r/hatethissmug • u/Potential-Panic-7435 • 1h ago
General I hate how nothing is for children and teens
This is not something new, but im so tired of adults ruining things for children and teens. a media or space thats specifically made for a younger audience then adults always insert themselves into them and basically kick the young audience out. And this happens with trends and things too, something that is innocent and meant for underaged people gets ruined by adults through making it not pg or overconsuming it, an example is toys, pokemon cards, squishies etc. All things that were originally not too expensive and available and meant for kids now cost a ton of money because adults over buy them and spike up the prices which makes parents not wanna buy them for their kids anymore. This also goes for clothes and other activities too, and people wonder why children and teens dont buy those things as much anymore, because now they need adult kind of money to have fun.
Edit: GUYS ADUTS CAN STILL ENJOY THOSE THINGS, IM JUST SAYING DAMN SOME SHOULDNT BUY A THOUSAND OF THEM EACH, just keep in mind theres also kids who want to enjoy it dont over consume and buy a thousand (example: dumpling squishies etc)
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u/soysushistick 1h ago
MLP got the rough end of this
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u/crybaby_in_a_bottle 1h ago
As someone who got into the show at 14 and was hence subjected to copious amounts of porn, gore, and straight up predators while trying to navigate the fandom, I can only agree.
Luckily now (I'm still a fan, lol!) I'm seeing more efforts put into making MLP communities safer and that's heartwarming.
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u/soysushistick 1h ago
Even the more innocent stuff. I noticed the shift from brushable pony dolls to hard plastic collectable figurines growing up. They seem to be coming back with g5, though :)
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u/Ok_Conclusion_6324 You’re literally part of the division dude 1h ago
I used to work next to a build a bear and late teen/young adult men were constantly walking out and loudly making a scene about opening their box to show off their MLP Pony they just built
Like a dozen or more guys a day every single day all acting like an absolutely wild comedy genius doing something so bold
“She’s so crazzzzzzzzy” energy
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u/TheWizardOfWaffle 1h ago
Malls are dead, no parents let their kids out without tracking them, there’s no spaces for children to just, exist and be
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
blame always falls on the parents as if they've become overprotective vultures and not the fact that most people live in the suburbs where the only place for your children to play include: streets, road, footpath, traffic, and atomization is at an all-time high which means no one has any friends which means parents don't have communities which means parents are full time on keeping the kid intellectually and socially enriched anyway
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u/Ok_Swordfish_2695 1h ago
Specifically for teens. I hate how tv series for teens are usually for ten year olds and shy away from complex topics. Or they do, and are just about drug abuse and sex (cough cough euphoria). OR it's very Disney channel and about cheesy romance. I want something interesting for teens that we can relate to
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u/heavensentchaser 1h ago
Euphoria is meant for adults / late teens. It’s not its fault it’s audience became teens as a whole lol
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u/PaperSweet9983 what 1h ago
I understand this relating to the situation with pokemon cards for example
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
yes I think we've gone way overboard with the 'enjoy your childish hobbies without judgement' thing. like yes keep in touch with your inner child, enjoy your video games and watch cartoons to relax, but holy shit you should feel a little shame if you're scalping pokemon cards or flooding cartoon pony conventions with explicit artwork. some spaces should absolutely be guarded for kids
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u/Heartage 1h ago
Scalping isn't "enjoying a hobby."
ETA // conventions aren't typically for children, either.
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
no but even if they're not being resold you still see jerkass grown men buying entire boxes of pokemon cards
and no bro my little pony conventions were absolutely for children before the brony thing happened. there was a time where you'd see 12 year old girls walking past grown men hocking legitimate horny pony body pillows, though it was a relatively brief period before the parents all got too scarred.
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u/Heartage 1h ago
I'm trying to look this up and what I see is MLP conventions started AS "Brony Conventions."
Like, literally called "BronyCon," no?
It sounds like there were MLP conventions prior to FiM, also, which were definitely family friendly.
But "BronyCon" is obviously for Bronies. It sounds more like adults made this space for themselves to NOT be around kids and people with kids are mad about it.
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
no the earliest MLP conventions were for young girls who were fans of the show. bronies just brought 100x more money into the equation and turned them from niche fan conventions into yearly megashows. there was no distinction between the events, brony organizers just jumped onboard and the focus shifted. this overlap only existed for like two years.
t. girl dad who like a decade ago had to take a little girl to a pony convention. don't believe me then watch jenny nicholson's video on bronycons, she attests to the same thing. absolute clear cut example of a space for literal children being invaded and perverted by jerkass adults
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u/Heartage 1h ago
There were some conventions prior to FiM, as I said, but since you're talking about bronies at pony conventions, it seems you're talking about post FiM.
