AIBU to Think MNHQ needs to tackle the ageism on this site?

[LastGoldenDaysOfSummer]

The venom and hate aimed at older people on some of the Covid threads is disgusting. If the same was aimed at disabled, TW or BAME people then the posts would be deleted immediately, and rightly so.

But because it's the elderly it's left to stand, even after being reported. This isn't new, MNHQ has always been a hotbed of ageism but it's usually dealt with when reported.

But not any more. Should they be doing more?

Sorry I haven't read the entire thread... but wondering if there are 2 different things going on? There's one kind of ageism on here which is pure misogyny and comparable to racism .... the general feeling that anyone past menopause should just go to gransnet and stop moaning. Women hate themselves so much and don't even know it.
Then there is the general ageism in the Coronavirus topic. Old people ( over 50) should accept their lot and die

They’re both insidious and nasty though. And come from the same place.

The threads on Coronavirus are horrible and things that are said there are plain hate speech. Scotsnet is similar. I wish mumsnet would do something about it

Has anyone else contacted them or reported anything? Or drawn their attention to this thread?

Could Ofcom help?

I've just revisited the "for some random 80 year old with dementia" thread. I hid it after the self-styled scientific expert tried to pick a fight with me on the thread after I said I was the one who had reported her. (Obviously she tried to rewrite history and say all she'd said was something about figures in carehomes) pleased to see the tide did turn on the thread after that and that was the last thread she posted on under that name. I'm sure if I could be arsed to cross match I'd find another hate speaker who started with the eugenics fangirling the same day though.

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince, I do some social media moderating and almost all the clients have a "inflammatory" or "hate speech" button to escalate the post being assessed. MN obviously does its own moderation but there must be something that says forum owners be held to account for allowing hate speech to stand.
I'm NOT blaming HQ, and as I say, they do delete most of the posts. But it does need more close moderation.

I complained to the Equalities Comission, but they don’t get involved with internet stuff.

That’s why l wondered about Ofcom

Just found this.

hqnetwork.co.uk/news/social-media-officially-considered-formal-complaint-by-ombudsman-3667/

Most of those who think that older people should be sacrificed will be old themselves one day. I wonder if they will feel the same then.

At a time when you would hope that, as a country, we would look for the common good and do what we can to support one another, we are actually setting ourselves against one another and I find that very sad.

Each generation has benefits and disadvantages. If you didn’t live it, you can’t say how it was. I think that things are very difficult in many ways for younger people today and I don’t minimise the difficulties. Surely, we have things to learn, admire and support in one another.

One wonders how they feel about the elderly people in their own family but invariably they churn out the "my gran says to let her die so we can live our lives" trope. Undoubtedly true, and most grans would probably sacrifice themselves for the young 'uns. Not to the extent of being left on the top floor of a burning building though presumably. (Real post from real MNer yesterday)

So I’ve just found this.

www.stophateuk.org/ I’m going to look into it. If you can post or direct me to any relevant threads or posts.

👍🏻

@Aridane

I hope you will also report posts that are on the same lines made about young people too. After all, been ageist is about age, not just older people.

If you don’t get the difference between a poster describing a young person as entitled / whatever and a poster effectively saying that the lives of the elderly are not worth living let alone saving, you are part of the problem

I would say that if you don't understand that saying it's OK to leave the young adults on the side of the road because you want to protect ONE part of the population at the detriment of the other, then you are part of the problem.

Yes older people are more at risk of dying than younger people.
However younger people are also disproportionately affected by MH issues because of covid. Unemployement (linked to poverty, needing food banks etc...). They are just as likely to be affected by long covid (you can long covid even if you have been only midly affected by covid).
At the same time, they are expected to 'just go to work' whilst at the same NOT go to work if they have any symptoms, regardless of the effect it can have economically (aka no food on the table) etc etc....
Not to be entitled (aka not receive any benefits because you know they should all be working), but expect to put everyone else before themselves.

If you can't see that its impossible to solve the issue of one group without taking into account the issues of the other group, then yes you are very much part of the problem.

I think there are just as many charmers on here as there are on “ageist” threads.

And there is a gulf between posts saying that someone is past it or sad at 50 plus (let alone that awful BBC podcast in which young women demanded that older women “just leave” public life) and the threads discussing whether someone very old with dementia should trump a younger person if treatment were rationed.

