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Ageism is dumb, and I rally against it now as an adult as much as I did when I was 15.

> "but I seriously haven't really heard someone over the age of 30 or so make snarky remarks about how so-and-so is such a hipster douchebag"

Maybe that's because you surround yourself with people who have similar outlooks? That doesn't mean that all people over 30 are above high school bullshit. And it certainly doesn't mean that all people under 25 are perpetuating high school bullshit. There is really no reason to bring age into this conversation at all. You're just confirming your own bias.

tl;dr condemn the behavior, not the demographic that you feel is representative of the behavior

I also think ageism is dumb, however the age - 25 - that he mentioned isn't an arbitrary cut off point.

There have been studies, such as by the National Institutes of Health that show that "the part of the brain that restrains risky behavior, including reckless driving, and thinking skills is not fully developed until the age of 25." Meaning the Frontal Lobe and Prefrontal cortex have not yet matured until 25, that's the area of the brain area responsible for planning, prioritizing and controlling impulses.

There is an amount of truth in this.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044371370457760...

I would believe it's more to do with the degree to which a person's identity is externalised. As soon as someone doesn't have the same taste in music, clothes, lifestyle - then it is an attack on them personally. I don't think it necessarily lessens with age rather shifts to other things like postcode envy.

Those studies are obviously flawed based on the anecdotal evidence that I was well into my 30s before becoming even passably mature.

So does this have much to do with calling people "hipster" in a disparaging way? And why "hipster", but seemingly not other insults (which >25 year olds certainly still make)?

He's just yelling at kids to get off his lawn and lacks the self-awareness to pay attention to who's lawn he is standing on while he does it. There aren't any deep truths hidden in his comment.

Whose lawn is it?

Not his either? Before he yells at others to get off it, he should get off it himself.

He is making a baseless judgement about an entire age group because he thinks that age group makes baseless judgments. The lack of self awareness is ludicrous.

Can't we all just /share the lawn/?!

Totally agree that ageism is dumb. I've met plenty of people under 25 who are rather smart, mature, and well rounded people.

But I've also met far more who are arrogant, confused, and wistful.

It's hard not to make broad, generalized statements when making such observations which is why I felt like I should justify it a bit more. I'm not saying there aren't any adults over 30 who don't act like bullies; the game just changes in my experience.

The point is that hipster hate tends to be a symptom of the self-conscious people who lack a solid understanding of their own identity. This can be a problem for people well into their 50's or through out their lifetimes: I don't know. Either way I wasn't implying anything negative about young people. Except that they're all absolutely insane in my opinion. Hate me if you want.

> I'm not saying there aren't any adults over 30 who don't act like bullies; the game just changes in my experience.

The game doesn't change, it is just played in different arenas, against different 'opponents'.

When I was under 30 or so I was ageist - I felt that most under 28 or so had a long way to go before they become human beings. Obviously, I was the exception to that rule, but even at that age I knew that my contemporaries lacked in maturity.

Except... then I reached my 30s. And realized that I was not, in fact, an exception to that rule. I was perhaps worse, because I was aware of it and somehow thought I was above it.

Now I'm closer to 40 than 35, and haven't seen anything to change my mind. The majority of twenty-something people I encounter in life and online - no matter how intelligent and capable - are still maturing well into their late 20s. Just as I was, even while convinced that I was not.

I'm nicer about it now, though. I realize it's probably physiological.

Nietzsche says something similiar:

From http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

Quoting at length because it's hard to extract the pith:

In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay.

Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTE FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life.

The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself—still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blindness!

In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon principle the cause AGAINST "youth."—A decade later, and one comprehends that all this was also still—youth!

TIL Piaget was ageist.

On the other hand, I have noticed that people over thirty are willing to label people under twenty-five as functionally insane, which strikes me as a bit of an internal contradiction in your post.

Wait until you get here, you'll find the young'uns unbearable to be around too. Just seems to happen...

I'm sure that'll happen, as I have no reason to believe I'm better than anyone else. I hope I'll have the self-awareness not to judge them for judging people, though, or at least to do it in a more measured fashion.

Indeed, and I'm not judging the young folk either, with their energy and their zeal and their misguided good intentions. Life will beat it out of them sooner or later, best let them get on with it. They'll join us old cycnics soon enough...

Judging people for judging people is the last acceptable judgementalism!

I don't think it is bad though.

They're in a period in their life where they seriously believe that they cannot spend the rest of their lives with someone who doesn't have the same taste in music as they do.

Wow... you actually believe that? You're insane.

"I seriously haven't really heard someone over the age of 30 or so make snarky remarks about how so-and-so is such a hipster douchebag. They'd get funny looks and people might think, "What is this, high school!?""

Yuppie douchebag on the other hand...

Unfortunately, biological age and mental age don't always go hand in hand.

Ha, I know what you mean. But it's not the kids I'm worried about, it's the adults.

Perhaps the cultural pendulum has swung a bit too far into elevating the voices of those with traits of psychological neoteny. How could we insert a counterbalancing force of support for mental gerontomorphic features in online discourse?