Mumsnet “norms” that annoy you most

[usernamechanged1]

For me it’s the utterly obscure baby names. We’ve all seen them and I’m quite sure nobody uses them in real life. Yet on MN, it’s apparently standard.

Honourable mention to the 50% of posters whose husbands are earning upwards of £100K too.

Yep.

I think it is fair enough people who have experience of SEN and dementia putting forward the viewpoint as signs are clear as day when you’ve lived with it. But a lot of essentially unqualified labelling and jumping the gun.

Also, still of the opinion large number of regular MN ladies likely ND and ergo their children/partners/relatives too… so could be frequent mentions due to that.

Harmless but tone-deaf people trying to be supportive on relationship threads - 'my husband and I have just broken up, I'm devastated' - 'that's so sad, my husband and I love each other so much and I could never cope if we broke up, hugs to you'. Err. Thanks?

That one poster who always posts the exact same pouty selfies on S&B threads.

Agree on banal, well-known platitudes being attributed to random nans and uncles, and 'btw i have anxiety' being tacked onto every single thread in an attempt to avoid criticism. 'AIBU to have smacked a random passer-by in the face with a deckchair, btw i have anxiety so please be gentle x'. Ok.

We had two endowment mortgages and remember the letters. The insurance companies always had an alternative investment you could use to cover the shortfall. No Thanks. It made me very wary of the financial services industry.

People hating reverse threads just to hate them or because they've been caught out giving (un)biased advice.

Seeing as it's difficult for some mumsnetters to be objective on certain topics, reverse threads are understandable. More often than not, you get the real advice.

I hate them because they're totally dishonest and can't ever give a true idea of what the person they're pretending to be is thinking. We know we can get only one side of the story, but if we know who's talking, we can at least assess the unavoidable biases and gaps. When we're being lied to about who's talking, we can't assess it properly.

Most people are shit at it anyway. You can usually tell a reverse because the writer comes over as a one dimensional pantomime villain with absolutely no reasoning process for what they're doing. They're just WRONG!

If you were in a disagreement with someone, would you be happy for them to speak as you to get outside opinions?

Some people do it to be objective or get unbiased opinions while some do it to make the other party seem worse, so they'll have more support. I think it's usually clear (to me) why someone's doing it so I don't disagree with them totally. The former doesn't bother me.

But mostly on mn, people just go against reverse threads even when the OP's position doesn't matter. (Eg: We want to know if you're the male or female so we can decide how we react or we want to know if you're the MIL or DIL so we can tell you what we think. The advice usually comes from a prejudiced position).

Threads: my wedding my rules, even though you sound disrespectful as fuck
Men bashing. Women are always right and perfect. I remember thread about traumatic labour. Woman would get sympathy, man got shit thrown at him for wanting clarification from NHS why some things happened such way.
Everyone is high earner or has high earning husband. And everything is doable. They just outsource everything and sleep 4 hours a day, but in the meantime have enough time to post on mumsnet. I don’t believe it. It’s not possible long term yet so popular here.

Completely agree re the relationship point. " My boyfriend has binned me, I am devestated..." And the reply will be "see your friends, get out....my dh and I have been very happy for 30 years but I know how it feels"

My bf hasn't answered a text in an hour..
Bin him, he's not interested. My dh answers my messages before they are even sent...

I can't believe how well I'm doing to stay off this thread...

People on MN who supposedly earn a fortune yet live so frugally that no one in real life would ever know. I don't know a single person who lives like that. What would be the point?
These jobs are also niche with dc/family friendly hours and not a modicum of stress involved.
I know lots of high earners most have big houses, nice cars, amazing holidays, great investments such as rentals and second/third homes. None of them are exactly bragging about it but they all definitely talk about it. They all work crazy hours, some travel abroad, get stressed at some point etc. That's the trade off.

How can you be objective when you're speaking for someone else? Would you trust them to be objective if they were pretending to be you?