I just noticed a pp taking a pop at me for saying this on a Covid thread. Well, I stand by my assertion that I think some posters are cracked if they would sooner save a (strange) 90-year-old from a fire than a (strange) 4-year-old.

I am pretty old, if that’s relevant.

@Meuniere @Aridane being ageist is about discrimination on the grounds of age.
The horrible posters who are being ageists aren't suggesting young people should be locked up, die in a fire or not access ITU care.

It's not a good situation for anyone and no one should be discriminated against due to age but there's no comparison here.

One might argue that your obsession with dementia, on this thread and others, plonks you in both the ageist (which you say yourself you are) and the ableist camps. You do know there are people in their 50s with what's known as working age dementia?
Where do you stand on severely disabled children? Out of curiosity?

I have a lot of experience of dementia. It is quite, quite, quite different from “disability” - for all concerned. Obviously there are sad cases of people in their 50s with dementia, but it overwhelmingly affects the elderly - senile dementia.

You are being very offensive and selectively “quoting” me from other threads. Your disabled children comment is nasty. You are a poor advocate for your cause.

I don't believe I've quoted you at all. Nor have I reported any of your posts. Not even the one where you said you were ageist. A confession of that kind is best left for everyone to see. (Replace it with racist or ableist though, and maybe have a rethink eh?)
That you seem to think it's you I'm talking about is revealing though, wouldn't you say?

Oh, yes, sorry. I did "quote" you as being the poster who says they are ageist.

I didn't report it though.

You missed the bit where I said I was ageist... and old. A joke.

@Jellycatspyjamas - I was talking of classic boomers (So born in mid 1940s to 1950s) though not people over 50 which is my generation really. As I said many times, there are issues with generational inequality between the millennials and that generation, particularly with pensions, housing and education costs. Silly claims about how “I am a boomer and couldn’t get a council house” don’t help - it is about inequality between the groups as a whole and council housing and right to buy was much more available to that generation.

As I said it’s similar to sex inequality. There is a big gender pay gap Of which men generally earn more as a group but of course many men live on low wages or benefits and struggle. But overall there is a gender pay gap and we should rightly consider why that is.

Meuniere the over 50’s have also been badly hit, but no one talks about them.

The eugenics is on Coronavirus topics though. And it's all over the shop.

@TheSeedsOfADream, I'm afraid I haven't been reading the coronavirus threads. Actually, I wonder if the fragmented nature of the topics is part of the problem. @MNHQ have given people the ability to hide topics, and not every topic has enough traffic to come up on Active Convos... perhaps there is scope to fold coronavirus back into In The News, or something?

I don't think websites should censor people wanting to talk effectively about triage which is something every A&E department in the country does every day and which the NHS has done since it was founded and doctors before then. Who has priority? Who lives? Who dies? It is not wicked to discuss those issues. Most of us if we had to would eg save 3 of your children and let 1 die rather than let all 4 die.

The bigger issue is that some groups of people want free speech and don't mind being insulted or hearing views they hate so never report anything. Other demographics might take a different view so do complain. Websites can only act on complaints made and thus those who complain obviously are considered in a way those who don't believe in complaining don't. It is just how it is. However that would still not make me start complaining and reporting.

Also on the CV19 issue it is the right and medically approved view that certainly people including very old ones will die on ventilators and it is wrong medically and ethically to put them on them. It is not being ageist. It is pure science. It is also a fact that I at over 50 am more at risk of CV19 than my 21 year old twins.

That's not what the haters of the elderly talk about Xenia.

Again, they talk about "dribbling dementees in dirty nappies" and "my boss in the care home told me not to bother with the ones on the top floor" etc etc.

We are talking ignorant, thick, prone to violent language, knuckle draggers, not anybody who would be able to string a coherent argument together.

Replace the words "dribbling dementee in a dirty nappy" with "dribbling disabled teenager" and see the outcry.

HQ have recently started deleting posts using "Karen" as an insult on account of the inherent misogyny coupled with ageism. Hopefully "boomer" will go the same way. As it's totally different affectively to "baby boomer" and born from nasty Tiktok videos taking the piss out of the 50+ generation.

There are threads discussing the elderly and Covid which don't descend into hate speech. But I've got a list (yep, really) of posters (a hardcore of about 10, only really post on Covid and there's usually a weird Venn intersection between non compliance, hating the elderly and denying Covid exists- which kind of shows the level of intelligence we're talking about tbh- maybe it's Shrodinger's 80 year old...)