
As I Get Older, Some Online "Friending" Gets Creepier - tomh
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/07/as-i-get-older-some-online-friending.html
======
m0nty
"But isn't there something a bit creepy about all this?"

No. There's something creepy about a culture which seems to believe you should
only befriend people your own age, and that anything more than 15% either way
makes you a pervert.

I do think, however, that you need to be careful what you say. I remember
playing Half Life online about 8 years ago, and I caught myself using the same
profanities I would use amongst friends at our weekly LAN party. What might be
a perfectly innocent profanity to me ;) might raise a few questions if other
players were particularly young, and I had no way to know, so I reigned it in
a bit. Social networks could easily lead to similar misunderstandings.

~~~
bdotdub
I feel like a part of it is warranted.

It's great to see people of different age levels be able to talk to each other
and have good conversations, all due to the accessibility of the internet.
People from across the world could have great interactions that they would not
have if not for the internet.

However, the internet also provides anonymity for perverts and pedophiles,
giving them the freedom to do whatever they want.

Younger people may be a bit more wary when someone older friends them because
of the latter, which an unfortunate truth.

~~~
ericb
The net is more dangerous than real life because pedophila or cannibalism is
mandated in the _Internet Terms of Service_.

They're all creeps, especially men. Perverts are _more_ dangerous when they're
on the internet!!!

I'm 12 years old. What are you doing on this forum chatting with _little boys_
anyway. Creep.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
"...because pedophila or cannibalism is mandated in the Internet Terms of
Service"

If we eat a pedophile, does that cover both requirements? Or is there a bonus?

Hey -- welcome to the club for people who want to do their own start-ups. It's
topic-oriented and self-censoring. Now that I know a 12-year-old is online
I'll refrain from posting my entire dirty limerick collection.

~~~
ericb
Post away with the limericks--I'm not really 12. Lying about your age is also
mandated in the _Internet Terms of Service_.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Actually I don't have any limericks.

Lying about just about everything else is also required.

------
bentoner
As I see it, it's the American media that has conditioned people to think that
any interaction between an adult and a child not related to them is suspect.

This is terribly sad. When I was 14, I would have loved to be able to talk to
a real scientist.

Is this exclusively an American problem?

~~~
hugh
Why do you immediately assume that an aspect of our culture comes from
"conditioning" by the "the American media"?

I think the main reason for it is this: for the most part it's difficult to
form close friendships with people significantly different from you in age (14
year olds and 28 year olds really don't have that much in common) so people
tend to assume that if they're talking too much then there must be something
creepy going on... or at least that they just can't find friends their own
age.

I'm a "real scientist". Why would I want to talk to a 14-year-old?

~~~
bentoner
I was trying to ask a question, not make an assumption. Sorry if my phrasing
was inept.

I lived in America for five years and I noticed that the fear-mongering was
much more pervasive there, compared to Australia, where I grew up, and
especially to Holland, where I live now.

I'm a scientist too. I love talking to kids about science. Their enthusiasm
rubs off on me. I'm not looking to become friends with them though. Can't we
distinguish between interaction and friendship?

~~~
jimbokun
"Can't we distinguish between interaction and friendship?"

The point of the article is that this distinction is very much blurred in the
online world.

We have networks that support all kinds of social interaction, but we call the
act of establishing interaction "friending" someone. Well, what does that
mean? That you're going to spend all your time chatting about science? Or that
you're talking about where the cool parties are.

The original article mentioned that the author checked out a young lady's blog
after she sent him a friend request, and quickly found out more than he wanted
to know about her personal life. I think that reflects different expectations
of boundaries and privacy, even between 31 and 20 year olds.

------
babul
31 is not old age, and I hope when I get to 31 I have 20 year old girl friends
:)

However, in the real world it is hard to socialise with people who are not in
the same age group as you are for many practical reasons e.g. try going to
bars with people who are minors in your group.

Primarily it seems we are indoctrinated by the nature of the societies we live
in which seems to teach us it is not good to associate with people much
older/younger than you. This seems to be an issue that starts from even the
early days of education where the difference is small (in most schools,
hanging out with people more than 1 or 2 grades above/below you is often
considered weird by the peer groups).

However, online it is more to do with shared interests, ability, and many
other factors rather than age. Age does not matter. Cases in point: Who knows
the ages of the people we interact with on HN - does it matter? All the
startups, in past and present cycles (e.g. soccernet.com, facebook.com)
created by very young people - did the users/ buyers/advertisers (most of whom
are in different age groups) know or care about this?

~~~
timr
_"31 is not old age, and I hope when I get to 31 I have 20 year old girl
friends"_

I was thinking the same thing. If there's anything creepy about this guy's
post, it's that he got married in the middle of college. I suppose that you
_would_ feel out-of-touch with 20-something life if you'd been married for
over a decade by the time you were 31!

