What's the most privileged/off the mark post/response you've read?

[waywardways]

I've name changed for this, just in case anyone does an AS and accuses me of getting DM fodder.

Me and the DC had to flee our home several years ago and we were moved into a tiny 2 bed flat temporarily. I made a thread at the time, saying me and 3dc had had a traumatic move and were very overcrowded and asked for advice on how to store our daily stuff in an efficient way.
Several posters replied helpfully, linking shelving units/freestanding storage, but one poster replied along the lines of:

"Your DH must be high up in the army and you have to rough it in officers housing until your 5 bed detached home is ready".

Another poster quoted the above with "This was my immediate thought too! It's so hard OP, but we've all been there".

I found this both amusing and perplexing because a) I would never have assumed the above and b) it was so far off the mark.

There was another thread very recently about food guidelines where the lack of awareness and privilege was quite frightening!

Here's what I don't get about these people who are so ragingly jealous think the system is so easy to scam (its not).

What's stopping them then?

Years ago, I made a passing remark in a thread about cleaning that there were no adult books in my house growing up.

One poster picked up on it and said she didn't believe me.
I replied that it was true - why would I lie about something completely incidental to the thread topic? I also said it was the case for most of my childhood friends.
Three posters pitched in to call me a liar and one of them said I should've been in care if my parents had no books.

These posters just couldn't comprehend that some people might not enjoy or value reading, might not be able to read well, might not have time to read books, might not have space for books, might not be able to afford books.

I'd started a thread about my adult DD returning home. Somehow it morphed into one twat poster telling me that neither DD nor I understand the reality of my DH's illness. After I had posted that we were with him when he was taken by ambulance to resus. Because, as the poster told me, he was really ill. No shit Sherlock.

I think the other perspective I have is that all of my clients are richer than I will ever be. They regularly talk about spending millions on a painting, or a seventh property, or a kitchen refurb that costs more than my whole (mortgaged) house. My junior colleagues see this too, and it’s a level of wealth we will never get to without a lottery win (and maybe not even then).

I therefore am very comfortable that people have different levels of wealth, and spend and live lives accordingly, and that’s fine and nothing to shy away from.

I wouldn’t brag to lower paid colleagues how I’ve had a great deal on too good to go, because they know I can afford full price so that feels tactless to me as I’ve taken something that someone might have needed.

I equally work every day with colleagues who get paid 4x what I do, and who drive nicer cars and have multiple holiday homes and nicer holidays. I like to hear about what they’re up to because I’m interested in them as people, and it’s aspirational.

Not privilege related, but I always notice when someone has posted about someone's awful behaviour and someone chimes in to say 'stop complaining, you're lucky to have a husband/mother/friend/cat, mine died.'

I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're still grieving, so I don't ever reply with anything critical, but it does feel out of place when the complaints about the person's behaviour are valid.

Exactly. They're so snobby but also jealous of those with the least in society. Pathetic isn't it.

I think what @Dollymylove is missing here is that you are totally allowed to talk excitedly about your personal wealth to poor people!

And other people are totally allowed to draw their own conclusions about your character based on your behaviour.

It’s the beauty of living in a free society. 😊

The Style & Beauty board produces some snorters at times, e.g. OP needs a dress to wear at a traditional church wedding and clearly specifies a maximum budget of £150.

You can barely count to 10 before somebody posts a link to a site where the average price of a dress is £3.5K & features such garish, oversized, shapeless numbers that the wearer would look like a circus clown who's having a bad day.

Most of the ones where people moan about driving/parking problems blah blah blah.

At least you have a car, many of us are navigating public transport everywhere, that frequently lets us down and leave us stranded in the pissing rain, with no hope of a refund for the service we paid for, and we also have jobs and lives. Your main problem is you have to walk three metres instead of two. Bore off.

I keep these thoughts inside mainly, because I'm sure there's things I moan like hell about that I am lucky to have and other people don't have and they roll their eyes at my privilege too.

It's all relative.

There are multiple posts on dementia threads. Only yesterday there is one where someone would never put their relative in a home, their (younger) spouse should care for them. They have obviously never dealt with someone with severe dementia who is violent, physically strong and unable to be kept safe 24/7.

