Some people enjoy patronising and depressing others

[Esprohuy]

Clearly everyone is having a different experience of the current situation. It seems to me from the posts here and elsewhere that MN is full of people searching for threads from people either asking genuinely when others think the restrictions may be reduced, or people expressing mental or emotional.distress due to being locked away, sometimes alone. The pattern is the OP posts, there are a couple of sympathetic/in the case of lockdown speculation dovish opinions then the Depressor swoops, usually with a formulation along the lines of:
If you think these restrictions will be lifted anytime soon you are a naïve fool. Christmas will be cancelled and things will never fully return to normal

In the threads expressing mental distress their standard formulation is a variety of:
FFS pull yourselves together. It's been (insert number) weeks, how the F do you think people coped in the war the. All you are being asked to do is stay in and watch Netflix

There seems to be a remarkably large number of people among this cohort who claim grandparental involvement in WW1/2 and have a partner/sibling serving as a front line NHS worker. These depressors seem to scour MN looking to pounce on people expressing povs like the above.

Mumsnet has become dourer and dourer in recent years. Nowadays it just seems to be full of people whose only interest in posting is to put other posters down. They are ruining what used to be a lively, interesting and witty forum.

Great Dementing on the thread about pubs - will never ever reopen or be the same again, apparently. Interestingly but not surprisingly, lots of them either explicitly say or make it pretty clear that they don't go to pubs themselves, as they lecture people on why never going to the pub is a minor thing and the death of the entire industry is necessary.

Ah, people suggesting the furloughed fruit picking will help the obesity epidemic. It never fails to amaze me how much some people hate the overweight.

Poster saying there's no reason why women can't work in the fields because they used to in years gone by and would just leave their baby in a hedge, has made me

I’m sure you’re right that in some cases it has benefitted people.

I wonder what personality types people are who are not in any vulnerable group but who so very angry and controlling about anyone who doesn't just completely hide away in misery from the world. It must be some sort of coping mechanism but how does it work?

@PTW1234 Have you actually read the thread, which is all about those who are being deliberately negative and wanting to make things worse (like, say, actively wanting a harder lockdown) and just how irritating everyone finds them?

It's on twitter too, just saw this link to 'lockdownend'- thought it might be rational people chatting about that but no, it's even worse than on here!

twitter.com/search?q=%23LockdownEnd&src=trend_click

if you want to see, be prepared it is pretty miserable!

I totally agree. People come on here and deliberately misinterpret what’s been said and seem to get joy out of provoking the OP. It’s sad. I understand not everyone will have the same opinion, that’s life, but the aggression in people’s tone, name calling, etc should be called out or reported as it’s just so distasteful and frankly like a school playground.

To be honest the dementors would make Oliver Cromwell and the puritans look like the ministry of fun. Having done some study on Oliver Cromwell and read his letters to wife and children they do the puritans a huge disservice. You would have more fun with John Knox and John Calvin together.

It is like the threads about childbirth at least 50% of MN would have died pre NHS, when historically about a maximum of 10% of women died from childbirth and not necessarily on pregnancy 1 so the chance of dying in any particular pregnancy was much less than 10% at worse time in history but dementors are so fragile and vulnerable that it would be worse for them.

Also somehow Britain has to be worst at covid because of Brexit, Italy is coming out of lockdown so is Spain but the UK will need lockdown for months longer, there are more people breaking lockdown rules in Spain, Italy and France as well as shortages of PPE and hospital beds, but our shortages are due to Brexit not an overwhelming virus. It would have happened the same regardless of Brexit

The dementors love rules so much they would have been duty bound to inform police that Anne Frank and family were hiding in next door attic.

The dementors love rules so much they would have been duty bound to inform police that Anne Frank and family were hiding in next door attic.

Depressing but so utterly true.

You can tell the dementors apart from the simply scared by seeing what happens when something they’re horrified about turns out to be untrue.

“I am so angry that people aren’t taking this ‘lockdown’ seriously, everyone is flouting the rules and deaths keep going up!”
“Oh good news, the government says its figures show most people are complying, and the lockdown is working, and the death rate is definitely falling.”

You’d think people would be relieved to hear that, but some act downright disappointed if it’s not as bleak as they think.

I’m sure you’re right that in some cases it has benefitted people.

Why don't you go and have a look and a search of old threads and make your own mind up? There are also some lovely threads in Classics - ones where posters have given advice to a fosterer (now sadly no longer with us) who was caring for a drug addicted new born. Posters who knitted memory blankets for others who had lost children and loved ones. It's not all doom and gloom.

Classics is like a different world. A bitter sweet reminder of how lovely mumsnet used to be. I suspect if a lot of the same threads were started today they'd be dragged down immediately by the constantly critical and 'irritated by other posters' brigade. Ironically often the ones wagging their finger at other posters and telling them to 'be kind'.

@Orangeblossom78 depressing.

And dare I say it, mildly reminiscent of the whole brexit debacle all over again.

When you resort en-masse to writing off vast swathes of people with genuine concerns as "stupid" "thick" "selfish" "uneducated"...

Well, we all know what happened last time that happened, don't we?

It's scarily accurate how often the people shouting loudest are actually the minority. That's why they have to shout.

