The Disney Adult Discourse Needs to Stop

A lot has been said and written over the last few years about the "Disney Adult." Depending on what you're reading or which YouTube channel you're watching, Disney Adults are either a scourge on the populace or just a slightly different breed of sports fan, and everybody needs to relax. I am not here to make either claim. I'm here to ask everybody to just stop.

I don't really need to say which side of the argument I fall on. I'm here, writing this, in this place. Of course I am a Disney Adult. The issue at hand is that I think the whole fight is a little silly and unnecessary. More than that, however, I'm not convinced it's real.

I've been writing online professionally in the entertainment space for well over a decade at this point, so I'm well-versed in how this game is played. Negative headlines get more clicks than positive ones. It's unfortunate but true. So saying that something, like, say, adults who enjoy going to theme parks, are terrible, gets a response.

If you can't go negative, however, the other obvious option is the "hot take," i.e., that thing everybody says is bad, is good, actually. And thus the cycle is set, and every few months this cycle repeats. Social media seems to go through this cycle on a regular basis for everything from Star Wars: The Last Jedi to "superhero fatigue."

And it happens with the whole Disney Adults thing too. We get a YouTube video from somebody I've never heard of going viral about how cringe Disney Adults are, followed by think pieces, often by people I have heard of, and sometimes people I know personally, about why they're fine, and everybody should relax.

I saw another one recently (not by somebody I know). It was a defense of Disney Adults, and I just remember it being weird because I don't even recall a recent example of somebody attacking Disney Adults. It seemed to be a response to nothing in particular, just a general vibe. Maybe there was an attack, and I just missed it. It's certainly possible. There are a lot of them.

This is one of those times when a debate gets started online, and we assume that because it's on the internet and gets a lot of engagement, it must be real, but it isn't. The Disney Adult fight is one I've only ever seen online. As with many online arguments, they attract enough voices that it makes a particular topic seem significant, but how many people would ever think about this topic if the internet itself wasn't serving it up? This just doesn't seem to be an issue people care about offline.

Sometimes when I'm out in public, my Disney Adult status is obvious; sometimes it's not. This has never impacted the way people treat me or things they say. When I attend the Christmas party for my wife's professional job, and I tell some stranger what I do for a living, few people have ever said the words "Disney Adult," and even when it does come up, it's them acknowledging that the whole thing is silly.

As somebody who covers the theme park industry professionally, I know more than my share of other Disney Adults, and I'm not aware of any of them having significant issues with being a Disney Adult and interacting with other people.

None of this is to say that there aren't people who think that Disney Adults are bad or that the people defending them aren't being genuine. I'm sure both things are true, but it seems clear that most of the people shouting about how terrible they are are clearly looking for online engagement, and the defenders have certainly taken that into account as well.

I know that by even bringing this up, I am making myself part of the problem. I am now part of the discourse that I am arguing needs to stop. I also don't expect the discourse to actually stop. As long as people will click on the anti-Disney Adult diatribes, they will continue to happen, and as long as they do, the responses will follow. Still, I would love it if this were the last editorial on the topic of Disney Adults. There must be far more important things we can argue about on the internet.