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I've been somewhat curious for a while as to what the general age range is for CYS users.  I'm guessing the average is in the 14-16 range, but if anyone else has any speculation feel free to comment!

Well, actually, most of the users here are 18 years of age or more. Especially the ones that post more often/reply more often on The Lounge. I myself am fourteen.

Most of the really young kids were driven off with the various purges, and while 14-16 or so used to be common, it's been a couple years for most of those members that are still around. The site doesn't skew anywhere near as young as it used to, thank God.

That might explain the recent decline in the shitty fan fictions lmao

Warrior Cat ban took out most of those, and swift and brutal retribution on anyone who seems poised to follow in their footsteps is also a factor.

Agreed. Back in the day of Warrior Cats, there were many kids under 10 probably browsing or posting on the website. The ban took care of those, and cut back on the fanfictions.

Yeah it seems most of the stories posted have a better quality than a couple years ago.

The last time JJJ was around he added that 48 hour wait in between creating a game and publishing it too, which I think also has been a big factor. No more 90 minute masterpieces flooding the new games list. The sort of idiot inclined to do so rarely has the attention span or patience required to wait a couple days.

Some people can crank out a good story in a couple of days and most.....well can't 

There's a ban on Warrior Cats?

Affirmed.

Excellent name/post combo.

I’m pretty sure that those in the lair, with an exception, do not fall into this speculation.

Mayana isn't human though. I'm sure she counts as an adult if you calculate her age out in blind-years.

No, we age the same, so we can better hide in the monkey ... er, human population. You're out of luck, I'm still an annoying teenager. :)
There are still many children on the site, but for sure less than before. Many of them got banned or left after we deleted their stories. But we don't have that many old people either. IAP is the oldest one I know on here. We need some 80 year olds.

e: nevermind, now it loaded

Really no way to know, just random guessing. I'd still suspect it is closer to 16 than 25.

It seems that there's at least a few 30-40 something year olds, a nice amount of 16-18 years olds, and then people in their early twenties.  Personally I'm 22 so I guess I'm close enough to the average lmao

I can confirm I am with in the estimated 16-25 being 16 myself.

Wow.  Well, my presence here is skewing the average age upwards.

Nah, we've got several people in the 20 to 40-something range. We're all just conspicuously not listing ages in here lol.

A lot depends on the definition of 'CYS users' though, because I'm only counting forum people who participate in the site in some fashion.

I'd say the age is higher than that. Our mods these days are old enouph to have a kid as old as some of our younger members. Our better writers are all pretty old (past 18). In face, I believe there were only two to have featured games since I was here that were in any way young. 

So, the older you get, the more mature and generally better at writing you get! These days we don't have many young ones. btw, I'm 19 in case you'd want to know. I'd feel like an arse to not somewhat after not amswering your question after typing all of this.

18-19 currently seems to be a really popular age around here. Although I think most of them have been around a couple years and so obviously were closer to the OP's guess at the time.


I think Crescent is the youngest author to get anything featured in awhile. Although I believe Steve was 17 when he did Achilles and Path of Death and the like.

Yeah, I think I was.

Guess I’ll join that younger age group of people who’ve gotten a story featured. Age seventeen is a golden age for writing. Well, at least for me it is.

Yea, that'd been nice for me to have. Other than CYS's friendly Irishman and Cres, you've been the youngest featured writer I've seen since I've been here. (Of course, 3J had some stuff way.)

Hey, I just wanted to say good job on the contest. You were really close to a top 3 finish. I hope you keep entering contests in the future. - Sethaniel
?I'm still kicking myself in the pants for voting my own storygame last in all categories (since I misread the directions like a retard). Doing otherwise probably would've put Solstice in the top three and given me a featured storygame. :( 

I'm 17 now as well, but I was 13 when I joined and 14 when I wrote and published my only two stories. The older I get the lazier I get to be honest.

I thought you were in your early 20s.

JJJ I think was 13 or so when he was getting stuff featured here, there might have been a couple of others during that MAG period that were young too since the story qualification for getting featured weren’t as high as they are now.

But most of those have been taken down now anyway.

I actually was in that age range back when I first joined the site. God I'm getting old.

Time to trade in that flesh sketch for a skull.

I'm 22 and what I've always thought is that people here are like grumpy old man/woman that are like 25+, with the occasional 9 year old retards.

