsterdom." It isn't something necessarily bad on its own but it's certainly an attribute that has been satirized with the rise of hipster culture, especially in regards to pop culture and music. So letting the author know I'm already aware of the problem he's talking about makes me feel hipster in that way. I think it's also important that I recognize that, while I may have already known about this issue (due to some news article I stumbled upon; couldn't even tell you how I found it, probably on some obscure subreddit somewhere), that still doesn't mean that people's ignorance isn't still a problem. I'm fascinated right now by grotesque things which is why it stuck with me. Also I believe the two self-immolaters I read about were among the youngest on record, 17 and 18 at the time.