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On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog (or a teen)
In my usual way of rambling from one LJ link to another in a bizarre and never-ending chain of time-wasting, I stumbled upon this:
http://onelittlesleep.livejournal.com/143885.html
General context: the writer (an adult) discovers that somebody on her LJ friend-list is 16. This totally weirds her out. The real interesting part is not so much the original post, but the comments, many of which just seem to come from a totally different mental place than anywhere my head has ever gone to. The discussion itself is rambling and full of fandom jargon (and also, the teen in question is apparently an idiot), so to save you from wading through it, I'll just pull out some exerpts:
I'm uncomfortable with anyone who's under 18 reading my journal ... I don't want anyone underage to try to talk to me about inappropriate things.
...
I make it a policy not to friend people under the age of 18, just because my experiences and how I relate it to everything comes from a different place than someone that young.
...
On our LJs, we often talk about our private lives and problems, sound-off about or marriage and relationship frustrations and work issues...and even without a sexual element, these are not topics possibly appropriate to lay on a minor.
...
I avoid teenagers on any friending memes I want to participate in. Actually, I generally try to find people 25+ ...
...
I was recently friended by someone who is 16. A first for me, as far as I'm aware. I couldn't bring myself to friend them back.
----
Now all of this is made a little more pointed for a lot of these people because this comes out of a fandom discussion, and this particular fandom has an active porn component, so there *are* legitimate legal ramifications to knowing that underage people are reading your porn. (Leaving aside the fact that underage people read porn in vast droves; I know this because I was once underage myself. Still, there are perfectly legit, if stupid, real-world reasons why a "don't ask, don't tell" policy is safest when one is posting erotica online.)
But then you have the whole "eww, a teenager, I couldn't be friends with one of THEM!" issue.
I think that there's a whole WORLD of difference between soliciting sex from a kid online, and just having a discussion with someone who might happen to be legally underage in their country. I'm a little baffled that this isn't just common sense. If someone is capable of interacting with me on my own level*, I'm not going to ask them how old they are, and I frankly don't care.
Now I'm not a total IDIOT. I'm not just going to randomly hook up with some teenager online and arrange to go to the mall. And honestly, if someone is mature enough to be entertaining (for me) to talk to online, then regardless of their chronological age, they're probably mature enough to understand real-life legal propriety. In short, if I do strike up a close friendship online with someone who turns out to be underage, I can't imagine that I'd need to grill them about their age because at some point it would come up -- and I'd say, "Hey, I need to meet your parents" and they'd say "Hey, that's cool" -- because that's what smart, mature people DO.
Beyond that? I don't demand to know my online acquaintances' ages, and I don't think that lurking minors are some kind of scourge upon the Internet. When I get to know somebody online, it becomes interesting to me to know more about them -- are they male, female, old, young, do they have kids or not, what country do they live in ... stuff like that. Because if you're going to relate to someone on a regular, one-on-one basis, it's easier if you know a little something about the person you're talking to. But if I get to that point with somebody, I already know the most important thing: I find them interesting to talk to. And I'm not going to stop liking them just because they're not old enough to vote.
Maybe I'll feel differently once I have kids, but looking back on myself as a kid, and an older sib to younger kids ... who the hell CARES if someone who's legally underage happens to be reading "Kismet", with its violence and smattering of profanity? Good grief! I was reading Jean Auel's books, with their graphic sex scenes, when I was 9! If they're not old enough to read it, then it goes straight over their heads. If they're old enough to be curious, then why the hell shouldn't they read it? Have you heard 12-year-olds talking amongst themselves? They aren't going to wither up and blow away at a few F-words!
Obviously, I have no desire to be trucked off to jail for selling porn to minors. I'm aware there are legitimate legal reasons for me as a writer to be careful to label stuff appropriately and let parents be the arbiters in borderline situations. When I was selling "Raven's Children" at conventions, I would ask young-looking people their age if they wanted to buy. My general rule was "under 16, need parent's permission". But it tended to be a self-policing thing, because how many 14-year-olds really found RC interesting-looking, anyway? If they did, chances were they had cool parents who were shepherding them around the convention anyway, who would flip through the book while I pointed out the odd bit of nudity and profanity and then they'd be like "Sure, no problem." Strangely enough, the straight-laced 13-year-old daughters of Baptist ministers didn't tend to stop at my table in the first place.
And that's the thing ... I'm not at all skeeved by the idea that the delicate mind of a 15-year-old might be exposed to anything that I write, in my LJ or fiction or elsewhere, because if they aren't mature enough to handle it, I don't really think they'd be giving it a go in the first place. And I think anybody who's interacted with a wide spectrum of humanity has GOT to know that chronological age is a lousy indicator of emotional maturity.
I think what really set me off about the discussion that I linked to above is that somehow it made this gigantic leap from PORN! KIDS! OMG ILLEGAL! (which is at least defensible) to "I couldn't possibly be friends with someone underage because they can't handle adult-level discussion", which is just *stupid*. It's a GOOD thing that adults online, like those in this discussion, don't want to exploit kids; it's just that at some point, to me at least, it crossed the line from being responsible to just being condescending towards teens.
