Posters bogged down in minor/irrelevant detail

[StillCoughingandLaughing]

I know it’s not a big issue (although someone will probably still reply to say ‘Is that really all you’ve got to worry about?’), but is anyone else being driven mad by how often threads get completely derailed by a minor detail - to the point you get more questions and comments about that than the actual issue?

I don’t want to make this into a TAAT, but a couple of examples:

There was a woman whose husband had claimed she was being rude because she’d had a glass of wine while cooking and hadn’t come to find him in a different room on the other side of the house to offer him one. The OP happened to mention that the wine had been open for about three days - basically to emphasise that they weren’t big drinkers. Cue post after post about ‘You leave wine open for three days?!’ ‘That wine will be undrinkable!’ ‘Actually wine is okay for about a week once opened’. ‘No, it says on the bottle drink within three days, and even that’s too long IMO’. It doesn’t matter!!! Answer the bloody question!!

An older one I found the other day - a dieting woman desperately wanted a treat day at Burger King. Instead her husband made her a bacon and egg sandwich so that he wouldn’t have to go out again. Again, genuine answers to the question bogged down with ‘Why didn’t you just get the BK while you were out shopping?’ ‘Didn’t you smell the bacon cooking?’ ‘What were you doing while he was making the sandwich? Didn’t you wonder where he was?’ It. Doesn’t. MATTER!!!!

Why?! Why can’t people answer a simple question without picking over minor bits of the carcass? At worst, I feel it’s low-level, disguised troll hunting. People don’t want to say outright ‘You’re a liar and I don’t believe you’ for fear of getting their posts deleted or being banned - so instead, they find fault with a minor detail, hoping to imply that this tiny discrepancy means the entire post is an invention. I suppose ‘Why did it take you 30 minutes to walk back and collect the bag you’d forgotten when you said it only took you 20 minutes to get home? ’ leaves much more room for ambiguity than ‘This is the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard in my life’...

The obvious troll thread that turned into a chinese/chips/knitting/crochet thread was one of my favourites. Shame it was deleted because troll was trolling.

God, the amount of trivial shit that people think warrants a whole thread though ... I think I'm getting old and cantankerous cos the amount of threads I open up, barely get through the opening sentence, do a massive eye roll and think "oh fuck off, no one caresssss" because it's either another bloody bubble quandary or a trivial decision that the op has clearly already made, so the thread is pointless.
Don't even get me started on the ones that make a thread with some innocuous question and then bugger off and don't return to actually say why they want to know.

Yea it annoys me too. On a thread the other day about a lodger taking the piss with boundaries and the lodger had opened a bottle of champagne that he OP had been saving and drank most of it, lots of people responded to say champagne shouldn't be saved, it should be drunk young. It really isnt the point, plus I don't think the lodger knew that and was doing it as some sort of favour to the OP.

It also annoys me when people talk in detail about their husband and issues caused by his hobby and then people come along and just moan that the OP hasn't started what the hobby is and if its cycling or golf it wont out her etc . It doesnt matter, it's not relevant to the thread, if he is fucking off for 3 out of 4 weekends instead of helping with his 3 kids what difference does it make if its running or badminton? And then when people do put the hobby and its cycling or gaming people just make comments like 'no way would I go out with someone who spends a lot of his time wearing lycra' or 'its ridiculous when grown men want to spend their free time gaming'. Its not the fucking point! Some posters are damned if they do give detail and damned if they don't

I don't know how a bottle of wine could last unmolested for three days, unless you're Mormons possibly.

I don’t mind it! I see it as two things:

• barely disguised troll hunting. I get that MN doesn’t allow troll hunting, but I think it’s useful so I don’t mind other people doing it

• just conversation. If we never let conversation meander, it would be very dull indeed! It’s a bit harder online, but in real life there’d be a side giggle about the very thought of not finishing wine, then back to the main point. Conversation would be very dull otherwise.

Isn't troll hunting outlawed in countries adhering to WWF guidelines? Or is that just pandas?

Some of the derails can but quite funny.

But I really hate it when you get a thread where someone is obviously distressed and the grammar police roll up.

Or someone saying: "I couldn't read this, it wasn't in paragraphs."

FFS

The hobby thing makes me it could be an hour of badminton, a day of cycling or a night of fishing, so depending on what it is would give us a clue, just say what it is FGS. One thing's for sure, it's not going to be anything wildly exciting is it?

What's wrong with 'my DH goes out cycling all day every weekend?' Just say that if that's what it is. 'Hobby' makes me think of train spotting or stamp collecting.

But there’s a difference between ‘meandering’ and ignoring the original question to debate a really very minor point.

Take the wine example. Nothing necessarily wrong with saying the wine might not have been at its best after three days, but it’s not the key point. It didn’t matter whether it was old wine, freshly opened wine or piss in a glass, to be brutal - none of these make a material difference to the original question.

It's a fine balancing act to get the right about of detail into an OP in AIBU.

Produce a succinct one with, giving the mail details (or even one with bullet points) results in posters asking about random detail and then follows after the OP answer there following numerous whining posts about drip-feeding.

Produce an OP which includes random details to avoid 'drip-feeding', and the becomes an OP that bound to be followed by lots of whiney posts obsessing with irrelevant random details.

It's such a fine balance to get it right, I'm not sure it's ever been got right.

I think though the fixation with irrelevant things is due to posters trying to show how this situation could never happen to me. It's like an AIBU version of victim-blaming.

