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.
To me it’s less a matter of what you consume media wise and how you consume it. Being super into something like Disney movies as an adult is fine but to me a Disney Adult is one who still approaches it like a child with no analytical outlook whatsoever and it being the ONLY sort of media they interact with. I know plenty of people who I work with who are adults who pretty much only ever watch kids movies. That’s the childish part to me.
This is the perfect way I’ve been struggling to say it. I know several Marvel adults and tried finding common ground with them, because they’re my coworkers and I’m trapped in a room with them all day anyway. I really like the X-men and have since I was a kid, so I tried talking about the social justice allegories, how Professor X is a kind of representation of MLK Jr, how the 2000s movies are clearly an allegory for being a gay runaway in America. They all looked at me like I just ate a live cockroach. None of them had any clue what I was talking about and said I was reading too deeply into it, or that I was just making shit up. It was frustrating, because I like analyzing stuff.
You don’t even need to be like, someone who actively analyzes stuff cause I get that’s a hobby almost but if you’re gonna be surface level then as you get older you should still want a meatier surface level at some point.