This post comes as a result of a little talk we had on GenZedong's Matrix servers a couple of days ago and I thought it was a good idea to bring it as a proposal to discuss here.
There are some strange people in Lemmygrad. I bet you can think of one or two names when I say this. Honestly, I have nothing against it, I don't think anyone should as long as they cause no harm, and quaint characters being attracted to on-line left wing spaces is as much of a natural law as that day follows the night so there's nothing one can do even if they wanted anyway. However, one can tell by some behaviours that the strangeness of some of them come from being young. Too young. And I think it would be nice to limit our list of extravagant individuals to people with a somewhat developed prefrontal cortex, since I think that currently we have none of that.
As some of you may do too, I belong to the earliest sector of Gen Z. As such, it means that I was part of that experiment of giving unlimited access to the internet to someone from an early age, and after remembering well having seen that one video of a man and a glass jar after barely hitting a double digit age, I can say with some confidence that it was a bad move. While there is nothing as nearly as inappropiate as that going on here, I still consider that now that we are older and it is us the ones who are in charge of something, it would be for the best if we did what we could to prevent the youngest ones from wasting their years of brain plasticity on Hoxha-themed soyjaks, anti-psychiatry drama and debates about whether or not the Shining Path was "giga-based" or "turbo-cringe" amongst other brainrot instead of playing Poptropica on coolmathgames dot com or, even better, away from the internet.
My proposal is to set the minimum age for a Lemmygrad account at 16. Of course we can't go around asking for IDs, but I think it would be sensible to put a message stating one must be 16 or older to join in the registration page, make it part of our rules and if someone's behaviour seems sussy then let the mods and admins decide according to their collective judgement.
That's it. Discuss.
Edit: Because some people seem to be missing the point - I know there is no way to enforce thia for all cases. But in the state things are right now, if some kid openly states that they are 12 they would not be able to be banned because there are no rules that justify it, which is no bueno.
Of a similar age (debatably either oldest Gen Z or youngest millenial) and personally my take on it is "thank god (or science, or the universe, or whatever) for the internet, otherwise I'd have been even more fucked up" myself tbh. Growing up with a cultish, abusive family and as an extreme minority (Asian in the prairies) I feel there'd have been no hope for me otherwise to have any proper pride and dignity or grow into a better person, among other things.
That said- while I'd usually agree that maybe we should vet for kids (and libs... but then again I'd be perfectly fine with this space becoming near-wholly defederated even, probably) this space is about as kid-friendly as it gets. No porn, reactionary bullshit gets dunked on or banned real quick, hell, I saw that post where the 'grad decided not even to have gorier war footage in Ukraine- it's as safe as it gets. FWIW also- if they're sticking around here, I'd expect the opposite of brainrot to be happening. That's a good thing.
Hell, even your examples of brainrot are... well, brainrot, yes, but the kind that could perhaps at least lead them down the right path (eventually). Better that than most youtube/FB reccs, their social sciences/history classes (if they live in the west- my experiences certainly were full of anti-communist propaganda), sermons at the church at bible camp or whatever, or pretty much any western mainstream news, isn't it? Hell, I'd even say that frankly it's better they're thinking than being effectively lobotomized by such things... the internet may be responsible for a lot of brainrot, but I hold firmly to the position that it has been infinitely more beneficial than not all the same.
The only reason I can think of for vetting for minors in this case would be if we had issues with people being creeps. But as far as I've seen that doesn't seem to be the case, and hasn't popped up in the 'grad yet(?) We have good mods, a good community generally.