..to start to disbelieve an awful lot of stories on here...

[BratFarrarsPony]

honestly some of the stuff you read you think ..awww how awful...and after about five pages of posters doing their best to give advice , MN steps in and zaps the thread...
Often and more and more I read something, start composing a reply and then thing no fuckit its a troll.
Obviously trollhunting is offlimits, but really?

report and hide

Aye, but it really is a minority.

I've fallen for two in two days.

Fool me once, shame on you... etc.

Just don't get attached! Give your view and move on.

This is why i skip to the last page before i rtft

Yanbu
There is a special flavour to troll threads... the drama... the style... the quick denouement... there are so many now!

There seems to be a theme lately

Alot of them are parents have done something to the kids and seeking other stories

but why do they bother?
How dull must their lives be to sit and think and compose a problem, post it, ....and for what exactly?

If you put a thread on your 'watched' list, you will be told on there if it has been zapped. If you forget, you can spend ages trying to fnd it. I wish MNHQ would post a list of recently zapped threads to save fruitless hunting.
I am particularly thinking about the woman with the million pound council house and a 'snobby old bitch' neighbour. Was It a trolll?

Probably tricky

Yeah I take everything with a pinch of salt these days. I saw someone say that their creative writing tutor encouraged them to test out storylines on here and now I can't unsee that when I read something particularly dramatic.

YANBU but it's a shame because strange and dramatic things happen in real life and those people are denied support and advice by the trolls who make everyone suspicious.

fuck knows tricky but why would you do that?
to watch a load of mumsnetters get slightly annoyed with a fictitious situation?
Their lives must be so dull.

Yes, sad, dull lives and depriving those with a genuine need of support and advice.

Where there is often a political undertone, maybe anti war or supposed racism (just examples not exclusive or pointed examples) I sometimes struggle to believe it's as real as the OP says. My dh calls it a nugget of truth rolled in big ball of bullshit I hope all the replies satisfy whatever urges made the OP post and don't just feed them.

there is often a sensational element in troll posts, so if this is what you are looking for you will fall for them.

It's for the same reason we read problem pages as teenagers or watch soaps. People like other people's drama. If you've not got any, making some up can be entertaining.

I've been hiding a hell of a lot just lately. I did get suckered into what I think was a troll post today and it really wound me up. just horrible, some people really need to get a life

I saw one this morning, was about halfway through the thread and suddenly thought "Oh yeah...Really? Perhaps not!"

If you put a thread on your 'watched' list, you will be told on there if it has been zapped

Does that happen now? It never used to show on Watched threads.

Went through a phase of starting every response with 'If this is true...'

I believe very little nowadays. Many suspect threads started by posters with little or no posting history.

I also believe very few stories on the Clangers "kind things your children have done" competition thread.

Is it still there Yamadori ? Come on, give us a clue.

Yes, it's hugely frustrating but quite easy to tell after a while. There's a certain sequence of events on them. It's very hard not to troll hunt when you're watching people get really involved and sharing painful stuff.