And all it does is fan flames.

Poster saying there's no reason why women can't work in the fields because they used to in years gone by and would just leave their baby in a hedge, has made me .

Me too, you can't run a volunteer baby group with out insurance and dbs checks, paperwork but a hedge should be fine.

Surely that counts as a rest for the baby though? Not allowed. They should be exercising in the hedge

I read a lot of posts in classics and think if some of them happened now there would definitely be joy sponges sucking the life out of some of them !!!

The Johnnie Boden one actually makes me laugh out loud, I don’t even shop there or know much about it. Probably have Bodenites complaining about reverse snobbery or classism or something nowadays

Notverybright, TBF it's probably quite easy to determine whether the hedge has a criminal background or not

I love this thread btw. I feel like I've found my people!

I had a 'fun' exchange the other day. I am pro mask wearing. I posted a link from a credible source with evidence for, and one poster tagged me specifically pointing out that she couldn't/wouldn't wear one and people like me wanted asthmatics to 'starve to death' . Slightly extreme...

It's the countryside psychomath it's probably infected with all sorts of boggarts and willow whisps and whatnot.

Dementors seem to have a particular attraction to threads about holidays booked (chance to point out the frivolity and use the ww2/partner on NHS ammo, plus to make sweeping and curiously always very general and intuitive statements, often reinforcing the dementing effect with a Whitty-esque "at the very least" as a coda on the end.
This is an example on a thread about travel plans:
I have a weekend away in the UK booked for March 2021. I reckon it’s about 50/50 whether or not it will go ahead

Firstly note the careful choice of the UK as a location( I believe the poster lives in the UK). Because if a UK break for 11 months away is only 50/50, the deliberate unstated implication planted in the head of the reader is that non UK travel could be months later, perhaps even years later, or perhaps not at all. Then let's look at the 50/50 probability. How has this been calculated? Why 50/50 not say 45/55 or 37/63? Does the probability get readjusted with govt statistics or pronouncements?
Just one example of mid range demention I have found.

Well you still need to maintain a 1:3 ratio for creatures for the fairyland realm looking after the under-2s.

*Even the idea of us being the laughing stock of the world is inverted arrogance, it’s assuming the the rest of the world are paying us an undue amount of attention right now.
*
^This is so true.

The fruit picking thread just baffles me. Clearly no one in authority is suggesting making furlough pay dependant on it or that anyone who has dependents or is disabled or frankly doesn’t like the idea should do it. Not everyone on furlough is middle aged and has children though, my nineteen year old nephew who’s taking a gap year, living at home and working full time at McDonalds is furloughed. No idea if he’s planning on fruit picking but he’s an example of someone who easily could if he wanted to. The whole English people are too lazy and feckless to pick fruit is BS too. I was a pretty lazy and feckless teen but I used to pick fruit in the summer holidays, as did my equally lazy and feckless friends. It’s no harder than any other manual labour job.

YY to this

The dementors love rules so much they would have been duty bound to inform police that Anne Frank and family were hiding in next door attic

The miserable people are classified as puritans. But the way some of you are talking, it's like being a happiness puritan. "I'm superior because I don't moan and let everyone do what they like without comment and don't get too uptight." But many people ARE uptight and control freaky. And the world needs both types of people. It's great you're able to be happy and allow others to be too, and no, I also don't like moany people so much, but I can see why they're like that.

I think I am a recovered dementor.

I don't think I was as bad as some of the examples on this thread - but then again I was never dementoring through a pandemic so who knows how I would have reacted.

A lot of what pps have said rings true for me. I did have a shit life. Textbook. Bad childhood, few opportunities when I left school due to the crash, doom and gloom. I'll never get to a buy a house. I'll never get to go to uni. And I was so fucked off with the rest of the world (well, country) for being luckier than me. For having things better than me. It really does make you wish you could suck their joy, just so they can understand how you're feeling.

But I genuinely don't believe it has to be this way.

And people who tend to be more "puritan-happy" on their outlook can easily be mistaken for only being puritan-happy because they have things good.

However when you scratch beyond the surface, it begins to make more sense. Luck will always exist but there will always be things you can do to improve your luck.

I read a book called "Lucky Bitch" and it completely changed my perspective on how being negative often breeds negative outcomes. "Misery loves company" is said so often it's become a cliche but there is a lot of truth in that statement - and that is why dementors work in packs.

Example: you have to cancel a holiday because you're sick and the travel insurance won't cover it. You're losing the money anyway, so decide to offer it to someone else at no cost.

Do you offer it to friend:

A) who is generally happy and bubbly. They're always talking about how exited they are to be going on their next trip away they've saved so hard for! You know this because they talk about it frequently, not as a stealth boast but because it's how they find their joy in the world.

B) thinks holidays abroad are a waste of time. More hassle than they're worth, tbh! We just make do with a weekend in Cumbria because it's all we can afford.

Even though person A and B have the same disposable income, and person B deep down would love to go on one they just can't afford it, 99% of people would give it to person A.

It's easy to say "well some people are just like that" but often if they just changed their perspective or outlook on life, they'd find it works wonders.

And that is one admittedly extreme example, but that example is why dementors will rarely find any joy in this world.