The Average Age of a Digger

Since becoming aware of Digg a few years ago I've always had mixed feelings about it and it's users. The site itself is very well put together technically, offers a ton of almost real-time up-to-date links, and was created by Kevin Rose whom I feel is a good spokesman for my generation online. The one thing that never sat well with me though were the comments on submitted stories. After reading Slashdot for almost ten years and being exposed to a exceptional moderation system, reading Digg's lead something to be desired. At first I thought it was simplistic up/down style moderation, letting drivel like "dugg!" through and me actually having to see it, but gradually I came to realize it was something else: age.

The average Digger to me, from the way they write to the insights they express, has always appeared to be in the under 18 category. I'm not judging them on their grammar or spelling, but with Slashdot whenever I read an insightful or interesting comment there's just this sense that it was written by a knowledgeable adult. Digg have never had that, comments are usually only a sentence or two, and rarely link to other sources. I still read Digg daily to get interesting links, but only rarely do I venture into the comments for fear that I may somehow get sucked into some comment abyss. Today though, I finally have solid evidence that these comments, and in fact most of Digg, are run by people under the age of 18. That evidence is Pokemon.

The top story for today in Gaming (although it has the most out of any digg section) is "Catch Mew-FINALLY!". Now the phrasing of the title aside, I saw this an immediately thought to myself "WTF is Mew?" Like Jason Mewes? Or something like the flu? As I ventured into the linked page I learned Mew was some type of Pokemon creature that you apparently could only capture by using a cheat device like The Gameshark or something else. So how does this solidify my belief in diggers being not of legal age? Well the Pokemon games (Yellow/Red/Blue) they mention weren't released until 1999, when I was 18 years old. At that age I missed the whole Pokemon craze, but remember the age group that was playing it then, 6-10 years old. Making them at most 16 and at least 12 today.

Now the story itself was technically interesting , but then I saw the comment count was up to 200+ (a rarity for most stories, even the popular ones) with the majority of them reminiscing about playing the game in their "youth". I don't mean to rag on these kids, since I did the same thing about old NES and Atari games when I was their age, it just proves to me why I've always felt Digg was wrong for me. I'll still continue to visit Digg, but I don't plan to really participate in it since the comment moderation and digging of stories will most likely be judged by the generation below me.