To be unsure of how much I actually believe on here

LTB is a MN thing, originated on here. So you probably wouldn’t hear it in real life, no.

Event or hobby - don’t understand what you mean

In the trenches - I’ve never seen that and been here over 20 years

Fun money - heard that in real life a fair bit.

Weaponised incompetence- haven’t really seen this that much on here or IRL

Everything has to be 50/50 - that’s not a special phrase or repeated mantra, it’s just an opinion. Many share it when it comes to joint finances and childcare etc.

The number of posters with perfect marriages, still having amazing sex 3 times a day after 65 years of marriage, slept together within 3 seconds of meeting and moved in together the same day, husband covers the bed in rose petals still every day and so on. Again it's not the norm.

Just because something isn't 'the norm' that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, though. Lots of people do, in fact, have very happy marriages and an equal partnership. I'm sorry if you don't, but that doesn't mean nobody does.

All six of my closest friends (and I) are in very happy long-term relationships and with lovely men. That hasn't always been the case at all - at various times we've all been with appalling men and been miserable. But at this point in our lives, all of us are very happy.

Also, there are very few posts on Mumsnet about 'perfect' marriages. Every now again, someone will start a thread actually begging for examples of happy relationships and great partners because they feel depressed by how many miserable relationships there are on here!

I'm slightly incredulous about how much people seem to know about friends' and relatives' financial circumstances surrounding benefits etc. I like to think I have understanding and non-judgemental friends and relatives, but it has given me the heads-up to be circumspect about whom I share what with!

It’s the repetitive language used on here which I never hear in real life.

LTB
An event or hobby
In the trenches
Fun money
Weaponised incompetence
Everything has to be 50/50

So many more…

As an experiment I recently asked ChatGPT to produce a post in the style of a typical MN thread. It was very convincing, in fact it made me wonder how many are auto-generated by AI. I’m sure that must happen. It’s very easy to produce both an original post and any of the responses if you copy and paste a few into AI. It would be very easy to instruct it to “make it inflammatory and contentious and likely to provoke further responses from others.”

imagine how manipulated we all are, potentially. Scary

My mum actually put me on mumsnet (I think she was annoyed with all my questions when I had my PFB) and she told me “most of it’s a load of shite but they can recommend you a good hoover and stuff like that”.

I think its weirdly bitter and insecure to waste energy thinking that a mumsnettermight have lied about a 200k salary 🤨 i dont earn that but why wouldnt i believe, or why would i even care, if someone else does? 🤷‍♀️

A very large proportion of MNs have children who are SEN in one way or another. I know hardly any in real life. And twins. So many twins on MN.

feel free to ask chatgpt what "an average" is. It will explain it a lot better than I would

@Faceonthewrongfoot 100% I am not going to post "I love my kids and I am happy with our life, my husband is great and we don't have many personal struggles" as a thread - there isn't anything to discuss it just is!

But people are far more likely to be on here because they have problems or challenges that they need help/advice/support on than people who's lives are pretty easy going. So it stands to reason that you see more people with unfortunate lives than in real life.

As for the rest of it - I don't really recognise most of what the OP is talking about - I feel like there's generally a good mix of people in terms of wealth etc. And I'm quite sure people do lie - its the beauty of being anonymous - but also a lot of people will change details to make themselves less identifiable in real life - and if you're going to do that, you might as well make yourself more fabulous than reality....

I've never wanted children so a couple of my friends see me as their 'safe' person. They know I won't judge when they come out with things they would never say to their friends who have children.

Case in point I can join in and say the same for my son, give his stats etc. If your son is 5'4 and 18 stone you probably aren't going to post so the thread becomes skewed without anyone lying.

To a point, but the big salaries crop up as a tangent on other threads as well. Say it's "If you love your job, what is it?" and there are as many posts saying they love their £200k a year job in law/banking as there are those who love their job at a dogs' home or working as a TA. You're right though; nobody ever said this was a representative cross-section!

