AIBU to feel disheartened by the lack of support and the presence of a crab bucket mentality among some women on here?

Crab bucket mentality - are you referring to the idea that crabs will stop each other from escaping from a bucket as they don't want some crabs to break free of their fate and make a go of it? They'd rather keep all their fellow crabs together, even if it means staying in a bucket and being eaten?

What is a crab bucket?

To me, the value of a forum is getting honest opinions or advice. Friends and family will usually sympathise and tell you what you want to hear.

There are some incredibly supportive threads on here.

There are also plenty of threads designed to wind people up and cause drama

Don't post in AIBU. Its a bear pit But lots of support on other boards. Currently posters bring v helpful to a woman in the CoL board.

I don't think your wrong OP I also tend to point out that it's not a race to the bottom or if a post is just toxic for the sake of it (which is different from pointing out issues).

Sadly I think a minority on MN just get their kicks out of this sort of stuff and it's quick and easy to do. They fail to or don't want to recognise that it can take a lot to even put a thread title up.
Unfortunately that minority becomes loud and others back away.

Brilliant 🤣😆🤣😆

I made a shit choice in a man and posted about him on a similar forum to this (before this one existed). I didn't get support, I got people telling it to me like it was. The kick up the backside was exactly what I needed and my life drastically improved after I listened to it, even though it hurts at the time.
The 'support' needed doesn't always have to be fluffy sympathy for it to really help.

There has never been this "golden age" of MN.

There's always been a mix of posters. And sometimes the supportive thing is to tell someone they're being a dick.

Because no, someone is not always right just because they're female.

(Also, those of us who have been on MN for a long time will remember the "you're all bitches" troll of yore. Aim was to limit how women expressed themselves, and getting off on the sheer ridiculousness of posters saying how much they dislike the site whilst actually posting on it themselves. The internet is huge, chat sites abound; if tis one doesn't suit you there is nothing whatsoever preventing you joining sites that suit you better)

I have been here for over a decade and it's not where I come if I'm in need of some emotional support (or serious advice)

I am not an archetypal MN'er and I don't fancy having my life choices dissected so I just don't post about them.

I am tolerant and supportive to a degree but I don't blindly support, believe or trust everything I read. I am, however, honest.

Well, it depends. This place can be fucking fantastic, for instance when a woman is facing domestic violence, or has been sexually assaulted.

Let's try to foster a culture of support and understanding.

I have found mumsnet to be a brilliant resource over the years.

It sounds like you think it's women's responsibility to always 'be nice' when, in reality, a dose of reality and tough love is what people need. And I include myself in that.

There are a lot of very wealthy women on here along with a lot of 'financially comfortable' women, 'getting by' women and a lot of 'living in poverty' women; there are women who are highly intelligent, women who are averagely intelligent and women whose intelligence falls below that. There are people who've made.mistakes and learnt from them who pass on their experiences and what they've learnt from those to women who have made mistakes but can't yet see it. There are women who enjoy being supportive and encouraging and women who enjoy bringing others down to feel a bit better about themselves.

And, as you'd find in any other arena of life, there are people who are arseholes, people who are kind (deliver the truth sensitively) and people pleasers who will blindly champion everyone for fear of being criticised or disliked.

A bit like you'd expect to find in any cross section of society anywhere else really.

I agree with you. You especially find it on the AIBU posts. Where if the OP is infact being a tad unreasonable, they can expect to get thier arse handed to them. I cringe reading some threads cause of the pile ons

I agree, @Desecratedcoconut - also I think that if you're used to privilege and plenty, when that gets compromised, it's painful.
However, claiming that you can't afford to have children when you earn £100k plus, does seem a bit strange and people will question that.

I think poor people have been adapting around poverty and chalking up inequity with a level of stoic grit for generations and have done so alongside a cultural narrative that insists that they brought this poverty on themselves.

And then here comes a col crisis and the 'squeezed middle' demand sympathy because they have been manoeuvred into financial difficulty via factors beyond their control and flail about the place because they must endure perfectly normal conditions, like having to send their children to the local state school.

I think a little, 'suck it up, buttercup' was inevitable.

Yeah this.
If netmums still exists it's for the 'aw, you go, hun!' type of meaningless drivel.
I would never support or cheer on someone traumatising their kid or making shit choices in blokes etc. Not sure what a crab bucket is.
Pity you're sulking because we're not cheering your post on.

And out of interest OP, how much lobbying of the government about people struggling financially do you think the average 'higher earners' did before they were personally impacted? Because poverty may be a new thing to some, but people in this country have lived and died with far less that most could imagine managing on for decades. They've just done it largely invisibly or had their circumstances blamed on the own poor choices, or failure to work hard enough to 'better themselves'. By all means, band together with other affluent women who are now feeling the pinch to try to make changes, and good luck to you. But to expect more impoverished people to rush to your aid with sympathy, on pain of being accused of a race to the bottom should they dare to point out their much greater need, is a bit much tbh.

I’d say it used to be like that years ago. Full of sisterly support.

Now it isn’t.

I partly agree and partly disagree with the OP. Of course people will and should have a range of different views on any subject, but what I do find distressing is the increasingly gleeful way that a minority of posters leap in with an bizarrely cruel and hostile response to anyone who start a thread.
Often people motivated in that way will seize on some aspect of the necessarily fragmentary info in the opening post to find some way of representing the OP in the worst light possible - so that they themselves can appear superior.
It is quite common on threads to see a lot of really helpful thoughtful posts sitting alongside posts that are so aggressive that the OP will likely be too distressed to be able to see the good stuff.
The level of aggression on MN used to be way less (although it was never absent of course). I think people are bringing the habits and riled-up emotions that they have developed in viler places like twitter etc

I don’t think you’re wrong, OP. I share the opinion that MN can be a particularly nasty place, with certain set opinions which therefore draws others who are cut from the same cloth to make themselves at home and causes others less likely to return.

Being statistically fortunate with money and feeling anxious about money are not mutually exclusive. There are hundreds of wealthy people who won’t bat an eyelid at rising costs and then there are hundreds who will go to bed at night feeling sick over over it – it’s behavioural rather than circumstantial. It’s almost like saying you’re not allowed to suffer from depression if you’ve got nothing to feel depressed about.

It’s sex not gender OP ;) Unless you’re expecting women to conform to female stereotypes, in which case I withdraw my comment.

I think it’s the nature of communication online and how our responses are influenced by the responses of those around us. It’s fascinating really- presumably there’s an evolutionary advantage in mob-think, that we evolved to avoid being ostracised by asserting our commitment to the group (and against whatever seems to threaten the group) so much so that we don’t even notice how group thinking influences individual thinking. And now it’s all being played out online.

Well if you look carefully you will see that men have invaded the site. Twas ever thus.

But really they aren't very subtle, you can just read one post and almost smell the man behind it.

Apart from that, this is still the internet, if you think this is an unsupportive site, please dont venture into the rest of the web.

I find some areas in here better than others. Aibu is a bunfight, if that's the only place you go, youd think less of the place. But, well, there way more than aibu.