Of note (as the author) I am accepting of it. But if you put a different perspective, what if I were viewing the 20 year old girl's blog at a public Internet terminal? Would that be more creepy? I'm not discounting the individuals. I'm thinking about a third-party's view.
Not really that creepy, and again it's based on content not author. Let's say that blogger was 15 and she blogs mostly about hanging with her friends, music and movies. I'd say you following it would be a bit creepy (as the question always is "why"). Now if that 15 year old was a programmer, hacker or had some sort of insightful ideas than following that blog isn't creepy at all.
As I get older I find that my peers in IT stay younger (please no jokes about high school girls) yet my business peers become older. This will surely hit me even harder when I break the 30 mark.
It seems the brilliance in IT is fueled by the young, and funded by the old.
Even if some younger person is not blogging about programming, there could be all sorts of valid reasons fro reading their stuff. Maybe you are working on a product that targets teenagers, or want to know more about your childrens world, or maybe you are just curious how other people spend their time.
Your are correct, I was just drawing a defined line to simplify the conversation (maybe I went too far). However just as in real life we need to understand that interactions with "kids" need to be done with a consideration of their age, motives and expectations. They aren't lab rats we can monitor and mess with without consequence.
I really don't see the problem? She is writing in a public blog, so what she writes is meant to be read by the public.
What about books - am I not allowed to read books anymore if the characters in the book are not of the appropriate age? Or music - am I not allowed to listen to a song if the singer of the song is 10 years younger than I am? That really doesn't make any sense at all to me.
What about books - am I not allowed to read books anymore if the characters in the book are not of the appropriate age? Or music - am I not allowed to listen to a song if the singer of the song is 10 years younger than I am?
Excellent ideas comrade, I'll contact the Ministry of Truth and see what we can arrange.
Seriously, the thing that bothers me about all of this is that the relationship is automatically cast as creepy and then justifications are sought to make it seem not so. This should be the other way around, no? I think we've all seen one to many episodes of "To catch a predator" for our own good.
