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

I think the issue is the bizzare/mundaneness/pointless threads to be honest.

I posted recently about a medical issue & recieved genuine help & support within minutes
But ive also posted admitadly dismissive/obvious messages on pointless threads > so & so does this... with a follow up of 'cant possibly change/already tried everything'. Sort of thing not to mention the threads that get so many praising posts that instead of thanking anyone publicaly the OP simply garners enough self-'respect' & popularity to instead call out anybody who disagrees or sees it from another perspective

(Also can't be arsed with chronic spell-checkers on here).

I thought this was going to be a thread about Wells-Next-The-Sea. We have crab buckets.

Absolutely no need for he biological women comment here. I'm not getting into an debate about trans issues as I genuinely see both sides of the argument and am unsure where exactly I fall. However jumping at the chance to shoe horn it in everywhere is just unnecessary.

But whether we like it or not, there is a huge wealth divide, and a person living in a £1m property in the SE with a 6 figure income, with DC in private school and a significant inheritance to look forward to has very little in common in the CoL crisis with a person on a 6 month tenancy on minimum wage with parents who don't have two h'appence with which to help or bequeath them. They might both be shocked at the cost of a weekly shop, but the first has options and a security blanket the second can only dream of. The second person knows this, and knows that if they had those things too, they would be just fine. Hence they give advice that may appear unsympathetic. Its all very well wanting one big cosy sisterhood of support, where we're all in it together, but we're simply not, and that's actually something many should be relieved about, not bemoan or deny.

It’s the woman blaming and the excusing of men’s poor behaviour that saddens me. I rather suspect Freud was right about women and sons.

I have never understood why if people find an internet forum so disagreeable they continue to read and post.
Other fora are available.

This thread proves your point 😂

Theres a lot of bitter and angry posters nowadays who love to bite OPs head off, be condescending and make OP feel like shit. When I read older threads I can see it’s definitely got worse in recent years.

I feel this with the cost of living posts. I have sympathy that life is more difficult but it's really hard to empathise with someone who can no longer put their child in all the normal clubs or have the same standard of living- when for a lot of people it's a struggle to buy food or have any kind of quality of life at the moment.
I do think some people are overly harsh though.

If there’s a thread where the OP is struggling with feelings of envy, you invariably get posters coming in to tell her that the focus of the envy is probably secretly miserable, and imagining all sorts of ways in which her life (and 9/10 it’s a her) is awful and nothing to envy. This is presented as supportive to the OP, as if feeling good about your own life is dependent on someone else’s being awful.

That’s always struck me as being supremely fucked up.

and yes, the whole ‘I suffered, so why shouldn’t you?/ I loathe you because you’ve got more than I have’.

I don’t believe in blindly supporting women because they’re women, but I do believe there’s a lot of tearing people down for less noble reasons than them actually doing anything harmful.

See NameChangeAsICouldBeOverReacting one of the best things about MN is that you get to engage with intelligent women who won't just blindly support other women on, well, anything!

The beauty of this is that you come here with a gut feeling or a question as a starting point (I mean the general you, not the specific) and by the end of it have refined your argument and articulated it even better.

I don't tend to post personal dilemmas under this name but I know that I have come here with a general feeling of 'this isn't sitting right with me'. There will always be replies that make me 🙄 but I will also always come away in a better position and with a greater understanding.

I've had some excellent advice and excellent discussions with people over the years.

I think this is spot on.

It feels as though people feel threatened by 'other people'.

So if someone does well you need to drag them down to make yourself feel better. If someone's doing badly (in their opinion) you drag them down by telling them you had it worse and managed to cope. Or others are worse off and don't you know how fortunate you are. People see threats from other people, rather than support, community, humanity, kinship, solidarity, empathy. The divisiveness of conversations serves to split people apart rather than bring people together.

I'm not enjoying it at all. However some of the smaller, less busy boards are full of lovely supportive people hiding away from the fighting on AIBU and Chat. I find the conversations on the smaller boards more wholesome and helpful.

I have been on here for 17 years, it didn’t have such a diluted demographic posting in the past. There have always been intelligent women posting about current affairs, feminism etc. I.e subjects that have nothing to do with being a parent but on the whole it was quite obvious that they were still Parents. It was definitely more supportive than it is now and more relatable as a result of the above.

Don't be so surprised. On the morning after the referendum, I remember walking to work and passing an elderly woman saying almost exactly this to her daughter/adult woman she was with.

I had no idea what crab bucket mentality is.

I think if you use in opening post it is easier to explain than have thread derailed.

Obviously everyone can google but why?

Probably an autocarrot. Really not worth calling out.

Did you bollocks.

Sorry, at the risk of being a complete pedantic twat, it's sow...reap what you sow.

Brexit was the ultimate demonstration of crabs in a bucket mentality. I heard a guy up the road say to his son ‘we’ve got no money, so it’s time for others to suffer too’. What kind of attitude is that? and to teach your children that type of thinking too.

Hehe, indeed.

I might start doing this. Plopping onto a thread declaring that I don't have time to read it and that people should explain things to me.

But then, how would I find the time to read people's replies?

Baffling.

But the whole point is that it's been happening for years, since the COL crisis started, before that even, but it was aimed at a 'lower' demographic.

But now because it's affecting people who maybe had that attitude in the past there's calls for support or everyone pulling together, let's not put each other down, it was very much an attitude of you are in this situation because of the choices you've made, so change those choices or stop complaining.

Now it's covering a different demographic and the narrative has changed from being bad choices to choices out of your control and everyone should pull together and support each other.

The point I'm making is that the reasons that people of all demographics may be struggling are the same, they have been since this started, but there was an attitude of it being people at fault rather than out of our control to some extent, before it got bad enough to affect people on middle incomes.

I don't doubt people are struggling on all types of wages, and I'm seeing the same reasons for someone on a low wage struggling being given, for someone on a middle wage, but if you're on a lower wage then it was your choices plain and simple, if you're on a middle wage then it's choices out of your control.

It's either one or the other, you can't apply different 'rules' and then expect to have the support offered that you told yourself others didn't deserve, because the reasons are the same.

And by you I mean generally, society wise, not personally.

I do think that everyone deserves some sort of support, because a great many are struggling but the issue is that lack of support and the attitude that it's of your own making only seems to be a problem now it's affecting the middle to higher earners, and when this is pointed out you've got a chip on your shoulder, a crab in a bucket mentality and told it's not a race to the bottom. That you're jealous, that you can't stand seeing people have more than you - for me it's not that, it's the hypocrisy of expecting sympathy and understanding and calling other people for not delivering when it's never worked the other way around.

As I said, as a society, we're reaping what we've sewed.

I think what I’m trying to express is people on here seem so ready to put someone down and fail to understand that some of this isn’t due to their choices but due to bad decisions that are made out of our control!

Ok so im trying to say this kindly.

There will always be things beyond your control.

There will also be things you can control and must control, that can mitigate the damage of the things you can't control

On here people can lack sympathy if the things beyond your control are having a big impact, if its at least partly because you did not or will not do any of the things you CAN control to lessen the impact.

Exactly. It is a bit more creative this time, though.

A lot of rose tinted spectacles about the site.

It was horribly cliquey. I joined just as Mumsnet Royalty were on their way out.

Now it seems that you get responses based on what you say, not your username/fanclub. I suspect that winds some posters up.