And the posters who know a child with foetal
alcohol syndrome because their mother had one glass of wine during pregnancy…

I’m a parent of one of the very tall skinny offspring who consume much more than the average daily calorie need. They do exist! Does it help you to believe it if I tell you he has horizontal stretch marks across his back, which I didn’t know were a think in teenage boys who have very rapid growth spurt, and so nearly contacted school when I noticed them as I thought he had been bullied in school? 😆

he does little exercise, he isn’t sporty. He does have a bike at uni which he uses to get to lectures sometimes and he tends to walk rather than get buses but that’s it.

he will happily eat a very full plate of roast dinner, and then refill his plate so that it’s full of roast potatoes and gravy, and eat that. Never heard him say “ooh I feel so full, I feel sick now”.

etc etc. other son is average build in weight and height.

so outliers DO exist, and I assume that means you’ll also have outliers in the other areas you mention, like salary, lifestyle, sex life etc.

takes alll sorts to make a world, as they say.

@Evaka equally a group or thread called "I love my kids and am happy" would be either hijacked by people who are unhappy and looking for a fight, or empty because it isn't really a topic for dicussion.

I love my kids, and I am happy... and there isn't really much more to say about it or discuss with strangers.

But is the point not that you can share dark moments, doubts and regrets safely on here?

This is also that fact that some posters don’t seem to recognise: obviously the threads will be self-selecting.

Discussions on pension savings, earnings, careers, private schools, house extensions, holidays, home furnishing, cars, style and beauty, even gardening, will be self-selecting in that they attract more people who have higher disposable income so are interested in and involved in these things so have experience to post.

Politics and economics threads will generally attract more people who are more educated so care about these issues (the serious discussions about it in terms of policy, not the ranting ones about personal circumstances).

Relationships threads are obviously skewed towards those who are having relationship problems.

Posts about SEN/ disabilities will obviously attract more posters with experience of those issues.

It’s quite obvious, statistically (even leaving aside the fact that nobody ever claimed that the population of posters on the site was a statistically adjusted cross-section of society to make it representative in the first place… it would probably be far less popular, interesting or intelligible if it was given the general level of discourse on the internet!) that certain topics will naturally attract more posters from some demographics than others so it’s odd that many posters on this thread seem to not grasp this and think that certain posts being of interest to people with shared characteristics must mean that the posts are fake, simply because that characteristic doesn’t apply to them personally.

Your life is more exciting than mine. The last time I called 101 it was while driving into the city to work and narrowly missing some loose cattle who'd broken out of their field on a main road. When someone answered, I said 'Just reporting about 20 bullocks loose on X Road that could cause a serious accident,' and there was a pause before the phoneline person said 'What's a bullock?'

OMG - mind boggles, doesn’t it? And they wonder why the crime stats are where they are just now 🤦🏽‍♀️

Called 101, I said to the lady ' I've just found a kilo of coke in my cellar'. Her reply was ' you've found a kilo of coke on your fella? Where is he now, is he still in the house with it on him or has he left?' Signal is crap here, it took a few goes for her realise what i was saying, she said someone would come and fetch it in the hour and search the rest of the cellar.
No one turned up, she called back and asked me to take it to my local station so I headed off. Then had a massive panic in case I got pulled over on the way as I realised she never took my reg plate or details.
The lady on the desk at the station had no idea I was coming so she was shocked when I dropped a brick of coke on the counter. She went out back to speak to someone, came back and asked me if I wanted a receipt for it?!
That was the end of that. I still haven't had a proper search of the cellar to see if there is more. It took us 4 years of living here to find that one!

Do you understand what “average” means? If the average is 31 then 40 is not highly unusual unless you’d also consider 22 to be highly unusual? Neither 40 or 22 is average but neither inspires incredulity when the average is 31.

If the average is rising to 35 then 40 is no more unusual than 30 (assuming they’ve used the mean not the median, but in either case if the average is 35 then 40 is quite close to that in the span of a lifetime! It’s not as though there’s some rule that everyone must procreate at an identical age).

First of all, I’m fascinated by the discovery of large amounts of class A drugs. What on earth do you do in that situation? Obviously they are illegal so one wouldn’t want to be associated with it - unless that contributed to the massive income & savings of course. But it belongs to someone, somewhere, and they will eventually miss it! Did the owners of “your” coke come calling, @Whowhatwhere21?

FYI I have adequate income, am “squeezed middle”, disabled, have gorgeous babies whom I loved despite PND (a couple of decades ago). I would, however, dearly love a DH who doesn’t fart in the presence of a lady, or indeed me!

Its not hard at all, no. That article says the average age is 31. It's predicted to be 35 for girls born in 2025. Neither figure is near 40.