Observations, thoughts and other assorted stuff.
Maturity level and physical age are two different things.
Published on October 18, 2004 By Ravenblack In Internet
It's the internet and we can all lie about our age. But can your posts tell others how old you are? Or does it say more about your maturity level. I think it's more the latter.

Game forums notorious for having kiddie posters. We call them kiddies, I suspect, not necessarily because they are kids but that they behave like kids. Bad rap for real kids, considering there are many kids and young forumers who are civilised, well mannered and thoughtful with their posts. Some kids don't know how to behave on the internet, but don't assume that they are all like that or that childish behavior is only restricted to children.

When we see a horrible post with bad grammer and spelling, we naturally assume that "a child did this". Not fair and not always true. Sometimes it's because the person is:
1) Dyslexic
2) Not from an English speaking country.

Such things are understandable.

It's not hard to distingush just-bad-English from just plain don't-care attitude and rudeness.

Anyone who scawls a post with barerly readable sentences and then tells you to "Fuck off" or "U R Gay" if you have a different opinion is definetly being rude. If confronted, and they say they don't know English, you can respond that they certainly know enough English to be as rude as a rude English speaking person.

The only way or rather, the best way to estimate someone's physical age is to see what they like to post most about: is it about school, work or angst? (Even so, it's not always right on.)

If someone tries too hard to convince you that he or she is thirty, that person is almost definetly NOT an adult in the physical sense. No adult would boast about reaching three zero, not like it's some kind of trophy at least. "I am old enough, I am thirty." as if that is suppose to make all of us suddenly accept his point of view. Well done, genius.

Don't assume a well thought-out post is necessarily made by an adult - this can sometimes lead to embarrassing emails and chat dialogues. Some young people, kids can be intelligent and insightful too.

Comments
on Oct 18, 2004
Good article Ravenblack. As a gamer I have frequented gamer forums and have seen the "kiddie" postings you refer to. (Although I will admit to not frequenting the gaming forums as much recently as I have become rather burned out with the childish spitting contests). I have read some well thought out posts from relatively young people (still in their mid teens).

But I have seen one problem. The more articulate "kids" often forget that experience is also a pretty powerful teacher. On more than one occasion I have entered into discussions with a younger person, and it was quite obvious they had no experience to back up their words, only what they had heard from friends, parents, TV, radio, news and the net. But then again, I forget that I have pretty limited experience as well. I suppose we could all benefit from recognizing where we do and don't have sufficient experience to back up our thoughts.
on Oct 18, 2004
I see teens and twenty-something-year-olds (and older) whose opinions are shot down because they're not "real." But coming up with the idea is just the first step--implementing it takes time and thought, so I see nothing wrong with this idealism. In the best world, idealism is never replaced with cynicism (as it is in mine), but rather, it is bolstered by experiences.

As for the ESL people, I used to be one of "those people" who jumped on bad grammar and spelling and such. Blogging really opened my eyes, and while I'm still peevish about typos made by English-as-an-only- or first-language-speakers, I'm learning to let it go. It's hard, though, to get beyond the words and into the idea when the English is really bad--but often you can tell how much thought was put into it, and that means more to me than a few typos.

BTW, one of my favorite oldschool JUs is under 20, and I didn't know that for several months. I have only a vague idea how old you are, Raven, and I'm not sure I want to know precisely. I don't prejudge people on their age--I prejudge them for their level of angst.

-A.
on Oct 18, 2004
Good Post! I'm very guilty of jumping on people for grammar/spelling. I don't know that I do it so much because I think someone is young, more likely I do it because I think they are posting something wrong (or in my opinion is just plain dumb) and that's how I express it. I think though, that if I am aware that they are ESL, I generally let it go, though. I spend my entire day with ESL people (my wife and most of the Korean teachers I work with) so I don't jump on those types of errors. But I let the inner troll jump all over those errors if, as far as I know, they are English as a first language.

Hitting the spell check button is pretty easy. Heck, if there's any doubt about a word, I open word and type it in there just to check.
on Oct 19, 2004
When we see a horrible post with bad grammer and spelling, we naturally assume that "a child did this". Not fair and not always true. Sometimes it's because the person is:
1) Dyslexic


Yeah I'm one of em. I'm sure some skinners remembers my old posts.

What? What about this post and recent ones? Well I'm still slightly dyslexic ( I don't have problems with reading, but I can't spell worth a damn, and once a while I can't spell 4 character words. ) but IeSpell ( http://iespell.com ) saves my ass on this department.
on Oct 19, 2004
but IeSpell ( http://iespell.com ) saves my ass on this department


IeSpell has been my best Internet Explorer friend for a year or so now. Fabulous little bit of code.
on Oct 19, 2004
XX - I can tell you sign from the way you write.  It's not bad, it's just something I've noticed about your sentence structure...
on Oct 19, 2004
Wonderful post raven:)
I think that the mystery of how old all of us are keeps posts interesting.
It causes us to really read, to open our minds to the persons point of view. Someone can just enjoy the post for what it is. Not just because someone their age wrote it. Age dosn't bother me, however for some reason I still don't want to reveal mine yet. Silly I guess.

I am a terrible speller. It takes me so long to post only because there is no spell check. I get so embarrassed when I see I have spelled something wrong. My ears get all hot.
on Oct 19, 2004
Thanks for the comments.

The article is inspired by stuff I've seen on game forums where I do see people going, "Are you a kid or something?" when they see the slightest flaw in reasoning and kids who try to pass themselves off as adults when they are losing grip on the topic.

People have less patience with the younger generation when it comes to serious debates on what is considered to be adult issues. I do think that kids should learn to express their own opinions instead of reguritating their parents' POV.

ESL or not ESL - I can easily overlook bad spelling and grammar if the post makes good points, but it still irritates me when people abbreviate all over the place and spell strangely to look cool.

It is better to keep an air of mystery around yourself - gender, age and location, until you get to know the kind of crowd you've found. But I find it doesn't really matter and most people don't even really need or want to know these details.