From what I've seen, youth doesn't get roleplayed very well.

Fake, dwarf ID and disguise skill?

I agree completely.
In a small team a Decker/something is usually more desirable. But when there are no glaring holes to be filled and the player feels up to the role-playing challenges, Otaku are not as worthless as people were saying.
This, of course, is just my most humble opinion.

IRL, there are no otaku. There are no newspapers in SR, only screamsheets (which are tranmited through the Matrix).

Rule #1 of being a player in an RPG: If your GM is an arsehole, find a new GM.

Maturity is realitive. There are some very immature 80 year olds out there and there are some absurdly mature 10 year olds. You can't jusde indivicual maturity by age alone.

If a character is an Otaku then he or she grew up on the streets or in the Arcology. Both places make you grow up very fast. They have to know how to survive or else they wouldn't still be alive. The only problem is their physical stats. Making them elves and buying some pistol skill helps. So does giving them powerful social skills. With a potential 9 CHA before 'ware they can make deadly Faces.

Would you have the same reservations about a 14 year old who was born on the streets,who was raised by hobos, and who mainfested Killing Hands during a fist-fight with a Troll go-ganger when he was 8 years old?

The local arms dealer probably sells to 10 year olds on a regular basis if he sells to gangs. As for maturity, there are different types of it. An Otaku certainly has intellectual maturiry. With a INT of 8 it is ahrd not to. An Otaku certainly has street smarts and enough social matirity to survive and even gain leadership with a "tribe". An Otaku may not hav the same level of emotional maturity as an adult but that is really a hormoral thing. He is certainly more mature than the pastless friendless vindictive munchkinized kill-borg that disguises itself as a street samurai.

Yet the munchkinized kill-borg is somehow better suited to the setting than a child who spent his entire life either on the streets or in sealed city run by a mad computer that thinks it is GMing a game of Paranoia. Why is that?

This goes back to the Girl Scout vs the Adept question, really. Could 50 girlscouts take out a single Adept by relying on Friends in Melee bonuses?

However, no one asks is a single Megacorp raised and trained girlscout with a monowhip in her finger and the skill to use it could take out an Adept. It is a disytopian future. Childhood is a luxury some people can't afford. Ever hear of child soldiers?

In some parts of Africa 8 year old girls are given AK-47s and told that they have been drafted in some geurilla group and they have no choice but to fight for them or be killed. It is the same way in the world of SR. The diffrence is that this happens in Seatle as well. How many gangs do you think recruit children? Probably most of them. Some of them probably do so by threat of voilence. Most of them by giving the kids a sense of belonging.

Edit: some links
http://www.child-soldiers.org/
http://hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm
http://www.amnestyusa.org/child_soldiers/index.do

10 year old member of the Khmer Rouge had little trouble working their Ak-47s or hacking up people with their machetes. Neither did 10 year old Hutus have trouble during then genocidal campaign against the Tutsis.

Anyone who deals with gang is going to deal with children. The younger members will be used as couriers and middle men so that the high-ups don't have to stick their necks out. If they have the money or the drugs then they will be taken seriously by virture of that fact. The person they are dealing with may think that they are just acting as a courier for someon else. That makes it easier.

That's what Levitate is for.

Both these things are pile of numbers and are dead if they have to deal with anything physical.

Otaku are too decker what Adepts are to street sams. But here is the trick, being a decker doesn't have to be the only thing your character is. See, Adepts give up cyberware and become good at one thing, and most the time they can be better the street sam at that. That is is fine, the street sams can do more things.

Now Deckers and street sams are a few skills apart. A decker can be good in a fight both on and offline. They can get combat ware,and contacts, and be your face, you waht not. They can do other shit. Otaku can um be good in the matrix. Wht else can they do? Can anyone show me an Otaku who is anything besides a fancy smart frame trapped in a child's body?

With all their two contacts? Great face!

That is a good point. Body 1 isn't so much of a liability when the Otaku stays in the armored getaway and support van along with the rigger.

That's pretty much it -- and which one of those two is "better" has been debated up and down these boards since I started here. It's a particularly potent argument from the pov of a determined generalist: by their nature, otaku almost cannot but be specialists. (And yet I still find them neat!)

Otaku inherently have a much greater ability to min-max IN/WL vs. physical attributes than any other character. Depending on the tone of the game, this can be awesome ... and it can mean something very close to instant death. (I've played a BD 1 non-otaku PC briefly -- just until I could gain enough karma and train up to BD 2. It's a very risky thing in most games.)

Since the otaku does with skills what deckers do with hardware or software, deckers are much more potentially skills-versatile, in and out of the Matrix. It's the inverse of the resources point mentioned later: otaku spend a much higher percentage of their skill points, and later their karma, on computer/channel-related skills than deckers, and thus have less to spend elsewhere.

Another part of the lowered skills versatility is because the otaku should, per canon, have some significant degree of social difficulty with meat-world social interactions outside his or her tribe. Otaku, by the way they have been written up in canon, are meat-world social outsiders; and it's almost impossible for non-otaku to break into the otaku's social circle/tribe. To call the otaku tribe something of a cult would not be an exaggeration. (A cautious GM should be wary of high CH and CH-linked skills in proposed otaku.) The decker has no such restriction.

In contrast, otaku are the specialists of the Matrix. The strong skill orientation means that they are karma sinks -- but otaku also don't have programme-related nuyen requirements. (There are computer- and programming-related expenses for otaku, but they are of a very different quality -- and cash-quantity -- than for your average decker.)

In contrast to a decker, who will continually be investing most or all of their nuyen into their deck, a much greater percentage of an otaku's resources can be dedicated to non-deck items, such as the useful cyber/bio that makes any Matrix-capable character even hotter in the Matrix.

Finally, don't forget the role of the AI behind the otaku ...