I find these kinds of questions disturbing

This is copypasta, I saw it on Lemmy already several weeks ago

A question only a young person would ask. After you become an adult, it’s not creepy to hang out with other adults. Before you’re an adult is when you give a shit about other people’s ages, because it matter.

This place needs to get a hold of these users making the same weird questions over and over. Same again questions about age gaps, or glaringly obvious inappropriate sexual situations.

There’s a few repeat users ands it’s becoming inane. Its making a mockery of the forum and it’s either clearly trolls, unhinged people or software.

Not necessarily weird. I’m part of social groups where the youngest are in their mid or early 20s and the oldest are in their 70s or early 80s. If there are common interests it can work. Though I do get why this can be side-eyed if the older parties exclusively only hang around younger people.

Nothing wrong with hanging out with people that are a different age to you.

I was part of a board game group where the ages ranged from 20 through to 45.

What are your thoughts on someone who has a mental age of 22 at 32 and hangs out with people in their 20’s?

Like the saying goes, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ to which I would add, so is the creepiness.

My thoughts is that unless you are one of the adult person concerned, their age (like their gender, religion, skin color, and so on) is none of your business.

Adults spend time with whomever they fancy. That’s why they’re legally adults: they’re considered old enough to be responsible for their own actions and decisions. They don’t need your (or anyone else, not even mine) permission.

I mean, are you some kind of moral police on a crusade to force people to only spend time with people born the same year? If you are I would suggest you focus you next crusade on a much more worrying issue than their age, which is: the way they spell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That, we will all agree, is the surest way to spot creeps.

As someone who was ‘offline’ a month with memory issues caused by this and having a jumbled mess for a year I can relate somehow.

I do not at all think (as a base) that is predatory and the person really has a lot to deal with which is not easy at all and needs all the support she can get. She needs to find back into life.

People in their 30s hanging out with people in their 20s is normal, jfc

Listen, already without your context in the body of the post, no that isn’t creepy or unusual.

Seeing your context, i have to remark;

She had a chronic condition where she was basically in a waking coma but wasn’t “experiencing” stuff for a decade

Wtf? That’s horrifying. Is it sleeping beauty syndrome? I’m terrified of that myself

it’s as if time had jumped from her POV because she has no memories of that period

So why are you asking this question anyway? When you give the reader a prompt of “is it creepy or predatory” it feels like you already want them to choose that answer. Is it someone you’re annoyed with and trying to vent about or are you asking this question because they’re insecure/paranoid of what people will think of them?

By the time you’re in your mid 20’s you stop caring about how old people are. I hang out with older and younger people alike; who they are as a person is far more important than when they were born. I stopped keeping track of my own age by my late 20’s, and now I have to do quick mental math every time someone asks me how old I am.

Now, I don’t have a weird condition that makes my mental age the equivalent of someone in their 20’s, but I imagine that someone who did would have all the more reason to want to hang out with similar-minded people. The real question that should be asked is why do you think it makes so much of a difference when everyone is well into adulthood, even by self-proclaimed mental age?

20 year olds are adults, there is no problem in regards to that. What the hell is this waking coma you’re talking about?

No.

I think it’s fine. A 22 year old hanging out with 12 year olds is weird. A 42 year old hanging out with 32 year olds is nothing.

I guess there’s some cutoff point where it starts getting icky. Someone should write an equation.

I’m in my 50s and regularly hang out with people in their 20s because that’s my kids age and he invites us over for house parties. LOL.

Some times they really like stories about ye’ olden times… Like the time I went to Shelbyville to get a new heel for m’ shoe. I had an onion tied to my belt, such was the style at the time…