Whoosh. Idk how much more of an obvious joke someone could make. Reminds me of one.

I took my girlfriend out for our anniversary one time, but we kept getting funny looks at the restaurant cuz Im 30 but she's only 23. So we left. Cuz I'll be dammed if I let people ruin our 10 year anniversary.

27 / 2 = 13.5 + 7 = 20.5

Apparently its ok. Idk how many people heard of the "half your age + 7" rule of thumb.

Jerry Seinfeld dated a 17 year old when he was like 38 which is way worse and he just kinda... got away with it?

Deleted, wrong reply, sry

But yea I agree.

Nevermind how many 60 year olds I know that have the maturity of a toddler… Age, maturity, power and independence are completely different issues… You can be with someone your own age that is fully dependent on you. Age isn’t the driving factor…

But people just get all icky at the thought of the age gap…

Many women actually choose this lifestyle.

My GF used to be together with a guy close to 20 years oder than her. She wanted a mature man but ended up finding out the hard way that age does not necessarily corellate with maturity. He was a really immature, self-centered dickhead, from what she told me.

She's barely a year older than me.

The rule is well-known and easy to calculate from the mind. But it does have flaws in that awkwardness regard.

Still weirds me out that according to the rule, a 75 year old could date a 45 year old. Maybe the graph should be called "Legally OK, socially questionable" - ie. the grey zone.

A version that would exclude this socially grey zone could be;

(age * 0.75) + 3.25

The .25 is added to make more numbers less strange. Round to nearest full number.
If the outcome is higher than the person's own age, that indicates you're too young to date. In this case the 'minimum' would be 14 for all involved, similar to the original formula.

For 20, it'd be 18.
For 25, it'd be 22.
For 45, it'd be 37.
For 75, it'd be 60.
For 90, it'd be 71.

Inversely, it'd mean that the maximum ages would be calculated as:

(age / 0.75) - 3.25

20 and 23.
25 and 30.
45 and 57.
75 and 97.
90 and 117.

If we're going on "can't date people who are statistically easy to trick" then half the population is right out just for being stupid, and then I guess when we get older that means dating is off the table, if phishing and scam calls are any indication.

What are we gonna use "A plane crashed between the border of Canada and America. Where do you bury the survivors?" As a "is this person fuckable" shibboleth?

Went to my wife's friend's (Filipina) bd party last year; she was turning 30. Yay! Got to talking to an old guy who turned out to be super cool. Yay! That was her husband and he was about to turn 70. (Lots of turning in this story - what an odd turn.)

"I was twenty-five, a man in those days, master of a large plantation..."

(Which is both from W.E.B. Du Bois' The Comet and the movie Interview With the Vampire. Did not know the former!)

Online discussion and arguments led me to believe there's a significant difference in how fast Gen X grew up vs. Zoomers today, and later research confirmed it. We're growing up slower, which is a sign of a society healthy enough to support that. Kinda odd to me though.

At 16 I was having sex, driving a car and working a bag boy job. Very few of us had cars, but I don't know of any peers who didn't have a license at 16, and almost every one of us passed first try. Losing one's virginity and working a job at 16 wasn't unusual one way or the other. Girl that snuck over and took my virginity was 14.

People today are not hitting those milestones until their early 20s.

I'm way smarter than my wife, but she has a stunning EQ where mine is embarrassingly low. It balances out nicely.

I seriously considered dating a pretty 26-yo when I was 52. She really seemed to like me, but the 3 very young children just put me off. At my age most women, if they could and wanted to, had had kids, but 3 tiny ones? Gah! Couldn't do it, met my 52-yo wife shortly after.

I hung out with the neighbor kid and his friends starting when they were 17 or so and I was 49. Very shortly after they turned out to be wiser than I suspected, able to argue fine points about religion and politics, things I had assumed they'd be clueless about, or more likely parrot their parents.

They weren't vulnerable with me! Maybe because I taught them not to be? But they didn't automatically believe anything out my mouth and would be quick to push back if something I said struck them wrong. Often I was the wrong one! (I understand this is a very different dynamic than in a workplace.) Even if I tried to manipulate them, I bet they would have smiled and later talked among themselves, "See that shit Shalafi was trying to pull about $X?!"

Perhaps they were unusual? I suspect so, but of them and their "peripheral" friends I saw now and again, about half their cohort seemed just like them. Anyway, two are 23 now and counted among my handful of friends.

The part they forgot to mention: they’ve been dating for 4 years.

Hell, I get annoyed when people call teens, particularly latter teens, "children". They're not. We even have a word for that weird in-between stage, "adolescent". "Child" is insulting. My kids are 11 and 13 and the gap in their behavior is spreading wider by the minute. Daughter's very much a child around her brother, but around my wife and I, she's suddenly a changed person.

LOL, even though I know exactly what's happening, it's still weird talking to her about sex and social dynamics. Fortunately I'm almost certain she's a lesbian so won't have to put up with asshole boys and men. Whew!

Oh no my friend, 18 is the age of majority, with almost all the rights of an adult. You're talking about the age of consent. In the US, only 10 states peg that at 18, the rest are 16 & 17. And for anyone that finds that particular fact icky, do not for the love of god look at an EU map!

Made a vow to myself in my teens to never forget what it was like so I wouldn't be an asshole adult. Apparently it worked because I get along famously with young folks. Made a comment (see ITT) about how they're growing up more slowly now, so that's a little odd to me.

