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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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It's healthy for teenagers to hang around adults

Is it? It sounds like a recipe for disaster and abuse.

see how they behave instead of going off of movies about frathouses.

I don't care how they learn to behave and frathouses that have 32 year olds in them are creepy. If a 17 year old wants to hang out with 21 years olds I think that is significantly less creepy than hanging out with 32 year olds.

I was a teen and ran the grill when my dad's friends were watching football

You were related to your father and it was his friends. Very different dynamic.

Is it? It sounds like a recipe for disaster and abuse.

Because all you hear about (especially in leftier circles with all their sexual disfunctions and neuroses) are the horror stories. Friendships and meaningful platonic relationships across much wider age gaps are normal and healthy. The thing where everyone spends their first 22 years dealing with peers within 10 months of their own age is an extreme historical oddity.

My best friend is five years older. The relationship has a certain parity now, but we met when I was fourteen and other friends used to joke that he was basically my dad. But it was really helpful to have someone a life stage ahead around to offer advice and buy booze. Two of my other friends had similar relationships with guys from his friend group. It was almost a bootleg Big Brothers program.

Half my actual dad's golf buddies are my age. He's mentored a double handful of men even younger through AA.

I'm not saying your concerns are baseless, but having the group collectively treat her as a kid sister is reasonable and healthy for everyone. And if you just don't want to deal with that, that's fine too. I refuse to let my similarly aged daughter come to D&D because I want to crack jokes with my friends without being in Dad Mode.

Yes, not everyone has a dad, I get it. Try to take care of bastards, learning how to be an adult from normie adults is the way to learn. Should she learn things from retarded woke ideology, instead?

Should she learn things from retarded woke ideology, instead?

She already has considering she goes by They/Them, uses a male name, has blue hair, dresses like a woman, and has two lesbian mothers as parents.

There's no saving that, and I'm not inclined to try.

Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Now you can just tell this person: "Sorry, this is a based and redpilled roleplaying group. Very stable geniuses only—no mentally-ill people allowed." Problem solved. (This specific wording is a joke, but the underlying meaning is not. However, I don't know whether the other members of your group would agree with this meaning.)


the question is how to handle it in such a way as to not scar this already likely friendless young adult

There's no saving that, and I'm not inclined to try.

These two statements seem contradictory. If the person is already scarred, why do you care so much?

I started off feeling sorry for the girl but the more comments from OP I read, the more I think she might be better off out of that group. She's making a bunch of 30+ year old men feel really uncomfortable that they can't engage in locker room talk and relive their glory days of high school badinage about gay orgy sex! How insensitive of her!

I'm really starting to wonder who exactly is behaving like the 17-18 year olds there.

I'm not going to be able to change this person's woke ideologue-ness because they are already woke af. While this group is not woke its also not anti-woke. I want to spare this person additional mental anguish because clearly they already have a lot of it.