To wonder why MNers are so obsessed with Brexit now?

[LoveInTokyo]

I used to post on MN before the referendum and I saw very little discussion about Brexit in AIBU (although I think a lot of threads started in AIBU were moved to the EU Referendum topic).

In the EU Referendum topic traffic was fairly slow and there were just a few posters battling it out time and time again. A few posters on the leave side were, in my view, 99% likely to be paid trolls, who all disappeared immediately after the referendum.

Since the referendum the subject really seems to have picked up steam and there seem to be loads of people getting really worked up about how Brexit is a disaster and the country is going to the dogs.

AIBU to wonder where all these people were before, and why they weren’t all shouting from the rooftops when there was still a chance to change the result?

Honestly I feel that if the remainers had been paying trolls they would've been more effective than the remain supporting posts were! The leave ones were relentless in content and frequency.

My issue was that on political topics MN should put a note that says 'political trolling happens'.

If you deliver "Red" leaflets in a rough part of "Blue" town - and vice versa you might not get a nice reception. No excuse for threatening behaviour but possibly unsurprising given the hysteria and very nasty name calling surrounding the vote

Mookatron - we'll probably never know who was trolling and who wasn't but I doubt it was only one group. Effectiveness can only really be judged on how many minds they changed. That, in this case, is impossible to tell.

And the people advocating Leave were such obvious Loons and bullshitters.

It is such a shame that this is the received wisdom on here and has informed pretty much all of the discourse.

Gisela Stuart
Dennis Skinner
Frank Field

It's a very difficult emotional shift - you find out that your neighbours are not who you thought they were, that those running and wanting to run the country don't care about its citizens and are happy to sacrifice them to an ideology / their individual career / big money for the very few, that people do not think with their heads, but with basic emotions, that people have essentially been brainwashed by the press, over all the years of EU- blaming. That nothing is immune from this (eg the City, the university sector). People who felt safe and mainstream within the middle class no longer feel that way. It feels like a very different place from the one we thought it was before. We all now know that we are considered to be completely disposable, that our opinion is of no interest to those running the country, that common sense is immaterial. Like moving into a Kafka novel.

If the Leavers were called Loons, bullshitters and racists where was the persuasive argument that was going to make them change their minds and think that their future would be better in a Eurpoe that believed that of them?

Same old, same old.

Allislost if you go to the 'EU referendum' you can see very clearly that most of the threads are started by very knowledgeable pro-Brexit posters who post in the way I describe above. Very few pro-remain threads that are as well informed.

I fully admit the remainers carried out a rubbish campaign in all areas, but they seem to have missed out mumsnet altogether.

There where a lot of threads. However they all ended up with people Brexiters being called stupid and remainers being called bullies. I think a lot got deleted but I don’t think calling people stupid or belittling their thoughts helped the remain side at all it was just more you don’t matter you’re opinions don’t count, you’re too stupid to understand let us smart people decide for you. Which obviously pissed a lot of people off marginalising such a large part of the population was never going to win. I expect a lot of leavers where protest votes in a finally listen to me and take me seriously type of way. That doesn’t mean that some didn’t put a lot of research in even if you don’t agree with their outcome.

The only stupid people are those that didn’t bother to vote.

Hard to believe any polls since the original ones were all wrong.
According to MNetteres
We will all loose our jobs
House prices will fall(if that were true all the millenniums would be voting leave)
We will only be able to afford to eat British grown turnips(the government will be happy as there goes the obesity crisis)
We can never afford a European holiday again.
We will stop getting European weather and the sky will fall on our heads.

I didn't criticise Leavers. I'm just saying that all political parties barring Nigel Farage (an obvious Loon and Bullshitter, surely) were urging them to vote one way. They voted the other.
The ones I met felt very strongly about Syrian immigrants (not realising they had no right to move to EU countries), that the UK could not send all foreign prisoners back to their own countries (I can live with that in exchange for being able to earn a living, personally), and even that the UK would soon be required to close down its national football team, as there would just be one football team for the whole of the EU.

I tend to post sporadically so dip in and out of AIBU rather than go on to the specialist boards so I haven't noticed. I take your word for it.

I just do not believe that only Leavers are paying people - after they have already won the vote. I think MN is full of paid trolls on every subject. Why wouldn't it be?? Maybe the Brexiteers are a bit more obvious about it or the Remainers have given up - I don't know. It doesn't much matter. It's up to us to weave our way throught the posts and judge for ourselves.

Well I was one of the more prolific remain posters (I was off work a lot before the referendum writing my master’s dissertation on Article 50, as it happens) and I can assure you I wasn’t being paid.

If there were any paid trolls on the remain side, I didn’t notice. None of the people posting in support of remain had any of the characteristics of a paid troll.

I just think that at the time the remainers didn't think it warranted a proper campaign because they were so convinced they'd win. Arrogant no doubt. But pitching all that political and PR experience against people who believe they're having a chat on a forum - it needs to be highlighted.

It's a shame and a real missed opportunity that the remain campaign boiled down to throwing insults and finger pointing shouting 'raaaacist'. This smugness along with the utter arrogant and sneery conviction that remain would win sums up the remain campaign.

I believe the leave campaign was racist. I think that's the core of it.

I agree the remain campaign was weak but saying someone is 'smug' and 'sneery' as a reason to vote for something that will affect generations to come is ridiculous.

I'm getting very disillusioned with UK and the British.

Me too, YTho.

Sometimes I think I just want to wash my hands of the whole business and leave the British people to lie in the bed they have made. But then I remember that only a minority of people actually voted for Brexit and I get angry on behalf of everyone who will now have to suffer the consequences of their foolishness.

As I said, we will never know who was paid and who wasn't. It is a well-used tactic.

You were off work - maybe others were too. I was at home recovering from a serious injury during the Scottish Indyref and was a fairly prolific poster then - just had time on my hands - not paid.

It wasn’t merely the fact that they were spending a lot of time on MN. It was the posting style and tactics. They didn’t post in the way that normal emotive humans do.

It was all very calculated and it took me a while to cotton on, but once I did it was plainly obvious.

I'm getting very disillusioned with UK and the British.

So am I, but I suspect for very different reasons.

Mostly I am pissed off that we continue to accept First Past the Post as an electoral system, and continue to elect Tory governments.

LoveinTokyo - where would you go? Just interested, not goading

I shall have to have closer look at the trolls - I like a bit of text analysis. Admit that I do sometimes think I've spotted a troll but no way of being sure

frank there’s something we agree on. FPTP sucks.

All I moved to France last year.

Ah, lovely. Tres bien!

Also agree about FPTP and voted in the PropRep vote to change the system. Was seriously surprised that wasn't at least closer.

Honestly it didn't occur to me there was a realistic chance of people voting to commit this act of self harm in such large numbers they would win.

That,right there, I think is why we are leaving. Brexit happened because people didn't listen to others, dismissed concerns, they voted to get out because they wanted change, and the chance to maybe just for once be listened to.
As I said,I voted remain, but I can see both sides. Was on here when people were all "devastated" at the news when the results came in, and the sheer disbelieving and "how the hell did that happen?"
You could see it coming a mile off, it was hardly a surprise. You'd think differently reading MN and the media though.
It's like they've got no clue what the mood out there is actually about, and people's experiences. Oh,wait.....