To wonder if people genuinely struggle with comprehension or just enjoy being arseholes?

[Notsuretoputit]

The number of examples AIBU throws up every day is getting insane.

OP asks ‘I bought a new dress for £200 but the shade of green clashes with my shoes. I tried to take it back but the shop said it had been worn. It hasn’t and it still had the tags on. AIBU to think I should get the dress refunded?’

And the replies come:

’YABU. You can’t wear clothes then expect to get a refund!’

’YABU. Why didn’t you take your shoes with you to try it on?’

’YABU. I’d never spend £200 on a dress. See if you can get something in a sale?’

’YANBU. If you’ve bought green, for example, there’s a high risk of clashing and this is what returns policies are for! Go back and speak to a manager.’

’YABU. Why did you buy green knowing they’d clash?’

’YABU to buy something from a sale without speaking to a manager first’

’YABU. You previously posted you prefer trousers’.

It’s mad.

I'm definitely going with both. If smart people want to be mean, they do it better.

There has been a rapid increase in posters who can't understand simple statements, too. No wonder so many of them find life difficult.

Yes! Often I go back to the OP thinking I missed something or I missed a dripfeed/update.

😂

I thought this was going to be about the dickheads who don’t ‘understand’ the entire post because the OP got ‘bought’ and ’brought’ mixed up 🙄

You missed “you should buy all your clothes second hand in a charity shop for £3.50, and give the rest of your money to Oxfam. That’s what I do. You should be ashamed of yourself, spending money on frivolities like work clothes when children are starving in Africa. Do you hate poor people or something?”

I stopped taking this place seriously for advice when a woman posted about being punched in the face by her partner. They’d recently bought a house together and she’d put all her money in it. She said brought instead of bought, but it was abundantly clear, despite her obvious distress, what she meant.

One nasty piece of work replied with “I’m confused. Where did you bring your house?”

Just nasty and uncalled for.

Agreed OP, the level of literacy on here is shockingly low and sometimes threads get completely derailed by it.

‘Mass protest’ and ‘jizz on the sofa’ made me laugh out loud. My favourite is the people who don’t read ALL the OPs posts never mind the FT then come swinging in ten or fifteen pages deep to set them right. I admire their confidence, even though it’s often massively misplaced. The one who told the OP she WABU to go to A&E when she couldn’t stop vomiting, had black shit and felt like she was going to die (OP turned out to have sepsis and was promptly hospitalised) stayed with me for some reason.

Like the recent thread where the OP discovered her new boyfriend had regular visits from his married male landlord, which involved cuddles in bed together, and people claimed OP was racist and culturally insensitive for wondering if there was something going on, because men in Egypt hold hands in the street? (Her DP was not Egyptian) 🤣

THREE POUNDS FIFTY!! Gosh some people on mumsnet are loaded, don't you know there's a cost of living crisis? I bought an entire wardrobe for 25p

Oh my god 😐

There was a thread recently where a poster was struggling to deal with her prescription-drug addicted mother and posted for a hand hold.

She was accused of all sorts of stuff by mumsnetters who hadn’t read the thread properly.

In her last post before deleting her account, after a particularly nasty couple of replies (that ran directly contrary to the OP’s prior posts), the distressed OP indicated that she was going to kill herself.

It's the same on any social media

You post "I got this lovely top in next for £20, they had lots of other colours"

Comments will guarantee to be

Where from hun?
How much was it?
Did they have any other colours?

I read this one too and was absolutely aghast at how some people behaved, deliberately looking to prod and poke the OP. If I was one of those people and then read her last distressed post, surely I would be ashamed.

… but I think the problem is that a lot of people post on Mumsnet who are leading extremely sad and frustrated lives, but use this forum as the equivalent of a scratching post, for relief of their frustration and boredom.

On here, we can all be GPs, consultants, six figure directors with two homes. We can immediately talk down to someone for using “brought” instead of bought, or “alot”. It allows for people to instantly kick out at someone, gain some cheap satisfaction for their day, then move on.

And they can all do it under the guise and cover of “… but I didn’t understand the OP?”

I don’t think many trolls on here would ever care to admit the above, but I’ve been around here long enough to see it’s just factual.

I honestly think people are just thick, or wilfully misunderstanding stuff.

The answer is, "both." 🤷‍♀️

’YABU. You previously posted you prefer trousers’.😂

Where was the Dh in all this when she was buying the dress? Why wasn't HE helping her? It sounds like she has a DH problem not a dress problem.

Agree there is definitely both here. But the deliberate goady nasty ones really rile me up.

The whole of social media is just about telling other people off. And signaling their virtue.

Also a lot of threads you can imagine might have gone a completely different way if they had been posted at another time.

Well, for starters, someone could have been a bit more supportive by giving her some Consumer Rights advice. Unfortunately the default setting in here by some posters is to attack, criticise and sneer. I do see a lot of posts where people are supportive but those are outweighed by the horrible negative nasty posts, especially when someone clearly needs support.

People use MN to practice being obtuse, it's like a life skill for them.

So many posters deliberately obfuscate with the intention of being able to make it about their own life. The well intentioned do it - just so they have something to say. The arseholes do it so they can make themselves feel a bit superior.

The dismissive "meh, this wouldn't bother me" type posts are appalling, eg: when the OP says it really upsets them and makes them question themselves because their DP is constantly saying how random women are "hot". All it does is reinforce that women should put up with shitty behaviour.