To ask you to admit doing the annoying things people on MN complain about?

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For an anonymous internet forum, it continually strikes me as odd that people very rarely admit to engaging in the problematic or annoying behaviours complained about on here - it's always someone else doing it, apparently. Whether it's hogging the middle lane on the motorway, having kids who are out of control in public places, being a noisy neighbour or not picking up dog poo, people on MN constantly complain about these things happening around them but if no one on here admits to doing it, who are all these offenders? For example, several people in my neighbourhood are leaving their dog's poo around constantly, but when this is brought up on here every single dog owner loudly exclaims that it it's these dog owners who give them a bad name, that they never go out walking without carrying several bags for good measure! Same with bad driving - people on here love calling out driving pet peeves, but surely at least some people on here are engaging in those very same behaviours e.g. tailgating, driving too slowly or bad parking, that everyone complains about?

Are people on here just squeaky clean or in denial? I admit it, I do hog the middle lane sometimes, there you go 😬

Oh yes @Unicorn1919 , I really like people turning up unexpectedly. I was pondering this after a previous thread. Although we got a telephone when I was five, I think etiquette hadn’t really evolved from the pre-phone era. My parents had friends who would call In unannounced, particularly one who would sometimes sleep on the sofa.
It always made me happy.

But the vast majority of people who eat meat and dairy aren’t doing so for their own survival. We could (almost) all be vegans and live a healthy lifestyle. The people who choose to eat meat aren’t doing so because they have no choice, they have a choice and choose to be part of a cruel industry. Myself included.

@FortunesFavour why do you want to sit next to me when other seats are available? Do you do other creepy and aggressive things? How do you pick your targets? Would you insist on your right to throw a smelly drunk's bag on the floor or would you pick someone who looked like she wouldn't stand up to you? Considering for a moment that you actually do this and are not just saying it, have you ever made the wrong decision in picking on someone? What would you do if you found out you had?

When you say 'other seats are available' do you mean other double seats, or spaces next to other passengers?

I drive a big diesel Chelsea tractor
I have a cleaner
I'm a sahm to school age kids
My kids go to grammar school
I pick up dog poo but not if he does it in a bush
I have too many kids
I have a loo brush in every loo
I spend too much in the super market
I open the door when someone knocks and invite them in
My house is usually "visitor ready"

Nah @limitedperiodonly, like many regular commuters I have zero tolerance for entitled arsehole behaviour. Yes I’ve done it on the tube when a man refused to move his bin bag (filled with balloons 🙄), and I’ve seen it happen in London on trains and buses too. Sorry that confident commuters will show you up for acting like this, but that’s what you get on London transport for entitled twattery.

If the other seats available are next to men, or maybe even drunk men, isn’t it a bit unkind to make another woman or young girl sit next to them?

I'd put it on the floor and sit down anyway.

I can drive and used to really enjoy having a nice car. I'm sure I'd enjoy it again because I loved driving even in boring traffic, but I haven't driven regularly for nearly 20 years because I really don't need a car where I live now and it's a pointless expense.

When I still had one I'd have to write down where I'd parked because I wouldn't drive it again for about three weeks and kept forgetting where I'd left it. Sometimes my husband would move it and forget to tell me so I had no idea where it was. I held on to my nice car that was getting older and older until I wondered why. Now if I really need a car I just hire one. My MIL lives 200 miles away and though we can easily get a fast train to the county town and I like the journey she's 20 miles from that with your suitcase on a bus that stops at every stop. So it's a treat to hire a special car. DH likes driving as much as me so we fight and I sometimes let him win.

I used to think it was odd and somehow shameful that people couldn't drive because everyone I knew apart from my mum got their licence at 17 or 18. But now I completely understand it. Public transport where I live now is brilliant but even where I used to live it was good and I'd always get cabs out anyway because I was drinking and if there was anything more shameful than not being able to drive it was drinking and driving. That's bad.

When I had a car I'd be happy to give people lifts rather than acting as if it was like giving them a piggy back across the Sahara. I really can't understand the anger about that among some Mumsnet car drivers along with their obsession with people not parking on their drives which are always a space in their front garden rather than a majestic Downton Abbey-type vista.