25+ grumpy man/woman I think of as more the ideal we're trying to achieve, but for many of our members that will unfortunately take a few years.

I'm quite surprised by how young people are here lol. And I hope they don't misunderstand the "grumpy" remark. I got a grumpy old man and I really like him because of that. lol

The size of the site is very appealing for those who can find it. However I left awhile back because there was a basically if your not serious or good at writing you should leave situation, I’m sadly horrendous at writing in general so i felt discouraged.

No one here has an issue with bad writers. Most everyone has an issue with bad writers that put out no effort or willingness to grow.

It's not skill that's expected, as Bucky said, it's hard work. If you work hard at something, you'll usually create something that's not half-bad.

I think it's more 'if you're not willing to put in any effort, don't bother', which goes for most things in life. (AKA if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, which I'm sure you've heard before.)

It's not very difficult to get a rating of 3 or higher even if you're still learning. 'Write in English' and 'have your storygame contain either a story or a game' is all the site standards boil down to.

If you feel discouraged by criticism itself however that would be more of a barrier. If there are obvious ways to improve a story, people are going to point them out, and it's assumed a desire for honest feedback is a big part of the reason people write here in first place.

Even if you're not working in a storygame at all though you can still participate and improve the site by writing reviews. Most members don't have their own games.

Like everyone else, I'd assume a good chunk of the site is in the 18+ range. The best writers are definitely in that range, probably in the 21+ range actually. I fall in the 14-16 range; 15, turning 16 this year. Was about 11 or so when I joined the site. I like to think I'm slightly less fucking retarded now, if only a little.

I guess I'm old but most of the site's standards. I'm 46. I'll be 47 on Thursday.  I honestly thought most people would be around my age bracket because we grew up with Edward Packard's Choose Your Own Adventure Books back in the 80's. I guess it's a good thing that there's a lot of young blood here. Keeps the momentum of the whole interactive fiction movement in full-swing. 

Traditional interactive fiction communities (authors of parser IF like the old Infocom games) tend to be dominated by people who are 30+, but CYOAs at some point became trendy with kids, probably because of being mobile friendly and less of a hurdle for indie devs than regular games.

But you're about Endmaster's age actually so that's a good place to be. You should post more, particularly about what idiots millennials are and how the world has been going downhill since the 80s.

He's actually older than me, he's closer to IAP's age.

He can still feel free to rant about idiot millennials and how the world has been going downhill since the 80s though.

The generation below them is even worse. Millennials are retarded for a lot of reasons, but they aren’t eating laundry detergent.

Pffh, your generation fucked up the economy, hated gays and were generally shitheads.

It's okay Bucky, we consider you an honorary grumpy old bastard, millennial status doesn't matter.

But yes, people born around 2000 tend to be retarded and fragile in ways too varied and hilarious to fully describe. Only the complex baby/bathwater separating mechanism and thorough threshing/refining process CYS now employs keeps the forum as good as it is.

Here, a list of the generation age ranges so everyone can tell exactly who is shit and who is superior. (This only applies to superior western culture. Other barbaric cultures have their own lists)

Lost Generation born 1883 - 1900
G.I. Generation born 1901 - 1927
Silent Generation born 1928 - 1945
Baby Boomers born 1946 - 1964
Generation X born 1965 - 1979
Millennials born 1980 - 1994
iGeneration born 1995 - 2010

Steve’s probably thinking of the Baby Boomers that fucked up the economy and hated gays (Though that one is more obvious in the previous gens). As far as being shitheads, that pretty much could apply to any of them.

In any case, the oldest we got here that I know of are Gen Xers. Even Thomas and IAP are Gen Xers (on the older side of course)

I thought my generation was called Gen. Z but apparently I stand corrected.

It's one of the many names, but the iGeneration one is apparently that label is gaining in popularity. Millennials were called "Gen Y" for awhile before their current label stuck.

I actually didn't realize the millennial label went back as far as 1980. >.>

Eh, they always sort of get hazy on when these generations begin and end by a couple years or so. There's bound to be overlap.

I didn't know they got rid of the Y label.

Apparently they got rid of their Y chromosomes as well.

