I have been there...
When I was starting out in the USA in the mid-70's I kept coming up against retired Air Force officers who were happy to work for peanuts in General Aviation since they already had a generous pension. There was a layer of these guys who really felt that if you were not ex-Air Force then you really had no business trying to break into aviation as a young guy just starting out. You felt like a small frog trying to get through a thick layer of weed on the top of the pond.
I only got some traction by going off to fly in West Africa. There they didn't care about anything but, 'Can you get the job done?' In that case they threw you a fairly generous wage while also making it very clear that paying you marked the beginning and the end of the relationship. That suited me fine, actually.
The only problem now is age-limiting legislation, exactly the subject under discussion here. It makes it very difficult to decide whether to go for an ICAO ATPL, since I have no idea how marketable I might be, just due to my age. Passing the medical is no problem, especially since I don't drink or smoke, but yes, I am almost 58. Finesse that one, if you can!
There is a very basic human notion of giving respect to age. It might be some sort of vestigial tribal survival tactic. Certainly it's much stronger in Africa than elsewhere I have been, but it's present to some degree in almost every human society. It only goes overboard in the case of a society that has sustained serious damage. I suppose the idea is that the aged have managed to survive while accumulating experience. That said, there sure are a lot of rather stupid, silly old folks around. But compared to adolescents, not such a high proportion, perhaps.
The jeering, adolescent tone of LHR Rain is provocative precisely because it violates this notion. Given that it's not a really sound attitude to hold to I can only assume he's wishing to wind people up by taking such a cavalier view of a problem most of us will have to confront at some time or other. What was he doing in English class the day they got around to 'No man is an iland'? He seems to have missed this very basic point, that we all share the same fate to some extent. Or does he have some plan that will see him remain a perpetual teenager?
I do not expect this legislation to change any time soon, or at least not soon enough to do me much good. That is life. There should still be some corner of the scene that needs someone like me. It will just be a matter of finding it. Or perhaps I end up driving a tractor for the local pig farmer. I plan to put the four-bar epaulettes on the blue overalls, in that case. That should get automatic respect from the pigs, right?