I support this as well! There are a lot of characters that I've left profile details out of because I don't want to accidentally expose minors to adult themes.
This came to mind after a friend of mind had an underage user favorite one of their characters that happened to deal with NSFW themes and the like. While there are ways to keep people under 18 out of certain threads now and to stop them seeing certain images, to my knowledge there still isn't a way to stop them from viewing a profile of a character that is completely NSFW!
For example, my character Kimiko, isn't a purely NSFW character, but by nature she is an inherently sexual character with a lot of sexual themes in her profile! But people under 18 can still go to her profile and look at all the info, no matter how much I try to censor it! I think this is a big issue and honestly, it would be worth having an option to age restrict characters so that underage people cannot gain access to them!
If this is something that already exists, please let me know! But I don't think you can do this currently and I think it's something that needs to be addressed!
@Aarca @Vitalitas
I think that's kind of just a band-aid solution? While I appreciate that some might be deterred by just a warning, other minors might not be and might just ignore the warning and look at the content anyway.
And, the issue isn't so much about what minors are ok with looking at personally. The issue is that some adults are uncomfortable with minors looking at NSFW content that they have produced. Not to mention the legal and moral issues too. Exposing minors to such content could even get an adult into trouble!
On another note, I appreciate everyone else's input! Hopefully we can get something like this implemented soon!
Honestly, I see most minors saying they just want access. Frankly I feel that most minors are going to say this and when I was younger i would have said the same. I can understand this and it makes sense that they want to feel adult and think that a warning for 'something bad might be ahead' is going to be enough. But I don't agree with this - especially when some of this material for me includes things I've very much kept from being posted to the site specifically because I've seen people so young looking at my page. I've also seen stuff like 'well I don't want to see stuff with sexual themes but gore and darker themes are okay'. The problem here is those aren't even always separate and while they might be some of the 'darker themes' might not necessarily be things that someone who is 12, 13, 14 would even consider.
I'm VERY uncomfortable with someone 15 years my junior looking at my page and write and have up until now made an effort to not put writing, character details and a lot of art up on it because of this. The site has had a steady influx of much much younger users. While we've had recent abilities to block images with warnings for gore or sexual content/nudity the ability to block entire characters would be incredibly nice. I have particular characters I would 100% NOT prefer that minors interact with at ALL. - whether people choose to lie about their age is their choice but at that point I can do nothing more.
@Yuna_Animatus Milesian
Okay, I get it now. I just wanted to put my opinion out there, but I honestly hadn't really thought about the legal stuff involved. I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable and not put anything up if there's a chance a minor could see it, so if people want the feature I understand! It would just be a little annoying for me to not be able to view someone's character, but that doesn't really matter if it would cause legal/uncomfortable-ness issues.
I support this idea, hopefully we get two options: One that just displays a warning that the character may include some questionable content on its page, (Hopefully with the ability to customize said message to warn for sensitive things like suicide as well), as well as one that just blocks the character from anyone who isn't 18. I have a lot of characters with very questionable content on their pages, even if I have none that are purely NSFW, and I would most certainly like to have the ability to give people a heads up before heading to the profile, as well as to hide the characters from minors if I so choose.
This would be really good. I have a handful of characters that are in some way BDSM or sex trade related. While some it may be only a minor thing and restricted to a couple images, others that is the CORE of their character, such as Vicoria, my mistress, Cam, my sex worker, and Kes, my sub. Kes in particular has a large bio filled out, and ALL his art (with very few exceptions) feature him in clothing on the fetish wear spectrum. I don't mark it NSFW because frankly I don't see it as suggestive when he is just standing there or looking cute like he does. But it is still BDSM related, which is not appropriate for under age. And I've realized recently that under age persons have done free art of one kind or another for him. And while I appreciate it I will admit it made me a little uncomfortable when I realized my highly sexual character was viewed and drawn by a minor, even if the image was non-sexual in nature. Being able to mark them as 18+ would give me a little piece of mind.