Who needs those pesky X or Y chromosomes anymore? ;)

Quit discriminating against me by lumping me into a generation I don't identify with. ^_^

According to this I'm at the very tail end of Generation X, having been born in '79.  Some places list Gen X going all the way to '82.  Apparently it's not scientific enough for people to agree where the Generations begin and end. ;)

I'm in those years of transition form Millennial (yuck) and iGen (yuck^2). My father is a (late) boomer, my mother is a Gen X (though an early one), I may fall into Millennial, and my younger brother are most assuredly iGen.

I always thought that Millennial are those who remember 1,999 suddenly become 2,000 and iGen grew up with tech. I do not fall into either of those categories. I'm surprised we have nobody pushing past 55 here.

Haha, look at this adorable infant using words like a grownup. So precocious! :3

At least I can always remind myself that I'm older than Steve! :)

Is that an achievement? Age isn't necessarily a good thing.

All generations above mine tend to be shit, so there's no reason to be proud to be among them. The so called greatest generation got back from killing Nazis to tell the niggers there was no way they were sitting down in their part of the bus, the silent generation did so fucking little they were known as the silent generation, and even then, wanted blacks to know their place, the Baby Boomers shit themselves over Socialism and shit out Bush and Trump wile gloating about how their shitty media was so good and bringing about stupid nostalgia, and Generation X are the faggots who were shit on for being slackers and for liking Grunge and black music, and then shit on the next generation for the exact same thing.

Really, a bunch of faggots the whole way back.

Age twenty will be cool for you though, that's when even the kids who got held back a few years graduate to not being pointlessly mysterious about their gender so that it's easier for normal people to refer to them in conversation.

Wibbins is a girl. This is not a question up for debate.

I find it wonderfully amusing to see such troubles. I will do so if one of two things happen. Preferably, it'd be more of a definite point where I'd (unrelated to the reveal) go from random nice person to CYS nice user. :)

Presumably anyone past the age of 55 is too busy fucking up the economy, hating gays and being a shithead.

(Not necessarily in that order)

Makes sense. I mean any one of those is a full time job.

I'm 18 (and was when I joined a couple of months ago).

That said, I believe I was around 15 when I started reading the stories on this site. I always loved "choose your path" type stories (the number of different names this category is given is astonishing) from an early age. I found DMW (and this site) after I read a book called "Blood of the Zombies", and craved more of it. DMW was definitely the best online zombie choose your adventure I found, along with a couple of other good ones like "Zombie Exodus".

I'm old enough that I'm taking collage level classes. 
Which sorta gives me a brief flash of feeling old. 
I'm not, really. 
Just a little flash of it. 
Cause with my first account, I signed up when I was 12 or 13 I think. 
I agree with the other users - at some point the average age was probably around 13-ish. Now I think it's more around the 16+ range for most people. 

Collage: A piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing.

College: An educational institution or establishment, in particular.

You're around 16 or 17 if you're taking "collage level classes", and you were 12 or 13 when you joined the site. 

*college

*too late      ;)

Although, in all fairness, I suppose you could be attending some kind of art college and actually be taking classes about making collages.

If that is the case, I would like to retract my initial correction.

 

 

I mean, I suppose that's what graphic design is partially about. Arranging different things in a aesthetically pleasing manner. If you count that, then I'm taking a college level collage class. 

Honestly, there are worse errors to make in English. :)

To add to the question of age, I'm 38.  I know I'm not THE oldest person on the site, but I'm definitely on the older end.

19

Again, just like with Wibbons, I thought you were in your early 20s.

When I first joined I was in that age range. Now I'm in my early twenties.

Oh, you do have one baby boomer on this site, although I was born so near the end that I don’t feel much like a baby boomer.

When I was in high school, some students were given accounts to use the mainframe at a nearby engineering college, as part of a computer class.  It didn’t take us long to discover the games.  I can remember playing Adventure, Star Trek, Zork (which I didn’t care for as much) and a few others.  Our time for playing games was quite limited, though, much to our frustration.

Although the official CYOA series was barely getting started when I was in high school, I can assure you that there were other books in existence before then that used that idea:  you’d make your decision and flip to the appropriate page.  In fact, those books were written for an older audience than the CYOA books, and were portrayed as quite the intellectual pursuit, believe it or not.

So that was my introduction to the genre.  Kept us busy when we weren’t hunting dinosaurs to extinction and wrecking the economy for future generations.

