To think MN is at risk of becoming a Mean Girls bitchfest

[Sparklfairy]

Flame me if you want, but I've been shocked lately at how OPs are being attacked when they post on here.

This isn't a TAAT, it's a general trend of spewing vitriol and being downright nasty in the name of being 'blunt' or 'telling it like it is'.

MN was always the place we could go for honest opinions and different points of view. A fantastic support when people are caught up in bad relationships and can't see the wood from the trees or a way out.

More commonly though I see a pack mentality developing where one poster will make a snide comment and then others pile in. It's no better than playground bullying. Reminds me of mean girls. If you don't write a certain way, use the 'right' MN terms, if you're new and don't know the right MN etiquette yet, and god forbid you don't use perfect grammar, then somehow you don't fit in here and therefore deserve to be called names, mocked and bullied by strangers.

People post on forums like these, especially when new here, when theyre out of options. They don't want to or can't talk to people in RL and want to reach out. I know how it feels to be horribly isolated in a shitty situation and if I'd posted here and received half the abuse I've seen on some threads it could well have pushed me over the edge.

I love reading threads where a woman has got out of a shitty relationship as a result of the support she's read here. But when she's at her lowest, a few shitty comments attacking her for no reason can stop that happening.

By all means, say what you think. But name calling doesn't help. If you have advice, offer it, but berating someone's life choices is simply kicking someone when they're down because you can. And that makes you no better than the bastards some of these women are married to/partnered with.

And before anyone says 'if you don't like MN then leave'. If I did that there would be fewer of us to call this shit out.

That's certainly not my experience of FWR, Pink.
It's a space that I can visit with likeminded females who can discuss a number of key issues relating to women's welfare and rights, without fear of being silenced or intimidated by those men who have hounded gender critical women from Twitter.

I've been on here for 14 years and am currently on one thread on the relationships board where the poster is receiving so much support from others. This is what MN does best.

AIBU was the same 14 years ago and you have to take it with a pinch of salt.

Yes this. It isn't exactly a secret that this place is trolled and brigaded by groups who would like to shut it down or at least disrupt it as a useful place which is women centred

Indeed! There are a LOT of MRA here who are trying to get the place shut down from the inside. There are a LOT of goady/bullshit threads and the genuine get lost.

Then there are those who will deliberately derail a thread to get it deleted. That's went on long before the Invasion.

Don't assume these people are all woman.

To think MN is at risk of becoming a Mean Girls bitchfest

Always was surely.

Depends though on what the topic is. Remember that a large proportion of the people posting seem to have a background of difficult relationships and are steeped in mistrust and anger.

I wish HQ would agree to a few months trial without AIBU just to see if the 'mean girls' get bored and go elsewhere. This week was horrible re SPAG bullies. E.g. One of the first replies 'sitting on my hands'. Subsequent posts 'joining you with sitting on hands' etc. Or wittily thinking up a post and bolding 'have' 10 times. So tedious. For a site purporting to be primarily a support network it is a real shame.

Don't forget the 'Mean Boys/Men'. There are a few of those too.

I wish the spag bullies would just realise that an OP may be dyslexic before piling in with their nasty keypad bile and I'm better than you disgusting attitudes.
I shall post this again
MP fights back at the bullies!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50206103

I haven’t come across the SPAG police much but they sound horrible. It seems ridiculous to me to correct people’s grammar on here - you don’t know the person’s background or if English is their first language. I have an English and writing degree but make SPAG mistakes all the time because I type too fast on my phone and cba to carefully re-read what I’ve written - why would I, I’m not writing an essay I wouldn’t make assumptions about anyone based on their SPAG on here.

I don’t think it is just the SpaG police, there seems to be a certain mindset that if you are the OP and don’t do as posters request/tell/demand you do then you are piled on. People seem to forget that posts aren’t there for their entertainment but are genuine asks for help and support.

I am new to mn I've been on it for about 3 month's I do not know the lingo yet I am learning. I don't think people bully on here and have had posts removed so I think it's all one person's view to another. Someone may agree and someone will not. It's just we are not all the same with the same point of view.

For balance there are some OPs that whatever you suggest it isn't possible so you wonder why they post. That's frustrating but there's always Hide Thread.

I wish the spag bullies would just realise that an OP may be dyslexic before piling in with their nasty keypad bile and I'm better than you disgusting attitudes.

