Look, Ryan would be a creep no matter what in this situation, even if every underage girl was 18, because he's fucking 39 years old and fucking teenage girls that are young enough to be his daughters. And that's not hyperbole, either - when I was 18, my mother was 36. That's SMALLER than the gap between Ryan and some of these e-girls; there's an age gap of two decades between Ryan and most of them. No matter how you slice it, he's a fucking predator who probably would fuck a 15 year old if he thought he could get away with it. He's disgusting.
That said, you are right that there is little distinction between a 17 year old and 18 year old developmentally. Which is why it's fucked up for him to be fucking ANYONE that young, point blank. Teenagers are dumb. They make stupid mistakes. They may feel that they are mature and wise for their years, but they're not. They're still little shits with a childish mentality and little regard for consequences. A teenager really doesn't grasp the issue with sleeping with someone much older than them, as they don't know anything about power dynamics or the control that age and experience can provide - but an adult, especially someone as old as Ryan, DOES. Look at how he played this situation; he's clearly had time to practice this extended manipulation, and given the fact that he's been consistent with how he manipulates and silences the girls each time, he has done this before. He planned this out. In what world do you think a teenager with little to no romantic or sexual experience could stand on equal intellectual footing with a manipulative smooth talker that they idolize?
Legally, he'd be in the clear if all the girls had been 18, but morally he would still be a scumbag by most people's standards. At his age, I can't imagine wanting to fuck someone under 24, let alone fucking someone under 20. Fucking multiple people under 18? That's not an accident. That's a pattern. This is the point people are trying to make; Ryan clearly likes his girls young and impressionable, and if he's already playing fast and loose with statutory rape, who's to say he WOULDN'T try to fuck someone significantly younger if he could? What does it matter to him if the girls are 18 or 16 or 14 as long as they're easily manipulated and beholden to him?
This is why people are harping on the underage point so much, even though 17 is obviously quite close to the national age of consent - because Ryan is a fucking scumbag for manipulating multiple teenagers into fucking him, even if they're "legal." It's really not that hard to understand that.
