Nowadays, I don't even know the ages of most of my friends, since they're all online and it's not a subject that pops up in conversation all too often.
^ And this thread topic made me think about this a lot.
Because, I mean, I feel the same way. People's ages aren't obviously visible, and I really have no reason to know the exact ages of everyone I interact with. I just let myself be friends with whoever feels like they would make for a good friend. And often times, there is a large age gap between myself and my friends. But that rarely feels like much of an issue.
And so when people in threads like these say that age gaps matter so much to them and that they don't befriend people far outside their age, like... it makes me wonder, how often do you check people's profiles on this site to see their age before you interact with them? I mean, like, sure, there are redstars and bluestars, but I don't think that really conveys a whole ton of information, at least on the redstar side of things. We know that bluestars are teenagers, but a redstar could be someone who just turned 18, or someone who's well into their 40s, or anywhere in-between. And when someone goes out of their way to avoid interacting with teen members and is only willing to befriend adults, it's like... you're treating a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old as being worlds apart, despite there probably being a much bigger gap in maturity and life experience between an 18-year-old and a 40-year-old.
It kind of makes me feel like people of different age groups could get along perhaps a lot better than they might expect, if we weren't so turned off by first impressions. In real life, a person's age is much more visibly obvious, so people can easily avoid developing friendships with people who are a very different age than them. And on Iwaku, anyone who wants to avoid interacting with teen members can easily do so, because we can easily identify teen members by their blue stars. But so long as you have that red star, and no one's going out of their way to check your age on your profile the first time they talk to you... well, I think it's surprisingly easy for an 18-year-old to get along just fine with a 40-year-old, despite the fact that, in real life, they might be too turned off by the obvious age gap to even get to know each other.