To think MN is getting nastier?

[MaggieJoyBlunt]

So far this week we've had giving birth referred to as 'calving' (in the context of women having children while young). Someone loved that one so much they immediately commented on what a great expression it was and repeated it.

We've had someone propose that Prince Phillip should be 'humanely destroyed'. swiftly followed up by a similar suggestion about taking him out to a barn or a shed or some such and shooting him.

We've had a thread about the death of a convicted murdered where several posters queued up to tell us they were, smiling or "laughing gleefully" or simply to post "lol" as a one word comment. (Okay she was a vicious killer and will not be much missed, but really?)

Add to all of that the Budget threads where in the midst of people worrying and calculating the cut to their household budget, other people came to gloat and make helpful observations such as "If you can't afford DC, don't have them."

MN didn't used to be nasty. Vigorous, challenging etc; But not nasty.

What's going on around here?

I don't think there are a huge swathe of posters obsessing about the site and hounding and bullying.
That's a really weird idea to be honest. Who are these posters?

I think posters are naturally interested in MN because it's kind of a community but with the twist of anonymity and name changing.
It's fascinating and we all see it differently.

I find the dynamic really interesting and I find posters interesting.
That's pretty common I think.

I've been here for ages and the thing I notice is how long the threads are. If you comment before taking quarter of an hour or more to get through it all, people get really upset about it. So I'm getting ruder. Just post and run like I have on another thread.

I don't post on really long threads unless I'm prepared to read them. If I can't be arsed to read I just don't post. Otherwise it just would feel to me like walking into a roomful of people, shouting sometime which is probably uninformed or what someone else has just said, and walking out again.
Like a Katie Hopkins shit-past.

Haven't been on long but was shocked only yesterday at some viscious reactions to someone who posted about taking her chicken pox ridden children on holiday . I am often surprised at the naivety and ' black and white' attitudes of some posters too .Perhaps it's because I'm much older than the average poster .Life has taught me that there are (usually) two sides to everything

How old are you granny?

I have no idea how old the average poster is.

I'd say the average age on here is 35.

I feel ancient at 48.

I am often surprised at the naivety and ' black and white' attitudes of some posters too

I think that's what I find hard to deal with on here too.

I'm 37. It makes me feel old when people refer to being born in the 80s.

How old are you pag? I know that's nosy but you look v young in my head ...

I think any nastiness I've seen of late has been directly challenged and dealt with. TBH I find most posters pretty decent.

I totally agree with what Rusticblush said.

And to be honest Pagwatch, while I don't believe that there are swathes of posters overly invested in MN, there are some who take it waay too seriously, get really huffy if someone starts a tongue in cheek thread, are always sniffing around looking for trolls and reverse threads, and can't just accept it's a chat forum, and you don't have to open or comment on any threads you don't like.

Hahaha - no, not v young

53. Properly getting on a bit now.

I've not been here long enough to notice as mostly a dip in and out lurker and only recent poster but AIBU seems to be the worst for utter nutcases and random nastiness from what I can see so far. Is this right?

I'm sure there are a few like that Nurserywindow.
I'm sure there are trolls and sock puppets and shitheads too.

I was reacting to the idea that there were a group of them bullying posters because they obsess over the site.
Does anyone actually obsess over mumsnet.

It's kind of interesting though isn't it?
Because a thread saying what is spoiling MN will always include opposite sides of the same issues.

I think what is spoiling MN for me is the selfishness. The desire to be rude about people with SN spoiling public events or the 'why the fuck can't they wait like the rest of us' stuff on disabled toilets threads.
Yet others on here will hate the fact that if they are at the cinema and someone near them is making noises and they complain here, someone might say 'was it involuntary noise - might they have SN'. They hate that and call it PO or PC or the SN brigade.

I'm just saying that the ways in which MN is worse for us (if it is) may be the very opposite of the next poster.

I'm incoherent I know. Sorry, tired brain.

