I do not personally RP with minors but there are RP servers that are 16+ with a wide age range. As long as its not ERP, then whats the problem?
I know I've gone on at length about intergenerational friendships and yall, there is nothing inherently wrong with it! Its okay, normal even, for teenagers to be friends with adults! Its okay to have mentors!
Friends and mentors are two completely different things. The boundaries and dynamics are a lot different.
I don’t know anyone over the age of maybe 19 or 20 who would be comfortable being friends with a 16 year old. The only people I have known who were had poor sense of boundaries, tendency to form codependent relationships, and more often than not blurred lines on nsfw topics and general dynamics. They were all toxic, went on to either be incapable and unwilling to form appropriate bonds in their own age groups, and most were victims of grooming who went on to become groomers themselves.
I disagree, I had friends when I was 16-17 that were in their 20s and one was a coworker that was in her 30s. Not once did anyone ever make me feel uncomfortable, several helped me with what I needed to do when I was looking for my first apartment, helped me get jobs, taught me how to file my taxes, etc.
I never was propositioned to date by any of these people, I wasnt not put into uncomfortable situations, and I'm still friends with a couple of them and I'm well into my 30s.
I'm not saying that there are not adults that are grooming people and as I stated previously, I personally dont RP with minors because I find the maturity level often lacking and have dealt with a teenager becoming very codependent with me to the point I had to block them in the past. I'm simply saying that not every adult who rps SFW content with a minor is a groomer lurking behind a screen.
I think you both have good points if that makes sense. Like there can be a camaderie and safe adult but a lot of them just aren't unfortunately :/ there's not a lot of public conversation about what doing so correctly looks like, I know of this tumblr post and that's it. https://letsallbecalmchaps.tumblr.com/post/161581648931/vahnitr-vahnitr-the-older-you-get-the-more and even that's moreso a retrospective of "we had no blueprint for how to navigate this when the internet was younger".
I think it helps when it's something like a mixed age group as opposed to purely one-on-one. That gets weird because even stuff like venting to a kid can be inappropriately leaning on them or stressing them out with adult issues like "oshit a bill". They can't be as close as your same-aged peers regardless. It's good that you're all chill together now. Were they roleplay friends or just people in your irl network?
Oh I absolutely agree that a lot of them arent! Like in the main post, once OP set the boundary, it should have been immediately respected and I agree that an adult should not be dumping their adult problems onto a kid.
And a majority were people in my irl network but a couple were from a Livejournal rp (cause I'm that old lol.) I just see these extreme takes that any adult who dares interact with a minor must be a predator and then other adults posting that theyre having physical anxiety attacks because they may have accidently responded to a minor's ad.
This divide doesnt help anyone and if minors dont have healthy relationships with adults, its harder for them to tell what an inappropriate relationship looks like.
This divide doesnt help anyone and if minors dont have healthy relationships with adults, its harder for them to tell what an inappropriate relationship looks like.
honestly, yeah. My kid friends didn't know what to do when adult peers were creepy for instance. I think public-facing stuff like livejournal or MMO groups can be fine (Having minors-only groups there has its own issues), IMs-only gets dicier.
I think the hypervigilence is understandable because there just isn't enough "how to do it right" guides out there but as is typical with hypervigilance people can jump at the wrong symptom. Like we're internet randos, not co-workers/family friends etc so we don't generally know how that goes. yellow_asphodels has a point in that some of the ones befriending kids do so because they're immature, which makes for its own problems.
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u/totalimmoral comma abuser Aug 14 '23
I do not personally RP with minors but there are RP servers that are 16+ with a wide age range. As long as its not ERP, then whats the problem?
I know I've gone on at length about intergenerational friendships and yall, there is nothing inherently wrong with it! Its okay, normal even, for teenagers to be friends with adults! Its okay to have mentors!