Most ridiculous things you’ve been criticised for on mumsnet

[Peacepleaselouise]

Lighthearted…
What’s been the most silly things you’ve been heavily criticised for on mumsnet?

Using a stair gate 🤔

I had similar, but my sons birth mum abused him so he’s adopted, it was on a thread where I moaned that she kept claiming child benefit. The poster said I should be paying his birth mum CSA, the same poster later spat their dummy out when her marriage broke up and the kids wanted 50/50.

Someone asked about university admissions to the department I worked in, when I was responsible for admissions to that department. Without saying that I worked there I explained how things worked. Several people told me in no uncertain terms that I was either lying or misunderstanding how things worked. There used to be a set of very outspoken posters on the higher education board who routinely accused academics of lying, most of us just gave up trying to help.

Not quite an answer to OP's question, but a personal bugbear of mine is when people pick on a side-issue in the OP and criticise, or make wild assumptions based on, for example, the use of language. 'You sound like a snob', or 'You don't seem to like (him/her/them) very much' etc, when it's nothing to do with the original point.

I haven't had this (yet) but I've seen it so often and it derails the thread and turns things very nasty and personal.

For teaching my kids to say aitch not haych

For asking how to handle a etiquette spat between my aunt and my mum in the week up to my wedding.

Apparently I shouldn't have even been having a wedding if I couldn't work out how to smooth it over, didn't deserve to call myself a niece or a daughter.

Luckily some kind posters provided me with a suitable form of words that did sort things out.

I posted once about receiving awful service in a shop - think throwing my shopping down the conveyor belt, tutting, sighing and pulling faces. Was told I needed to have more thought for the shop assistant who was possibly having a bad day. That was when I realised this site is full of twats who talk out of the hole in their arse.

I was made to feel like a total scumbag for daring to be worried about having a child with disabilities. People were saying that if I wasn’t able to cope with a profoundly disabled child then I shouldn’t even even consider trying for a baby and that it was ableist to even say out loud.

For saying I worked hard.

Apparently that's an awful thing to say, and my success is purely down to privilege and luck.

I posted on a weight loss thread about the problems I was having restricting calories, but not losing anything. Someone jumped in with comment about how stupid I was because if I were really counting the calories I’d easily lose weight and then went off on a tangent to lecture me about people held in concentration camps during WWII. Not what I was expecting, really!

Expecting DH to either eat the brown bread we had in the house or sort his own lunch out. We'd run out of white and he was sulking about it because he doesn't like brown. I posted an AIBU because he was being overly dramatic when eating the brown bread sandwich.

Apparently it was my responsibility to make sure the poor dear had white bread even though he's a grown man quite capable of going to the shop.

Edit: Forgot to add, one poster actually said I was being controlling. I wasn't forcing him to eat it. We just didn't have anything else in!

During covid someone wanted to take their very elderly mum back home to the west of Ireland I said yes do it , it was a remote area near my neck of the woods and would have made an old woman very happy before she died . I got savaged I'm surprised an gardaí were not called to reprimand me .

I once got told off for a piece of legislation existing.

A poster asked about it and as I worked with it every day, I named the act and how it applied to her issue.

Another poster was furious about this, said the legislation was wrong, she refused to believe it and how stupid both I and the legislation were.

Thing is, I didn't write it.

Gos it's disgusting how some posters are just arseholes for the sake of it. Really sorry you had to experience that when all you needed was support. Thankfully there are still alot of really nice people on here who do give really good advice and sometimes just a handhold and a listening ear when you need one. Ignore the twats, that's what I do😁

AnyoneWhoHasAHeart · Today 11:46

Apparently, yak's butter in tea is the done thing in Tibet and some Arabians do it, too. Tried it as a kid and round it meh...

This is it entirely. No bother people having a different opinion to me or even saying "I think you might be a bit out of order there" but to be told you are a evil, nasty, spiteful person and everyone also thinks that about you is not pleasant and like you say for a bit afterwards was quite upsetting.

Live and learn, do not post on MN if you are not feeling army levels of robustness.

Took my daughter bowling. About 10 people
informed me that I should have taken her to the park instead and no matter how many times I explained that we do indeed often go to the park but occasionally enjoy other activities, it was not accepted.

Thinking intermittent fasting can be unhealthy

I do think that often people get hold of the wrong end of the stick on here. Many times, someone responds to a post having obviously misunderstood what the original post said. That's probably most of the problem.

Thank goodness somebody's trying to do that! I'm sick of shouting at the telly or the radio, "It's AITCH, not HAITCH. There's no 'H' at the start of 'aitch'!"

Absolute venom when I said I wouldn't be cleaning toilets in the workplace during COVID (I am not a cleaner or in any type of job that would include cleaning). I was the sole reason the economy would collapse or something.

I was once blamed for the gender pay gap because I didn't like discussing money.

@ItGhoul
>> confusing ‘being disagreed with’ and ‘being criticised’

Exactly, I have been trying to tell most people for 50+ years that being critical is a good thing.

To criticise is the art of evaluating or analysing work or performance ... looking at the detail, praising/extolling the good and maybe suggesting ways to go forward better next time.

The modern (post 1980s) slant, in many people's minds is that being criticised is always a negative thing. The original meaning or inference of criticise, critical and critique is to assume someone is having a nasty attack upon another person or situation.

Being critical with the scientific investigation of documents or "the news" as to origin, text, composition or history is a good thing. Imagine if more under-educated Americans were actually more detailed in their thoughts and judgements of their 45th/47th President.

It doesn't matter what the original meaning is though; what matters is what is understood by a word in its context nowadays. If anyone says they criticised an artwork, people might understand that they looked at it objectively and described the good and the bad. If anyone criticised a person, absolutely nobody would think that meant that they'd pointed out some good things!

(Under a different UN) I dared to suggest that I liked the privacy that net curtains provide. Wow, that really upset some people 😬