Of course you need to know who's speaking before you can assess the situation. You need to know what the perspective is. That's obvious.

Either you trust the people you're asking or you don't. If you don't, no amount of lying and giving a skewed perspective that's got all your own biases in it but pretends not to is going to make the response more right.

And yet here you are...

(that's a joke by the way in case anyone starts)

We'll agree to disagree @ReneBumsWombats I've seen many different cases of this - some where it's understandable and others, where it's used to manipulate. The former more than the latter. Trust really doesn't come into it as an OP can't really "trust" a bunch of strangers online, otherwise our advice must be taken without question, doubt or challenge.

And it's not about giving their perspective and lying (that isn’t reverse) but providing the facts and either remaining neutral or claiming to the the opposite party so as to get opinions (and is usually done to understand things from that opposite point of view, perhaps something they may be missing to see).

As said, the intention is what matters. It isn't all bad.

Please don't tell me what I'll agree to do.

Reverses are totally dishonest and they always give a skewed and unfair picture because they pretend to have a perspective that they haven't got. They start from a lie. I don't think you'd trust someone you're arguing with to speak for you.

If you don't care or trust what Mumsnet thinks, don't ask it.

If you do, give the information as honestly as you can so we can assess it fairly. Lying and pretending it's coming from a different narrator is not going to get a more objective answer. It's going to give a completely misled one.

Please don't tell me what I'll agree to do.

What does this mean? Have you never come across the statement "we'll agree to disagree"?

We seem to disagree and I don't need to be right in my opinion. It's mine and yours is yours. That's fine.

Not being emotional about putting babies in nursery or children's first day of school. Derided as precious.

That women are all meant to like gin, cats and Tom Hardy.

Using crude sayings like 'boils my piss'.

Of course I've come across it, but I don't like it. Obviously you are entitled to your opinion. But "agree to disagree" suggests that I respect your opinion, and I don't. Your right to hold it, sure. Any respect for it as a substantiated, reasoned position, no. I think it's a total nonsense.

The thing is, OPs using reverses never get an unbiased opinion anyway, because people always spit them - usually because the OP has hammed it up to make “themselves” (i.e. their neighbour or MIL or colleague) sound as awful as possible. If you’re after unbiased opinions, you’ve failed the minute someone says “Is this a reverse?”

Right!👍🏼

Exactly. Most people are bad at them because, whatever they might tell themselves, they're not going to give the other person's account the way the other person would. If they could do that, they probably wouldn't be in disagreement! They'll write it to make it sound the way they want you to take it, but they're lying about where the biases lie. Hence the pantomime villain stuff.

If you don't trust MN's judgement when you're bring honest about your perspective, why would you suddenly trust it more when you're misleading everyone about the whole thing?

The idea that people hate reverses "just to hate them" is ridiculous and if you think that, you clearly couldn't ever write a good one. People hate them because nobody likes being misled and it makes a total mockery of any response.

I had no idea this was such a controversal idea! My husband and I have tracked each other since we dating (his idea), and it's nothing more than really handy! I don't have to spend my afternoon texting "are you still at work? are you still at work? are you still at work?"

I've never written a reverse so not speaking about myself. I can write about something from other people's point of view and experience. But you're right, you know it all and have seen it all so your opinion and "respect" (🤣) trumps all.

I'm going to carry on with the OP and leave you to it. Enjoy your day.

People being "traumatised" by smear tests. Do not know anyone in real life who cannot handle smears, especially considering they are a crucial and potentially life-saving procedure. However on MN it's been vilified as a procedure that is akin to abuse. It's undignified and potentially painful and for some people could trigger past issues, but at the end of the day it's an unavoidable medical checkup for a part of your body that you can't do otherwise.

Many MN smear discussion threads probably puts off a lot of women getting their checkups which is dangerous. Each one descends into hysteria with each poster writing about how horrific their experience was. Probably BU but anxiety, shame and fear of pain are simply not valid excuses for not getting smears.