The old days of Mumsnet when…

[Anon778833]

Back in 2003, there was a section entitled ‘introductions’ and people would post identifying photos of themselves and their dc. And a post about themselves.

How times change!

I was thinking along those lines, in that there’s now a whole new generation posting and they just maybe have a different style - but I’m not sure it’s us original / earlier posters that are the shitty responders, it’s the posters that automatically disagree whatever the OP is saying and then the rest just roll with that and pile on and on.

It used to be sharp tongued and argumentative - but with intelligence behind it, often humour. Now it’s often just contrary, closed mindedness and often cruel.

You should’ve been here when mumsnet HQ changed every thread title to “what’s so special about cod?” one night .

Ha ha. Loving the seething hate ❤️❤️

I've been on since 2002, it's seen me through 2 pregnancies, numerous dogs, relationships, family loss and has kept me invested for all of those years.

I'm now on the wrinkles, peri menopause and getting older threads along with flying the nest and teenagers.

So many posters I loved. And I remember a post about someone spraying a pigeon with fence paint.. and the posters making up the poor birds narrative "omg Paul what happened to you etc"

There were a few "that's cruel" but the majority were laughing and the who story I think maybe on classics but it was funny at the time.

Oh and snail fuckers??

I'm sticking around but change my name about every 3-6 months.

It used to be sharp tongued and argumentative - but with intelligence behind it, often humour. Now it’s often just contrary, closed mindedness and often cruel.

This articulates it really well: so many posters who can’t look outside their own experiences and seem to feel really resentful of difference.

Yes agree. I think the good stuff is still there, but you have to dig deeper to find it.

I am always struck by the wit and cleverness of some responses. The one that always sticks in my head was the yoni thread - first reply was something along the lines of "it's a noni from me"

Fond memories of the thread when a young man came along to explain computers to the mums too.

@PollyAmour Ooh hadn't thought that far but maybe book a particular 'room' or carrying something!

I’m glad I’m not the only one that remembers that! The feeling of excitement that you might get a bottle with a message from another mumsnetter!

💯 this!

loving this, ESPECIALLY the bat explanation. Vote for classics.

It's the first place I heard about batshit/sock puppetry/trolls so used to be educational for me lol.
I used to escape to style and beauty if aibu got nasty because it was so genteel in those days. Now even S&B can be really bitchy and ever other post is Botox.
I think it's less cliquey and less MN royalty nonsense but much more judgy.

I was on a long running thread back in the mists of time, where we decided to do secret santa one year. I received a rather lovely tree decoration from a MNer. I hang it up every year and am always struck by how strange it is to have a gift from someone I never met - I didn't even know her name IRL although obviously she knew mine!

You what?

I get what you mean, but beware of nostalgia. There were some brilliant, funny, witty threads, and I miss those. But there was also some absolute fuckwittedness, even back then. As an HCP, I still shudder at the memory of some of the vicious anti-MMR threads in the 90s.

2008 here.

Does anyone else remember the Bean Flicking bloke? Or did i dream that? 😂

It's less cliquey, but less witty.

There were no threads in the 90s.

MN was founded in 2000

I started reading in about 2015 and I can remember threads that had lots of comments with those 'creepy wee brackets'in them. Like.

Thinking about the old days < tilts head>
When were they ? < stifles grin >
< shuffles a bit > Another country.

Don't get it at all. Really tedious. And rarely see it now.

I also ended up in quite a controversial discussion the other day and people kept saying 'good post' and referencing each other back and forth and "as such and such says" and it suddenly reminded me of that 'in the clique' way of posting you used to see.

But it can't be all bad as I'm always on here.

Lots of rudeness and bun fights on here.
But nothing as seriously nasty as someone who posted asking about school pick ups or something, but referred to her husband as "hubby". OMg that was awful . It was 2016.
She was shredded. And I still see those names about the place.

Please tell me about the New Year's Eve when it all went A Bit Wrong?

There were threads with anti Vacsers but they were just posters with opposing opinions I don’t remember viciousness and they were probably post 2007ish (though their might have been earlier ones).

The weirdest smack down I ever got was on a bfing thread where I disagreed with someone who “had lots of experience”. My boobs are obviously alien because I was basically recounting my own experience of feeding my children. Apparently it just “doesn’t work like that”…I’ve discussed it with the delinquent mammaries but they refuse to comply with MN expectations.

I think this is broadly true. I joined in 2009, so obviously quite a newbie compared with the OP! I don't look at MN as much as I used to even a couple of years ago, partly because I now have great difficulty loading long threads and because I find the 'Search' function pretty unhelpful (e.g. just now, to check the date I joined, I used a search engine rather than an MN search). But it's also because I don't see a lot of humorous threads these days - maybe I just don't spot them, but I wonder if some 'classics' from the past ('hamster stew' springs to mind) would today be deleted for trolling?

OTOH, I do agree there could be a certain cliqueyness back in the day. There are some posters I miss, but definitely some I don't!

And was it always a 'much kinder' place then? I was too late for the Mouldies debacle in real time, but I've read subsequent threads about how hurtful many people found that. And I joined at the time when a poster in Bereavement had just been outed as an awful troll, which obviously deeply upset many people. Posters of my vintage will also remember the 'Who is your favourite Mumsnetter?' threads that cropped up from time to time. They always started nicely enough with 'XX posted some great advice recently' and 'YY is such a hilarious poster', then degenerated when some posters came on to say 'Well, XX may be lovely, but ZZ is just HORRIBLE!', and finally the threads were deleted for nastiness.

I remember those 'who is your fave MNer?' threads.They always ended in a fight 😄
I think the balance was different in the old days. Most threads were fine. The minority were mean.
Now the split is the other way. In the last few months I'm constantly amazed at the topics posters try to start fights about. You can almost see the OP thinking 'this will be a nice chatty thread' and suddenly gfs are stomping all over it just being deliberately contrary and nasty. If they want angry contrariness, I don't understand why they don't just go to Twitter or Reddit.
I know US research leans towards arguing being the way to boost engagement on social media but it feels in conflict with what the ethos of the site was.

In a brief nut shell, iirc, people started posting spoof threads on NYE. It all got rather silly and out of hand. One of the MN staff who, I think had been left on their own, panicked and pulled the plug on MN overnight. On NYD everyone woke up feeling rather sorry with a hangover and no MN.

I wonder if some 'classics' from the past ('hamster stew' springs to mind) would today be deleted for trolling?

Judging by a lot of the "popular" threads now, no they wouldn't.