Being able to drive is a useful skill. But like swimming, which I can also do well because I had proper lessons and got badges and everything, it is not a life skill.

I can feel another one coming on...

I like to think I’d do that, but I probably wouldn’t.

Just do it. She's rude, antisocial, doesn't care what you think and doesn't know what seats are for. Why should you worry about her approval when all you want is priority for a public seat over her bag? Her bag will be perfectly comfortable on the floor.

Swimming is not a life skill. It is a desirable thing somewhere between knowing how to change a light bulb and being able to add up and subtract and know what percentages are.

I had proper lessons and got badges. I am good at it and pleased I could flirt with boys at my local pool and now have an all-over fitness regime for the price of admission to the sports centre and a black school-type cossie.

But if I couldn't swim I'd just paddle at the shoreline. Most drowning deaths are in people who overestimate their swimming ability.

I hope you are paying for the seat that you are hogging with your bag, otherwise I will need very tempted to do the same as other posters and either dump it on your lap or the floor so that l can sit down.

I wouldn't do the bag on chair thing but I would feel annoyed if there were an empty double seat in clear view and somebody sat next to me.

@limitedperiodonly I'd be tempted to feign poor eyesight and just sit down on your bag.

Twats driving in the middle/fast lane incorrectly I will gain on, overtake and pull across to the correct lane in a hope they get the fucking hint.

Not dangerously shit bag levels though. I give them space.

Sometimes it can even be a fortnight before our bedsheets get changed.

If you've never had to clean skids then you've obviously never met my grandson, I'm sure he must eat Polyfilla the way they stick.

I refer to DH as "Hubby" (and occasionally "Hublet"). A MN sin I believe.

I eat cooked food on the train.

I travel on public transport all the time because I choose not to have a car. It's in London but I don't see why that should matter except to people like @FortunesFavour who seem to think that being in big bad London makes them bad arse mofos like Samuel L Jackson. I'm sure people in other parts of the UK and the world are able to be assertive.

Why would anyone especially want to sit next to someone they don't know when other seats are available? That's odd behaviour. A red flag as people on Mumsnet are fond of pointing out. I'm not a scaredy cat who doesn't ever open her door but In the normal scheme of things whether on a tube train or a beach you want to spread out and give other people space. If not that's a bit weird.

So that's why I say no and point to the other seat.

@NoNameNowAgain it is not my responsibility to be kinder to people than I already am. I am a woman and I guess you are too. As women we are alert to people invading our personal space. That's whether they are perving, pickpocketing or as @FortunesFavour said just enjoy needless confrontation with someone they perceive to be weaker than them.

Apart from pickpocketing which is a skilled and dishonorable profession, I have no idea why anyone would want to get close to other people when they don't need to in order to make them feel uncomfortable unless it makes her feel better about herself. I'm assuming @FortunesFavour is a woman. If the poster is a man the comments about enjoying sitting next to someone when other seats are available are more disturbing.

It is public transport so if other seats are not available of course I budge up - public being the operative word.

In case you are fretting I have rescued a girl who was being hit on by a perv on the tube. Everyone was looking down and I said loudly: "Hi Jess. Didn't see you there. Come sit next to me." "Jess" looked at me wildly for a moment and then realised it was a lifeline and came over. The perv was neutralised and everyone thought: "I wish I'd done that."

I learned the trick because a strange woman did that for me 30 years ago on the tube. So I can be exceptionally nice. But I don't let any old person sit next to me.

We weren't pink and blue but my late OH did think that putting the bins out was his job so it's been a learning curve since he died. When I first went for petrol after he died I couldn't find the tank opener, we had a system if we were together that he put the petrol in while I queued to pay, worked well!

Or sit on the bag, even the threat to do so usually gets it moved!

I can get on board with that. My husband is not my hubby but calls me kittenbuttocks. They are not very kittenish any more.

I get called Sugartits occasionally and don't feel like I'm being violated or think my DH disrespects me.