Submitted 1 year ago by adrianhooves@lemmy.today to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Your writing style looks very young. I would’ve guessed that you were in high school, maybe on the earlier end.
If it’s friends online, you might want to focus on that. Proper capitalization and periods would help.
If it’s in real life, then you probably act or “feel” younger than you are. It could be something like not having “street smarts”.
How old are you? How tall are you? What is the timbre of your voice?
You type like a child. I was genuinely shocked to see in the comments that you’re a 21yo male. If this is how you talk to people who are closer to you, that might be the reason
Well, there’s not much to go on. We don’t know you, we don’t have any access to your friends, and you didn’t tell any story that might help us guesstimate what’s going on.
That being said, a lot of the time someone gets pegged as the “kid” of the group, it comes down to either their relative age, or their behavior.
Some people are just naturally more childlike. Not childish, though there can be overlap. The kind of folks that are bubbly, or energetically happy, or tend to have a certain naivete, that kind of thing. It comes off as younger to some people, so they’ll start treating that person as younger than they are.
But the other part is that sometimes even a year of age difference changes things when it comes to perceptions and group dynamics. You’re 21, so if they’re 22-25, it really can be enough of a gap to set you up in their heads as the “young” one.
That’s the stuff that tends to be common enough to fit without knowing more, or assuming anything about motivations.
Are you sure they are intending it in a diminutive sense and not a familiar or affectionate sense? Buddy is pretty common to call people you are being friendly with in American English at least. If you don’t like a nickname or term of endearment, you can tell your friends not to use it, but fair warning, friends of your age might just tease you about it instead of respecting your wishes.
I mean, just reading that question as one long run on sentence certainly didn’t make me think of you as an adult.
Also, might be a language thing, but buddy has almost no age connotations and is used pretty frequently across age groups.
Probably the autism.
You need to give more context about when they say that. Can you provide examples?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re going to have to actually talk to your friends.
Depending on your level of discomfort, you can do it in a group setting, “Hey, how come you guys always use belittling language towards me, it hurts.”
Or, you can ask face to face, but that might be more stressful, or it might not, I cannot speak for you or your friends.
To this point, not being direct and being overly concerned with what other people think could even be directly driving OP’s issue
The fact that you posted this question without any context on how old you are really, what you look like, how you behave, may be a clue as to your maturity.
Insurance companies don’t bill people as adults until 26 because our brains don’t finish developing fully until then and we make poorer choices in a statistically significant way until then.
So while the legal age of adulthood is often late teens to early twenties, the reality is you still probably act young in a way that older people pick up on.
When I was 21 I felt like I was an adult. But I wasn’t even finished growing, and looking back from 40 I was young and dumb and it was obvious to everyone but me.
Maybe the no swearing thing is part of the reason?
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Others have covered the main bits. But as someone else who has often been treated as young… it’s also possible to roll with it. Talk less and when you do talk, make it more about reflecting what someone says back to them. Then you’ll be perceived as young and smart instead of young and naive.
But I personally enjoy the fact that at over half a century, I can still hang out with people of any age and they feel like they can be themselves with me. Even if people in their 70s still treat me like a child.