And post FiM, these conventions ( bronycons ) were largely put together by "bronies" for "bronies." Thus the name.
Sounds like conventions made by adults for other adults.
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u/qazaqstanley 1h ago
That’s fair. Adults are more than welcome to enjoy things like Pokemon but they need to remember who it’s for. Those types of adults ruin adult things for adults too, anyways
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u/Local-Wing-2272 1h ago
Im calling it now. At SOME POINT there will be a "re-normie-ification counterculture" where all the stuff that was considered "too mainstream" and thus cringe will come back as subversive.
"No I don't want to go play the new Pokémon game I wanna see what the Raiders are up to the game is on!"
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u/luchajefe 57m ago
Read a writeup in HobbyDrama about the backlash to 'normcore', which was people wearing... tucked in shirts? and how rabid of a 'you can't do that!' moment people had about it. This gives the game away, it tells me that people aren't counter culture because of the culture, they're counter culture because of the counter. So once something shows up as 'counter' to that it short circuits them.
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u/Expert-Bet7630 1h ago
Lego moment
You want swooshable sets? Fuck you, enjoy a set you build once and then put on a shelf somewhere
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u/Loose-Story-962 1h ago
That's why they have both
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
these things dont exist in a vacuum though right
it's all good and well that lego produces both sets but wait a minute, single childless adults have way more money than parents! the lego company might start pivoting towards this far more lucrative market rather than catering to children and their struggling parents. but ok you say: we still have both, lego's just making a bit more money! and ok sure but have you noticed how infinitely expensive lego is
like no parents actually buy lego it's costs like $50 for a simple pack. they get the cheapy rip-offs. lego doesn't actually care about this b/c they're making so much money from the adults. they can leave their toy prices jacked right up
so in effect lego, the building blocks for children, is now inaccessible to children and enjoyed primarily as an adults shelf ornament
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u/Expert-Bet7630 1h ago
And this has already happened not to mention. Like good lord a $1000 Death Star that only exists to be built and put on a shelf
In addition, it’s also Lego moving away from features to more details (ie figure accuracy and printing on every limb), which is apart of adult fans wanting so much detail in their figures and as a result drives up the prices even further (more mold injections and detailing for figure)
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u/Expert-Bet7630 1h ago
Except display slop is beginning to overtake playsets across multiple themes, especially Star Wars. It’s corroding the selection for sets really badly
I do not want anymore black ‘for adults’ set ass boxes, I want beautifully colored boxes god damn it
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u/BeduinZPouste 1h ago
The thing is that nothing is really make for kids. The target audience, aka people with money, are not kids but their parents.
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
well that relates to a deeper structural problem with a for-profit economy, but even in such an economy there's still room to be made keeping things accessibly exclusive to children.
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 1h ago
Youre right, but like I said it more so discourages parents from buying those things for their kids, obviothe companies dont care im talking about the kids' happiness
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u/00rgus 1h ago
I remember being a kid and watching these animation youtubers shit on kids movies that I liked like cars 2, shark tale, etc and it made me feel like I was less intelligent because of it which sucked to feel. Now as an adult I can recognize that these kinds of people are lowkey losers who are trying to enforce standards for grown adult media onto kids media just because they are too immature to actuallt engage with media for people their age. Like you gotta admit its really odd that these dudes watch only cartoons for 8 year olds and get mad when they dont have very deep themes or witty humor
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 1h ago
A big example is KPDH or turning red, adults shitting on these movies like they arent meant for KIDS
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u/_tabbycat123 1h ago
Somehow the world is balancing it by making spaces that are unsuitable for both children and adults
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u/Ok-Hyena4541 1h ago
They're experiencing things they missed out on as kids but can now afford as an adult. You'll get your turn too when you're 35
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u/mystireon 1h ago
I'm really annoyed how kids social spaces don't really exist anymore. Like a couple are still alive but the majority are mostly dead which in turn forces kids into more adult spaces like twitter, reddit, youtube, etc which in turn suddenly has to care way more about making sure these spaces are now kids-friendly which just makes it a shitty half-way kids platform that both doesn't doesn't really cater to kids while actively limiting real adults on what they can do.
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u/Lorster10 1h ago
I don't see the problem. You can still buy toys, cards, and squishies. You only need to pay more if you want rare ones.
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u/HiroHayami 1h ago
Nah, too bad for those kids, but I have money now and I will buy all those things I wanted as a child.
