One thing that I’ve found very funny throughout my time reporting on the Ukraine war is when people try to discredit other’s work based purely on age. For example, I’m 19, and ever since being…

One thing that I’ve found very funny throughout my time reporting on the Ukraine war is when people try to discredit other’s work based purely on age. For example, I’m 19, and ever since being doxxed two years ago, I’ve faced constant hate based purely on age - from both Pro-Russians and Pro-Ukrainians. But the funny thing is, pretty much all of those hater's favourite analysts are a similar age as me, if not even younger. In fact, you would be VERY surprised how young the Ukraine war analyst space is. The vast majority of English-speaking OSINTers are under the age of 25, with many being under 18, although a lot haven’t specified their ages for obvious reasons. I can guarantee for almost all people reading this - a lot of your favourite accounts will be MUCH younger than you would expect. Attacking someone based on age is always a sign that you have no ability to debunk or counter their arguments and present your own. It is a form of character assassination, and proves that you are probably the more immature one. Usually, attacks based on age actually have nothing to do with age, but rather to do with the fact that they aren’t reporting what you want to hear. If you say to someone that you disagree with: “why should I trust a random kid in his mum’s basement who has no qualifications”, but then say to someone else of the same age who you agree with “the fact that you are doing all this at such a young age is incredible, keep it up!”, then your biases are the issue, not the person’s age.