To be more suspicious of disingenuous threads nowadays?

[HillyHoney]

I might be imagining this, but are there now a lot more threads along the lines of "AIBU to think that this [insert terrible thing] my [insert close relatives] do is actually not great? Just doesn't sit right with me, but maybe I'm wrong!" Tinkly little laugh implied.

It's usually qualified by a casual mention, as if not at all relevant, that the OP is saintly, moral and humble in various ways whereas the [terrible relatives] have also been in prison/are murderers/don't like puppies etc.

Are these increasing just to generate engagement and therefore ad clicks?? Who's writing them?! (Sorry, dont mean to be disingenuous there 🤣)

I agree.
I'm usually a spelling and grammar pedant but I've found myself deliberately not liking small local businesses posts when I usually would as I hate it.
I'd much rather see their natural posts instead, it's "them" instead of a soulless machine.

I am finding the thread helpful.

Look up the dead internet theory and you’ll understand who/what benefits. The theory is that the internet essentially died a decade or so ago after reaching its peak. Ever since then it has been kept alive by bots/AI that routinely post controversial or goady things to get people posting again and generate a burst of activity to create the illusion that the internet is still active.

That makes absolutely no sense, unless your experience of ‘the internet’ is limited to chat boards.

Yes! And I don't know if it's the same user posting all the other similar ones about weird situations/beliefs they present as commonplace (like wedding nights not being "sacred" anymore, or weddings being networking opportunities for the brides' fathers) but those ones play out in an identical way.

Agreed. In the age of AI especially, I don't think MN should still have the rule against troll-hunting. I think it's important that AI-generated threads are pointed out so that people who haven't realised and would otherwise waste their time and effort replying to them can be warned/pick up tips on spotting them, or, as you say, to let people who start fake threads know that people are on to them.

I've been using em dashes for years, I find them more colloquial than a colon. Now Chatgpt et al are going to make me look like a bot!

I've been on MN for around 14 years and it's never been any different really.

I've never understood what OPs get out of starting a Captain Obvious thread just so everyone can agree with them.

Might be loneliness or something?

I’m relatively new to MN and have been surprised by how much of it seems fabricated

Gah!

As someone with a three word username, which I thought up all by myself, I'd like to say that I'm not a Bot/Troll/Spammer/AI test post.

How the hell does one pass the Turing Test these days?

Unfortunately, I see this as an inevitable part of the enshitification process that is absolutely rife in society at the moment. Invent something brilliant, realise it can be monetised, and then ensues either a gradual or a rapid ‘remodelling’ of the original idea to make it as profitable as possible at minimum cost. Such a shame, but hopefully it will help to drive us off our phones, and onto better things.

I'm here to stand up for the em-dash. I sprinkle these through all my writing, but I promise I'm not AI!

Here are three reasons why not... (sorry).

<signs up to the Oxford Comma Society>

I've been on MN for around 14 years and it's never been any different really.

I haven’t been here that long but found it used to be funnier and had a lot more traffic.

As a Vampire Weekend fan I am itching to put "who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma?"

But as a frequent user, I won't.

A few years ago I posted about something very detailed and specific to me. I immediately spotted similar posts, reworded. It was too specific and frequent to be “just chance”. I would report some of them as spam as I flight someone/users must be copying my posts, only to be told that they were genuine & wouldn’t be deleted or questioned. It led me to conclude that there weren’t quite so many users on MN, but that it was paying people to rewrite some of the posts - in effect, that MN was writing itself.

It irritates me a bit that accurate grammar (whaaat is wrong with a pair of dashes -every primary school child learns how to use them) and a decent turn of phrase gets presumably genuine posters accused of being AI bots. It's as if we expect communication to be slapdash, or think this is more normal or authentic than succinct, correctly punctuated posts. 'Well written' is a communication style too!

@Followthatpath thats why I don’t post anything very meaningful or would come here for advice.

Please feel free to pass this thread by if you think it's a bit odd, ta.

@Overalls yes deffo a spate of those in recent months, sort of "I'm controversial! But not actually controversial, silly (#BeKind)"

Fascinated by the "dead internet" theory, off to Google that now. Love the idea that the only thing happening on the internet is other people getting annoyed at what they think is happening on the internet...when it isn't.

It’s not about perfect grammar though. AI posts often sound quite generic & have a kind of impersonal cheeriness, & they often have bullet points and subtitles.

The probable biggest giveaway is that they usually don’t come back to the thread & if they do, it will be another generic post.

A lot of threads on mumsnet are just Internet trends a few days or weeks behind the trend. Such as the it's 5 minutes past twelve on Christmas day that's it am taking my tree down or the supermarket sent me nuggets instead of a turkey. Mumsnet doesn't have the same interest to me anymore because I've seen it all on ticktock days before. Majority of threads are rinse and repeated from way back in the day. Put a thread name into Google and the same thread comes up covering a span of 20 years. Add in the meanness and man hating and it's just not a great place to be anymore which is such a shame its really quite here now compared to what it used to be like.

That’s just a basic overview , obviously it goes much deeper than just discussion forums. Google Dead Internet Theory. It will explain it in far more detail.

To think that a lot of hairdressers lack social skills, etiquette and basic boundaries?

Yet another inane thread just posted on aibu - same style, same word salad and just constant.

I’ve noticed a theme of a man posting asking if he is unreasonable but then goes on to describe a senario where no one could ever say he is unreasonable and his gf/mother of his child is some incels wet dream of what they think women are like. Everyone loves to tell the OP how perfect they are and any criticism is quickly batted away as ‘you wouldn’t say that if woman posted this’.

It’s pure misogyny fanfic and I think it’s probably the same poster as the style is always the same

Edited to say - the woman is always low earning, a single parent prior to meeting, doesn’t contribute and exploits the OP for his money. She is always abusive and controlling.

I've replied to that one just to see if the OP comes back. The generally just melt away like snow.