To think that Forum Foggers are a pain in the @rse

I don’t understand what you’re talking about? you’re just creating more “fog” with your thread and why are you using dashes? it should be a semi colon if you are continuing your theme? 😂🤣😂🤣😂
why do you care? YABU

I left a recent one where the OP asked for destinations for a "staycation"

Instead of offering suggestions people piled in about the meaning of the word staycation. 🙄

God yes. Great name for it. I had a thread recently to discuss something difficult but instead spent a good part of it trying to prove that I wasn’t the OP of another similar thread from earlier that week.

I absolutely agree with this

It's deliberate. As soon as there's anything that might be mildly confusing these posters will dig their claws in. And then keep going, even after OP has clarified. It's tiresome

Yes they probably do have poor comprehension skills, but the goal is to put OP down. The goal is to prove OP is stupid and they are better.

People don't bother to read even the first sentence of a post, or the title, properly. If someone posts about a problem with one of their DC, and includes the phrase, "My daughter is 6" in the first sentence, there will immediately be a tetchy little question by a poster, keen to be first cab of the rank: "How old is your DD, OP?"

This is sooo true! It happens in real life too. Some people cannot (will not) just listen, think and respond. You start to speak and they're asking irrelevant questions or butting in to say you're wrong, before you even finish a sentence. It's a combination of Devil's Advocate Disease and a cat marking its [conversational] territory.

There really are a lot of posters very keen to put the boot in. I often wonder who they are, and what their motivation for posting on here is.

//early morning attempt at irony // don’t know why you’ve got such a problem with fog, it’s a perfectly reasonable weather condition in the autumn…

seriously - yes. I’m seeing this lots but I don’t know if it’s really got worse. The posters who sweep onto a particular sentence and make it all about that or even worse, miss an obvious bit of information (sometimes it’s in the title) and then another 60 posters say “need to know what age DC are” when it’s perfectly clear or whatever.

but I do feel recently I’ve seen more recently that immediate answers to OPs are nasty/critical and then there’s an entire sub thread of that poster responding to critics of their post, and the OP doesn’t get any responses.

I just think a toxic message from someone is inevitable on most posts especially if it's on AIBU which often divides opinion. Not that I think it's very nice but I don't think I've ever gone on a AIBU thread and it all be pleasant and respectful.

Its part of the reason I have never posted on AIBU because I know at least 1 person will say something nasty but likely way more than that.

You're literally opening up your problem to the Internet which is full of every type of human, including people who are toxic, argumentative, insecure, bullying, bitter.

There are some really negative and oppositional types who seem to really enjoy winding people up. I’ve seen where posters who don’t read and/or comprehend (intentionally??) the original post as the poster intended it to be understood so they don’t really get where the poster is coming from and then respond in a harsh judgey way attacking the poster. Then when they are told they have it wrong, they insist on arguing with the op on why THEY are the one who is wrong!! This really derails the thread and other posters then start weighing in on the debate based on the misunderstood argument and the poor op ends up having to defend themselves from all sides. Also there’s a lot of twisting of words and victim blaming goes on here which is really unhelpful to someone looking for support. It’s like some posters view everything they read as a personal attack and are always trying to catch posters out or something! Newsflash the post is not about you!!

People aren’t very good at reading and comprehending unfortunately. And they don’t read updates by the op, just comment on the original after things have been clarified. Always read the updates before posting, people!

The former 100%. I've just been irritated on another thread where a woman is having issues with her mum - why are you on here wasting time just tell her comes one of the helpful replies. I think it's a lack of empathy/emotional intelligence. Same as not being able to read between the lines of the problem, when the problem posted isn't the problem it's a symptom which the op can't see as they are in the midst of it but is obvious to anyone else reading.

It’s exacerbated by the enormous number of posters who don’t bother to read anything but the OP, even on a multipage thread, so don’t respond to any further posts from the OP or any ongoing discussion and just post the same ‘surely you mean 10AM, not PM, OP?’ for the 100th time.

I think a lot of posters overlay their own experience or situation and combined with failing to actually read the OPs post jump straight in. The recent post on surrogacy had a poster utterly ignoring the OPs point because she thought people were having a dig at baby care units.

No it was a typo for Alsatian, but the guy then said GSD (same thing). I was flummoxed at first!

It’s annoying when a post is clear but sometimes what is clear to me isn’t to another person. Sometimes I pick up message A in good faith when a poster later clarifies they mean message B.

Except that the OP was clearly very upset and concerned about the welfare of their child, who was being put into a dangerous situation by their other parent whenever in their care. The "jokes" weren't even remotely funny because of that alone.

I agree OP

It took me a couple of minutes to cotton on that the OP didn't really live somewhere that people were releasing alligators onto the street. I thought she must live in Florida or something. I was surprised people were answering without mentioning the alligators

And some derail a thread by picking on a totally inconsequential sentence in the OP's first post and pulling it apart. 'You went wild swimming? Why did you do that before a restaurant meal? Where did you get changed?' Whether it's an intentional derail or a bear-of-little-brain moment it has the same affect on the thread. Yawn.

Autocorrect has much to answer for! Some very funny, good-natured threads have taken off because of a great typo. Not what the OP means, though and I agree some people are like a dog with a bone. Boring to read for the rest of us, unpleasant for the OP.

It was a typo for German Shepard, not Alsatian. No idea how that typo came about.

It may have been funny the first time it was pointed out, or even the first 10 times. But after the OP had acknowledged the typo, added a pinned correction to the OP and asked for advice about the actual issue, then mentioning the typo wasn’t funny any more for the next 100 times, especially people posting solely about the typo and not also offering advice.

OP, not sure if you’re on TikTok but I’ve noticed that on there, creators often make errors eg typos in captions, mispronouncing words in videos, calling a product by the wrong name etc which then results in an onslaught of corrections in the comments, along with others pointing out that these creators do it on purpose for engagement- i.e. the more comments they get, they more they get paid for that video! It’s a form of click bait. The creators know that people just can’t help themselves but to correct things.

Some people just aren’t very bright. Or they’re reading quickly and their comprehension isn’t good. Or they’re reading with a lot else going on in the background.

There will be those who just miss the point entirely due to failing to read properly - we see this all the time in life

Then there is that small percentage who are just out to harass and get a real kick from it and they do it by homing in on a minor point or getting on a high horse.

my personal hatred are the ones whose immediate solution to any relationship issue is ‘kick him out’ or ‘get divorced’ as if it’s always the best and only thing to do

That might have been funny though? I didn’t see that one but some of the funniest MN threads have evolved like that.