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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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More of vent/advise post rather than a small question.

Background: I run a board game meetup, formally around the social deduction game Blood on the Clocktower (Think very involved werewolf/mafia but with a DM). Some of the regulars have become addicted to the game and spun off a separate discord to play more often, which is fine, because I joinws it and play I just don't want to have to run the game every weekend which is the occurrence they seem to want to play at.

The Problem: Somehow a minor infiltrated our group. The main group is public and meets a local game hall so its whatever, but this person seemingly got invited to the separate discord full of all the addicts. We just played at someone's house last night. This minor is now 18, an autistic woman. The average age of this group is early 30s, quantitatively 32. We do have some mid 20s and occasionally some folks in their 23-24 range show up and several folks in their 40s that come play but 18 is extremely young. Consequently (thankfully) everyone is very uncomfortable with this development.

Extra Tea: She needed a ride to our event last night, she doesn't really advertise her age, so a male member of the group picked her up because it was on his way and he's a helpful person. He immediately regretted offering to help when he saw her. People where discretely playing hot potato with who was going to drive her home. Her parents apparently don't care that she is attempting to hang out with a bunch of 30 year olds. They seem to be living out of a hotel for some reason (likely poverty), but it's unclear if this is a recent thing or not. She's very clearly autistic with a severely awkward demeanor and lacking the ability to at all process anything not spoken directly to her in the environment.

The Question: Is there any advice on how to boot this person from the group. Obviously it's going to happen but the question is how to handle it in such a way as to not scar this already likely friendless young adult. I currently lean on just ripping the band aid off, but technically since this is an offshoot group I am pushing towards making the moronic discord head who added her do it as penance for being a fucking retard and adding her in the first place.

I'll lean in with the other posters: why must you boot her? I do not believe it is such a harmful experience for her to spend time with (gasp!) 30 year olds in a controlled environment. If you just don't want to be responsible for keeping the environment controlled then own it and boot her yourself. But I disagreee that it's "disturbing" in any way. Society should get over this "18 years old isn't a real adult" bullshit, evidently all it does is keep people from maturing.

Why should we moderate our natural humor for an 18 year old? The storyteller(DM) last night was gay, he kept going into the bathroom for private chats with players for their abilities. We joked that we were all running train on him. Everyone laughed. 18 year old was uncomfortable. I don't feel like it is on us to change our group dynamic because of them. It's not a managed environment and I don't think anyone wants to step up and manage it that heavy handedly

This is more of a woman thing than a 18-year-old thing; after all, teenaged boys are probably peak when it comes to crude humor. I assure you 30-year-old women are, on average, no more fond of crude, edgy humor than 18-year-old women—if anything, less so, as overtime they've spent increasing time in HR/Karen-approved spaces and less time with teenaged boys and young men in unmanaged settings.