That guy is probably his 50s — the sumo crowd is older, that particular chat did an age call out once and most people were men around that age.

Anyway — call me old fashioned, but I really don’t like it when people say to me “people like you should be dead” and you dismissing that as “silly” is pretty frustrating, honestly. I’m not annoyed that one random guy said something stupid to me, I’m frustrated because people like me get death threats all the time. And conservatives are actually killing us; one of my friends literally watched that woman get run over by a radical conservative in Charlottesville; this isn’t idle bluster, they really fucking hate us, and they really want us dead. Your thinking that this is about the fact that I didn’t get the last sick burn in completely misses the gravity of our current situation. (And, fwiw, the “burn” I offered up wasn’t even that witty or slick. It was intended as an example response for anyone who has to deal with a troll.)

Anyway; yes, not everyone has to go to college, but they do have to learn how to think critically if they want to avoid being manipulated. College is one place this can happen, but not the only place. Also, yes, the college system is predatory and I have a lot of issues with it, but it would also be disingenuous to claim it doesn’t sometimes teach valuable things.