[bartread]

> 10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions.

Just in case anybody else picks up on this and wonders what's so wrong with asking a girl out on a date, based on when @corbett attended MIT, RMS would have been about 50 at the time. A ~50 year old man immediately asking out a 19 year old girl the first time he meets her, even if it were intended as a (bad) joke, registers as pretty damn creepy.

The other points, assuming true at face value, all seem well made.

[c0l0]

When my parents met and fell in love, my father was 48 years old, and my mother was 21. I was born four years later.

My father died two years ago, at the age of 86. My mother lovingly cared for him during these last and toughest months of his.

I'm not even sure why I am sharing this here... I guess it just upset me that you, effectively, called him a creep. Maybe try not to judge people who seek (and sometimes even manage to find) love in ways you are not willing to try or to understand.

[bartread]

Oh, come on. I don't know anything about the context in which your parents met, how they got to know eachother, or how they got together.

But I do know that on this specific occasion RMS met somebody who was young enough to be his daughter and then some, and the first thing he did is hit on her. I'd bet that nine times out of ten the girl on the receiving end of that kind of attention will feel extremely uncomfortable. I make that bet both regretfully and confidently because I was a member of an organisation where this happened on multiple occasions and I saw exactly this play out. Girls were made to feel very uncomfortable and creeped out to the point that they were reluctant to be involved. Men were asked to leave because of it.

I understand where you're coming from, and I understand why you might be upset, but I wasn't attacking you or your parents, and I do not apologise for my point of view because the vast majority of the time the behaviour I've outlined is going to come off as creepy to the girl on the receiving end of it.