Have you considered how many people you debate with on other forums are not even 18?

[Specter Von Baren]

Something I've been wondering lately. While I'm fairly confident that most of the people that come here to talk about stuff have grown up to the point that they are in college or have full time jobs, what about other sites like Reddit or forums for individual games?

I've begun wondering just how much of the lack of reasonable debate, experience, and empathy I see in discussions is because people of severely different ages and thus, levels of experience, are trying to debate with each other.

Now this isn't the be all end all of people acting childish, adults are still very capable of being childish, but I wonder if this is an inherent barrier to meaningful debate outside of small communities.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I mean you said it yourself, some adults are capable of being childish and petty while some children are capable of being mature and adult. From my limited experience, children tend to just want to get a rise and are trolling, while adults are the ones who can actually hold and defend horrible positions, so I tend to think adults are worse really

 

[Hawki]

I think most of the people here are pretty old. There was a thread awhile back when we gave our ages. I'm 29, and in that thread, I was one of the younger ones.

 

[McElroy]

I joined a large Finnish Discord community not too long ago (because I'm lonely and stuff), and most people there are teens of various ages. On the occasion I provoke somebody into a bit of an argument and the inexperience shows. People probably already remember me as a troll or worse. At least I got to fuckin' serve some 15-year-olds!!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I think its kinda...bold, maybe is the word(?) to assume teens are on Reddit and the Escapist. They're on Twitch watching 'influences' in booty shorts bend over to play Minecraft, on TikTok to watch 'Influences' in booty shorts bend over to drink water, and on the 'gram and Twitter to watch 'Influencers' in booty shorts bend over to #BestLife

The only place I think they're might be teens are EquestriaDaily, and yet its a Brony site so chances are no

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Not on forums as much but on stuff like discord, I take the age of people as a factor in my modding decisions ever since I became a mod in a discord with over 10k individuals. A lot of time people just don't know or are being cheeky and aren't deserving a ban and you have to be lenient because you need to remember how you were back then too. Oftentimes, being told firmly you did something wrong but not being punished will make you not want to do that again in order to not betray the trust you were shown.

And of course you have some little assholes who are just trolling so those you can ban without feeling bad cause they don't care about it either. Getting all up in arms about the 12 year old that enjoys saying rude things to people is a sign of an immature mind haha.

 

[Saelune]

Wisdom is ageless. Either you are a person able to learn from experience, or you arent. Being old means shit if you never learn from anything, and its pretty clear old people are often old minded.

One real problem are too many people seem to think 'If it is not a problem I face, then it is not a problem that even exists'. Age rarely changes that view.

 

[Kae]

Well TBH, most kids don't use forums all that much nowadays, it's a relic of the past they're probably arguing on Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter and some other more discussion focused apps like Amino with the closest thing they have to Forums being possibly Reddit & even 4Chan.

But as for back in the day I would say it was mostly just kids arguing, as I've gotten older my desire to discuss has gone down severely, I know I won't change anybody's mind & no one is going to change mine so it mostly seems like a waste of time, plus nowadays I actually have friends IRL and I feel most of my online presence from back in the day was due to me being an antisocial asshole & having no friends, so I needed some other way to socialise, fortunately I've found people that enjoy hanging out with me even if I sometimes exasperate them, because I am a huge asshole.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I think most of the people here are pretty old. There was a thread awhile back when we gave our ages. I'm 29, and in that thread, I was one of the younger ones.

You can tell just by the join dates. There aren't many people who joined after 2014 so someone would have needed to sign up when they were, at latest, 12 to still be under 18.

OT: It probably does drag the general level of discourse down a fair bit. I've noticed that from time to time on Youtube comments, where several commenters are having a discussion and one has particularly lousy arguments and then it's revealed that they are like 10 or something. If it were up to me children wouldn't be allowed to use the internet unsupervised until they were at least 16.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wisdom is ageless.

How old are you?

 

[IceForce]

There aren't many people who joined after 2014

Yes, and we all know what happened in 2014 that caused the site to feel unwelcoming (and therefore led to little-to-no new people joining since then)...

I keep saying that the site hasn't recovered from that, and perhaps it may never, but a lot of people still don't seem to want to believe it.

 

[TopazFusion]

I think most of the people here are pretty old. There was a thread awhile back when we gave our ages. I'm 29, and in that thread, I was one of the younger ones.

I'd say it's to do with the fact that no new people have joined in a while. So naturally, a userbase consisting of only the same group of people is going to grow older over time.

I'm looking at a 'new users' page the mods have access to... I'm not sure how far it goes back, maybe a month or two? ...and it's completely empty.
Now it could be that page is just bugged (like a lot of the old site), but I haven't personally noticed any new people myself, so it's probably accurate.

