I think mumsnet is no longer fit for purpose in the spirit it was meant to be.

[Tolstoysbackpack]

I’m wondering if anyone feels the same as me. It’s called ‘Mumsnet’ which makes you believe it’s a supportive place and a place to go for advice or give advice. Some tough love. It’s great because it’s anonymous. I think you have to take the OP in good faith. But I think a lot of threads now are not. I think the balance has tipped from a minority of arseholes being nasty to a majority.

the starting point seems to be for a lot of people that reply to OP’s is to catch them
out, purposefully misunderstand, find some gotcha flaw in their OP to exploit as if they are interviewing a suspect, give unsolicited stupid legal or medical advice and believe their word is important and must be heard, compare their circumstances to the OP’s which I can only interpret as trying to show off that their situation is better, stupid examples, obsessed with money and leafy areas, if you don’t have family to help in an emergency why don’t you? You loser, if it were me I would….., I can’t believe you don’t drive, get a better job. Why don’t you go private? It’s people like you that have the NHS on their knees. What is your DH doing? Mine would race to me and pick me up in his beefy loving arms and if he didn’t I would LTB, I don’t think you are telling the full story here OP. I don’t understand your OP? (When any adult can kind of get the gist) and they asking questions just to cause a bit of drama.

some people really do ask for help and they get ripped to spreads. What is even more insulting that a lot of these people don’t bother to read the thread, they just are compelled to reply. They don’t even bother to look if their comment had been answered, it’s like the internet equivalent of perpetuating kicking someone while they are payed on the ground. And they don’t care. A lot of these people also claim to be incredibly affluent, educated and in important jobs.

I used to use this website a lot, I have found amusement and good advice. I thought it was a positive place. I don’t understand why people feel compelled to fuck it up. If you don’t have anything to say just move on. No one is asking you personally, and how arrogant to assume they are.

in a couple of hundred years when we are all dead and gone I wonder what historians will make of us. How they will interpret a website that was positive turned so cruel.

I am not sure if it's not 'fit for purpose'.
But there are some things that go on which are annoying.

I won't mention people living under bridges, as I know that it's not good for the site to say there are these people around.

But a good number of threads are started by posters who do not appear genuine. Their threads are always contentious or overly dramatic, then lo and behold they are pulled while MN 'looks behind the scenes.'

These are often the same threads where the poster posts once and never appears again. Posters who have genuinely tried to offer support ask 'where are you and what happened?' Zero replies.

The other thing is anyone can join and not be a Mum.

That's okaaaay to a point but sometimes it seems to be inhabited by very young women, barely out of their teens, who are not parents.

So it's become a general 'agony aunt' site, not just about parenting.

It's true though. There a load of different sites on the internet. Some you'll like, some you'll loathe. It's totally different to the notion of moving country!

I'm always amazed by posters who come on to post how awful Mumsnet is, yet still stay and post.

Totally agree with you. It can be very toxic. Some of the language and attitudes are pretty awful. I am in the middle of a thread at the moment and I can only assume people see it as a way to vent and to say things they couldn’t/wouldn’t normally. It’s a bit like Twitter actually.

Like all 'spaces' or organisations, its got its own culture, which shifts over time. In your excellent OP you put your finger on some of the phrases which grind my gears - but posters are picking those up from others. Humans imitate to fit in, even subconsciously.

I think it's easier to be unkind on MN than other sites because you can have unlimited name changes!

Ok, so it’s a free anonymous forum. I can post my point of view, people can comment or choose to ignore it. I’m not being impolite or rude. Why does that upset you. You could have done the same thing that you recommended I do. If you don’t agree with what my opinion is please tell me. Or ask me to explain. But flying in and saying “if you don’t like it we’ll piss off” is pretty lame. And kind of proves my point. My opinion and your opinion are valid.

I think it's just aibu tbh.

Threads in Money, COL and property are usually really good. I enjoy reading them

I just find it baffling that people still don't expect this? You aren't posting your query or problem on a niche forum where only professionals and experts in the matter can respond. This is an open public forum. Literally anyone and everyone can respond to you. The professionals, the stupid, the smart, the racists, the biased, men, narcs, scociopaths etc. It's very naive to post thinking you'll get only helpful and supportive comments. Yet, people seem to. Then they spend the whole thread arguing with the unhelpful and unsupportive posters until they get so worked up they have MNHQ pull it. People need to wise up.

I think MN is too big to have a specific culture, to be honest. Different parts of the site have a totally different feel.

I stay away from AIBU now, it's an absolute bearpit now and riddled with trolls and journos. But lots of the other boards are still full of helpful kind people.

I've learned loads about fashion companies new to me on style and beauty and some great book and TV suggestions on other boards. And mostly chat is fairly pleasant.