The original poster for that one did actually say she had plenty of money and that £1000 wasn't leaving her out of pocket. Her issue seemed to be she just didn't want to spend that sort of money to see her son 🤔

Same with "can you turn the dining room into an extra bedroom?"

When I pointed out that millions of houses don't have a separate dining room one poster actually came back with "but....where do you eat???"

Some people are completely oblivious and self-centred. It's not about what is "your" normal vs someone else's privilege, as the first poster suggested, it's about having the ability to see outside your own experience and understand the possibility of other people living different lives to you, even if you haven't directly experienced it yourself - something mn has taught me that a surprisingly high proportion of people are completely unable to do!

My DH and I are currently separated. It took a long time of me being miserable for him to finally leave despite my begging. In my case it would have been extremely disruptive for our autistic sons to move. I didn’t post about my situation. However I am perplexed by All the posts were the advice us “Just send him back to his mum’s” is bandied about. Just how many mums want their grown sons back, how exactly would I make him (as a shared owner of our home) and she lives around 160km away. Surely most adults aren’t just around the corner from their parents.

Yes, I think I remember that one too, now you've said!

The assumption seems to be that everybody is either hard at work and comfortably off, or money-poor and very time-rich. Unfortunately, many, many people are working very hard and yet still struggling to make ends meet.

The ‘Covid cheese in your coffee’ post is urban legend- it was never actually stated 😁

Honestly, pretty much every poster who says something in a way that reads as:

'Well, thats not my experience, and I've never heard of anyone doing that, so therefore you are lying or are in the wrong'

Its utterly fucking mad.
Especially funny on wedding threads where people twist themselves in knots trying to insist that someone has been deliberately offensive by not invite xx person because OBVIOUSLY you invite xx person those are THE RULES and to not do so is them being deliverately offensive and hurtful (absolutely ignorant of the fact that 'the rules' differ across class, religion, social group, or oooh, I dont know, literally just personal preference OR even just thinking 'the rules' are a bit silly!)

Scholarships rarely covered everything. They enabled children from less well-off families to avail of private education.

They did nothing for the poor.

Your local fancy-pants coffee shop is adding this to their menu right now as you type... probably

It'll seem so sophisticated if they give it a vaguely Italian-sounding name - Cheddoccino or something

Oh it was, alongside a poster calling another a murderer because she grabbed some Easter eggs in the supermarket whilst shopping, people leaving shopping and parcels outside for 72 hours, someone else suggesting a poster would cause all the nurses in her local hospital to die because she managed to get some and sanitiser for herself and didn't donate it, people being called granny killers for walking their dog.... it was absolutely mental.

I remember once reading a thread where someone was baffled by homes not having a "boot room" apparently it's "just that little room when you first go into a house" and that all houses have them.

She was SHOCKED when she asked what other people's houses open into and many posters relied with "my front door opens straight into my living room and my stairs to upstairs are also in that room."

I do wonder what people with these opinions would do if they ended up disabled. It could literally happen at any time on any day.

It's horrifying how many people seem to see disabled people as a different species, rather than the exact same as them, but with bodies (or minds) that don't work as well.

You forgot the bit about the DC having their own ensuite each, which is a MN necessity. Perish the thought that you might share a loo seat with z family member.

You think benefits are easy to claim and comfortable to live on? Go on then, why don't you jack your job in, go scam the DWP by writing 'I'm depressed' on a piece of paper and live in luxury?

Thought not.

They know it doesn't work like that really. Its just some weird form of transference/projection about their unhappiness with their own life.

crackers and red kidney beans. It was on a thread yonks ago about donating food to a food bank of their list of wants. A poster was insistant that they would only supply the above even if not on the list as it was a quick nutitional way of getting food. Apparently you have to smoosh the beans on the crackers or something. There was a barney on the thread if I recall correctly. I often think of them and whether they were as joyless in real life.

Haha yes I remember reading a thread started by someone asking for cheap ideas for a summer holiday (at UK caravan park/camping level prices as a guide) and 2 posters started discussing and comparing their favourite posh foreign long haul all inclusives that were around £12-£15K for a family of 4. I think the OP had to point out that would take her approximately 10 years to save for that. Absolutely tone deaf posters.