#// 20s-30s: you're young

[littlefankingdom]

The Batman fandom infantilizing a near 30 years old white man taking in a child, saying he was a brother more than a father as if he wasn't a full grown adult taking in a child he could have birthed, but parentifying a brown young adult taking in his brother pre-teen for less than a year, saying he was a father more than a brother (only a year is barely enough but ok), or saying he was more a father to his other brothers than Bruce, when he met them when he was 18 and 21 is making me uncomfortable, ngl.

Like, Bruce is a "kid" when he became Dick's guardian when he canonically was over 25 (he started being Batman at 25), and a brother to him when he raised him for 10 years (and Dick probably has not many memories from before Bruce now), but Dick is a "father" to Damian he only had as his charge for less than a year, half of which they were fighting each others??? Make it make sense???

[holmsister]

Kinda gets me when people age them down in AUs and stuff because to me those characters wouldn't be half as interesting if Chilchuck, Senshi and Mithrun were the tallman equivalent of in their twenties

[hollenka99]

I think it would be very funny if Roger ap Gwilliam was born when Ruby unleashed him. I don't think it's said which year specifically they land in but since Ruby could pay on her phone, I'm going to put it in the past 5 years if it's not 2024.

So you have this man in his early-to-mid 20s, saying shit about wanting nuclear control, and somehow he wins. He probably has much older opponents who are either middle aged like Ruby or older, something that theoretically indicates wisdom and sense, while this fresh faced Welshman acts like a living John Mulaney 'eggs and bottle rockets' sketch.

First Prime Minister to be appointed in his 20s in over 250 years (only other person in our history actually because Pitt the Younger is currently the only 20-something PM) and may even beat that record if he was born in 2023 or 2024. Possibly the last PM too if his plan went ahead.

All because people saw him and said "Sure, let's give this young man his bombs despite the fact he left school only a few years ago."

[brokentoys]

i don't know but i really think this should be discussed more often but it's everyone treating 30 years old as if it's old. it's obviously taking a toll on people (especially women) and making them feel as though they're old when they're not really. selena is literally only 32 yet she feels she's too old for the pop life. miley is the same age yet she released a song called "used to be young." the human brain is believed to stop fully developing at 25. you're telling me that at 30, your brain has only been fully developed for like 5 years, and you're "old"? hell, even when you're 30 -- you've only been a legal adult for 12 years.

maybe it's because i'm starting to edge closer to 30 myself, but it is wild how many ppl sincerely believe this is an old age.

[necromancy-savant]

This is what I literally looked like a few years ago

Vs a recent photo about 6 or 7 years later

T didn’t give me instant results. But over a long time, like 10 years time, it did work. At least I have eternal youth and am now old enough to appreciate it

[jinxpologist]

the amount of people into bloodweave who are in their late 20s-30s-40s and have said they haven't been in fandom spaces for a long time but have decided to take the plunge again bc of these two makes me so happy. even at 21 i'm really worried about not being able to interact with fandom anymore when i grow a bit older, or worrying that i'm "too old" (crazy, i know) to be involved with this kind of thing anymore. it seriously warms my heart to see people who are fully grown with fulfilling lives still enjoying being silly in fandom.

with the advent of the internet and modern social media, fandom has slowly grown more and more centered around children. and it's not a bad thing that a lot of kids have fandom spaces for themselves! i think spaces for kids are really important, especially with how much fandom can lend itself to 18+ content. but being a fan of something and being told by other kids around you that once you're an adult, it'll be not only cringe but predatory to be a fan, is pretty damaging.

fandom was made by mostly middle-aged women, and every time i see that legacy continued on despite changing demographics i get really happy! no matter how much the actual interest changes, fandom in general has been my home for a long time (like 8 years now), and i'm happy to see evidence that i can be here for a long time yet. i love it here and it's so fun. i'm less afraid of getting older when i see that i can still be the autistic nerd i've always been no matter how many years go by.

[ssaalexblake]

My fav thing about people who heard somebody say 'age differences in relationships are bad' and just decided to take it at face value like they're following a school rule rather than bothering to understand Why an age gap may be a problem in certain situations, is that you can have ships in fandom where they're soooo fucked up and just deeply unhealthy Alone let alone together and you have That subset of fandom that's saying the ship is an issue because there is an age gap between two grown adults.

Yeah. That's the problem in that relationship. Sure.

[lesbianjarvan]

is there a canon age for j4? or like an approximate age

He doesn't have a canon age but I would say he's probably like 26 or 27

[cuntwrap--supreme]

What is it about me that makes old white men think I'm a conservative? I need to know so I can change that.

[astrxealis]

making myself suffer looking thru ffxiv stuff on tumblr when i could be playing ffxiv rn but i eternally love and miss ffxiv

[deadrlngers]

some of my mutuals on here will be like 'my husband/my wife/my spouse' and i'll do a double take every single time bc many are ppl in their 25s or a lil older and have been married for like 3+ years already and in the cultural shock of it all i find reason in knowing it's my american mutuals

[cavaliersecondary]

actually still thinking about it. i hope everyone who responded to that posts being like "actually its fine if ppl in their 20s/30s have relationships with each other" with something like "yeah lol. like [x insane predatory age gap theyve witnessed or experienced] its fine" actually fucking chokes. no its NOT

[transfemstarscream]

reading “universal transfem experiences” posts and going i didn’t do that. not me. i never did that. that’s not true. that’s not universal. i didn’t do that. who is “we”. nintendo wii?

[biromanticwritergal]

So I'm signed up for this online 30's speed dating event for WLW and sapphics right?

Here's the thing: It looks like they aren't even bothering to regulate it at all because I see tons of people who aren't in their 30s and even some men are listed in the people who are signed up for the event.

What's even the point of a specific event for 30 something WLW if just anyone can join it? :/

[starflowersatsunset]

you get to this point where you realize... this entire piece of my life is gone. what am i going to do now with what's left?

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES