Gatekeeping of Opinions in the Facebook Groups
This is when people get offended over someone's opinion and ask that it be removed from the group. Typically, nothing is wrong with the supposedly offensive opinion. It is an opinion, and everyone is entitled to have their own opinion.
That kind of gatekeeping is wrong. However, I do my own share of gatekeeping, and it involves preventing people from being hurt by unkind statements. The unkind statements fall into two categories.
The first type consists of mean comments aimed at specific collectors. These people will mention a specific person, website, or eBay listing, and then proceed to make nasty statements. I have deleted several of those over the years. I will protect collectors from having their feelings hurt by mean collectors. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to protect myself from that. I end up seeing the attacks made on me, but I do try to spare other people from experiencing that hurt.
The second type of unkind statement is when members aim insults at teenagers and Millennials. What's weird is that most of these people think that Millennials and teenagers are the same generation. They aren't. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996. The very oldest current teenagers were born during 2002. At least get the generations right if you're going to throw out insults. Otherwise, your insults make no sense.
Whenever I see a generational insult, I remove it. We need the younger collectors. If we chase them away, then our hobby and all interest in it will soon cease to exist.
This is a breakdown of the membership of the Collecting Vintage Children's Series Books group by age. The percentages do not add to 100, which was caused by Facebook's rounding of the numbers. That drives me crazy (I teach math), but I don't have the information to fix it.
28% - age 65+
26% - ages 55-64
20% - ages 45-54
15% - ages 35-44
8% - ages 25-34
1% - ages 18-24
I am in the middle of the 45-54 age range. Let's say that half of the people in my range are older and that half are younger. This means that 64% of the group's members are older than me. I have always known that I was one of the younger collectors. When I first got online in the 1990s, probably 90-95% of collectors were older than me. The percentage has dropped, but even now that I am much older, most collectors are still older than me.
I remember those early days online. Just about nobody liked the revised text books. I read those growing up, so I liked them fine. I agree that the original text Nancy Drew books are usually better, but it was distressing that just about everyone acted like my beloved revised text Nancys were awful.
Even now, since most collectors are older than me, the majority opinion continues to be that the original text books are the only good ones. Opinion has softened somewhat, since those people, while still the majority, are not the extreme majority.
It's not a problem that people like the original text books better. It's how they say it. Some of these people act obnoxious, saying that all Nancy Drew books from after an arbitrary date are "trash." Not as much of that happens now as it once did, but that viewpoint is still quite prevalent.
Negative statements about the modern Nancy Drew books can also drive away the younger collectors. I'm not that young, but I avidly collect all of the softcover Nancy Drew books. I have complete sets of Nancy Drew #57-175, Files, Girl Detective, and Diaries (these in the pricier hardcover edition). Consider my age and that I am open to collecting these books. Some collectors older than me make terrible, judgmental statements about all of the softcover Nancy Drew books. If I were very young, I'd flee. Why would I want to stay in a group with people who hate what I like?
Gen X and Millennials are the end of the line for series book collectors. We have a number of Millennial collectors and a very few Gen Z collectors, but our fandom is a dying breed. Insulting Millennials is foolish. Insulting Gen Z is even worse since we can't afford to alienate the very few young people who will join the hobby. Let's not chase them off.
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