The community exists, in a self-referential form if anything. This has been the case since it started referring to itself as a "MAP Community" via social media such as Tumblr, Deviantart, X (Twitter) around 5 years ago. As an estimate of its size, myself and others have set up servers within this community, and they have grown towards and sometimes beyond 1000 members in a relatively short time frame. The fact that an unusually large proportion of these people are mentally ill (probably slightly higher than BC) and that some are clearly attempting to terrorize others within the community, does not detract from the fact that it is a "community". Others are attempting to clean it up, and having some success. The fact that said community does not have critical mass as a political movement does not detract from the fact that it is undoubtedly a community. Boomers on sites like BC.org just don't know how to make Fediverse servers work on dial-up, that's the problem here. As for the value of alternatives to "MAP", it would appear that "youth" (the most commonly mooted alternative to "minor", behind "child") is the term with essentialist loading, while "minor" is a reference to a legal status. |