Why have mumsnet posters got so rude?

[Littlelou61]

Honestly I read threads and people are genuinely having a horrible time and posters are so quick to say something mean-

a poor woman asking advice about an abusive boyfriend will be met with absolute victim blaming

someone asking for dating advice is run into the ground for having getting to know 2 men (as is dating culture)

a lesbian mum is asking parenting questions and it’s derailed into a trans debate absolutely nothing to do with what she is asking

someone commented that their husband does nothing around the house and people say you’re a grown woman you should do it yourself

Genuinely what is going on these days

Again, this is unnecessary. Prefect is almost certainly an autocorrect: the PP’s point was perfectly understandable despite the typo, and yet you chose to be mean and picky rather than writing a response with substance.

Hiding thread now, as my irony-meter just broke.

I don't think Mumsnet is diverse enough personally. Loads of ignorant unkind comments on here. From people with very little knowledge of real situations.

Netmums site has closed??? <misses the point of the thread>

Sorry but this is news to me, I've not been paying attention at all!

I'm just mirroring back. So it's okay for a poster you are defending to say that I lack comprehension but it's not okay for me to reply in the same manner.

I said that you jumped on a comment and got argumentative for no reason. It may be you didn’t comprehend it. It may be you’re just argumentative.

it was, and remains, an example of what people are saying. That some posters seem very argumentative.

you had a go at an autocorrect

And now I’ve been drawn in again when I said I wouldn’t argue. This is how it happens… sorry everyone

Actually, I think it's calmed down a bit (joined - with a couple of breaks - in 2014).

Been years since I've seen "ODFOD" or even "FOTTFSOFTFOSM".

I quite prefer this version: "FOTTFSOFAWYGTFOSM".

I've been here since 2008 and I think there have always been posters who are rude, but I have noticed that people seem quicker to pile on and completely derail threads now. I think it's part of a general societal trend towards binary thinking combined with the seductive lure of a purity spiral!

I notice more mistakes in basic comprehension now. Perhaps our attention spans are shorter, or maybe it's because we are carrying more conformation bias.

The anonymity has always been an issue. The casual use of other people's misery for entertainment is perhaps new. People seem to struggle to differentiate between professional social media content creators and a sleep deprived mum looking for support.

The 'I call a spade a spade' types have always been here. They tend to fall into 3 groups: people with low social awareness who are generally lovely if rather blunt, people who are overbearing and a bit binary in their thinking but generally harmless, plus a small number of people who are actually just rude.

Poor you, that must have felt horrible. And even though you know that you're a nice person, and it's not 'real life', it's so hard to not take it personally. Maybe I'm just projecting though haha!

I absolutely agree with the comprehension point.

”some people post with bad intentions”
”how dare you say we all post with bad intentions!!”

a lot of posters see criticism where it’s not, and that gets them riled.

I also had someone who nastily looked at all my old posters and said horrible comments on them!! Awful, get a life!

I love your thread OP, and that you brought this up. You also timed it perfectly as I was thinking that exact thought when your post popped up!

@70isaLimitNotaTarget you raised such a good point about the eyebrow raising - it feels like a kind of passive agressive faux naivety. You made me chuckle. To add a supporting (fictional!) example:

Say an OP's house has just burnt down and they post asking how to sort out the insurance. Then someone replies saying "OP, you just need to email your contents inventory spreadsheet to the insurance company. The one that you prepared when you moved in that lists all of your possessions, how much they would cost to replace, the photos of each item, and the receipts that you scanned in for every miscellaneous gubbin. And don't worry that your laptop is also burnt to a crisp, as you'll be able to retrieve the files from the cloud storage drive that you saved them on".

Knowing full well that...

English-speaking people from different countries, some who lived in their car or an emergency bedsit to those living in mansions, even Kate was rumoured to be on here from time to time.

You can never know what the real life situation of people is, but it is as diverse as can be!

The disbelief that someone can't afford to buy food for themselves that day,
or the disbelief that someone on a 6 figures salary can struggle...
It does prove that you have all kind of posters - and you are correct, that many can't accept that different people have different experience, just as valid.

Sorry to correct this. You can use advanced search if you're not a premium number either search using google and search @ and their username or using the search bar on the desktop site version

It's not great to search people's usernames though

Oh god I totally second this having read that thread too! Yes I do love giving my boy a Christmas Eve box and stocking, and when he's older I will be doing Elf on the Shelf as well! Why do people comment negatively for the sake of it? I can't speak for others but I certainly won't NOT be doing it because randomlady666 disapproves 🤦🏻‍♀️

I actually also commented on a similar thread a while ago to say that I thought so many posters were unnecessarily rude and bitchy as I always see people giving their unsolicited advice and opinions on sub sections of the thread which had no bearing on the actual topic. There were a lot of comments along the lines of, "oh people like to keep it real and be honest", "people are fiercely protective of people in need", "if you can't handle honest opinions don't post", and blah blah blah...

It's bullshit, what it is, is anonymity gang culture bullying with people hiding behind a device, who in reality would probably be too much of a coward to say things like that to people in real life. I commented along these lines and was told that I was being horrible 😂

I think there are a lot of unhappy people out there-and let's face it life is tough for many. a lot of posts seem to divide into let's belittle people for whom life is tough or on the other angle - let's have a go at people who whether through luck or hard work or luck of birth- life is just fine and dandy -

I suppose the alternative viewpoint is in order for someone to be rude to someone, generally they have to be either really tasteless or really stupid.

So another way of looking at it is why are people so stupid, rather than why are people so rude ?

Yeah, right on! (I have never said 'right on' before in my life, but it felt so right after reading your post lol).

This isn't a new thing, OP - this exact question has been asked on here regularly for decades (and always framed as if it's a new phenomenon and that everyone on here used to be lovely).

I think part of it might be that people usually come onto MN for support with a specific issue (e.g. potty training or buggy advice) and the specific forums tend to be quite supportive and focussed on the issue at hand. But then as MN becomes a more general source of advice and social interaction after that initial issue has passed, people start to see all the shitty and rude behaviour in other areas of the site like AIBU, and it feels like a nest of vipers whereas previously it was just nice people with helpful toileting advice.

Also, I think because of the "active threads" section, it's easy to jump from thread to thread across AIBU, chat, specific issues, and so it's easy for the judgey blunt style of AIBU to bleed through into threads in other areas of the site.

But the internet isn't real life.

People aren't standing face to face with each other on the internet. Also a significant proportion of the time in real life you are interacting with people you know. Not with people you don't.

In the same way people act different when they are in cars from when they might be standing next to each other in a pub. Sticking the 'V's up at other drivers because they think they are safe from retribution.

People behave differently in different environments depending on how safe they feel to speak their mind, and whether that is going to lead to consequences.

isn't it both? 😂
There are some spectacularly stupid and/or narrow-minded people on here, it's astonishing.

But there also are a lot of very rude - often very stupid too - posters.

It's telling that for some the worst possible insult they can come up with, when someone dares to disagree is "you must be a man". Oh dear.

All these bored housewives 😂

I think the long and short of it is that some people are just nasty! (Not specifically housewives, that was tongue in cheek!)

Some people are always quick off the mark to kick someone when they're down,as long as they can hide anonymously behind a keyboard.