Cool, we now officially have four generations of CYSers on here.

Though for all we know there are a shitload from Silent Generation on here and they’ve all just been lurking the whole time.

I know a dude in his sixties on an IF forum, I should try to get him over here to improve diversity.

I'm 11

Great.

I don't know why but I laughed at your reaction. lol

Grand.

You're not alone. :)

Oh Christ in Heaven.

I suppose there are worse things to base a story off of.

I think as long as it is not warrior cat-based it's tolerable. Warrior cats is not that bad tbh, It's just that the warrior cat fanfics eons ago are still causing PTSD on some of the witnesses of that historic event. And for those who don't know, yes, it was that bad that mizal still gets triggered at the mention of the word "warrior".

Those awesome books were ruined for me completely. Trashed my precious childhood memories of badass cats doing sick warrior things and replaced it with violent, badly written cat intercourse.

Yes, I saw it too. But there are a lot of those floating around.

I stumbled across the site when I was around ten or so, I believe. I had two accounts before Slasher was created. Good times. I'm nineteen now.

http://chooseyourstory.com/member/?Username=itschristian69

http://chooseyourstory.com/member/?Username=HuffNuffJigglyPuff

http://chooseyourstory.com/member/?Username=Slasher

What I find most interesting is the JigglyPuff account had a story called Does Love Exist? in the works. Meanwhile a few months later as Slasher you had a story called Hatred in mind.

It's like you found out love didn't exist so you decided to embrace hate.

Neither of those are mine, actually. There was one called izfan123 I believe and another called evilzcreation. At least I think it was spelt like that. I made a really shitty game based on Degrassi and another one about killing a cyclops or some shit. I remember asking 3J and Fergie for advice. Then after Slasher I was Pyun, and now I'm ShadowHills.

Think you're going to stick with this one? ;)

Slasher got banned for an impressively long and volatile feud with Playa who was also banned.

Actually, while they were banned at the same time, their feud wasn't the reason for their ban. Back during the days of the great purge like two, three years ago or so, 3J made a thread and there was something about not saying extremely offensive things or something or other. Slasher and Playa broke that rule, got banned to hell and back. The posts in the thread have been deleted since IIRC, that or the thread itself was deleted. Pity, it was a pretty entertaining read.

(EDIT: Then again, the above is me vaguely remembering events that happened two or three years ago, so I could be waaaaaaaay off. Take this all with a grain of salt. Below, however? I remember clearly.)

Meanwhile, he silently made the Pyun alt a couple weeks later when he was sure the mods' search for him was over and done with, and then got banned when he was exposed. Tada, ShadowHills emerges from the ashes once the mods grant him permission to come back.

Was it Slasher that I had that rp thing with where there was some kind of explicit sex or something? Ah those were the days.

I prefer to forget those days, but yeah, that was a thing that really happened.

With who?

Back in the bad old days of forum games, insane gave slasher a blowjob or something.

In any case, the accounts I listed were still sharing the same IP as Slasher, so either he had more he forgot about or someone he knew was using those.

Oh, well he couldn't afford her now.

If an account is made at a public location, say a school or library, wouldn't the IPs be the same?  I've just always wondered about that for tracking down 'who' people are.

Yeah, I imagine Slasher was posting at his school or he's got a little brother or something.

That makes sense.  Whenever my sister and I would join the same site/game/etc we'd have to let admin know that we were siblings in cases that there's a 1 character/account only policy.

I mean usually when it reaches the point of needing to ban some kid on a school computer there's no reason not to take out all their dipshit/most likely imaginary friends while he's at it. Nothing of value has ever been lost.

I believe the Queen of Alts did that at school. The bitch had like, 90 accounts.

Wow I'd almost forgotten her. What the fuck do kids even do in school now that they have time for this.

Apparently not learn English, because her grammar was shit. Pretty sure it was from an elementary school as well, so extra creepy points for that.

Well, if that happened, you wouldn't know if anything would have been lost or not if no one from that school could ever get the chance to prove their mettle.  Just saying.

It's almost like you don't understand people at all and also for some reason are assuming that anyone in this scenario of an idiot being banned for shitposting would be a larval Steinbeck if only the mean mods gave them a chance.

