I feel like the fandom doesn't actually have that much concern for the minors who hang around, instead we tend to just be annoyed with them. But could we talk about WHY they're here? The majority of BTD fans I've seen who turned out to be or were plainly stating themselves as minors have been heavily traumatized and unstable, kids who think abusive behaviors in REAL LIFE mind you, are somehow desirable. They lack the ability to separate fiction from reality and it kind of seeps into their mindsets which gets them in danger a LOT. Most of them have been groomed into the fandom, I've noticed, too, which is even worse in my opinion. Why don't we call out the clear predators in our community like we do with minors? Because they're not so annoying??
Minors should NOT be in these spaces at all, but there are REASONS they tend to be here, and those reasons are often very worrying. I wish people actually brought it up more.
This is true and I agree with you, but I have to say, in defense of the fandom, the reason we don't call out predators as much as we call out kids is because predators aren't known, not because they're less-annoying. In my experience, we do a good job of taking the trash out, but we can't do that if we don't know what's trash and what's another man's treasure. There's also factors involving cancel-culture mentality and hesitance of acting alone, seeing as there are some bad-seeds in the community who like to target specific users based off trivial or juvenile circumstances, and also users who are too afraid to confront someone in the case they are wrong or they receive push-back. There is definitely a dialogue that can be had here, though.
At the end of the day, and I feel we can all agree, this is an adult space. I feel for them, I wish they could have been protected, I wish they were well, but there are much more resources available to them as children than adults who were once victimized children, themselves. Take advantage of it, nip your mental health's cancer in the bud while you can, don't come to a fandom space to solve your problems, because it absolutely wont. The solution is removing kids altogether.
And if worse comes to worse and you need a place to cope, Strade, Ren, Lawrence, whoever aren't going anywhere and will be here when appropriate. Work on saving yourself in the meantime. Maybe you wont even need them.
