MN really IS full of jealous, angry people

[durundundun]

AIBU to think MN is full of people spitting tacks that some people have a lot of money. More money than them.

I'm currently reading threads bashing those than own Range Rovers calling the owners stupid, wankers and the like.
Several threads on private school VAT where the resentment is palpable and people are positively gleeful that the private school dc might suffer and end up in sone terrible school miles away from their homes.
Threads on women who do not work and have husbands who earn a lot. Apparently these women are not rich. Their husbands are and the women live 'off their dh money', are prostitutes, their rich husbands are definitely having affairs and the woman are definitely miserable but pretend to be happy and not contributing in any way to the marriage. The same accusers then have to do a completely illogical about face and say they don't think women who earn £2k a year whilst their dh earn over 100k are living off 'his money' because she is 'still contributing' because otherwise they are agreeing that the one who earns more is the boss. And they don't really believe that. That obviously just resent and have rage about rich women who have the choice Whether to work.
Threads on people seeking private diagnoses claiming the highly qualified and regulated consultants are on the make and unethically diagnosing anyone who pays. ^
Threads on how helping adult dc with their first hike purchase makes the dc spoilt, entitled and will definitely fail in life due to always needing help.^

It's just relentless. The people attacking anyone with money are just so illogical and contradictory that it is obvious they just can't stand rich people.

They are convinced anyone with money has gotten it through ill gotten gains, tax evasion, immoral means and when all else fails pulls out the 'new money' trope. ^

Bizarrely they seem to worship people who inherited money through no hard work, sacrifice or intelligence. They love referring to them as old money in the conversations putting down those who made a lot of money themselves.^

They sniffly state they wouldn't want^ a Range Rover if it was given to them/private education for their dc/access to private healthcare/the ability to choose whether to work or not.... basically anything money can buy that they don't already have is beneath their superior moral code. Because by the end of any debate they have to resort to trying to denigrate the rich person's morality^ as all their other attacks are shown to be illogical or weird.

In all honesty most people I know would be on their knees thanking all their Gods if they had no financial worries, no health care waitlists for their sick relatives and the sorts of small class sizes and facilities private schools offer to their kids.
It's kind of cringey reading it.

There is absolutely nothing mean about suggesting that you are reading threads and taking one tone from them and others are reading them differently. It IS to do with your attitude when reading them. This is an evidenced and called cognitive bias. You are looking for people being mean and ignoring all other evidence to the contrary. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

But you can call me a mean girl for pointing out your own bias if it makes you feel better.

@Temushopper exactly. As I said before, in a Venn diagram I'm pretty sure the same people will be the ones being nasty to both groups of people. It's just seems like MN is a conduit for angry resentful people to spread hate.
Notwithstanding the fantastic and supportive threads that appear on here.
There just seem to be so many angry people in the world. MN reflects that. And being anonymous gives them the ability to be really^^ nasty. 😟

@GoogleWhacking

There is absolutely nothing mean about suggesting that you are reading threads and taking one tone from them and others are reading them differently. It IS to do with your attitude when reading them. This is an evidenced and called cognitive bias. You are looking for people being mean and ignoring all other evidence to the contrary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_biass***

But you can call me a mean girl for pointing out your own bias if it makes you feel better
I and others who agree are not saying everyone in MN is bitter and angry. We are saying that some threads are full of bitter and angry people. That's hardly a controversial observation.

Its not meaningless to take issue with attitude if that attitude causes offence. And imo there are numerous attitudes taken by the self identified 'wealthy' on MN that have this potential.
A poster on here with the attitude that people who dislike vehicles that cause high levels of pollution and pose a danger resent their 'privilege' in being able to afford it, rather than considering they may resent their anti social behaviour in choosing to excercise that privilege. The ridiculous comparison of their car with buses and utility vehicles as though people lack the wit to see the difference.
The people who insist on putting wealth solely down to hard work, refusing to accept the role societal position at birth has on future success; claiming its a level playing field, and that poorer people simply made poorer choices.
The hyperbole around the VAT policy 'children suffering' in the context of a society with high rates of child poverty exacerbated by the social injustice private education fuels.
The SAHMs who come on to threads to boast about their leisure, to accuse working mums of letting someone else raise their children, to tell women who fear that a SAHM may fall victim to an exploitative man or end up on the wrong side of the 50% divorce stats, that they should have chosen wisely like they themselves did.
Everytime these attitudes are questioned the cries of jealousy are as predictable as night following day, and it's that that's meaningless. Thrown out as a conversation stopper when they've run out of arguments, or used as a comfort blanket to avoid considering opinions that may feel uncomfortable.

@durundundun i genuinely find it amusing that you have starred a thread about people being mean and have since proceeded to be mean to everyone who doesn't share your view!!!

Where have I been mean? Genuinely

calling people jealous is pretty mean

Just to reassure you, I loathe stupidly large cars on the streets of London for no good reason whatever make they are and however much they cost. We're talking about Range Rovers in particular here because that was the subject of the thread, but a twenty five grand tank is just as annoying as a hundred grand tank.

I'm perfectly happy to see wildly expensive car-sized cars on the road: always happy to gawp at a Lambo: their fuel economy is admittedly dodgy, but they don't exude the fuck-you attitude of larger SUVs.

Do you think the tone of your messages to me have been fine?? Or anyone who disagrees with you?? If so, maybe you are part of the problem.

Yes, you can.

You simply don't look for validation of your own choices from complete strangers on the www. I don't care how other women structure their lives and I'm certainly not about to justify my decisions to them.
It's no one else's business.

If someone balances their home/domestic lives differently from you personally, it's not an insult to you and it doesn't need to be taken as such. We are all better off examining the patriarchal structures that lead us to make such decisions in the first place.

