Just saying because nearly every person I know who has ADHD and/or Autism (including myself) seems to care less about people knowing they’re into “childish” things.
Also the idea that this is a new phenomenon because Millenials and older gen Z are “soft” or stunted in some way.
I mean, boomers have model trains and and cars. So did their parents. My grandma used to knit herself plushies. This isn’t new. You don’t suddenly stop having your old likes because you reach a certain age.
Absolutely nothing wrong with having hobbies or being into childish things but to me “manchild” shit starts to arise when you start doing shit like gatekeeping your hobbies from women and poc or attack anyone trying to make it inclusive. Disney, Nintendo, Marvel et all are billion dollar industries after all thanks to adults flush with excess cash.
That’s my take.
Most of those products are fine (as far as products go in the burning hellworld we live in) but being a toxic gatekeepery tribalistic dipshit about them is not.
Who is the prototypical manchild, it’s like an older unhygienic dude in a fedora who’s an asshole and sore loser (and a even sorer winner) that hogs tables at your friendly local gamestores pokemom tcg event who also manages to turn away any non older unhygienic dudes with hateful rhetoric and antiquated attitudes. Or I guess there’s the weird right wing youtube commentators with a cartoon as an avatar gatekeeping TV aimed at children (that was not made with them in mind, like the modern She-Ra or whatever and that they have no personal childhood connection to).
I guess Disney Adult isn’t like that, the prototypical Disney Adult is probably a mid 30s lady making 6 figures with an email job who spends tens of thousands of dollars on Disney stuff and vacations and probably talks about Disney a lot. It probably doesn’t help that they have theater kid vibes as well. But at least they aren’t harmful or hateful like “manchildren.” Nintendo Adult is a new thing to me, I don’t know which way they swing between God awful manchild or inoffensive Disney Adult.