It's the Internet this is what happens here. Youtube is worse than here at least here you can get some good advice.

I understand what you mean, Pag.

I certainly get the selfishness vibe on here and in rl. It's all very 'what's in it for me' and 'it's your own fault for living/breeding/working for nmw'. And my personal favourite 'you should have planned for having children with SN and got insurance'.

I get a feeling of more journalists lurking about and stirring.

I think part of the problem, Pagwatch, is that some posters just constantly bring SN into threads where posters are talking about a general societal issue and are not focussed on the behaviour of one child or one small group of children. And, as happens with this kind of behaviour, the real issue and its seriousness becomes diluted.
In the same way that I've seen people at work go around shouting 'bullying' because their boss told them off over an error in their work; or someone shouting 'racism' because they've been asked to leave a place for being rowdy or somesuch. That really annoys me as I've seen real bullying and racism and the terrible distress it causes.
Likewise SN is a serious issue but when some posters try to use it to score points or make an OP feel bad, but do it in a way that's inappropriate and irrelevant to the thread, the do a disservice to those really trying to achieve a greater understanding of SN issues.

It can be very black and white here and I think Mn has actually has developed a set moral tone on what is considered right and wrong. Every topic and issue seems to have been done so many times and read so many times by so many posters that most posters automatically react with what Mumsnet has decreed to be the proper way, rules for what is acceptable. In real life it's often not quite like that as obviously everyone else hasn't read the World Rules According to Mn. I think a lot of people either start to buy into this outlook and adhere or know they will get ridiculously flamed so stay quiet and it just perpetuates itself. Sometimes I want to give Mumsnet a slap and other times I acknowledge how much I have learned from this site. You go to other sites and the difference in how people respond think is quite a stark comparison (yip, netmums is one of them).

I think the tone of Mn is like a 40 something middle class, educated school teacher who just knows that she is right and should be in charge of the world.

I see what you are saying nursery. Certainly 'might he have aspergers' on a thread about a man being a selfish dickhead is irritating.

But I guess the problem with what you are saying is that it implies that you can have general societal problems and then you have SN issues.
People with SN are part of general society. It is just ordinary life for a lot of us so the idea that someone may have SN will occur as a possibility.
I suspect too that the big issues around 'might the child have some sort of SN' could be diluted if the SN brigade stuff didn't start.

But I don't want to turn it into one of those threads

My point was just that half the posters on here are probably bemoaning the behaviour of the other half .

I agree Bambambini about how black and white MN can be.

It's as though some people do regurgitate a party line response to an OP's problem/situation and they don't deviate from it.

I saw someone use the phrase "In Mumsnet land" recently and when I thought about it, it was quite fitting.

It often doesn't reflect real, everyday life. Well not my real life anyway.

Well that's true Pagwatch. And in fairness, sometimes I know exactly what I mean in my own head but I express it in a way that an unintended meaning seems to come across to a poster and I find myself thinking 'ooops'!

I suppose, because we can't see people's expressions or hear the tone of their voice on here, we often take words very literally in a way that we wouldn't in rl.

For those wondering where LaQueen has gone, she posted something a few months ago that she decided was a bit too revealing about her real life and decided to have all her posts deleted and to depart from MN.

It's a shame really. While I took a strong initial dislike to her, once I got used to her posting style I really enjoyed her posts. She was funny and good humoured and wrote very stylishly and had a knack of cutting through any nonsense without resorting to personal and rude remarks.

I really hope she decides to re-join under another name.

God yes, sometimes I read my comments back after a while and I wonder what the fuck I was trying to say

No one would miss me and write moving tributes to my posting style if I left.
I'd have to come back under a name change and do it myself [sadface]

It would be great though - 'God I miss Pagwatch. She was so witty and sparkling , with great dress sense and to be honest I totally loved her'

I'm totally doing that now.

I would actually pag - I've been fond of you since you stopped me getting torn to SHREDS once!