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.

Tell me about it! I just think some people come on here to be arseholes. It's so much easier for them to hide behind a keyboard/their phone and get their frustration out on the world anonymously.

I beleive rightly or wrongly that some have a little clique and if one of them is faux offended, they paly on it and then when you ignore them on come the pals.

What some fail to realise is just becuse the other disagrees with the others point of view, it does not make them wrong.

The best thing is try to avoid engaging them as their repose to your post is clear that they are on a mission and then the followers join in. Its like a game to them and in turn they drive away many people

Not everyone has the same literacy skills and this should not be an issue. Mine are not great, I know that but I've met many people from my motherland that never had the chance to get an education but they are damn samet, intelligent people

Some are offended just for the sake of being offended and like i said, they are playing a game with behind the scens of high-fives with like minded clowns

Some people are just thick. The majority on here are so self-pitying. Unless you’ve posted about being in endless misery they won’t read the op. They will be offended and forever victimised. Many don’t seem to have anything else to do so it’s their entertainment. The reading comprehension is low in this country though.

It’s often the posters with poor literacy who get picked upon by the ones being deliberately obtuse. ‘I’m sorry I can’t possibly understand you until you write in paragraphs’. It’s so rude and unkind, I fucking hate it.

I agree. They are doing it on purpose to be nasty.

I know I was surprised in a previous job answering customers' emails how many of my colleagues struggled with understanding the exact problem. I was put on the repeat complaint emails and so many were customers getting crosser and crosser because previous responses to them had failed to grasp the problem. And quite often I had colleagues in my office saying to me 'so are they saying that X happened?' And I would have to say 'no they're saying that Y happened.' It made me think that comprehension should play a bigger part in the national curriculum as clearly lots of people were leaving school not being able to comprehend a range of scenarios.

Though in certain cases I did think it was more an issue of people not wanting to bother to try and understand the situation and to just try and get rid of the customer as soon as possible. I think that is sometimes the case here. People can't be bothered to try and understand an OP's sometimes complicated issue. Though in that case they should probably just keep scrolling and not bother to reply.

Tbf I don't quite agree that not engaging is altogether right. That's kind of the point of AIBU. But once it becomes uncomfortable, then absolutely, evacuate.

Aside from the deliberate, bizzare shit stirrers, actually, people do struggle with inference and comprehsion!

Look up literacy rates, it's a national disgrace.

There's an element of confirmation bias too....e.g. OP says "my ten year old child is wanting to stay home while I go out for an hour in the evening, is this acceptable" replies range from "you can't leave a 9 year old at home alone overnight" to "a 12 year old will be perfectly fine to be left for 10 minutes"

I loathe those.

Most commonly if the problem involves anyone over 40 - cos we've all got Alzheimers apparently.

So, my uncle has always been an arsehole but he's being an arsehole in this particular way.

'have you thought about him possibly having dementia?'

Oh just FUCK OFF!!!

On a quick glance at trending threads just now I found:

• A woman who said she's 39 weeks pregnant being asked to confirm she's definitely 39 years old because she sounds immature (that was an odd post, granted).
• Someone repeatedly called a gossip because she caught her friend's unregistered child minder lying to her friend over care provided to the friend's child, and told her friend the truth.
• Someone who hosted friends for a few days. The friends appear to have paid for very little, but it was the host's fault because the one time the friend half-arsedly asked her "do you want me to pay for this?" (hardly a heartfelt, genuine offer in any reasonable person's book) the host said no. The host had accepted a previous, equally half-arsed offer to pay, and eventually discovered that as soon as she'd turned her back, the visitors had allowed hey husband to pay - that was her fault, too, with several people commenting that the visitors had "offered to pay twice!".

The usual question springs to mind: can there really be that many thick, illiterate, mean people prowling mumsnet?

Yes.

More and more people on MN don’t work, think everyone else owes them a living, post all day about how hard life is and went to the University of Life. It doesn’t scream educated.

😂😂

I think the worst ones on here are the supposedly educated ones. They're always not-so-humble bragging and putting others down

I am torn on this - I don’t think it’s fair to pick on somebody with poor literacy skills, but equally half the problem with poster comprehension is that a lot of posts are really badly written, and the OP has to come back later to give the full story.

Those 2000 word posts with no paragraphs or punctuation, and no explanation of who anyone is, are completely impossible to follow. I don’t stick the boot in, I just don’t comment, but the people who do post to say they couldn’t follow it aren’t being unreasonable.

The usual question springs to mind: can there really be that many thick, illiterate, mean people prowling mumsnet?

Apparently 1 in 5 adults is functionally illiterate in the UK, which is apparently 7.1m people. Obviously not all of those people will be thick, or mean. But there are bound to be a reasonable number of people who are, and some of them will post prolifically on here.

I think it's a mix of those who don't properly read the OP, those who don't properly comprehend the OP and those who read the latest few comments on the original post (who haven't properly read the OP) and end up relying on inaccurate interpretations or information, perpetuating earlier misunderstandings as they base their posts on those comments rather than the OP

Sometimes the original poster omits key information, drip feeds or doesn't clearly outline the situation or explain it very well

From both sides, I suspect a lot of posters are not paying full attention (probably are also cooking, tidying, watching a programme etc) which doesn't help, or they zone in on the aspects of the post that resonate with them

@Saschka I agree with your point about very poorly written comments- I am also not criticising those who struggle with writing, but very poorly written posts can be difficult to decipher

Some of the worst-written comments have ended up in classics - the one complaining about her husband t-rexing in the supermarket comes to mind. I am still not entirely sure what he was actually doing or why it annoyed her so much, but it made for a very funny thread.

I’ll be surprised if functionally illiterate people often choose to come on here - mainly because people who put up really badly written posts get a hard time.

I think it is just plain people who can’t be arsed to read the OP properly.