Passing thoughts

[branchandroot]

Sometimes I trip across an example of that intensely weird "you can only be in fandom until you're 30" thing that some of the kidlets have been taught to parrot these days. And sometimes it annoys me, and sometimes it just makes me shake my head, and then again sometimes it makes me think...

Melville was 57 when he wrote very thinly veiled self-insert expies of himself and Hawthorne falling in love for 18,000 lines of an epic poem about war and politics and religion and sex and identity.

(That was Clarel, if you're wondering, and they also had a bit of a threesome going on with the young title character.)

So you know, A) Rolfe/Vine 4evar and B) you never age out.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

The idea of aging out of fandom is so ridiculous. I have no idea how that got started. I will be sixty in a few weeks and I am so not done. The kids can ignore me if they want but I'm not leaving.

[branchandroot]

It is utterly ridiculous. (Also, happy birthday!)

[annotated_em]

Just what do they suppose happens when a person turns thirty, anyway? Or is it that they're so young that thirty sounds like some impossibly distant age?

...actually, do I really care? Nah. Except to say that if they think I should have left fandom when I turned thirty, then they're not allowed to read any of the porn I've written since then. Obviously they don't want it since it was produced by someone past her sell-by date.

[branchandroot]

Honestly, the part that puzzles me most is where they think all the platforms and fic and art and vids come from. Like... do they honestly believe that either a) it's all made by 18 year olds or b) it's all created and maintained by adults who then... don't use it? The lack of thinking, it burns.

[edenfalling]

The whole "adults can't have fun" attitude is incredibly frustrating to me -- and particularly so in relation to fandom, which was, of course, created by adults (and mostly adult women to boot).

I think some of it is rooted in the current trend where anything you don't like is somehow equated to pedophilia and therefore adults are inherently EVIL. I think a lot more is rooted in sexism and the idea that women's pleasure is inherently suspect.

And then, of course, there's the thing where anything you like as a teen must inevitably be disclaimed and shunned as you become an adult because OH THE SHAME!!!!, so naturally adults can't possibly like the same things a teen currently likes, and if they do, there is something deeply shady and wrong about them. I think some of that reaction is just an inevitability of growing up, but it's been strengthened and warped by the pedophilia craze and pervasive sexism, and the resulting stew is doing nobody any favors.

[branchandroot]

Yeah, I'm thinking there's going to be a lot of young adults with very messed up heads in another five-ten years. Actually, I kind of hope there are, because the alternative is that they keep thinking this.

[mekare]

I agree with edenfalling. Also, yes in my teens 30 seemed impossibly old... what rubs me the wrong way most about this however, is how teens presume to prescribe what adults should or shouldn‘t do. The audacity! XD

[branchandroot]

Seriously, I'm always just wondering "do you talk to your parents like that?".

[indywind]

Of course not; talking to people in meatspace has different consequences than talking to people online, who don’t do unbearably oppressive and unjust things like offer to stop subsidizing one’s unlimited data plan if it’s just going to be used to talk shit.

Fellow fans are soft targets.

[branchandroot]

*sighs* That, yes.

[trobadora]

Yeah, I also agree with edenfalling above. The whole thing is so frustrating and backwards, while also being ridiculous.

[branchandroot]

That does about sum it up. *sighs*