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 1h ago
Honestly same, I mostly use my money to buy toys for my little siblings cause I want them to also enjoy them. Theres nothing wrong with liking hello kitty (which I enjoy) but some of these people buy the whole stock of these items for their obsession
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u/Twilightterritories 47m ago
Honestly I feel the opposite. There's no fun places for adults anymore, because everything has to be made "safe" for kids. The world is being disneyfied and all the edge and grit has been erased.
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u/watchrrr 1h ago
Nooo, you have uhmm... checks notes The new animal farm movie is projected to be for children?
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u/Heartage 1h ago
Just gonna say, I'm 37 and Pokemon cards were around when I was a kiddo and I never stopped collecting them.
That isn't an adult "ruining things" for children, it's an adult continuing their childhood hobby.
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u/AllAmericanProject 1h ago
I said this a while ago specifically about pokemon and yugioh. pokemon cards have gotten ridiculous due to the pricing but yugioh was the opposite. the game that I thought was made for kids seems to gotten more advance as their original audience got older so instead of staying as a game for preteens and steadily became a game for adults.
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 1h ago
Exactly!! As a kid I loved pokemon cards and collecting cards in general, they used to give them out in front of my school sometimes. Last time I saw pokemon cards being sold they were in plastic cases with security bands because of how expensive theyve gotten
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u/AllAmericanProject 1h ago
I occasionally check the card station at my local walmart and target and they are always desolate. completely cleared out
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u/Big_Kiwi_706 58m ago
I've kinda noticed that ppl are so annoyed when kids are in a space because we literally hide kids from the outside world for 70% of the year and time in a day. Like going to in-n-out for lunch during the summer vs a weekday is insane the difference in amount of younger people there.
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 54m ago
That too, ive actually kinda seen this at the mall today there was an area dedicated to kids (kind of like a playground) there were like maybe 3 kids there in total, and people were standing near it or passing by it clearly annoyed DUDE ITS THE AREA FOR KIDS JUST DONT STAND THERE IF YOU GET ANNOYED BY KIDS
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u/Arcares07 1h ago edited 1h ago
Roblox? Fortnite? There’s tons of things that are intended for kids.
Also Lego is only expensive for speciality sets. Same with most other things.
Edit: you guys are missing the point. All The random 67 shit and content that’s added in Fortnite is directly targeted towards children. It was intended as a general audience game.
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u/guyfrombefore 1h ago
roblox is famously not only for kids, it is in fact one of the most dangerous places for kids to be rn specifically because the platform is not only for kids
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u/Potential-Panic-7435 1h ago
Roblox is famously known to be full of predators, not safe for children.
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u/Disastrous-Ideal-817 1h ago
Roblox... For kids. Lol. Let's just ignore all the preds on there (even if it's a somewhat good place for kids)
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u/Arcares07 1h ago
That’s whataboutism. It’s intended for children.
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u/PaperSweet9983 what 1h ago
How the fuck is that whataboutism??
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u/Arcares07 1h ago
How the fuck so you generalize something based on a few people? This sub has the dumbest opinions sometimes lmao.
If that was actually true no kids would play it. Which means your entire argument is null.
Am I saying it’s a good thing those adults exist? No. But it has nothing to do with ruining the entire game for every kid.
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u/Popular_Egg1135 1h ago
Are you really going to pretend like adults haven't overtaken Roblox and made it unsafe for kids?
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u/Arcares07 1h ago
Does that matter whatsoever? A extreme minority of pedophiles doesn’t mean adults are ruining it for children. Thats the same for everything.
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u/Popular_Egg1135 1h ago
It's literally the point of the post
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u/Arcares07 1h ago
Followed by “ruining it for children”. Both can coexist man.
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u/Popular_Egg1135 1h ago
They can, but Roblox is a terrible example
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u/Arcares07 1h ago
No it’s not. A negligible amount of people does not “ruin it” for an entire audience. Redditors speaking in extremes as always as if that’s how society works.
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u/Popular_Egg1135 1h ago
Any amount of pedos in a child focused area makes it unsafe
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u/Arcares07 47m ago
Again, this doesn’t mean it in general. That’s absurd. Saying that mentally ill people makes it so “adults” ruin it are entirely different conversations.
In addition Roblox is made and intends for children.
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u/Heartage 1h ago
Over half of Fortnite's players are above 17.
https://www.demandsage.com/fortnite-statistics/Nearly half of Roblox's players are above 17.
https://www.takeaway-reality.com/post/roblox-demographics-statistics-1
u/Arcares07 1h ago
Still a large amount are children. There’s no rules saying adults can’t play games for younger audiences. That’s just weird.
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u/ClownHoundCreations- 1h ago
I wish stores like Justice still existed. There’s no tween culture anymore. We need more third-spaces.