Just saying because nearly every person I know who has ADHD and/or Autism (including myself) seems to care less about people knowing they're into "childish" things.

Also the idea that this is a new phenomenon because Millenials and older gen Z are "soft" or stunted in some way.

I mean, boomers have model trains and and cars. So did their parents. My grandma used to knit herself plushies. This isn't new. You don't suddenly stop having your old likes because you reach a certain age.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm fairly contemptuous of adults who strongly identify with pop culture, whether it's game developers like Nintendo, movie franchises like Marvel, or pop celebrities. It's one thing to obsess over them as a child, teenager, or young adult, but by the time you're a fully fledged adult, you should have experienced enough of life, made enough friends with radically different upbringing from you, or read enough intellectually and emotionally stimulating books that you can draw from a collection of rich experiences instead of relying on pop culture trash as an emotional and creative crutch.

    It's not exactly a case of poorer classes having an impoverished emotional life because they don't have time to read. If anything, they, especially people with lumpen backgrounds, have plenty of life experience to fill books. It's people who come from labor aristocrat/petty bourgeois backgrounds who live completely boring outer lives and emotionally sterile inner lives while making friends with people who also have completely boring outer lives and emotionally sterile inner lives. Add anti-intellectualism that prevents them from cultivating a rich inner life in lieu of life experiences and what you get is a bunch of losers who obsess over some British kid invented by an anti-Semitic terf and who feel personally attacked when you point out how the anti-Semitic terf is anti-Semitic and transphobic.

    If you're talking about the terms itself, yes, I do think the terms, especially "manchild," are a bit ageist and better alternatives like "Nintendrone" are better.