Help me stereotype and pigeonhole people.

September 17, 2010 8:43 AM

How is this thread anything but an invitation to perpetuate ageist stereotypes?

When people are asked to share stereotypes, this kind of answer is inevitable. In fact, it's exactly what's being requested:

But the one thing that seems to be nearly universal is that once people hit 45 or so, they can and will talk endlessly about their own and other people's medical conditions.

Would this question have been allowed to stand, if asked about any other group?

posted by Wordwoman to Etiquette/Policy at 8:43 AM (4 comments total)

We're sort of talking about this same general topic two questions down. I was hoping the person who asked the question about older people would have come back to the thread and explained why he asked such a weird question, like maybe there was a real reason and it was unclear. So we left it open hoping for the best and realistically it's slowing down and not turning into a total disaster. Since we'd really like not to keep track of a bunch of MeTa threads on basically the same topic, can we follow-up in the one that is already open talking about gender issues, I think the overgeneralization theme is pretty much the same.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:47 AM on September 17, 2010

Let's just burn effing AskMe down to the ground already.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:47 AM on September 17, 2010 [14 favorites]

Would this question have been allowed to stand, if asked about any other group?

Yes.
posted by Memo at 8:48 AM on September 17, 2010

I'm going to close this, feel free to continue the discussion in the open thread.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:51 AM on September 17, 2010