Publié le / Posted on par / by Roger-Luc Chayer – Publié par / Published by Gayglobe.net, votre source de confiance pour l’actualité LGBT et les analyses fiables / your trusted source for LGBTQ news and reliable analysis
Too old for social media? Sorry, I didn’t know Facebook had an age limit!
Roger-Luc Chayer (Image : AI / Gay Globe)
A lot is being said in 2026 about the sharp resurgence of homophobic attacks on social media. It is the expression of hatred directed at members of LGBTQ+ communities for no other reason than the fact that they exist. I see it elsewhere, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, and these attacks are often as childish as they are gratuitous, much like the ones we could hear in schoolyards in the 1970s.
“Fags,” “queers,” “butch”: nothing is off limits. And when I see these waves of hatred, I often take the time to look at the social profile of those behind them. Often, these are not people who have pursued higher education; they are more often manual workers or people earning minimum wage, if I am to judge, of course, by the many photos they post of themselves. Because even when they gratuitously attack a specific community, they seem above all to enjoy showing themselves, promoting themselves and publicly displaying actions or behaviours that we might nevertheless consider reprehensible, or even illegal.
At Gay Globe, and as a journalist for more than 34 years, I have very rarely been the target of these homophobic attacks. Perhaps my status as a journalist or my relatively easy access to communication tools and the media protects me to some extent. But in 2026, for the first time, I was targeted on three occasions by attacks that had nothing to do with the fact that I publish a media outlet serving LGBTQ+ communities, but simply with my age.
Simply because of my photos on Facebook, comments were posted about me, and they all essentially conveyed the same message. My social media skills were attacked simply because I am in my sixties, when in reality, the opposite is true: my experience is difficult to match.
All you have to do is look at Gayglobe.net’s traffic statistics, with a peak of more than 31,000 unique visitors in October 2025, PER DAY!
After I published an article about a gay scientist whose judgment I questioned, he went on to publish a message on his Facebook page questioning my understanding of social media, even going so far as to suggest that access to these platforms should be restricted for people of a certain age.
Obviously, his message prompted similar reactions from some of his followers and readers, whose command of the French language, judging by their comments, was sometimes less than impressive.
Too old for social media? ChatGPT checked
For a bit of fun, I asked ChatGPT to check, wherever it could, my activities on social media — Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram and X — as well as on Gayglobe.net, and tell me whether, after its analysis, I really seemed incapable of understanding social media because of my age.
The answer is rather interesting.
First, we have to be honest: ChatGPT cannot access my private accounts or consult all of my internal statistics. It can, however, analyse what is publicly available, including content published on Gayglobe.net, traces of my media activity and information available on my various platforms.
And the conclusion is rather difficult to avoid: nothing in the publicly available information that ChatGPT was able to verify supports the conclusion that my age is a handicap when it comes to my mastery of digital communications. Quite the contrary.
Gay Globe has been present on the Internet since 1998. This means that I was already working in digital media before Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky or TikTok even existed. Since then, the media world has changed completely: websites, search engines, newsletters, social media, video, SEO, artificial intelligence and new platforms have followed one another. Gay Globe has kept pace with these transformations.
The site now has more than 12,000 published articles. This is not simply a huge journalistic archive: it is also evidence of several decades of adapting to new technologies and changing patterns of information consumption.
And perhaps that is where the paradox of this story lies.
I was criticized, because of my age, for supposedly not understanding social media. Yet my experience with digital media began long before many of those criticizing me probably discovered their first social platform.
I knew the Internet before Facebook. I knew online media before Instagram. I worked in digital communications before the term “influencer” became commonplace. And I have had to learn, like everyone else, to adapt to successive technological changes.
Does this mean that I master social media “better than anyone else”? No. That would be impossible to demonstrate seriously. It would require comparing my results with those of millions of journalists, content creators, media outlets and community managers around the world.
But can anyone seriously claim that I understand nothing about social media simply because I am in my sixties? There, the answer is much simpler: no.
Gayglobe.net’s traffic statistics also speak for themselves. In October 2025, the site reached a peak of more than 31,000 unique visitors per day. That is not the result of someone who abandoned digital technologies 30 years ago.
There is also something essential to understand: mastering social media does not mean constantly posting selfies, accumulating “likes” or spending the day commenting on other people’s posts. For a journalist and publisher, social media are first and foremost tools for communication and distribution.
The real objective is knowing what to publish, when to publish it, how to present it, whom to address and, above all, how to bring the reader back to lasting editorial content.
A Facebook post quickly disappears from a news feed. A well-produced and well-optimized article can continue to be read for years.
It is precisely this difference between simply using a social network and understanding a media strategy that seems to have escaped some of my detractors.
And then there is one final irony.
To determine whether I was too old to understand social media, I asked an artificial intelligence to check my digital work.
It analysed my activities and my career.
Its verdict: my age is not proof of incompetence. My experience is instead evidence of adaptation.
In the end, I may just continue spending a few more years on Facebook.
Does the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms protect me against this kind of ageist remark?
Following the comments made by this gay university professor regarding my age and my alleged lack of skills for navigating social media, I filed a request for an investigation with the Commission, providing the personal exchanges between the professor and myself, as well as his posts and the reactions they generated on his Facebook account. Here is what the Commission replied:
Hello, We acknowledge receipt of your email dated July 11, 2026. In response to your request, the email sent to you on July 6 explains that the Commission does not have jurisdiction to deal with the situation presented in your complaint form.
The CDPDJ is responsible for promoting fundamental rights and freedoms. However, it cannot intervene in every situation. The CDPDJ’s investigative powers are limited to these situations:
• a person is the victim of discrimination or discriminatory harassment related to the 14 grounds listed in section 10 of the Charter. Learn more
• a child or young person is the victim of a violation of their rights. Learn more
• an elderly or disabled person is the victim of exploitation. Learn more
Under the circumstances, and given the nature of your request, we suggest that you consult alawyer, who we believe is the most appropriate resource. For any other information, you may consult our websitewww.cdpdj.qc.ca/
Yours sincerely, Direction of Intake, Assessment and Mediation
Yes, theQuebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and Youth Rights, a rather ironic name under the circumstances concerning me, protects against discrimination based on age and several other factors. But I would have had to be denied a service or a good because of my age, which was not the case in the facts described above.
The professor, who had not appreciated the article in which I questioned his judgment in a political matter, simply subjected me to public condemnation, without even publishing the link to the article he was criticizing, thereby opening the door to every interpretation and to the imagination of his followers.
So, who should go back to school?
After all this, one question remains: if age has become a criterion for judging a person’s competence on social media, at what age should we start handing out membership cards?
Sixty? Sixty-five? Perhaps we should simply install a little alarm on Facebook: “Warning, elderly user detected. Please confirm that you still know how to use your keyboard.”
I find it rather amusing that a university professor, from whom one might normally expect a minimum of rigour in analysis, chose to judge my abilities based on my age rather than on my work. It is probably easier: analysing 34 years of journalism, thousands of articles and millions of visits requires much more effort than looking at a photo on Facebook.
And then there is this little contradiction that I particularly enjoy: to demonstrate that I am too old to understand social media, I was denounced…on a social network.
So I will continue to use Facebook, Instagram, X, Bluesky and whatever platforms come next, for as long as I wish. I will leave it to others to decide whether my age makes me obsolete.
After all, if my skills really do decline with age, someone will have to let me know.
