to not understand why people keep saying they feel attacked because someone disagrees with them?

[KirstyT79]

hello. i have recently name changed but have been a mumsnetter since december. i have made posts where most people have not agreed with my posts but never felt attacked just that people were telling me honestly what they felt. anyone else feel a bit tired of this whole "i'm being attacked because others don't agree with me" mentality?. i have tbf seen some vile replies to threads but to be honest not massivly

[ViciousJackdaw]

I just find it hard to get upset about what someone on a forum where we are all faceless and don't use our real names think of me

Me too. After all, insults on a forum are little more than a series of key depressions or screen presses (bigotry and discrimination excepted, obvs.). Not everyone is a hardfaced old cow like me though and that's fine. We are all different and there are certainly things that upset me that other people might class as 'silly'.

[Sparklingbrook]

If I worried about what people thought of me I'd never post a thing. It's just a Talk forum after all. Random internet strangers.

[ThreeImaginaryBoys]

I work with one of these.

Every single time anyone says anything that she doesn't agree with, she goes to our line manager and complains that she was 'challenged' by that person and felt 'really uncomfortable' because of how she was spoken to. It can be as simple as 'we need to remember to keep the windows open' and she disagrees.

The worst thing is that she is listened to and her complaints acted upon every single time. It drives me insane.

I can't help wondering how on earth she would cope with an actual problem.

[BackforGood]

Usually people feel attacked if their position is weak and they struggle to defend it. Saying they're being attacked is their only defense

This ^

Considering this is a discussion forum, there are a worryingly high % of posters that actually aren't willing to discuss anything.
Quite often threads are started that are such a good example of it, in the problem they are actually bringing. As pps have said the 'AIBU ones where the poster tries to get the thread pulled because people say they ABU.
It never fails to amaze me how many people can't debate the actual point rather than being nasty to other posters.

[HerMammy]

@KirstyT79
I literally said she sounds young! not a single personal thing about the DD.
It was a thread with OP wanting to give her DD14 £50pm to live on with OP only buying school uniform and food, she was beyond ridiculous and argued with every pp telling her she was 🤷🏼‍♀️

[JokeTheCoalman]

Another thing

A disagrees with B
B- 'im sorry if I've offended anyone!!!!
A- 'who's offended? I just don't agree with you!

Slightly different but similarly annoying

[poppycat10]

There's a difference between attacking the person's viewpoint and attacking them personally.

I was on a thread the other day where someone made an extremely unhelpful personal remark (not about me but the OP), so I reported it (not sure if it was deleted or not, but it makes a point).

You can say "that's a stupid thing to do OP" but it's not ok to say "oh how can you do that you're so vile". My favourite is "well aren't you a peach". Lovely. MN should come down much harder on the personal insults and offensive language, in my view.

[memberofthewedding]

I use another forum which is for older people.

There is a "jokes and funnies" section. The jokes are mostly old and not to my taste. A member posted what appeared to be 6-8 threads in general chat category. However each one, when opened, was a tired old jokey cartoon. I did not post on the threads but felt quite irritated at having to wade through them all to find an interesting thread. Later, someone posted in the jokes category and another member said it was in poor taste. I said "well at least its in the correct category, unlike all the tired old jokes in general chat."

Now the poster of the original wrongly placed jokes has flounced off the forum like a drama queen because of my fair comment. Other members are saying I was mean, small minded and so on because I did not appreciate the jokes.

Its actually a forum for older people but they behave like small children. The only reason Im still a member is that a colleague of mine doing a ph.d is studying some of the interactions (mostly the bullying and snitching) and gathering data for her thesis. She uses my login script for lurking.

[KirstyT79]

i supposed that i feel differently about it if this was totally real life. if someone in real life said to me"kirsty i think your an attention seeking arse" i think that would affect me more than someone who said the same thing on a forum like this where we are not really friends and only communicate with each other through a screen.

[RedPandaFluff]

Haven't RTFT but the title reminded me of MIL - the entire family tiptoes around her because if we challenge her on anything, or even just have a different opinion or point of view, she pretty much has an anxiety attack and runs off crying.

It's driving me crazy.

She's ignoring poor DH just now, because he questioned her (batshit, in my private opinion) refusal to get the covid vaccine. And even though he followed up the conversation with a message saying it's because he loves her and worries about her, she's still not answering.

It's getting harder and harder to grit my teeth and let things slide . . .

[KirstyT79]

how ladies some great answers to this @RedPandaFluf she sounds like a nightmare. my sister once disowned our entire family because she didn't like something that someone said to her even though it was the truth. i don't know why anyone wouldn't want to take the covid vaccine as i think its so vital not just for myself but for other people i may come into contact with but that's for another thread. you do have to wonder what some of these people are like in RL how they hold down a job which is customer facing where there is more of a possibility they are going to be disagreed with by a customer wanting to be awkward

[Minezatea]

Like others I think that posters hide behind the 'just being honest' when they're actually being unnecessarily acerbic. It's fine to disagree, it's fine, of course, on AIBU to say 'yes I think you are'. But I don't think it's fine to attack people and there's an awful lot of that on MN. You do see some where people feel attacked for non clear reason but I'd say that 90 percent of the time when people say this you can see a good number of posters who have got unnecessarily nasty.

[DiddlyWiddly]

A lot of the time a ‘disagreement’ isn’t a disagreement at all.

An awful lot of people have entirely lost the ability to debate properly and respectfully and resort to personal insults and aggression when they disagree with someone else.

It happens all the time, on here and in real life, so yes, I can definately understand why someone would feel attacked if others don’t agree with their viewpoint.