~~~
louismg
I didn't get married in the middle of college. I got married at 26, well after
college.

~~~
timr
_"Alana's Facebook profile says she graduated from high school in 2006, eleven
years after I did, and at a point where I'd been married for three years."_

Bah...my apologies. I parsed the above sentence incorrectly, and somehow read
"eleven years after I did" as "eleven years after I was married".

------
DanielBMarkham
Yes that does move the old weird-o-meter up a bit.

I think what's missing is a social trust structure and a goal-based
relationship. After all, we see these types of relationships everywhere -- Big
Brother/Big Sisters, Boy Scouts, Youth Religious Groups, Mentoring
relationships in school and college, etc.

But there's always some kind of goal, and some kind of trust structure built
by society to protect (or at least try to protect) the innocent. Now with the
net we probably have 9-year-olds chatting up 60-year-olds on the virtues of
various sex practices. It's out of whack.

I know I was in a chat system a couple of weeks ago in a room that was
politics and "R" rated. (Hey -- politics is always R-Rated!) I got a "hey
there" IM from a person with a nickname of "April 14, 1939". We started
chatting, and it took about 20 minutes for me to figure out it was a 12-year-
old using god-knows-who's nickname. (The bad grammar and vocabulary were a
hint)

I know I was uncomfortable. I told the kid he should use sites with his own
age group. I also chided him on his poor grammar and vocabulary and told him
we'd talk some other time (we didn't).

It's weird and it's uncomfortable. I'm not saying it's wrong -- I'm sure there
are good things that can come out of these relationships. Kids need role
models. Adults usually have been through a lot of the problems that kids are
going to face and can help out a lot. But gee -- you get these "ambush"
friendship deals...

I think there's a great potential for good here. I also think there is
something very wrong going on. I am reminded of the observation made when TV
came out -- it used to be there were "adult" conversations and "kid"
conversations, ie, conversations were adjusted based on the audience. With TV,
everybody was downstairs in the kitchen late at night talking with all the
grown-ups: even if we were only 4. The net takes this context-free-
communication thorn up to the next level: chatting bi-directional
communication.

Yuck.

------
menloparkbum
A 31 year old guy working in Silicon Valley needs to get over feeling creepy
about being friends with 20 year olds. In the future he'll be working for one
of them.

------
selva
From Oxford Dictionary: Friend - a person with whom one has a bond of mutual
affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.

Developing mutual affection takes time. Clearly, technology has taken this
word 'friend' (and many of it's variants) and has - to use the new parlance -
mashed it up. Of course, words and meanings evolve but technology has created
social platforms that leave behind words and meanings that were shaped over
decades and centuries. There's a dissonance between who we think is a 'friend'
and what a social platform thinks is a 'friend'. The context is new, the rules
are not well established, and the words are awfully inadequate.

I agree with Mr Gray, btw. It is creepy. But, this is quite normal where
technology is busy pushing the boundaries.

------
josefresco
Being a geek and an Internet geek at that he should be more accepting of
people no matter their age. As long as they bring /something/ to the table it
makes sense for them to be in your list of "friends". Curiously, IvanB is also
on my list (Twitter,Plurk,IM), he's 18, I'm 27 with two kids, no big deal ...
he's a Digg/social website animal (good to know for a publisher) and I also
helped him try to land a gig at Mixx.

~~~
louismg
Of note (as the author) I am accepting of it. But if you put a different
perspective, what if I were viewing the 20 year old girl's blog at a public
Internet terminal? Would that be more creepy? I'm not discounting the
individuals. I'm thinking about a third-party's view.

~~~
josefresco
Not really that creepy, and again it's based on content not author. Let's say
that blogger was 15 and she blogs mostly about hanging with her friends, music
and movies. I'd say you following it would be a bit creepy (as the question
always is "why"). Now if that 15 year old was a programmer, hacker or had some
sort of insightful ideas than following that blog isn't creepy at all.

As I get older I find that my peers in IT stay younger (please no jokes about
high school girls) yet my business peers become older. This will surely hit me
even harder when I break the 30 mark.

It seems the brilliance in IT is fueled by the young, and funded by the old.

~~~
Tichy
Even if some younger person is not blogging about programming, there could be
all sorts of valid reasons fro reading their stuff. Maybe you are working on a
product that targets teenagers, or want to know more about your childrens
world, or maybe you are just curious how other people spend their time.

~~~
josefresco
Your are correct, I was just drawing a defined line to simplify the
conversation (maybe I went too far). However just as in real life we need to
understand that interactions with "kids" need to be done with a consideration
of their age, motives and expectations. They aren't lab rats we can monitor
and mess with without consequence.

------
mian2zi3
I'm 35 and a few years ago I dated a 20 year old. Was that creepy? Not at all.
I followed the campsite rule.

<http://www.thestranger.com/savage/campsiterule>

------
ericb
When I was 6 a nice man down the street gave me my first coca cola and showed
me his Pete Rose rookie and baseball card collection _without molesting me_!
Should I be offended?

------
aggieben
I totally understand what this guy is trying to explain. I get invites from
folks that were in diapers when I graduated high school, and I always feel
that I have to be careful how I interact with them. This is especially true
for girls. For boys, it's really not a big deal because there are plenty of
ways for younger and older men to have entirely appropriate relationships.

Not so much for girls. Even if I were single, I think I'd have to be careful
with girls, and more careful as the age gets lower. Girls tend to bond with
and be attracted to male affection, and the ideal source for that is their own
father (assuming the father is on the up-and-up) even through a time of
courtship (courtship is about making the transition from a father's affection
to a mate's affection). It would be entirely inappropriate for me as a grown
man to allow a non-adult girl to have misplaced bonding because of my
affections, even if they were entirely innocent.

Since I'm married, this is a double no-no. The reasons above still apply, but
now since I have now vowed my affections exclusively to my wife, there are
very few relationships with other women (particularly young ones) that are
appropriate. Work relationships qualify as appropriate, obviously, but
independent friendships have to be very carefully considered.

------
omouse
I like how he says "but going to her personal blog had me feeling like I was
getting a bit too much information," and gives a link to the blog, heh.

------
theoneill
Honi soit qui mal y pense.

~~~
oz
Dieu et mon droit

I was a cadet in high school, and the Warrant Officer Class 1 wears the Royal
Coat of Arms...

------
jrockway
I read books, papers and attend lectures by people much older than me. How is
following those people's twitter feeds any different (other than probably
being a waste of time)?

------
gojomo
Louis Gray must find YC really creepy -- 40ish-plus principals working closely
with twentysomethings! What could they possibly have in common?

------
davenolan
Another example of how social networks' reductionist concept "friend" fails to
map onto real life.

