What has happened to Mumsnet? So many horrible people on here

[Fedupwitheveryone]

Every thread I read seems to have a nasty comment or response straight off the bat. And so many responses seem to come from people jumping to irate conclusions without having read the OP's post properly. It's so tedious.

It hasn't always been this bad. It used to have genuinely useful advice and/or funny comments. What has changed?

MN has a fair few bots and paid users who will derail threads to skew perceptions, throw in the odd angry frustrated stressed out users and you have quite the negative concoction for the right topic.

Agreed. I think there are a lot more men on here than there used to be. Not all of them signal themselves upfront with "Bloke here"!

Well yes - of course it was different! It was much smaller then, and people namechanged a lot less. Therefore there was more of a sense of community, and people getting to know each other.

You'll always get the good, the bad and the ugly

Yes, I get this impression too. Some responders have nothing useful to say: they're just here want to wind up, criticise and undermine the OP (and other responders).

Totally agree OP. I used to get all sorts of ideas and info from Mumsnet, now every thread is a race to the bottom to see who can be nastiest. I don't really know why I'm still here to be honest! Habit maybe, but I really don't enjoy it anymore.

I’ve been thinking of closing my account due to the nastiness to be honest. I wish someone would start a new forum with a better vibe. Maybe name changing shouldn’t be allowed more than twice a year or something like that.

You know this isn't true, don't you?!

Ignore the vile ones.

Every single thread I clicked on here on Sunday (apart from long running ones) was made up rubbish.

Anyone who thinks MN doesn't still have loads of good advice and support needs to check out topic boards and not spend all their time in AIBU/Chat.

I don’t think you can make excuses. I can’t work because of my severe anxiety disorder- I don’t be nasty to other people because of it

The Internet is mostly a fake world now, it’s not representative of real life

The ones I really hate are where the OP posts about a situation that’s difficult or distressing for them. It might be a bit of a ramble, or have some grammatical errors but it’s still perfectly easy to understand. Without fail you always get some dickhead claiming that the OP is incomprehensible and that they can’t offer advice as a result. Kick someone while they’re down why don’t you?!

That and the “why did you marry him/have children with him?”.

Removing the ability to name change would stop some of it I think.

And 90% of the bitchiness is in AIBU, get rid of that or ignore it and the rest is much better.

I definitely preferred it when I first joined in 2008. It was much funnier and I learnt a lot from several posters. Its a bit of an odd mix on here now and some posters have me asking 'Why are you on here?' as it is clear they only want to annoy and provoke people who are genuinely looking for advice.

How can you tell though?

It’s so easy to tell that I cannot believe people fall for it honestly

You must be new here. Do you truly think people with certain agendas to push simply steer clear of Mumsnet, a well known website with a broad appeal and an extremely active forum section with thousands of users and viewers? The fact that certain threads end up on the Daily Fail website shows there are paid operatives lurking and that’s just from one company.

The absolute opposite is true. I've been here since 2006.

There are always people who have a specific agenda, and it's pretty obvious who they are, so it's pretty hard for them to skew or derail without being taken to task. They come and go depending on what the latest topic/controversy/political story is.

Those who join and try to post 'hidden' adverts for their new product/service get short shrift and are pretty swiftly spotted, reported and deleted. You can spot the fake-genuine posters a mile off.

And the Daily Mail <spits> have long-since trawled the boards for stories. They don't need to pay anyone to post - they just lift what they want.

I think unfortunately that analysis showing that middle aged women were most likely to swing the election didn't help because its attracted a lot of political posters to the site hoping to cause a move to certain agendas. Its unpleasant.

There is certainly more piling on and general aggression than there used to be and I find that's made me more defensive when people ask questions as I always worry they have bad intent and are about to launch an attack!

I would disagree. You can always spot the provocative thread followed a couple of posts down by someone posting an equally provocative alternative viewpoint. And then it rolls.

It’s very obvious once you start being aware of it. Who benefits? MN advert revenue

You could literally say on here that you'd helped an old lady across the road with her shopping - and a good chunk would somehow find a way to make you feel bad or that you'd done the wrong thing!. So many bitter, angry, nasty people walk among us - and MN and other places really bring them out in droves. It's like they have pent up anger they need to unleash on the undeserving. I just feel sad for them tbh

This.

what I will say, is I have been accused of making things up on this before when it was a perfectly honest post😂 so I’m sure some people might? But really, you could say you had a ham sandwich for lunch and people would tell you “I live in the uk and it’s impossible that you could have had a ham sandwich for lunch”. I’m not sure there are as many made up posts as people think. Some of them are perfectly reasonable but people are accused of making it up!