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[rae2nerdy]

Lol my entire point was basically just your last sentence.

You don’t have to say “X is illegal and that is why I don’t do it.” You can just say “I don’t like X.” No one is going to argue with you for having an opinion.

The argument is not - everyone should roleplay with minors cuz it’s not illegal and your being silly for saying it is.

The argument is - just say you don’t want to roleplay with minors. you don’t have to invent worst case scenarios to justify a preference.

I don’t care what people’s personal preferences are. I think both stances are valid. I just think that fear mongering about the police is silly.

 

[Windsock]

Lol my entire point was basically just your last sentence.

You don’t have to say “X is illegal and that is why I don’t do it.” You can just say “I don’t like X.” No one is going to argue with you for having an opinion.

oh, yeah?!

 

[Daisie]

Hey folks! Do try and stay on topic and stay polite. Y'all have been doing a lovely job of it already, but I do wanna make sure that there's a reminder in here before things get the chance to escalate.

Not only that but I would like to throw out some statistics.

~30 minutes ago today, I checked the first page of the 1x1 interest check forums. 25 interest checks total.

8 of the threads had some sort of age requirement.
7 of said threads demanded their partner to be 18+. 1 of them demanded 17+. 1 of the 18+ age requirements was not strict, the OP stating that they weren't stingy about it.

17 of the threads had no age requirements whatsoever.

Do with this what you will. Happy RPing!

 

[Crayons]

The argument is - just say you don’t want to roleplay with minors. you don’t have to invent worst case scenarios to justify a preference.

I don't understand why you can't accept somebody's reason, and keep assuming their reason is something else? You may not agree with that reason but why assume everyone is lying about it? It's like if I said "I like Harry Potter because of the characters" and you said "No, you like it because of Quidditch. Stop making things up to justify your preference!"

Have a difference of opinion by all means but don't resort to telling people the reasons they hold their opinion are not the real reasons. It's bizarre.

(As an aside: extradition is a thing. If you were to break US laws on a US website from the UK, American law enforcement could ask British law enforcement to send you over to the US to face justice there. I believe most European countries have an extradition treaty with the US.)

And that's pretty much my final word. Sorry for contributing to the slight derailing of your thread M Mesenterium

 

[Onmyoji]

I worked for isp and there was a team that handled official police requests related to web content hosted on our servers. I don't know details or results, but I know investigation took place. But that's beside the point.
I simply don't agree with the statement that these things can't happen because probability is low. Yes, it's extremely low but doesn't mean they can't happen.

As it was mentioned earlier, for many people who are not in the hobby 'roleplaying' has sexual connotations. Or 'bad' connotations, as in 'doing something stupid'.
Yes in that absolute extremely improbable case that you get reported to the police and get questioned, they will analyse your conversations and find out you were not doing weird things to a child. So yes, technically you don't have anything to worry about. If you are innocent it will be proven.

But even without as extreme and really improbable cases as police investigation, it can be as little as the minor's parents replying to your PM instead of the child, telling you what bad things they think about you and demanding to cease contact. And this is also what some people don't want to face, no matter how little the probability is.
Yes, you can talk this through with that parent and explain things. Or you can agree to cease contact and never talk to that minor again. Either way it's pretty humiliating.
And it's not that uncommon when parents take over social media accounts of their children and try to forcibly cut off ties with their friends they don't consider appropriate.
You don't need to be hacked or reported to police to get into this kind of situation. Just one controlling parent is enough. And this has higher chances of happening when you're talking to a minor than when you're talking to an adult, for obvious reasons.

Certainly, if something happened to you it doesn't mean it will happen to everyone else. But also it's wrong to assume that if nothing happened to you and to 9000 other people, it will never happen to you or to the 9001th person.

Just because I happen to belong to one of the 'sides' of this discussion I simply wanted to lay out some of my thoughts on it.
None of my statements was about saying it's wrong to talk to minors. When I started to rp with one of my favorite rp partners they were below 18.


I think one of the reasons this discussion happened (not the original one but about age gating) is the perception of age gating. Some people might be totally alright to rp with you if they're 20, and you're 17. But they still write 18+ because they want to find people closer to their age.
As the original question stood, it's quite important to be honest with your partner in case you or them have a problem with age difference. But in most cases, the problem is not as much the actual number where your age falls, it's the years within the age gap. 3-5 years? will likely be fine. 10-15 years difference? Can work, but less chances to be fun for both parties because of the differences in experience and interests. Some people are willing to try, some don't want to bother. Every party can find dozens of reasons why they do or don't do something. And it's their right to hold on to these reasons even if you think their reasons are wrong from your point of view. It's also their right to explain or not to explain those reasons. It's also their right to not have any reasons and just say "I do X because I want to do X".

And Daisie's statistics only prove that there are less people with strict age gating and more of those who are willing to try

 

[rae2nerdy]

Yeah I think scheduling is usually a bigger deterrent than age specifically. Especially once you reach post college years where you need to find someone who is willing to work with your hours of availability and also interested in your ideas.

Unless your doing a specific topic that you need real life experience to portray properly (and even then age is less of an issue than just having that experience)

Like I would rather deal with a teenager who actually has a mental disorder and will be respectful of it than a twenty something who treats it like a personality quirk.