I don’t think there is a “dead giveaway”. Plenty of kids can pass as adults online and plenty of adults seem like kids online. And sometimes with stuff like word usage/grammar/etc you can’t tell if it’s a child or someone who doesn’t speak English very well or maybe an English-speaking adult who happens to type like that. There’s a lot of different people in the world.
Yeah seriously, every time someone makes a generalization online “that subreddit is all 12 year olds anyway”, “r/teenagers is mainly grown me”, it really bothers me because no, you’re just overconfident in estimating people’s ages from text
I imagine that part of it comes down to motivation. I pretended to be an adult on a special-interest forum when I was twelve years old because I needed an escape from my miserable existence. At that time, I had no control over my life and every morning I woke up meant I had a new chance for traumatic shit to happen. I desperately needed to be someone else, so I took my time, researched shit, and avoided any conversation where I might be outed. I’m sure I didn’t fool everyone, but I got some shocked responses when I went back as an adult and owned up to it.
Kids doing it for the authority boost or just as a childish fancy will be easier to spot. Kids doing it as a coping mechanism for their horrible lives will probably blend in a lot better.
I can’t get over ironically using stupid lingo, without being good at presenting it as ironic use…so I often seem like a child. I am certainly bad at forming sentences that are not stream of thought (with weird punctuation like parentheses containing clarification…like this…and overused ellipsis…)
I don’t think there is a “dead giveaway”. Plenty of kids can pass as adults online and plenty of adults seem like kids online. And sometimes with stuff like word usage/grammar/etc you can’t tell if it’s a child or someone who doesn’t speak English very well or maybe an English-speaking adult who happens to type like that. There’s a lot of different people in the world.
Yeah seriously, every time someone makes a generalization online “that subreddit is all 12 year olds anyway”, “r/teenagers is mainly grown me”, it really bothers me because no, you’re just overconfident in estimating people’s ages from text
frfr m8
No cap
Bet.
I imagine that part of it comes down to motivation. I pretended to be an adult on a special-interest forum when I was twelve years old because I needed an escape from my miserable existence. At that time, I had no control over my life and every morning I woke up meant I had a new chance for traumatic shit to happen. I desperately needed to be someone else, so I took my time, researched shit, and avoided any conversation where I might be outed. I’m sure I didn’t fool everyone, but I got some shocked responses when I went back as an adult and owned up to it.
Kids doing it for the authority boost or just as a childish fancy will be easier to spot. Kids doing it as a coping mechanism for their horrible lives will probably blend in a lot better.
I can’t get over ironically using stupid lingo, without being good at presenting it as ironic use…so I often seem like a child. I am certainly bad at forming sentences that are not stream of thought (with weird punctuation like parentheses containing clarification…like this…and overused ellipsis…)
I have found the gen xers are the WORST at texting and writing in general. At least the ones I know.
I would die without autocorrect. I grew up with “mom, how do I spell (word)” and getting “sound it out”, witch werks grate in Inglish…
I grew up getting “Look it up!” and I still can’t spell for shit.
I HATED that one…look it up in the Dictionary…sure ok, let me look up a word I can’t spell …ffs!
Ever watch a kid who grew up after smartphones try to type?