Are people on mumsnet reflective of the online world?

The song and dance about private school VAT is certainly not representative of mainstream opinion.

You mean the real world isn't full of left of centre degree educated women on 6 figure salaries who are also disproportionality dependant on Universal Credit and Child Benefit and almost all of whom have children with undiagnosed ADHD and don't trust their partner, and that can never see anyone else's point of view while feeding a family of 4 for a week on one roast chicken simultaneously purchased from Lidl for £2.79 and Ocado for £12.79 ;)

Actually I think there's a pretty good cross section here, and plenty of people who go out of their way to provide advice that is genuinely helpful :)

There are plusses and minuses to the ability to constantly change names though

No not ime. MN majority is full of a group just waiting to pounce so they can pick threads apart & find something to be pedantic & argumentative about. Frequently awful & rude. I always think they either have something lacking in their life or just think they’re better than the rest of us.

But…there’s another group who are lovely, non-judgemental, kind & helpful. I’m here for these people.

To be fair, we only have the anonymous posters word for that though.

I think people generally behave differently online to how they do in person. Many seem to want to go out of their way to be as argumentative as possible and do as much as they can to knock others down. There's lots of genuinely lovely people on Mumsnet though who offer some amazing advice and support, and there are some really nice threads/ topics. AIBU and step parenting seem to bring out the worst in people.

No. MN has a higher average of degree educated middle-class women. I can't think of any other space that is similar.

I think Mumsnet is just reflective of a website that allows constant name changing, so that people can be curt/stroppy/nasty in one name and lovely in another, depending on what mood they're in.

On sites where name changing isn't allowed, I think people tend to be nicer, otherwise no-one else would bother replying to them.

No.

Most of the online world is worse.

Try Twitter for a bit. You'll love it.

Not all online spaces are like Mumsnet, in fact, I'd argue that in my experience Mumsnet is very much unique, but not in a good way.

It's an extremely busy, well frequented site, with an enormous number of concurrent users. For that reason alone, you are going to encounter the fringes of online society, including a selection of the most rude, delusional, stupid, vapid, ignorant, and thoughtless, as well as the vast majority who are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and are none of these things at all.

It's not an extreme site, and nor are it's users extremists, but purely because of the size of the user base it's naturally going to include outliers.