You know, "The OP should/shouldn't have done this. Because I'm convincing myself I would/wouldn't do that, so that makes me safe from the harm/upset"

This is turning into a TAAT-I would have to read the one about wine to check which facts were relevant. I've not seen it.

AIBU ? Yes you bloody well are or you wouldn't be doing the asking now would you ??

That's to anybody

I can bullet point it for you @Sparklingbrook

OP wrote that she was making the dinner and fancied a glass of wine. She poured herself one from a bottle that had been opened last week. Her husband got all sulky that she hadn't stopped making the dinner -presumably that he planned on eating - and found him and asked him if he wanted a glass and then gone back and poured him one and them taken it to him so he would drink wine while sitting on his arse with headphones one (waiting for his dinner to be made). Then:

• Some posters said the OP was evil, lazy and unloving (input other not - some flattering descriptions)

• Some posters said fair enough - if he was in the kitchen the would have been offered a glass but otherwise no. So same as OP.

• Some poster became obsessed with how big the OP's house was (because she used the term 'hunt him down' or something similar)

• Some posters became obsessed with how long the wine had been open for (for various reasons - the length of time isn't possible, the wine wouldn't be nice and so on).

That's about all I can recall.

I dipped into a thread earlier, OP pissed off with her husband.

First post:

“Hubs?”

Like, why bother? So snotty.

The ones I can’t bear are the ones where the OP clearly just needs to blow off steam, there’s always some joyless pedant who can’t resist being ‘confused’ at some point or mentioning that ‘you wouldn’t stand for it if a MAN said he wanted to bury his wife under the patio for sniffing too much’. Or how if you say some random kid was an actual pain in the arse bastard, clearly you’re the worst parent EVAR not to mention some sort of abusive harpy.

@CherryValanc

I can bullet point it for you *@Sparklingbrook*

OP wrote that she was making the dinner and fancied a glass of wine. She poured herself one from a bottle that had been opened last week. Her husband got all sulky that she hadn't stopped making the dinner -presumably that he planned on eating - and found him and asked him if he wanted a glass and then gone back and poured him one and them taken it to him so he would drink wine while sitting on his arse with headphones one (waiting for his dinner to be made). Then:

• Some posters said the OP was evil, lazy and unloving (input other not - some flattering descriptions)

• Some posters said fair enough - if he was in the kitchen the would have been offered a glass but otherwise no. So same as OP.

• Some poster became obsessed with how big the OP's house was (because she used the term 'hunt him down' or something similar)

• Some posters became obsessed with how long the wine had been open for (for various reasons - the length of time isn't possible, the wine wouldn't be nice and so on).

That's about all I can recall.

Thanks, that all sounds a bit storm in a tea cup/wine glass doesn't it? Typical AIBU.

YABU OP! This is the whole point of Mumsnet for me. There's always
thread derailers, bizarrely aggressive people who take an insanely angry / hardline approach and sensible thoughtful posters and that's the joy of it! It's a giant chat with people and mostly v interesting

Long, long lists of relatives and assorted hangers on with details of who had an extra cherry in their Snowball in 1987, and why Auntie Maud can't sit on a hard chair for more than 15 minutes (insert irrelevant details of historic surgical procedure)

This made me laugh. You have a lovely way with words, pp.

Or similar is when the poster makes it all about them (and thus wholly irrelevent), usually incorporating a stealth boast and starting with, "See..." For example:

OP: I'm worried about my DD(15)'s use of social media and whether it's affecting her mood. Should I limit it to an hour a day?
Poster: See, we don't use social media in our house because we have poor broadband so we prefer to talk to each other or read books.

Or OP: Where can I get some decent black lace-up school shoes that don't cost a fortune?
Poster: See, my DS can wear whatever shoes he likes because we home-school him.

ODFOD.

@Plonque

God, the amount of trivial shit that people think warrants a whole thread though ... I think I'm getting old and cantankerous cos the amount of threads I open up, barely get through the opening sentence, do a massive eye roll and think "oh fuck off, no one caresssss" because it's either another bloody bubble quandary or a trivial decision that the op has clearly already made, so the thread is pointless. Don't even get me started on the ones that make a thread with some innocuous question and then bugger off and don't return to actually say why they want to know.

Yep, this drives me mad.

OPs who give absoultely no detail at all, and just come back with random unrelated or irrelevant information are almost as irritating as the ones who post a thread a page long detailing their issue going back decades with made up names and jobs and 'outing' hobbies.

But yes OP in answer to your question. There is a current one where the OPs ex's drug addiction has caused him to be paranoid, controlling and radicalised online and she's after advice to keep their young child safe, cue 3 pages of arguing over whether pork is haram or not

Oh and the threads where OP has some really worrying concern e.g. has been assulted, family member rushed to hospital, partner has done something awful and subsequent posts complaining about the bad grammar / poor comprehension.

While I agree MN might not be the best place but sometimes they are clearly just after reassurance or a hand hold.

I'll stop ranting now

@StillCoughingandLaughing

I don't think you're literally driven mad OP, it's a bit insensitive to say so.

In MN speak I wouldn’t be ‘driven’ mad - I’d be ‘ferried about’

I find it amusing.

Yes! Snitty comments, almost always judgmental. Called this out just yesterday. The responses proved to me that MN is just a game to some - trouble is for the vulnerable it really isn't.

AIBU was the home of Penis Beaker after all. If you have some major personal thing going on there's generally a topic that will be better to post it on. But people seem to post in AIBU 'for traffic' so they want lots of replies rather than a few decent ones presumably?

I’d much rather have a bacon and egg sandwich than a Burger King