Or perhaps they simply had a poor education.

With so many of us communicating nowadays via email, text, Whatsapp, chat forums etc, it must be absolutely awful to have to struggle to communicate and have people look down on you for it.

The puerile “nest of vipers” is nothing more than an excuse to be unpleasant as possible.

Sadly the people who most robustly peddle that line are unable to distinguish between robust debate and being a twat.

I think it is a minority unless it is a deliberate goady thread.
It is AIBU section it has always been more feisty.
There are plenty of other options.
Overall I'd say it is much more helpful than bitchy.

I've also been here years and have noticed AIBU has become much worse over the years but also think that people should only post a question in the relevant section. Too many post in AIBU for the footfall and complain when they take a pasting and when posters suggest they ask MN to move it to the correct place they refuse ( I'm not for one moment agreeing with the way they are treated). I love this site but it has as others have said attracted a lot of TRAs etc and has pretty useless mods on at weekends and half term. We should always call out the bullies and the SPAG twats and keep reporting until MN respond.

I post to AIBU too quite regularly and I have usually been lucky enough to get mostly positive responses. I saw the thread that has been alluded to and I thought it was quite shameful, the OP however dealt with it admirably and thankfully hadn’t abandoned the thread before people who actually wanted to support her posted.

I do agree that the first few replies can influence the tone of the others, but thankfully I’ve seen a number of occasions where one or two posters manage to turn it around and it’s that sense of community that keeps me coming back! But that being said, I’ve experienced a MN ‘pile on’ and it was awful how quickly the posters called everything from my character to my credentials into question - so I backed off and have been a little more tentative about posting on hot topics where it’s clear that pack mentality has already taken over.

AIBU should definitely come with a warning though - it’s perhaps the section with highest traffic so a lot of people new to the site post here for that reason and if they’ve not delved into AIBU before, the responses can be jarring/offputting sometimes.

The SPAG police were out in force over the weekend and it was horrible, posters saying " Oh I'm sitting on my hands " totally uncalled for thankfully the OP ignored them but others took them to task over and out came their simmpering excuses. There's probably loads on SPAG in my posts but I don't give a shiny shit

Yikes....I've just joined today...the myth of the sisterhood eh?

'It's one of two boards, no need for dramatics.'

....just proved my point bay aggressively saying I didn't have a point. Hilarious. This may be a one day membership...

AIBU used to have the Fight Club quote above it.

Personally I think AIBU should have a warning like on the legal and health sections. Something about recommending that posters consider posting on another part of the site if they need support due to the robust nature of the AIBU topic. And MNHQ should be quicker to move threads out of this section if it's becoming a pile on

I agree - If MN is happy to allow AIBU to be treated differently in terms of the types of replies people should expect to get, then its only fair to put a generic warning on it.

Angelina it proves nothing as there is really nothing aggressive at all about what Baguette said. Posters misconstruing things and turning a perfectly harmless comment and making it into something it is not (like you have just done) is exactly the point I was making though.

I think once a user has been here any length of time they have seen most topics repeated on AIBU. After a few months i would imagine people have moved on to a board or two and rarely glance at AIBU.

So, it's possibly new people on AIBU misreading the MN way to make friends? It would be difficult to join MN and dive straight into a long running board without at least grazing in AIBU.

I, personally, disagree with reporting. It feels very juvenile, I'd rather post "that was an awful thing to say" directly on the thread.

Worra I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I do get your point and ideally it wouldn't matter but it does. When I see posters tittering at SpaG, I worry for the OP that they are judged in every day life for it too. I'm not saying it's right to be judged but it happens. I worry for the mother who writes to the school with poor SpaG to advocate for her child. Is she taken less seriously? Maybe. What if her child's teacher is one of those women who were just "sitting on their hands?" I know a couple of people who, having worked their way up to more senior positions, have been told to "sort" their SpaG when liasing with clients by email. I cannot imagine how unpleasant that is. Luckily they had someone to help them but maybe situations like these could have been avoided if someone was honest with them before that.

Sorry for long block of text.

Totally agree.

Some people are obviously just nasty, they're not funny, they're not clever, just plain nasty

I don't come on here for that

Oh yes the best way to help someone with Spelling mistakes is to comment on threads with encouraging words like "omg this is making my eyes itch" etc.

Posters come on here for support not to be ridiculed and have it disguised as helping for the greater good.