Now will people stop believing everything they read on here?

[Inklingpot]

And stop begging for updates to made up rubbish?

Totally agree, between 70% and 95% of posters here are not 100%.
I myself am a statistic - broken down by age, sex and marital status ... but mostly by the marital status.

I see certain phrases and my heart sinks.

I can practically smell the Immac on their little hairy hands.

But, you know, I allow myself to laugh about the tide au troll and spit my tea all over my keyboard.

Definitely. It's so transparent - free focus groups, basically. In the same vein are those posters who go on threads that are (rightly) slagging off some policy and/or politician, and insert the most gushing defences of same - in the face of actual evidence that the politician/policy is cunty 😂

When you're sitting there watching netflix or Disney, just remember that all entertainment is made up. Even the news is scripted and can't be trusted.

Even people who respond are also trolling. The thread about a lady stopping pony lessons for her daughter because she found herself unexpectedly pregnant and a mob of women with pitch forks telling her to have an abortion is just an example. And another one of a poster pissed off because a neighbour asked to sit in her garden. 🙄 someone earning £450k asking if they can afford to send 2 kids to a private school?

I only respond to realistic situations even though it may be a troll so that someone else browsing the net looking for answers might get some advice if they're genuinely looking for it.

I read a lot of fiction anyway, so as long as it’s entertaining, I really don’t care.

Totally.

The pace of the updates, the sitcom-style quotes from the kids and husband, the unrealistic storyline, the heroic transformation of OP from people pleaser to ballsy CF-slayer…

It actually really annoyed me, because people were falling for it and saying how amazing OP was.

OP certainly got the attention they wanted!

But would they merely post on the thread, or would they start it?

(I do also love @FessHole both the speed and wit of the name change but also the namesake twitter account)

I haven't really believed anything on here since about 2013

Despite the amount of ‘meh, of course it’s all made up’ posts, there are still a significant number of people posting on MN who get very over-invested in threads.

’Oh, OP, I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about you! Please come back and update us!’

MN isn't taken seriously be the government any more.

Not least as MN dominant opinion always seems to back the losing side in any election/referendum.

I have spotted quite a large number of times when there are threads about themes that then appear in the BBC 'thinkpiece'/non-urgent news the following day. This week's example being the cost of school uniforms.

Not sure which way round that is - I suspect it's 'we're doing uniforms, start a thread and see if it comes up with any good angles' (because of timing of appearance of thread) but it could also be 'this is topical and we're about to cover it - oi researcher, see what the usual suspect websites have to say'

Is that what that means?!!

Good to know.

Reddit even has a whole board about how to troll on MumsNet, poor SOBs

If you mean the one I think you mean - it's discussing trolls - much like this thread, but allowed to be specific as they won't be zapped as TAAT for doing so.

I mean, there might be a how-to subreddit as well, but it ain't the well-known one about all the trolls

Just imagine 👀👀👀😂

It could be you or it could be me

I think they didn’t notice that often a thread just runs and runs when it’s obviously BS, and posters are just having fun with the OP.

Op, I don't believe you!

Que all posters on this thread never, believing a thing they read on here.

Not like the other invested posters. 😉

I suspect that a lot of the bollocks threads start off true then the OP starts embellishing as he / she loves the reaction.

A thread where you have a slight falling out with a neighbour then both of you pretend it never happened - probably true.

A thread where you have a slight falling out with a neighbour then it escalates until you are both waving chainsaws at each other - probably not true.

I find these threads as annoying as the fake ones.

I think everyone must know that there's a chance any thread is fake?

Sometimes I point it out. Sometimes I play along even when it's blindingly obvious.

These kinds of Sm fora are like interactive take a break magazine's

Who cares (as long as you're not personally invested/giving up time or money) if its real or not?

Yeah, same.

I don't see it matters - they are still interesting scenarios ( the made up posts)

I don't only read non- fiction.....

Which of her 2 threads made the DM?

I bet the mil with the name tattoo of the baby was made up.

I must be very gullible then because I tend to believe people. I really don't think that most posts are made up. Some posts do stretch credibility but not the majority.

There seems to be a thread every day where a woman is wasting her time with a man who doesn't work even though he is able to, really hope most of those are made up.

I've no idea whether MN is taken seriously by the government or not, but given that the demographic skews youngish and female it would be pretty stupid of any political party to use it as a barometer for which way the entire electorate is going to go. That was equally true when we did have a Labour government.

If a political party is going to use a forum or way of surveying a group that aren't representative of the population, they'll contextualise it. Similarly, a pensioner forum might be useful data on what pensioners think, but it would be missing the point to complain that it's no use when it comes to assessing thirtysomethings. It's not supposed to be.