With secondhand trading becoming more active recently, beyond Joonggonara and Danggeun Market a lot of new arrivals are coming into Dosa as well.
Structurally Dosa is not an easy place for young teenagers to come across, but it seems they end up here while hunting for secondhand items.
As you know, if you look at the comments on posts written by teenagers, the ones that reek of what people call schoolkids, there is a strong tendency to shut them out regardless of whether the content is true.
While wondering what problems lie behind this, I am jotting down my own thoughts.
Since Dosa is a club community, there is an unwritten rule that conversation among club members is conducted with a certain formality. Put simply, basic manners and courtesy.
But the schoolkids write in the way they normally talk, without knowing this unwritten rule, so in the eyes of existing members it inevitably looks rude or careless.
They sometimes repeat questions that a search would answer immediately, post a question and then fail to respond properly to answers, or leave comments unrelated to the context of the post. With the exaggerated tone, boasting and pointless junk posts typical of fixie culture mixed in, I fully understand why existing members feel fatigue. I too do not always view such posts kindly.
Nor am I saying that behavior that muddies the water should be tolerated simply because someone is a teenager.
The problem, though, is that at some point an atmosphere emerged in which people go beyond criticizing the wrong 'behavior' and view an entire post negatively simply because the writer is young.
Before looking at whether the content is true or whether there is a problem with the question itself, the labels "schoolkid" or "fixie kid" get stamped on first. Even for the same content, things that would pass if an adult wrote them draw unusually sharp reactions when a young person writes them.
Of course, from the existing members' point of view, prejudice is bound to form because they have seen countless similar posts.
It is also true that some fixie users have caused trouble, behaved rudely and repeatedly shown themselves incapable of normal conversation.
But I do not think those few cases should become the standard for judging all young users.
Teenagers who come to Dosa for the first time are highly likely not to know the atmosphere or the unwritten rules here. It is only natural, in a way, that they bring over the tone they used in other communities. Expecting them from the very start to be perfectly courteous, to make searching a habit, and to write in the way existing members want may be a little much.
If there is something wrong, you can simply tell them.
If they keep repeating the same behavior after being told, or become rude, it is not too late to criticize them then.
But if they are mocked and sneered at from their very first post, or dismissed as people because of their age, those young people will leave without ever getting a chance to learn Dosa's culture. And then all that will remain is the perception that "Dosa really is a community of old fogeys."
A cycling community too is sustained only when new people keep coming in. Even a young person riding a fixie now may in time take an interest in road bikes, study equipment, and later become a member who participates normally.
I do not deny that there are cases of fixie riders coming to Dosa, writing junk posts and muddying the water. There really are many such posts, and behavior that makes existing members uncomfortable certainly exists.
But an attitude of viewing every post negatively simply because someone rides a fixie, or simply because a post reeks of a schoolkid, is not the picture of a healthy community either. Point out wrong behavior as behavior, but I hope we do not judge people in advance by their age and the bike they ride.
If we ask new arrivals to respect the existing culture, should existing members not also show at least the minimum leeway for new arrivals to learn that culture?
These are just the thoughts that came to me while looking at recent posts and comments.
