To think Mumsnet is more vitriolic than it used to be?

No it’s not you ..
A woman asked the last eve for recipe ideas , as her husband is tiring of the same dinners when he gets in from work ( perfectly normal ) ..
She was met with bad language in posts back , basically bashing her husband , giving out , things like “ I know what I would be telling him “ , “ tell him to f ( proper word used ) Off “ ! It’s ridiculous & it’s not nice to see ..

There are lovely kind people here aswel though ☺️…

Have you ever 'dared' see the man's point of view?

You get accused of all sorts of things.

There just seem to be some quite spiteful responses lately. Or people piling on to bully. Reminds me of the stoning in the Life of Brian sometimes.

I was just thinking the same today OP. I’ve been here since I was 19, I’m 35 now. It seems to have become far more groupthink and it just depends which way the first few comments on a post go and then it’s just a pile on anyone who disagrees with that initial consensus.
Far less compassionate and nuanced than it used to be IMO. Yet here I am!

MN is different now in its demographic. It's much better known than it was 10 years ago, the Daily Mail regularly lifting threads to fill its pages, Reddit posts, the TRAs who don't like women standing up for other women, all bring bad actors to the site. I'm sure there also some MRAs/Andrew Tate followers on here now - whenever a woman posts issues with her DH/DP there will always be a few trying to derail the thread with a poor menz, nasty lady not being kind/subservient enough approach.

Between them all it's no longer a relatively (in the context of the internet) quiet corner for women supporting women.

It’s really hard to say without sounding snobby and exclusionary - but I feel the lack of reading and comprehension skills has increased a lot.

There’s so many threads where OP states something clearly, yet the replies are clogged up with questions which are answered right there in the OP. Surely it’s basic courtesy to read the OP properly, before you reply.

And if it’s a longish thread then at least skim read the OPs subsequent posts. There was a thread a few weeks back where the OP was asking reassurance if her diet was ok for someone who was pregnant. Then in subsequent posts it became very clear she had quite severe disordered eating. But there were so many replies on the thread by people who had only read the OP and were therefore giving quite misguided and, potentially damaging, views.

Maybe it’s partly as 10-15 years ago someone would be sitting at a computer leisurely browsing Mumsnet. But now they’re on a smartphone, switching between lots of different apps, possibly which walking down a street or something.

The pp that tend to complain were not here 10-15 years ago…

I agree. I don't think it's anything like as bad as a few years ago. Bun fights all the time especially Saturday nights and all the usually suspects ganging up against one unfortunate poster. This doesn't happen nearly as much.

Oh God, yes, the, paragraph police when someone is sharing something quite traumatic and is invariably on the app or dyslexic or stressed or whatever.

100% on they’re not reading the OP too, usually something like ‘what does your DP think, OP?’, when the OP has said in the first paragraph that she’s a single mother or her partner has died or something equally upsetting.

It’s the same on Facebook, people are just so rude online, I doubt very much if they would be the same face to face as most of them wouldn’t be that forward.

Some people just enjoy being spiteful, it's part of their psychopathy. Some people feel aggrieved in life in one way or other, and get to vent at strangers without having to deal with come-backs. Some people feel superior to others and like to put others down. There's a lot of this on here now sadly.

I think people are in general. That and we have seen it all before.

I try to stay away from the relationships section as I am pig sick of seeing women making the same mistakes over and over with useless or abusive men - especially giving up work not married to said useless man.

Only so many times people can give the same advice.

I do think that nastiness on MN has increased to a significant extent in the last few years. But this seems to be occurring across social media. Yesterday I was listening to a podcast by a YouTube creator who was talking about how many more nasty comments she gets these days than in the past. She said that other YouTube creators have said the same. As MN has grown, I suppose it is to be expected that it won't be immune from this kind of negativity.

Has anyone noticed that the first page of answers is usually so reactive and nasty and then after a couple of pages the more pragmatic, reasonable people start to come in with their answers??

I especially see this on the 'my DH did this threads', there's a full page of irrational people shouting to leave your marriage over everything and then you start to get the more helpful and more thought out answers come through.
Makes me think there's a group of people just sitting waiting ready for the next argument to come in 🙄

Has it been going that long? Only joined a couple of years ago with the genuine intention of seeking advice.