I've tried - numerous times on numerous SAHM V WOHM threads. Strangely, not many people are interested.

Armyofrock
MN is possibly the most toxic site I have ever encountered. There are some absolutely lovely sides to it, but the negativity is so overwhelming at times.

I'm old enough to remember the old-school live chat rooms.

I can assure you that by comparison
Mumanetters are a bunch of Mary Poppins'.

On this thread alone you've suggested people who hold a different opinion to you are "combative, sarcastic, unhappy, mean, bitter, insecure, resentful and passive aggressive" to name but few.

But my particular favourite bit so far has been the fact that you lambasted posters who make "a quick about face illogical reply" when just two days ago you posted this little gem critising a young woman being financed by her parents:

"To be fair, if she wants to be treated like a 20 year old adult then she really shouldn't be expecting mummy and daddy to finance her."

And only yesterday you had this to say about Kate Middleton:

"Perhaps this is an indication of how low the bar is for how much work Kate thinks she should do. If standard parenting is a 'sacrifice' it's no wonder she never had a proper job and barely did any events compared to the other working royals. She clearly thinks doing anything is a sacrifice"

So much for it not being your place to judge others...

I agree it's absolutely just a car (to me). But people on that thread were attacking people's personalities, their morals and ethics for driving one. Also calling us wankers, twats and arseholes as I remember?

Now I'm with you there, I wouldn't drive one if we lived in a city because it would be a pain. Something much smaller and more manoeuvrable would be preferable. One of our daughters lives in a city centre and drives a tiny Fiat 500 and wouldn't thank us for a larger car.

Funny, isn't it, that @durundundun only sees wrong in other people and not herself!! 🤣

@Shakeoffyourchains oop sounds like a wind up thread then🙊

I think you are mistaking anger at inequality for personal jealousy.
As public services decline to the point of collapse after 14 years of tory government people are rightly angry that they can’t get basic things like healthcare, education, food, energy.

The things we do of our own free will do send messages about our personality and priorities though, don't they? And if the choices we make are controversial then it's surely par for the course you will be judged on them by people who feel they are harmful or (in the case of the cars) anti social.
Its never acceptable to call people abusive names for their choices, but it stands to reason that on discussion forums people will be fairly free in expressing their opinions of others who do things they disagree with.
As I see it, you have three choices. Argue your corner, explaining why they are wrong and driving your car is not ASB; own that it is, and tell people you don't care because your pleasure in the car matters more to you; or decide other people's views don't matter/or are too upsetting to hear, and don't engage in the discussion at all.
What isn't really realistic is to expect people to censor themselves on a discussion forum about things they feel strongly about to save your feelings.

I’m in a position that puts me in to the very well off category so have no envy. I had a career in higher education and DH is still head of a science dept, I retired early. We used our weird brains to invest and have made some stellar financial decisions.

I have seen the end product many times of the state and private school system and these kids made it to the two leading RG Universities I worked for. The child that makes it to a leading university who has managed to get good A levels from a bog standard comp is exceptionally clever. Add in to that a poor background or hardships, thinking back to one of my students that was a carer, anyone that can do well despite that has real gumption and is to be admired.

So I have no envy, I could pop out and buy us both a Range Rover today but I do not live in the countryside anymore. They are a status symbol within town and take up a lot of space so I can see why people are irritated by them. Actual anger about them is misplaced though because as a capitalist society with a nod to socialism we can choose how to spend or waste our money if we have disposable income.

Not necessarily.
I went to a very average state school.
My Dad dropped me in a fairly nice company car as school was on other side of town, and he was going past it anyway on his way to work. The amount of bullying I got from other children as being a 'posho' was insane. Even my friends would comment on it (in a jokey way). I was top of the class academically and on most sports teams because i was good at them. I got frequent comments about my parents 'buying my grades'. My parents had a very average income, but this was lots more than most of my classmates parents.

Envy will rear its ugly head wherever you are, there will always be someone who thinks you have more than them and tries to bring you down because of that. I got a double whammy of financial and academic envy, which was tough, but I think made more determined in the long run.

I think people who aren't well off dislike a lot of the "we worked hard, we sacrificed so we could get X Y and Z" (often with the implication that absolutely anyone can make the same sacrifices and work hard and get the same rewards) that gets trotted out on MN.

I mean yes, it's true, but low income people often know from personal experience that you can work hard and sacrifice and not have X Y or Z.

I know someone whose dad got banged up for a serious crime when he was 14-15.

His family was glad to be rid of the dad, but the dad was also the breadwinner - the mum was only capable of low paid manual work, and his sister was still in primary school.

So (and this was legal then) this lad quits school at 15 with no GCSEs, to start full time low paid work to help support his family.

Wasn't that hard work and sacrifice?

There are a lot of crabs in a bucket here Op. It's a bit sad.

There are also a few crabs who having been lucky enough to get dumped at the top of the bucket rather than the bottom, seem to feel they are entitled not just to try to clamber out of the bucket, but to be cheerled by the crabs on whose heads they are standing.

This is the goadyness I think OP means, she's been intentionally reasonable the whole thread and there's nothing bigger than her calling someone jealous to call out so someone has somehow turned her using the word jealous into being "mean" when the people tying themselves into knots to find a flaw in what the OP is saying are much meaner/bad spirited imo

Interesting, I'd say the exact opposite.

Whether she's doing it consciously or not, it's extremely goading of the OP nd those who agree with her to effectively say to other posters "I know your motivations, values and emotions better than you know yourself so I'm entitled to characterise you to others as I see fit, and if you disagree with how I paint you that just proves that I'm right about you"