I think sadly parts of the site like AIBU are reflective of what's happening to society. For many of us this is a frightening time. For the two generations after me this is really the first time they will have experienced a major recession, for instance.

And for many, sadly, a mechanism for coping with fear is to hit out in anger.

And goodness knows most of the vicious mainstream media doesn't help.

I didn't say you were impolite or rude. Nor am I upset. I didn't tell you to piss off. Your point has not been proven by anything but your own conjecture.

I was asking you some questions. That happens on forums. Your post was very defensive. Perhaps ask yourself why you have such a strong need to assert yourself. Why you need random, nameless strangers to care about your opinion. It might come from insecurity.

These threads come up virtually every week, if not every other day.

In my experience, they tend to get pulled quite quickly.

This, so much! I feel like I'm in the twilight zone reading those derailed threads. There was a terrible one recently where the OP's MIL was being weird about putting money towards a pram and wanted to buy a cheaper pram outright, obviously to be able to say she bought it, and the OP's partner was being horrible to her about it all. The pile on in that thread about her being grabby/wanting a naff pram/telling her to LTB was unbelievable. The OP kept replying and trying to correct posters but to no avail, and eventually it was deleted.

You've made some really good points. It's getting to be like this on all the boards. I posted something about my mental health not long ago, not in AIBU, and got ripped to shreds by people who couldn't even read the OP properly, had no qualification to what they were saying, and I was left feeling so suicidal that I came off MN for a couple of months and deleted my account until I was ready to cope with it. It was next-level arseholery and MNHQ told me they didn't think it was personal attacks.
So now I know never to ask for support on here but I still try to give it to those brave enough to ask. The culture has really gone downhill since I first joined five years ago.

I think it remains a solid and useful website.
It is one of the few places where we can vent about certain issues, and there will be arguments and hostility.
But that's fine- and I think the moderators do a good job of allowing free speech while stopping bun fights, trolls and personal attack.
And the website is huge.
I tend to avoid the arguments, mumsnet has a lot of amazing places, good support and understanding of others happening quietly in the background.
Mumsnet hosts one of my favourite chats on the internet

Yeah tbh I really feel for the children of some of these posters. Must be horrible to grow up with such vile, bitter and gaslighting bs around them every day.

Completely agree OP. Reading too many AIBU thread arguments is actually beginning to warp how I see/think about situations in real life. I think for my own MH I should stay away for a bit tbh. Sounds stupid but there you have it

It's very political on here, I don't generally start any threads though, I make the odd comment then go away, I can't be bothered to argue with randoms on the internet.

I completely agree, recently I frequently find myself disgusted with aggressive, pompous and plain nasty posters. Lost my temper with some today which wasn't my proudest moment but I couldn't believe the blatant bullying happening. That kind of poster has always been on here but not in this quantity. It's often not a positive, supportive or kind space now.

I wish we could opt out of notifications from specific threads. Sometimes I would like to engage briefly with a thread or just give my opinion and not then be tagged for the next three weeks by angry, repetitive posters making extremely vile personal attacks because they have a different view to mine. I usually don't care if they want to say this stuff really, it reflects more on them than me, but I would like to opt out from being notified that they're still doing it.

This will not change OP, as long as name changing is allowed, and for obvious reasons it'll always be allowed.

If (like on many other forums) people had to stick to one name and they were nasty in it, no-one would bother replying to them or taking them seriously, so they'd have to keep their behavior in check to a degree.

As it stands, they can be as nasty as they like within talk guidelines and then just slip back into a nice name that everyone knows and likes, or they can just pick a new one and start afresh.

@NowDoYouBelieveMe you can! At the bottom of each thread/topic there is a button "Watch thread" or "Unwatch thread" (if you've posted on it). Just click on "unwatch thread" and you'll only get notifications if you're specifically tagged or quoted. I think you can opt out of any notifications in your settings too.

I am being specifically tagged and quoted though.

What can I do then?

I asked the mods for help before and they just said "have a play around with your settings, it might help".

I don't even want to say what these posters are saying about me, it's too upsetting.

I agree OP. I was reading some of the older Relationships board topics the other day and the advice was much … kinder and supportive, less… vitriolic and argumentative.

I do wonder if those threads had been pruned to rid them of much of what I've seen on current threads where people go off on a tangent, or pick holes in the OP's post, or pick fights and derail the thread because one of the replies has a different point of view.

AIBU can be a bit full on sometimes but I think there's a lot of posters who genuinely want to give decent advice, especially when it comes to raising the bar for what we accept/expect of male behaviour.

There's also some quite robust debates, but I've changed my views on some topics because of those debates, both participating and reading.