Zee made me post this.

[schmerica]

Dear fandom, sometimes people are a) immature b) bitchy or c) wanky. Surprisingly enough, there is no direct correlation between this and being under 18. Seriously, you deal with underage people ALL THE FREAKING TIME, and you don't know it, because we don't choose to tell you. Most people CAN'T TELL, and that's FINE. If you do have the emotional maturity to deal with fandom reasonably, and you don't broadcast your age and make it into a issue for list owners and such, nobody SHOULD care.

(Less life experience CAN mean more wankiness, but you know what? That's usually if you are a person prone to it anyway. Other people just keep getting worse and worse about the longer they go on. Seriously, there's a certain type of kerfuffle-raising that's a skill; you get better at it with time.)

I have to admit, too, that when I entered fandom as a teenager (after I started college, but before I was legal for anything), one of the things I absolutely loved about it was its age-blindness. On the internet, what matters is how you present yourself and how you act that matters, not your age. At 17, it is kind of amazing to be able to strike up discussions and friendships with people anywhere from your own age to three decades older than you and have none of them automatically, without even thinking, treating you like a silly kid.

Signed with love and frustration,
Pearl-"I Was a Baby Fangirl and I Lived to Tell About It!"-o

Comments

[shoemaster.livejournal.com]

I was a baby fangirl, hell, most days I still feel like one (going to be 20 soon!). When I first got really into fandom in oh, 7th/8th grade, I assumed everyone out there was my age. (Ha!) Obviously my view expanded as most of the people I talked to were in their 20s and 30s, and everyone was really great, I got the minimum of shit due to my age. At 17, I took my parents along for my first second fangirl meet (we were looking at colleges), and they let me go back to visit a few months later and they've been pretty chill about it all.

I shelter them from the sheer volume of porn, but my dad (accidentally) got me reading Laurell K. Hamilton when I was 11.

[aillychan.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought the same thing. I started young, and was utterly flabbergasted to realize that people who were stirring up some utterly ridiculous wank were adults. Real, honest-to-god, well over the drinking age adults! I thought, don't people grow OUT of that stage?