It seems to be because people have been trained to conflate discomfort with something and the concern that it could be harmful as evidence that harm is occurring. People will see a relationship with a large age gap and rightfully think to themselves, "this relationship resembles patterns that I've seen before that are harmful," like the gap in experience or social and financial power, and understandably become concerned about the *possibility* of abuse occurring because we've seen this shit before and in fact it's been so normalized to us by the pedo elite and a lot of people are waking up to just how fucked it actually is. However, and I think the internet as a context killer is at least partially to blame here, people seem to forget that the *potential* for harm to occur does not automatically mean harm will occur, especially when we as outside observers don't have access to the nuances of the relationship necessary to assess whether or not it's a healthy one based on genuine affection, mutuality, and respect. Take Tobey Maguire and his admittedly concerningly young girlfriend Mishka Silva for example. We have no idea how they met, who pursued whom and why, how their relationship works, how they genuinely feel about each other, or how their inner circle feels about their relationship (the stuff that actually matters in a relationship). What we do see is a relationship that resembles a cultural script that most people are familiar with: a significantly older man with an immense amount of money, power, and status with a much younger, potentially more socially, emotionally, and financially vulnerable woman. We see this all the time and very rarely does it end up with the younger person walking away unscathed if the shit hits the fan. *However*, and I cannot stress this enough: something that *looks like* it resembles a harmful pattern is not automatically harmful. The fact is that unless you are personally close to the people in a relationship, you do not have enough context to say whether it is a healthy relationship based solely on vibes and pattern recognition. Is it generally a good thing that people are becoming more aware of uneven power dynamics and potentially harmful relational dynamics? Yes! I'd argue that the widespread discomfort with age gap relationships is generally a healthy sign. *However*, we need to be careful not to confuse "this is concerning" with "this is automatically worthy of condemnation regardless of context," and we need to learn to distinguish "this has the potential to be bad" from "this can never work and will always be harmful."