I would barely be able to discern the difference in your ages, let alone think that a 7-year age gap is worthy of note. I honestly think they were staring for some other reason and/or your perceptions were off. Unless you look like you're 45? :)

EDIT: My god. Noe I'm the one missing the joke. I'm leaving it for all to see how dumb I am.

In the 90s no one would have so much as blinked at that difference. Times sure have changed for the pruder.

At that age and a little latter, I dated girls 8-10 years my junior. That was perfectly normal with Gen X. The age gap doesn't concern me, the lie concerns me very much.

I'm a bit torn. He might have lost a great thing, but she came out the gate lying. It wasn't a "big" lie, as-in a lie that would turn out to hurt him, but still...

Your brain is still developing until your mid to late 20s so there will always be a bit of that.

I'm amazed how well the 1/2+7 rule of thumb works, it seems like it shouldn't match up so well with the limits of what I see as acceptable

Tbf at 25 I thought I was an adult and was actually retarded, but I wouldn’t magically say I was so dumb that I needed to be full on treated like a child. If we treated people like children until 25 then they would just be dumbasses from 25-30. Then we would be arguing that dating a 29 year old is “sus”.

I'm just musing it's kind of stupid to make it a math problem "one size fits all". Who the hell should have the right to tell 50 year grownups they can't date lol.

I am 33 dating a Filipina who is 24. She is the love of my life!

You can end up with someone who sees the younger person as easier to manipulate versus someone who's had time to catch onto the bullshit. Not every time, but it happens.

Same as the age for a man to start meeting the social consequences for his behaviors.

what people love to do is judge other people and their relationships. it's drama.

the problem is people projecting their current self onto their past self. and being like 'well i was stupid at 22'

yeah and when you are 60 you will think you were stupid at 40. that's how life should work.

but you don't get to generalize that for others. there are people who at 22 are vastly more matured and full of life experience than people in their 60s, because it's mostly a matter of what you have been exposed to and things you have dealt with. Some folks like sheltered lives, others not so much.

I am in my 40s and I'm shocked how many 35+ year old adults are more sheltered and naive about life and relationships than I was at like 20.

because it's a number that's easy to measure and understand.

what age is that?

pretty sure men and women are both legal adults at 18.

I do not think it's a sign of a society being healthy. It's probably the most unhealthy thing for any society. I think it basically arises from the distinct lack of pathways into 'adulthood' - university is now marketed as a way to extend being a kid, home ownership and access to work is completely off the table for loads of people. Young Zoomers either live with their parents through university/after high school, or will have to live with them after graduating, or will have to "slum it" with their friends while desperately trying to get into work.

To some people, knowing and experiencing all this means they act out by being immature and irresponsible members of society. For others it just affects their self image, and they are racked with insecurity or anxiety. Both are bad, and i see both when i look around st my peers. And the ones who are doing okay are absolute rats about it, like "i climbed out of the bucket, so why couldn't you??"

Some people also were unhappy when I came together with a girl back in the day. I was 19, she was 17. such a pedofile!

May you be held to the terms of every EULA you've ever agreed to.

"Age gap" by itself isn't an automatic red flag, and sometimes it's fine. And if everyone is consenting adults it absolutely isn't "pedophilia". But I will want to know more context and have zero problems judging someone in that situation.

Let's not pretend there's not a lot of "age gap" relationships where the older party isn't at minimum incredibly immature. And I'm talking about people 40+ dating people barely out of their teens.

My God you dorks will believe anything

Some States laws have a moving age of consent window for exactly this, because there were teenagers dating when I've would turn 18 and then they would become pedophiles because they kept on with their 16 year old girl/boyfriend.

Unbelievably 17 is the age of consent in some States. Except in the South where it can be as low as your mom.

There's a pretty big double standard. Women who date much younger men are rarely punished for it. Now and then you'll hear about a teacher getting busted for it, but that's about it, especially if the boy is a teenager.

Hey man, some people like playing cards, other people enjoy being offended by random internet bullshit.

potatoe, tomatoe, chicken nugget

Why do you feel entitled to know more about a strangers relationship?

This is the type of weird shit that makes Westerners look insane to the rest of the world.

If a person's relationship is fine by the law and their family, then mind your own business.

It really depends depends on the state. Here in Arizona its 2, because 16 year olds look like adults but 15 year olds don't. In California there is no exception for rape, so two 17 year olds having sex would both be raping each other, although in reality it isn't treated like this.

"I read it on the internet"

"It had a frog cartoon on it and everything"

Let's be clear: this is bot spawned propaganda aimed at minimalizing the right's pedophilia problem.

"Oh I guess we're all pedophiles then huh"

Similarly, I was def a dumb ass as a ~23 year old. And I am consistently impressed with my co-worker s at that age. Despite thinking their lingo is dumb, I do they they've got their heads on straight in a really good way.

Because I have eyes, ears, and I'm not an idiot? Because I know the difference between "that's a little different but I don't see a huge problem" and "Fucking hell, that's not OK".

Again: I've seen "age gap" relationships that were fine. I've also seen them where it was some incredibly fucked up dynamics being acted out.

"they are racked with insecurity or anxiety"

That would explain much of what I see on social media. Are you saying they don't know their place in society and that's stressful?

This thread is filled with incels, holy fuck - adults are allowed to do what they want you troglodytes

well this is a fascinating take. kinda interested to see where this goes when the incels see it