But fear not! This forum is getting retired soon, and will be replaced by brand new forum software and a brand new look. The site owners will likely start heavily promoting it once it goes live ('cause there's no real point in promoting this old forum, as it stands).
In the meantime, they have launched a new Escapist Discord server, which is quickly filling with users and becoming busy. Check that out if that's your thing.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Wisdom is ageless. Either you are a person able to learn from experience, or you arent.

Both agree and disagree. Take two people both able to learn from their experiences - one is 20 and the other is 50. The twenty year old has had significantly less experiences, and thus has accrued significantly less perspective and wisdom, than the 50 year old. You are right, there are some people out there totally blinkered to their world view who will rarely take on new ideas even of they live to 100. But even those of us capable of learning from experience still must build up that experience first.

OT: I tend to find younger users of this (and other) forums tend to give themselves away inadvertently. You'll find occasional references to things from only three or four years ago being referred to as 'back in the day', 'retro' or old school', whereas to those of us of a certain age the events of three or four years ago are referred to as 'just the other day'.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I agree that wisdom is ageless in the sense of wisdom being the degree of things you can endure without being upset, which is something that anybody can do irrespective of their age, but typically you get better at it as you grow older.

But yeah, there definitely can be some very wise younger people just like there can be vapid and hollow old people. I think wisdom comes when you're faced with adversity beyond your own control which is something that hardens you and forces you to realize that being upset isn't productive when in a really dire situation. Anyone will be wiser from that experience, typically it's just not going to be someone all that young because young people tend to be shielded and sheltered from those situations more than older people.

 

[Elfgore]

For anyone who may remember my early posting days and how much an idiot, moron, douche I was back then, that was because I was fifteen. So if you were around back then, yes. You were literally arguing with a child. So, yep! I'm completely aware and consider it when people post. Especially on Reddit.

 

[Saint of M]

It depends. I tought merit badges at a boyscout summer camp that ranged from this kid nice, please come work up here with us; to ones that if you mentioned three features on him in a discussion the other camp counselors started getting nervous, like I just triggered a Vietnam war memories.

We also had parents that were awesome to ones that I swear their 11 year old was more mature.

I think it also depends on the situation

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, I am acquainted with Church Basketball. For those outside of the faith, just about every one of our church buildings has a full size basketball court that doubles for scouts, weddings, parties, and what not, but does get utilized for basketball.

For some reason, you take the nicest, sweetest person in the congregation, give them a basketball, and suddenly Football hooligans, Raider Fans, and Mortal Kombat got nothing on us.

 

[wings012]

My account has some years on it, but I've only really started posting a bit recently. I kinda just had an account for some reason or another, don't remember why.

But I've had my share in being a shithead in other forums since I was 14. I'm 31 now. I never really quite got on with newer social media and still frequent a number of forums and mIRC channels. Though I've settled into certain game specific subreddits which functionally are a lot like forums, but never really got into the whole Twitch scene or discord communities.

I actually don't bother thinking about the age of people I debate with. I think it's kinda liberating actually. Being from a Chinese family, I always found it absolute tits up that you had to respect someone's age. Sometimes even my mom says or does stupid shit, but I can't tell her off or it'd be disrespectful or some cock.


There's just a user name, I don't give a rat's arse where you're from, what your gender is, what your age is or what your whatever is. Either you have a point or you don't.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Oh I'm sure many are. I had an argument on Reddit a while ago about taxes and I'm pretty sure nobody there understood how taxes work, like they think if you get into a higher tax bracket you just get that tax rate on the entire sum rather than just the dollars that actually go over the amount the tax bracket starts at. Like when they'd say so whats the point of working harder? Well you're still making more money...

The only place I think they're might be teens are EquestriaDaily, and yet its a Brony site so chances are no

Are Bronies still a thing?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Oh I'm sure many are. I had an argument on Reddit a while ago about taxes and I'm pretty sure nobody there understood how taxes work, like they think if you get into a higher tax bracket you just get that tax rate on the entire sum rather than just the dollars that actually go over the amount the tax bracket starts at. Like when they'd say so whats the point of working harder? Well you're still making more money...

The only place I think they're might be teens are EquestriaDaily, and yet its a Brony site so chances are no

Are Bronies still a thing?

Oh yeah. The show just ended last Saturday, so there's a big push for nostalgia viewings and the like right now

 

[Worgen]

Oh I'm sure many are. I had an argument on Reddit a while ago about taxes and I'm pretty sure nobody there understood how taxes work, like they think if you get into a higher tax bracket you just get that tax rate on the entire sum rather than just the dollars that actually go over the amount the tax bracket starts at. Like when they'd say so whats the point of working harder? Well you're still making more money...

The only place I think they're might be teens are EquestriaDaily, and yet its a Brony site so chances are no

Are Bronies still a thing?

Are you kidding?

We are still around and still watching, you are probably surrounded by bronies right now. Always watching always judging.