Because it may have seemed like a good idea at the time. And then he went about his real-life activities - work or hobbies or meeting this girl’s parents or whatever - and made his decision, having forgotten that he’d actually asked for advice here. It’s a possibility.
This is a community, certainly, but not to everyone. For some of us, it’s a place to spend some time during the day reading grammatically clean discussions. And that’s about it.
Advice is not always heard nor accepted, is most often ignored, and that’s human nature. People who give advice often feel let down by this because it is a gentle blow to their ego and is definitely a waste of their time. That’s human nature too.
Featherlou calls this a mild pitting, and I agree with him. It’s one of those annoyances in life that do prick for a second or two. I’m sure I’m guilty of starting threads and forgetting about them, or responding and neglecting follow-up. Is that marginally poor netiquette? Sure. Awful enough to justify the fervour your post seems to project? I rather doubt it.
I’m thinking about wrapping my cat in duct tape and using it as a doorstop - is this a bad idea?
And when I say I’m thinking about it, I mean I’ve already done it but I desperately need someone to provide me with a justification for my having done it since I can’t justify it myself.
Do you take every bit of advice offered you immediately, especially advice intended over decades of your life? I don’t. I consider it, often keep doing what I’m doing as I ponder over it, and if I accept it, sometimes it takes a few weeks or months for me to accept the decision as my own. What’s the big deal? Did we all sign some sort of “I will put my brain into escrow and take any strongly worded advice I get” sort of contract?
So what advice exactly should he follow? There were two pages of responses that ranged from “burn in hell, fucking pedo” to “ride, Sally, ride”. Is there some objective rational criteria that he should use to determine which of all the advice given he should blindly follow just because he asked? (please don’t say majority rules)
Perhaps I was a wee too shrill-(the caps and the bolding). However, I stand by when I say I find it pretty annoying when people start threads-and then don’t even comment on what was said. Dude didn’t even address any of it. It’s his life, yeah. But it’s still pretty stupid to ask for advice-and then not even bother to say why you’re not taking it. Or even say, “Well, thanks, but I think it’ll be okay.” (At least, I don’t recall him doing so)
Oops, no it isn’t. For some reason, I thought Freejooky was in one of the many states in which the AoC is 16. He’s in Illinois, however, where the AoC is 17; nevertheless, my point stands, since A) there’s no evidence of a sexual relationship and B) he apparently has the blessing of the girl’s parents.
As Sofis said, how were you disrespected? The way I’m reading it, you were disrespected because your advice was not followed. What am I missing? Sure, a lot of people take the time to share their own, personal experiences. What if I were to have asked two years ago, “Is it worth it for me to go to graduate school?” and all the people who happened to view that thread were people who didn’t do well or had bad experiences in grad school? Would it have been disrespectful for me to have gone to grad school, anyway, even though a lot of people told me it was a bad idea? You’ll note in the original thread that there were a handful of people who said they met their SO in a similar situation. Would the OP have been disrespecting them had he followed the advice of the majority?
As people have pointed out in that thread (especially Sailboat and his cousin who is in jail), he’s playing with serious fire here. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing - it can turn very badly for him based on what it appears he’s doing. Most people wouldn’t touch that situation with a ten-foot pole.
Here’s something I figured out when I was abut 14, years before I ever read Jean-Paul Sartre: a lot of the time when people ask for advice, they are actually asking for you to tell them to do whatever it is they already want to do (or have even already done). If your advice is NOT what they already wanted to do, they’re going to ignore it.
Knowing that this is common doesn’t make it any less annoying, though. If someone already knows what they want to do and isn’t going to be persuaded otherwise, they should skip the cowardly approval-seeking and just do it. The end result will be the same, and other people’s time won’t have been wasted. This also spares others the guilt of “What if I’d been more persuasive in my argument?” when and if things go wrong.
I think asking about dating an underage girl (an action that could have legal consequences) is a hell of a lot difference than asking if it’s worth it to go to grad school. :dubious:
Why? We convict innocent people who are seeing a girl with the consent of her parents? I don’t know what was up with Sailboat’s cousin - but its possible that he was actually engaging in statutory rape - which Freejooky is apparently NOT.
I don’t know what the consent of her parents has to do with it. The state prosecutes and convicts on behalf of the people in society.
As to what they might charge, it’s already been established in this thread that she’s underage in his state. Depending on the laws in his state, all he would have to do would be to (if the laws are similar in his state):
If he did any of these things, if these laws apply in his state, he is no longer innocent as to the laws of his state.
Regardless of the sincerity of the advice, or ramifications for following or not following it, it isn’t disrespectful to the advice giver if the advice receiver chooses not to take it. I truly don’t understand the sentiment.
