I think its a little bit more complicated that that.
That arguement makes no sense if you have hundreds of thousands or even thousands of fans. Ignore the lunatics and/or publicly shame them if they get too irritating. There's no need to maintain those kinds of people and there will always be more to replace them.
I'm sure there probably are examples of 19-year-olds grooming 17-year-olds on a level that would attract law enforcement, but those are Rotherham tier cases involving physical and psychological abuse, pimping and human trafficking, and are often tied to organized crime.
That surprised me. It's not exactly rocket science.
For some reason the idea has been ingrained in American culture that the moment you turn 18, you're functionally a mature adult who is vastly different from a 17 y/o. It was considered normal for people in the 16-19 range to associate romantically (not sexually tho lmao) prior to the weird culture shifts after WWII.
If 19 + 17 is such a big deal then surely there must also be a problem with 20 + 18 but no-one seems to give a shit about that for some reason, probably because 18 is the number arbitrarily chosen by the states to dictate the point at which you're fair game, even when every other country on the planet seems to be okay with the number 16.
The duality of man
Feds have jurisdiction over basically anything that happens online, even if you're in the same state. Your web traffic is going to be routed through a server in another state at some point, boom that's interstate commerce.17/19 isn't bad, as everyone has said before me, but at the lowest level, nude images of a 17 year old are illegal federally, meaning there could be trouble if the girl's are in different states and the feds do get involved. That being said, we win with every outcome of the situation. Either Carson is vindicated in the end and this is seen as a nothingburger, causing Keem to get shafted once again for mishandling a story, or Carson goes down. I consider both outcomes to be equally hilarious.
they cant think for themselves at all anymore and think that the lines being the legal ones means that it was always the objective moral line rather than an educated guess made in the hopes it protected as many as possible while inconveniencing the least possible and they havent thought to check is something like romeo and juliet laws exist.
