Over what time period?
Probably 100 years or so, but of course it's been a continuous upward trend over the last 20, and particularly accelerated in the last 10. Over the last 5, it's been slower, but steadily trending up. It kind of doesn't matter what time period you pick - it's lookin' pretty good.
Over 20 years? Well sure. 20 years ago this wasn't even a thing
Incorrect. You just happened not to be involved.
- or not one that I'd ever heard anything about.
Look, I don't mean this to sound too mean, but what you do or don't hear about is not really that significant. If it makes you feel any better, I don't know much about football, and the offside offence is something I can't even make a coherent joke about. If I worked the way you do, I could extrapolate and say that since I know jack about it, football is not "even a thing". But the truth is much simpler - what you and I see is rarely a good litmus test.
I just wondered what recent change prompted this thread.
My guess would be TikTok. It's the current mainstay of FE proliferation among younger people, and people are doing great there - probably similar in success to what this place has been 10 years ago.
I mean, look, we're nowhere near the majority viewpoint, that much is obvious. But if it pushes us from the current extremely-well-documented 10-20% of the population (depending on which countries you inspect) to 12-22%, that's a good, steady pace.
I have looked for data and struggled to find anything which backs up the "exponential growth" you have talked about.
But you don't need to look - I've done the looking for you. I have, time and time again, shown you studies which clearly indicate it. And it's the fact that you've not responded to that at all that makes me thoroughly unwilling to engage with you in any discussion of verifiable facts. You don't respond to verifiable facts. You just repeat your claim.
I dunno... would it help if I sent you the same list of links again? Intuitively, I don't think it would, because you never respond to the data within. You just keep saying you haven't seen it, but you truly obviously have - I made sure of that. I don't know how to fix your problem of not reading the studies that have been readily presented to you, or of not internalising the information that's presented to you. I can't fix your zealotry. I can't fix the attitude of you just pretending you're amnesiac about any information that confronts your preferred worldview.
Which brings me back to my usual conundrum - I don't think you're a drooling, mouthbreathing moron. I think you've seen the studies I gave you earlier, and I think you've read them - so your claim of not knowing about them falls apart. But that only leaves the possibility of you being malicious - and I don't want to make that accusation lightly.