fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6352 ]

[ SECRET POST #6352 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6352 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #908.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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06. https://i.imgur.com/IaqY8bf.png

I think that hang up is something that will probably resolve itself with time. A lot of young people think 30+ is ancient, and they're too young with too limited of a life experience to grasp how ridiculous they're being. At the same time, fandom becomes such a passionate interest for people that they forget it's not an experience that's unique to them and their generation and that they didn't invent, nor do they own it. Youth. Limited perspective and inability to see further than that.

I hope all such people live long enough to shake their heads and grin with embarrassment over how silly they were when they were teenagers.

I think this is probably another symptom of how isolated we've become as a society. Back in my day, etc etc, but people of different ages used to mix more. All the third places where everyone would go regardless of age have all but disappeared.

Yeah, when I was a teenager I had a variety of older friends and mentors. When I tell people this they look at me with pity, like these people were victimizing me (they absolutely weren't).

I knew someone in college that said she came to college with a specific goal in mind of finding a mentor. She went around and spent time with various professors until she found one that clicked.

And of course we used to hang out with all ages too. Now I feel like if you said a professor or teacher was holding parties or get togethers where students are invited you'd get accused of grooming. Which is dumb.

(no subject)

sabotabby - 2024-05-27 23:54 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-05-28 00:01 (UTC) - Expand

That was me but...in fandom. I was like thirteen or fourteen when I started participating in chatrooms (for you kids out there that's like discord but with only the general channel). Almost everybody else was at least a few years older than me. I don't recall anybody losing their shit that adults were in fandom because fandom was mostly adults.

I do remember it being weird that this one text-based RPG I was in had a player that was in her forties, that seemed ancient to me at the time (and now I am forty....). In hindsight, I'm surprised those folks let me hang out with them.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-05-28 06:37 (UTC) - Expand

Seriously, this. Society's gotten really crazy about acting like the only adults that can interact with children by choice (without being pedophiles) are parents, teachers, school coaches and daycare workers. And it saves the people who are paid to deal with kids from a lot of scrutiny, while creating a lot of unnecessary "are you SURE that was okay??" over stuff that, in fact, was fine.

I hear that. I remember fandom being an adult space, where some corners were more kid friendly than others. I also remember meeting safe adults who encouraged me-- who made me feel good about my creative efforts at times, or who made me feel good about WHO I WAS, as a young person who was so often out of step with my peers. When I was an older teen, college age but only just, I met up with an older woman I had met through fandom, because she lived near my grandparents, who I was visiting. She was between my parents' and grandparents' age, and meeting her made me feel better about like... what aging is?

That was many years ago now, but I recall her being KIND, and just being unapologetically herself in a way that I have often looked back on, when I've wanted hope for the future, to know that I get to age and still be myself.

I wouldn't want to meet up with a KID that I met in online fandom, even with their parents' involvement, but I do have a friend who was going into college when he joined the online fan group I co-moderated, who I've gotten to see grow up a lot in those years and like... I hope that I and the other adults in the group are the kind of older adult who make him feel like growing up is okay, because you get to continue to be passionate about what you love! I hope that when he shares his art, our enthusiasm for it is encouraging the way the feedback I was getting at that age encouraged me to keep pursuing and improving at MY art. I hope I'm the adult now that I was glad to be around when I was younger.

The good news is that a lot of young people have no attention span and fandom-hop a lot, so after a while the worst ones tend to leave to go be assholes in another fandom and leave certain fandoms for the casual enjoyers.

Well, here in the UK we're gonna send all our kids off to a foreign field to die for king and country again in a couple of years anyway

Once William takes the throne? Yeah, probably.

No wait, we could still eat the royal family before that happens!

Nah, the UK can't even afford shoelaces for that many soldiers, let alone actual training and weapons.

Oh no, brats doing something other than roving around in feral gangs or harassing people online? Perish the thought!

...so you'd rather they go to war than be the kind of teen hooligan they can still look back at with embarrassment when they inevitably grow up?

Damn.

Being from Derry, that description is basically that of the British Army anyway.

Really showing your maturity, wishing death on people because you think they're uniquely responsible for rudeness on the internet.

This seems so completely random it must be trolling.

Someone has not been watching the news.

When I got into the first fandom that I really took part in (apart from reading an occasional fic or something) I was 36 and most of the other people around were in their late 20s at least. Some people were over 50. Now I am that person.

(There were also some 18 year olds who could really write! I just saw one of those people recced last week, and now they're the age I was when I got into fandom.)

So whatever. I don't care what teenagers think about anything, really.

I remember when I was new to fandom I always thought how cool and creative the older people in my group were, I was only a preteen then. I never interacted with them but I think it's strange how much the sentiment has changed it feels like.

Is it weird to think that a reason for it is that more specific for kids-teens spaces aren't as much of a thing? It's not like they were abundant before or even completely "adult free", but the point wasn't to be adult free, just to appear to be.

The main situations where I've seen young people go "what are you even doing here, aren't you too old for this anyway?" it's because some older fan was acting like a complete ass and trying to pull rank on them. The more articulate version of verbal self-defense might be "you've got zero reason to belittle me for disagreeing with you" and "you don't get to tell me my problems don't matter just because it would be illegal for me to get a job." But IMO, the antagonistic back and forth between people who think they've got more of a right to a space than other people is something we need to push back against in fandom in a broad, fair way, instead of by singling out one little bit and ignoring all the others.

I've seen plenty of "why are these old hags even in fandom" posting that is not in any way a reaction to elitism from older fans.

DA/NAYRT

Same.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-05-28 23:15 (UTC) - Expand

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