Why are so many people nasty to each other on here

[CamFoz]

Honestly, I have never been on a forum where people say such nasty things to each other. Fair enough, I haven't been on many forums, but users on MN will write a whole paragraph trashing each other. The judgemental attitudes on here are atrocious, most of the time over quite menial things. Do people really have that much time on their hands for this?

Now that’s mean

Haha, no I didn't realise 😅

As pp have said this place has always been a bit rough.

Frankly, it's because a lot of the posts are shockingly stupid, and often extremely unaware.

We have to put up with "w r all mummiez and wummins so we ave to stick together innit" shit in the real world and have no option but smile and nod.

Here we don't have to. It's not the school gate. If I pick up from a post that you are a lazy cow and your husband is a layabout and your kids are feral - I'm going to say so.

I think certain subjects really set people off…

wedding etiquette
abusive partners ( LTB)
class
boarding schools

ive seen really reasonable sounding posters getting monstered because of a genuinely difficult dilemma.

but There’s always some supportive people and great advice within that mix.
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also - people can’t judge the tone of voice, so I’ve seen people get really angry at comments I’ve thought were mild. That often starts a spiral of anger.

you’ve also got people from very different backgrounds bumping up against each other. Often we only speak to people like us. I think that is also mumsnet’s value- but it has a down side.

and people automatically take the side of the person who reflects their experience ( the OW/ wronged wife/ step mum). Even if it’s actually a different set of circumstances

There is just an intensity to it, I guess that's what I'm trying to understand

I am not sure OP but I suspect the posters you're referring to are usually unhappy, get no respect or attention elsewhere and this is the only way they can feel important.

It's pathetic but what can you do.

It upsets me on a deeper level as I've always objected massively to the "women are bitchy" drum that gets beaten by men, usually in a justification for the inequality that exists in the world. Then places like this feed into that narrative.

I mean, I get all of it. I get the wit, the debates and the general meaness. So, I guess really, there was no point in posting my OP, other than seeing how everyone else felt.

If you have ye stomach for it there's a site called UK Punting where users very high five one another all day long. Lots of male bromance going on. It's quite lovely. Unfortunately their bonding moments are documenting their visits to sec workers and marking these events out of ten.

So in terms of online spaces where people are awful to women it could be so much worse.

In terms of MN however the number of users is HUGE. Sure some people are knobs and can be nasty and genuinely unkind. We can choose to report this behaviour or, in some cases it's good to let them stand so others can see.

But they are the rarity. There's lots of challenging language and if you are an adult of the internet you should be able to cope with this.

But the majority of users here are bloody lovely and MN remains one of the few genuinely safe open spaces we have

But it’s full of contradictions because mumsnet isn’t one entity or one type of poster.

It’s not the same person saying opposing views.

it’s interesting though that the people who think you should stay at home when sick aren’t supporting the person who has been off twice in 6 weeks.

I suppose we get hooked j to a thread if it’s against our views? And just scroll on if something doesn’t bother us?

Are you just not used to being disagreed with, though? I get that there are different intensities, sure, but some people on here appear to have absolutely experience of being told they are completely wrong about something, even if it’s perfectly civil, just robust, and not qualified with apologies, polite ‘I might be wrong about this’ etc etc.

Well, those examples certainly do spark debate and abuse.

Some people have rage issues. Some people are toxic. Some people think ‘it’s the internet it doesn’t matter’, even though the person they’re trashing is a real person reading their vitriolic vomit. Some people think it’s amusing (to them). Some people assume the worst in everyone and can’t fathom someone may actually be asking or saying something innocently without ill intent. Some people have cognitive dissonance and can’t handle being challenged, and respond with anger.

Or a platform to abuse each other, depending on how you look at it.

I agree with the first paragraph above: it’s to do with being able to be more assertive than they normally are because they are hiding behind a keyboard. The nastiest posters always come across as people who are struggling a little IRL and I guess it’s an outlet for them to “ kick.”

I was going to start a very similar thread op because I honestly don’t think I know as many uptight, easily triggered people IRL.

Not at all. But are people just disagreeing because they can

The quality of the average poster, and therefore the quality of the average post, has also declined massively. I'm not too sure when this happened but it feels like it has been in the last 5 years.

I remember when threads were regularly filled with professionals, academics, doctors, lawyers, civil servants and the like. It meant threads were interesting and useful, there was always something to learn. Debate was encouraged and robust. Posters had a lot of practical and academic knowledge about topics.

Now it's just full of "u do u hunz xxx". Often the advice here is objectively terrible like "just have a baby if you want one even though you are 20 and you and your boyfriend are unemployed". No. That's a really stupid thing to do and just means yet another state dependant family while we work on our careers. It's frustrating and cuts at the heart of the frustration. There are a lot of people who make bad life decisions and expect handouts and mollycoddling.

They won't get the mollycoddling or handouts here. We are tired.

I have to agree with both these posts. I work in a health care setting, and if I saw this is how a client used their time, I would certainly advice against and suggest they need to find more meaningful activities in their life

Oh I’ve seen men be ‘bitchy’ to one another plenty of times on forums 😂 But no one tars all men as bitches or whatever the male equivalent would be, oh wait, there isn’t one. There are plenty of kind people on here, they just don’t get the focus.

There’s been a concerted effort to promote nastiness in public discourse ever since Simon Cowell got airtime

But why else would you disagree with someone? Because they’re wrong, because their position is based on misunderstanding something, because the bias of their sources is showing, because they went to a Trump rally and didn’t fact check, because they stopped their children using toothpaste after their father phoned about something he read on the internet, because TikTok said so? These are all things that can be pointed out.

Or posters put another point of view, eg responding to the numerous threads that say ‘My friends never invite to anything even though I do everything for them!’ not by saying ‘There, there, your friends are CFs and you’re lovely’ but by saying that people-pleasers are never going to buy friendships by trading them for services. It’s not what the OP wants to hear, but it’s way more useful than the ‘There, there, lovely’ replies.

And why is the first response so fucking awful 95% of the time? Like it's a competition.

I reckon there are organised pile one's too. This came up in a thread yesterday and I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Surely there are better things you can do than read the threads and and start your own to complain about it.

Your classing of "menial" things, what you deem as menial might be to the woman who started the thread the final straw for her but you've deemed it menial so aren't you being mean?

Some of the arguing and meanness you see could be in response to an obvious troll especially on AIBU, heavily laden with sarcasm that doesn't translate well. Genuine personal attacks are removed and posters who set out to be deliberately mean all the time are banned, people are always going to disagree with each other.

I'm on MN a lot (I am semi-retired)and just ignore the bitchy comments.

As soon as someone starts being bitchy, I just scroll to the next post.

I don't understand why anyone reads the bitchy comments let alone responds to them.

If you ignore them, they don't have any power.