To wonder if MN has changed much in 13 or so years?

When I joined about 14 years ago people seemed to lurk for a while to learn the etiquette.

IE DD2 meant 2nd daughter. DD (2) meant 2 year old daughter. Now people use DD2 to mean either which is occasionally confusing.

MN used to be funny. Now people are "howling" and "congratulations you win the internet"ing for the most obviously made up crap.

It's a lot less friendly. I also remember people driving to pick up other MNetters who needed help.

And people seem incapable of actually reading a post. There was one recently about a single mum of 2. People were asking the OP if the woman in question was single, or how many DC she had.

OTOH I remember a lot of MN being very anti benefits in the old days. On the whole it's a lot less judgemental on that topic.

I came on to say it’s not funny any more, but just about everyone has made that point already. Very seldom are any threads worthy of being added to classics. A lot of name calling, virtue signalling and banging on about certain topics regularly derail otherwise interesting threads. Shame really.

I have been here for decades
No clue about the pear

(Despite the very welcome edit function it’s still possible to produce a thread absolutely stuffed with typos - and only notice once it’s too late to do anything about it … )

It’s much more anonymous - I don’t really recognise any posters’ names or get to virtually “know” them a bit any more.

I’ve been here on and off for about 15 years. I remember more of a focus on baby and small child threads - the individual mum/child-focused boards like pregnancy had more traffic than now. People were much less guarded - remember the Christmas present exchange and the meet-ups? But it was also more cliquey, and the well-known names often would just talk to each other and ignore newbies. (I don’t miss that aspect of it.)

I originally came from a small board called BGH where lots of posters used their real names and shared photos and lots of details about their lives - and I “spotted” a fair few on here, ten/fifteen years ago, as many posters were far less guarded or worried about anonymity as today.

There were more funny threads, but I also remember a lot of systematic trolling - a fair few quite elaborate set-ups where fake posters created sob stories about ill children or needing money, and lots of sympathetic posters would fall for it - you developed quite a trolldar for the sob stories (a few terrible stories were, of course, real). I don’t think there are as many of those predatory or time wasting trolls as there used to be - or maybe I just don’t spend enough time reading now to spot them!

I had a long break from about 2016 to about 2022. I think it was partly that my DC got a bit older, so I didn’t need the small child advice aspect of MN as much as before. But actually, counter to some of the posts complaining about gender issues above, the feminism boards here and the gender critical feminist discussion brought me back to MN -- for a long time it was one of the few places on the internet where you could talk about reality and feel like the world hadn’t gone quite quite mad. Thanks, vipers, for getting us through!

I agree with this. The main difference I have found is that posters seem to be much quicker to take offence, one of the things I loved most when I first joined MN was that people would get their arse handed to them over something they posted and they would respond in kind, or occasionally admit being in the wrong, but now everyone seems to take huge offence at anyone who disagrees with them.

Being back the

I’ve been on MN for 21 years ( I name change often as an ex tries to stalk me ).

When I was first here we had baby pasta and photos of a bat.

Been here 17 years. Yikes. How time flies 🤣

The anti trans stuff is boring AF
Covid times were insane
The sex board has brought even more pervs to MN.
It's nowhere near as funny or friendly. I've been here on and off for over 15 years.

We've actually been Trying to Explain Reality to Fuckwits first at least 13 years 💜💚🤍

I’ve been here about 14 years.

It has changed. I don’t notice any cliques - it’s rare to read of meet ups and their aftermath. And no one’s ever offering to race to rescue a woman in urgent domestic distress (remember that?) accompanied by a thread full of anxious countermanding advice and entreaties. Essentially it’s much less of a community.

When I arrived, looking for school advice, staying for the chat, falling into the first of the long current run of Archers threads - I felt noticeably older than most posters. Somehow the average age seems to have crept up - so there are plenty of people of my own generation now, taking postgrad degrees and spending money on clothes and delighting in memories of 1970s vegetation cooking. That’s all great.

And we have Black MN and a Mature Study and Retraining board now, as well as a Boarding School topic in Education - all very welcome.

The level of wit has decreased - but then, life is harder than it was - perhaps people have more pressing concerns …

Avoid aibu.
It's the least funny section.

All social media has changed massively over 13 years. MN is not alone.

Were you Gibboninaribbon?

Yes, it's changed enormously in 13 years! You wouldn't recognise it now if you spent any time here.

Still a mix of vipers at times, many new names

Nowhere near as funny or light-hearted as it was when I joined 10 years ago.

Someone said on a similar thread that MN used to be a village and it's now a city.

Lot in that.

I haven't seen Cutted Up Pear mentioned in ages

More people means you don't really get to know posters. I tend not to bother reading who posts now.