I must say, most were supportive but some were harsh. When I commented on posts there were a few admonishments, especially have you not been keeping up with the post? Erm no, I saw it, went off to do my real life, but wanted to respond so did so later when I had time.

As everywhere, there are different personalities and there will be conflict between different age groups, backgrounds, religion etc.

However all should show respect, not just type because they're looking for an argument as a keyboard warrior. Xxx

I’m relatively new to MN and I think some of the answers are just mean, for the sake of being mean. And so many leave your husband. As if you just walk out the door with your kids and life under one arm.

l also think that lately there’s a high degree of reading and comprehension fails, as well as an increasing number of posters who are clearly just keyboard warriors out to take an alternative view no matter what, with the sole intention of a derail. Not to mention internalised misogyny being more and more prevalent these days.

I think it depends on the subject matter. Threads on benefits of any kind always take a turn for the worse, as does anything to do with step parents, baby boomers or just men in general !!

agree

99% of my annoyance (which I usually manage to ignore but probably am guilty of being rude to occasionally) would be mitigated if people just READ THE POST THEY WERE COMMENTING ON. So many people just reading the headline and then either asking questions that the OP has already answered several times, or merrily responding to a scenario that bears little if any resemblance to the OP and is just what they've made up in their own head in order to have an excuse to pile on.

If anything there seem to be slightly fewer of the dickheads who used to reply to a clearly distraught OP asking a serious question to ignore the actual content and just point out an error in their spelling/grammar, usually with the veiled pretence it made their post incomprehensible (when it was always perfectly clear what was meant), or say something like 'use paragraphs OP I couldn't be bothered to read that wall of text", than there were a few years ago.

Yes I definitely think it’s gradually become a significantly more cruel and callous space than it used to be back in the day when it first started up. With a lot of people apparently just posting essentially to crow about how perfect their lives are and make people feel even worse about their problems. I do agree there has been a significant sudden worsening since the pandemic (which I would agree is something I also observe in real life). And I agree it’s less funny than it used to be (also probably reflecting the lack of light heartedness in real life as people are grappling with all the problems afflicting modern Britain).

I also agree with a poster who said that people now attack the person not the point. It’s always been a place of robust debate hence the viper’s nest. And yes there have always been some trolls though not as many as now I think. But the big difference is that previously if someone came on saying they wanted advice about a particular issue or wanted to discuss opinions on a particular issue, unless there was something glaringly significant needing addressing they’d skipped over like it was nothing eg “my DH hit me last night, to cheer myself up I want to make a really great lunch for the kids, what are people’s ideas for kids packed lunches?” or something, where people would rightly focus on the hitting husband rather than the lunch ideas, generally people stuck to the topic raised for discussion.

And I feel like people were generally a bit more respectful of or at least tolerant of other opinions even if they massively disagreed with them. Though that’s again something I’ve noticed as a real-life issue, and potentially some of it is generational. I am Gen X and my teen is Gen Alpha, there are a lot of things I like about his generation but I hate the “cancel culture” and the lack of “live and let live, agree to disagree, and respect people’s differences” that I see in it, everything seems black and white to them. For example I feel like back in the day there were the sort of debates happening which might actually change someone’s mind about something, rather than an immediate dismissal of any dissenting opinion as basically being evil.

I actually agree with another poster who said Reddit now seems a kinder and more supportive space than this.

Everywhere is the same though. My books go up on Netgalley before release and I used to get loads of lovely and supportive pre-release reviews. Now it's all bitching and moaning that 'I would never do that' or 'it's too short/long'. So I don't think we can entirely blame Mumsnet, I think it's the Net as a whole.

I've noticed more goady and judgy posts in the last year or so.

It's definitely getting worse! Complaints about husbands, partners, boyfriends etc result in "LTB", "arsehole", "WTF", 'WTAF" "clusterfuck" and worse. So much hate!

To be fair though the amount of Herberts and fantasy/grief/trauma trolls is enough to make anyone bad tempered. You see people falling for the most unbelievable shit time and again. There's a long running thread right now that is quite clearly a pervert. OP hasn't returned after some 600+ posts. It's the gullibility and sheer stupidity that makes people ratty.

I do agree with this. I miss the more coherent debates of the old days. This is not Twitter or Reddit and I really wish some posters would remember that.