"Presumptuous" is (nevermind the unfairness) far less concerning compared to the arrogance that speaking on behalf of the entire art world and/or zeitgeist entails.
I try not to be presumptuous- as I honestly have no idea what art is because I’m too old to keep up- so maybe you can give me some examples that buck the trend? If not I’ll just assume you’re offended because you’re old. And honestly, if you think art is as easy as retiring and doing it; you deserve to be assumed to be presumptuous. You have a lot to prove and nothing to lose. Suck it up. Prove yourself or deal with mediocrity. Or worse, you’re just pretending.
So if you have no idea what art is because you're too old, why do you presume you can gate-keep art for others?
> I’ll just assume you’re offended because you’re old.
I very strongly suspect I'm younger than you. And I've no personal interest in artistic pursuits, to be explicit.
The only reason I took offence was that you were, in short, acting offensively. Even shorter - you were an asshole.
In the longer - you were telling people who wanted to pursue art that they were presumptuous for daring to do so because they weren't the right age in your opinion. That far exceeds presumption and veers directly into arrogance, as I mentioned earlier.
> Prove yourself or deal with mediocrity
We are nearly all, in the scheme of things, mediocre. That's just how normal distributions work.
But, you don't have to shit in someone else's Weetbix just because you're feeling your age and Scrooge's "Bah humbug" makes more sense than ever.
Just stick to yelling at those damn kids to get off your damn lawn.
You’ve read too much into what I’ve said and taken too much offense. Text is hard so I don’t blame you. “retiring and doing art” is an absurdly simplistic path to point someone towards and it’s not helpful to anyone who wants to actually create anything at all. And it probably doesn’t work in most cases.
You seem to be aggressively pushing the idea that "doing art" means a very specific thing - i.e. influencing millions. Someone painting for their own pleasure is also art. And even if they never exhibited it, they are still creating things. Your definitions seem far too narrow.