AIBU to take more pleasure from the spats on MN than the genuine / helpful / lovely comments?

It really depends.

I find it entertaining when you get the extreme reactions to a minor problem - LTB blows my mind in a lot of cases. But outright nastiness and pack mentality can be vile on here.

There was a post about builders helping themselves to the posters fridge. I couldn't believe the amount of response saying let it go!

It does seem some posters can take offence to almost anything and twist things when it's plainly obvious what was meant.

But yes, MN definitely has major bemusement value IMO!

It was a joke. Sorry. Thought I was keeping in theme but it didnt land.

In the uk we love to bring someone down, but only if that person is either mean to others or see themselves as superior. It's called "punching up", or giving someone back what they dish out. I think this is socially acceptable (within reason, death threats and racism/slurs are always unacceptable).

But there's an awful lot of "punching down" and completely unprovoked, goady attacks on MN. I can't understand why some get a kick out of doing that - it's pathetic.

I also hate the stupid, mindless, parroted comments like "first world problems, get over yourself", or "drama llama, just myob". It adds nothing to the discussion and it's so BORING. If you think the OP is dumb, just move on, and if you must comment at least try to be a bit more original.

But doing that doesn’t get you the dopamine hit that posting a comment like that does. And that’s what it’s all about I think, a human need to win a conversation or get a nice feeling from writing something horrible.

On a lighthearted level I agree.

But it us a bit depressing too - assuming we are mostly women on this site, I can just hear the misogynists laughing at the petty cat fights.

That’s a term some might choose to be offended by, but frankly, many of these pathetic squabbles Dont deserve any other name.

Yes - a classic is…wait for a pp to recommend Seasalt…and brace for the sneers about 80 year olds! It’s totally predictable. You can like a brand or hate it - but if you hate it, walk on by.

Absolutely. I got in a great bun-fight on a thread about OP being stuck doing the office washing up. Hilarity insued, as you can imagine. Some posters minimising it, some outraged.

One poster recommended a snarky passive-aggressive note along the lines of "your mother doesn't work here..", i pointed out that was not the way to go if you want respect or to be taken seriously.. then everyone pilied-on with the passag notes they'd seen or had made and the two camps went at it.. great fun.

Always happy to argue about the low-stakes stuff that some people love, and some find infuriating.

I love a good fight on MN..it often makes me happy.

Mine was indeed a joke in spirit of the opening post. An obvious joke to me that has reminded me that we can all read and comprehend things differently :)

Some topics inevitably have posters whose views are like similar magnetic poles that can’t help pushing apart. Politics and religion, most obviously.

Some other topics deserve a little thought about why a poster’s emotions might be very raw, and their posts fighty. I always find the step- threads like that: stepmums having a hard time with stepkids get shit from anxious, bitter separated mums because they stand on such different ground with such different perspectives.

And of course some posters are just trolls or foul-mouthed losers.

The bunfights I really enjoy are those where nothing’s at stake. Style & Beauty threads are fucking excellent for that.

I skip over the comments that are just spats between posters.

Its starting to get rather boring tho. You can't post a comment with your opinion without someone taking offence to it now and starting a spat.
I admit I'm guilty of replying sometimes but erg every post lately gets an are you serious sort of remark to it.

True, but it might have been expensive to her. The comments were very snobbish…in a vulgar sort of way!

It can be entertaining to read how dramatic some people can get over topics that really aren’t that serious, but I don’t enjoy reading people being nasty and argumentative for the sake of it to posters that are already having a difficult time. When I had only recently had a baby I briefly mentioned in a post that I was struggling with a new baby and an older child with additional needs and felt unsupported by my family. Only to have another poster tear into me over and over again about how I don’t deserve any support and I’m a horrible, entitled person for expecting it. It wouldn’t bother me now but I was very hormonal at the time and already feeling vulnerable and it did upset me. I’ve seen similar on a lot of other posts unfortunately. I think trying to bring other posters down when they’re already struggling is absolutely disgusting and gives me no pleasure to read.

I think the responses on the first page which piled in saying you were rude/obtuse were being ironic rather than serious.

But on here, who knows…!

Well I think the challenge there was it was the inference that it was really expensive so better than some pleb who had bought something from primark. But was funny as the brand wasn’t anything special.