I completely understand that persons under 18 may or may not be ok with different types of things, and I respect that. I had friends who were writing and drawing NSFW content prior to becoming of "legal" age. I also fully believe there are some under age people who are more mature then some over age people, that is just life. But there are rules, laws and regulations in place for this kinda stuff. It can vary but you have to keep in mind there can be real and nasty repercussions for people concerning this stuff, on both ends.
@Yuna_Animatus
While I agree that it is a band aid solution, what I think you're proposing is that Toyhouse take the age of users and store it so they can't see characters PERIOD. I don't think this is right as it goes against many GENERAL (note the GENERAL) privacy policy conditions. Minors should have the choice whether or not to expose themself to that content and Toyhouse + it's users are not legally responsible. In reality, anyone can code or take something from code to put on top of their profile that tells viewers the triggers or NSFW content and what to avoid. On top of that, anyone can lie about their age on toyhouse or any other site, so I don't think this would be solving anything. Unless Toyhouse incorporates an part of the interface that allows users to add NSFW or 18+ tags to their character that would enable the block and allow users to choose whether they want to expose themselves to certain content similar to how discord approaches it, I don't approve.
Thank you for talking to me in a way that didn't belittle/look down on/patronize me, I really sincerely do appreciate it. I did not know that Toyhouse stored age.
Thank you for clearing this up- I see where you're coming from now. I agree with you completely. Though, I feel like there is a better way to program and code this than just excluding minors out of things (such as forum games) just because they can't bypass a barrier. As a child that was excluded a lot from my parents "protecting" me I missed out on a lot (Not to make you feel bad or anything don't take this the wrong way it is just I am looking from a minor's point of view) though I do still feel that toyhouse should be open and out there for everyone (it's hard enough just to get a code.)
Yeah, I think my problem lays in that a few of my characters have virtually no information because of discomfort over minors seeing information - things which don't necessarily simply have to do with sexual things, but when they are of a sexual nature go far past what something might simply be considered by someone under 18.
While I completely undrestand someone who feels they want to be grown up, or that they are being excluded, at the same time, I've also encountered forum games where things like 'smash or bash' or 'do you ship this oc with the above' gives me an underaged character among other situations. It's very difficult to convey the discomfort one feels in this situation - because while I've seen a lot of discourse of 'well we're not very different and we don't bite so stop avoiding us because you're over 18', as Motherbeast said a couple posts up, there are ramifications of a more legal nature that do put people in a very bad situation. This has led me to not rp with anyone under 18 and, as of now, avoid putting a lot of material up on TH.
Given the current massive influx of younger people onto the site, I think it would be very good to impliment this - especially given that the site saves your age in its code. I don't want the younger audience to feel left out - but I also am sure there are others like me who have avoided putting character information/artwork/details as well
Haha it's ok that it came into a novel, I enjoy reading it as you do explain your point of view thoroughly. I agree with you 100% now! Thank you for having an (er, debate? I am not sure what to call this) with me and explaining the pros and cons. I think that is definitely a good way to implement it in a way that it is fair for everyone in a sense. 😄
I'm all for this. <.< A lot of my characters revolve around mature content, and I'm heavily uncomfortable with the idea of their interacting with a minor. Gore, darker themes, sexual content. And a lot of it is pertaining to themes I can't just wrap up in ribbon of tags or warnings, because the specifics of the content isn't even something I want to be accessible to minors - there's a lot of reason that things in regard to minors are just bundled in 'NSFW', and it's because there's a good deal of legitimately sensitive content that nobody can really know the depth or sensitivity of until it's already been exposed to them. I think Milesian made a good comment of this - that someone who's 12, 13, 14, could say they're comfortable with darker themes, without knowing the entire depth to which darker themes really pertain.
It's for this reason I keep a lot of my characters straight up entirely hidden to everyone, or keep a lot of images hidden, or have no profile information.
I know that minors do, and frequently will lie about their age on the internet (I did). There's nothing I can do about that. But this extra step at least would be nice.
As for the forum games... there are some too that I would be equally uncomfortable interacting with minors in, tbh. Like there are several that are in themselves inherently nsfw, but there's also ones like 'ship x character with the one above your's'... sorry but I'm not even comfortable shipping my tamer characters with, again, someone potentially half my age.