I understand some things about some people, but I won't argue that I don't understand a lot of people.  It's true.  However, I might have misinterprteted what you meant earlier.  I thought you meant banning anyone with the same IP, or somehow locking out the IP, which wouldn't be fair.  And no, I'm not expecting anyone to be a great writer, but merely making the point that you can't know what would/wouldn't have happened in a given scenario.

Maybe it was the school situation. I vaguely remember HuffNuffJigglyPuff but I don't remember itschristian69 at fucking all.

Oh yeah, that was me xD. You had one with iqqih, as well.

Slasher got banned for insisting on arguing with JJJ while the looming banhammer for disobedience was in effect. Basically he was wearing copper armor and calling the gods bastards on a mountain top during a lightning storm.

Playa got banned for saying Melissa should be killed for being a pedophile and JJJ reluctantly made an example out of him since he was trying to restore order at that point.

Lol look how well that went. 

hey @JJJ-thebanisher pedophiles like nmelssx should be lined up and shot 3

That shit was fun.

Yeah, though I'm actually not that fond of the name.

ShadowHills seems like a respectably tolerable name.  The kind that doesn't make too much of a fuss one way or another.  Unless you like fuss and/or mockery?

Maybe. I really do miss Slasher, though. It was a badass edgy name.

Well I could just unban the Slasher account, is that what you'd prefer?

Actually yeah, I'd love that.

Unbanned. I'll be banning the ShadowHills account at some point soon.

Thanks. Is it the same password that I signed up with?

I would imagine it is, I never changed it.

It's saying the log-in attempt is unsuccessful.

I guess I'll reset the password then and PM you the new one on your SH account.

"Guess who's back, back again." Lmao.

Congrats on reclaiming your legacy.

Thank ya kindly. I need to change the fuck out of my bio.

Shit, Sent didn't kill himself, Fazz is still around, Slashy's reborn. My rogues gallery is rising up again. This should be interesting.

You'd get bored and complacent without a few enemies to keep you on your toes, Steve.  :)  And I suspect you like the attention, negative or otherwise. ;)

Well, you might not like badass and edgy five years from now.  ShadowHills can work for a long time without you slapping yourself in the face, wondering why you made the name.  Sure, it might not be exciting, but sometimes that works in your favor.

Maybe so, but I also love slasher movies, which was my main reason for choosing it.

Then that works. :D  It seems you're getting your other name back.  (I do like your current avatar though!)

Hell yeah. Thanks, my girlfriend drew it, I'll let her know you like it. :P I might transfer it over.

There's probably a way you could add it to your profile even if you don't use it as your avatar, though I'm not sure.  I don't do much with my profile.  I probably should.

Anyhow, congrats on getting your other account unbanned!

OH GOD IT'S BEEN 7 YEARS SINCE I JOINED WHAT THE HELL

Time marches on, relentlessly.

Holy shit. I didn't realize you were still around.

Why are you still here tho

You seem to ask that a lot.

I'm curious what MrAce's age is.  Anyone know?

12 but he can "read on a 10th grade level"

What's your source?

Probably page 42 of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I kinda feel bad for questioning him, but I have the feeling like I have to double check anything he says.  Some people are just like that I guess.

Yeah it's pretty rude to assume a thing you read on the internet might not be true or not take it seriously, as if the internet is some kind of joke or something. If I were Ford (thank God I'm not) I would be very hurt and angry right now and I think you owe him an apology.

I meant more that I felt bad for questioning him when I let it slide for many others.

To be fair, no one takes anything Ford says at face value.

I noticed that.  Which is why I was suspicious.  But I have an over-developed sense of guilt.  I should probably adapt better to the local customs and just not give a damn.  *shrugs*  Oh well.

I mean I don't think anyone believes Mr. Ace can read at a 10th grade level yet, that was pretty obviously a joke.

We're seriously offended, and ask that you write a sincere letter of apology, pay reparations to the offended party, as well as resign from your position, and tattoo #TOOMANYQUESTIONS and #NOTATFACEVALUE on your forehead and ass.

Well, then.

The angsty teens (and tweens) have never exactly been a secret. Especially not if you keep an eye on the new storygames list.

e: you fucker. Why'd you edit?

That escalated quickly.

That was a joke btw

I know. I just read the whole thing, and...

I didn't think it wasn't.  It's just what I would usually reply in conversations .