The Next Generation

I write in a lot of places. I’m on the Patheos Channel as a contributor on Friendly Atheist. I guest post at The Heresy Club. I’m the other blogger at Ashley Miller’s on FreethoughtBlogs. I’m the Communications & Marketing intern at Foundation Beyond Belief.

I’m not writing this for some sort of bragging rights. In all honesty, I’m doing too much, and in the middle of shifting around my priorities. But the point is, I’m actively involved in the skeptic and secular community.

I’m also 20 years old.

More particularly I’m under 21. In the United States.

This means that in a lot of places, bars aren’t an option.

I’m your target audience, skeptics groups. I’m young, I have free time, I like to talk and argue and listen. I’m at college, so I have access to lots of different research publications without worrying about paywalls. I don’t work full-time, and I’ve lived in an area where many people don’t believe evolution and I think science education is really important.

But here’s the thing. I’m the next generation of skeptics. Which makes me not this generation. But I’d like to be involved. Which means, to some extent, because I have the means and time to, I’d like to go to events. I’d like to learn from everyone else.

Which is hard to do when I’m not allowed in the venue.

Sometimes it’s hard to make every event open to everyone. There’s really nice bars and pubs and sometimes when it’s after a conference, all you want to do is drink. That’s just fine. I’m not attempting to be the Ruiner of Everything Ever.

But when you have dinner with famous speakers, or Skeptics in the Pub, or the event starts after 9 pm, I probably can’t go. Not because I wouldn’t love to. Not because it wouldn’t be fun and a better use of my time than Netflix. But because making the (public transit) commute down to an event, only to find out that I’m to young to get in the door is really unpleasant. It’s true that I might be able to go. But pubs/bars/restaurants rarely give out that sort of information.

So here’s what I’m suggesting:

Featured image from here.