*I originally had typed "on an adult level" here, but then I realized that quite a lot of what I post, especially on the fandom side of things, isn't really a paragon of maturity and well-reasoned discourse. Incoherent rambling is more like it. Still, if you can entertain me with your ramblings and/or be entertained by mine, I don't care how old you are.
http://onelittlesleep.livejournal.com/143885.html
General context: the writer (an adult) discovers that somebody on her LJ friend-list is 16. This totally weirds her out. The real interesting part is not so much the original post, but the comments, many of which just seem to come from a totally different mental place than anywhere my head has ever gone to. The discussion itself is rambling and full of fandom jargon (and also, the teen in question is apparently an idiot), so to save you from wading through it, I'll just pull out some exerpts:
I'm uncomfortable with anyone who's under 18 reading my journal ... I don't want anyone underage to try to talk to me about inappropriate things.
...
I make it a policy not to friend people under the age of 18, just because my experiences and how I relate it to everything comes from a different place than someone that young.
...
On our LJs, we often talk about our private lives and problems, sound-off about or marriage and relationship frustrations and work issues...and even without a sexual element, these are not topics possibly appropriate to lay on a minor.
...
I avoid teenagers on any friending memes I want to participate in. Actually, I generally try to find people 25+ ...
...
I was recently friended by someone who is 16. A first for me, as far as I'm aware. I couldn't bring myself to friend them back.
----
Now all of this is made a little more pointed for a lot of these people because this comes out of a fandom discussion, and this particular fandom has an active porn component, so there *are* legitimate legal ramifications to knowing that underage people are reading your porn. (Leaving aside the fact that underage people read porn in vast droves; I know this because I was once underage myself. Still, there are perfectly legit, if stupid, real-world reasons why a "don't ask, don't tell" policy is safest when one is posting erotica online.)
But then you have the whole "eww, a teenager, I couldn't be friends with one of THEM!" issue.
I think that there's a whole WORLD of difference between soliciting sex from a kid online, and just having a discussion with someone who might happen to be legally underage in their country. I'm a little baffled that this isn't just common sense. If someone is capable of interacting with me on my own level*, I'm not going to ask them how old they are, and I frankly don't care.
Now I'm not a total IDIOT. I'm not just going to randomly hook up with some teenager online and arrange to go to the mall. And honestly, if someone is mature enough to be entertaining (for me) to talk to online, then regardless of their chronological age, they're probably mature enough to understand real-life legal propriety. In short, if I do strike up a close friendship online with someone who turns out to be underage, I can't imagine that I'd need to grill them about their age because at some point it would come up -- and I'd say, "Hey, I need to meet your parents" and they'd say "Hey, that's cool" -- because that's what smart, mature people DO.
Beyond that? I don't demand to know my online acquaintances' ages, and I don't think that lurking minors are some kind of scourge upon the Internet. When I get to know somebody online, it becomes interesting to me to know more about them -- are they male, female, old, young, do they have kids or not, what country do they live in ... stuff like that. Because if you're going to relate to someone on a regular, one-on-one basis, it's easier if you know a little something about the person you're talking to. But if I get to that point with somebody, I already know the most important thing: I find them interesting to talk to. And I'm not going to stop liking them just because they're not old enough to vote.
Maybe I'll feel differently once I have kids, but looking back on myself as a kid, and an older sib to younger kids ... who the hell CARES if someone who's legally underage happens to be reading "Kismet", with its violence and smattering of profanity? Good grief! I was reading Jean Auel's books, with their graphic sex scenes, when I was 9! If they're not old enough to read it, then it goes straight over their heads. If they're old enough to be curious, then why the hell shouldn't they read it? Have you heard 12-year-olds talking amongst themselves? They aren't going to wither up and blow away at a few F-words!
Obviously, I have no desire to be trucked off to jail for selling porn to minors. I'm aware there are legitimate legal reasons for me as a writer to be careful to label stuff appropriately and let parents be the arbiters in borderline situations. When I was selling "Raven's Children" at conventions, I would ask young-looking people their age if they wanted to buy. My general rule was "under 16, need parent's permission". But it tended to be a self-policing thing, because how many 14-year-olds really found RC interesting-looking, anyway? If they did, chances were they had cool parents who were shepherding them around the convention anyway, who would flip through the book while I pointed out the odd bit of nudity and profanity and then they'd be like "Sure, no problem." Strangely enough, the straight-laced 13-year-old daughters of Baptist ministers didn't tend to stop at my table in the first place.
And that's the thing ... I'm not at all skeeved by the idea that the delicate mind of a 15-year-old might be exposed to anything that I write, in my LJ or fiction or elsewhere, because if they aren't mature enough to handle it, I don't really think they'd be giving it a go in the first place. And I think anybody who's interacted with a wide spectrum of humanity has GOT to know that chronological age is a lousy indicator of emotional maturity.
I think what really set me off about the discussion that I linked to above is that somehow it made this gigantic leap from PORN! KIDS! OMG ILLEGAL! (which is at least defensible) to "I couldn't possibly be friends with someone underage because they can't handle adult-level discussion", which is just *stupid*. It's a GOOD thing that adults online, like those in this discussion, don't want to exploit kids; it's just that at some point, to me at least, it crossed the line from being responsible to just being condescending towards teens.
*I originally had typed "on an adult level" here, but then I realized that quite a lot of what I post, especially on the fandom side of things, isn't really a paragon of maturity and well-reasoned discourse. Incoherent rambling is more like it. Still, if you can entertain me with your ramblings and/or be entertained by mine, I don't care how old you are.