What’s with the influx of posters researching others?

[NCso]

I’ve seen this a lot recently. Someone asks for advice (normal MN type post) and someone miles down in the comments will say ‘looking at all your other posts you need to sort out this and that’ - mostly a snide comment alluding to someone’s marriage being in the shit or concluding the poster has some sort of MH issue. I’m not surprised people NC every post. I might have been oblivious to this but do people generally do due dil on others here or is this new? Excluding times when a poster makes a couple of threads within days of each other and they’re recognised of course.

AIBU to think some of these posters are a bit OTT, and purposefully trying to “dig up dirt” to stir the pot?

Nothing new unfortunately. Neither are posters who try trip you up because they can not belive your version of reality. I said under another name that my dc was a persistent school refuser, got A's at A level and went to a top uni. They presumably wanted to point out it's a shit uni because that fits the narrative that only hard working diligent kids get into Russel Group top five unis. I am neither proud or delighted on my dc path to uni. But regardless it happened. Fair or not. People like to trip people up I guess? Plus if you have a mistake you need to wear it like a cross forever?

Who has the time? So many people have picked my posts apart. We are a imperfect family, MN isn't a criminal court. Engage at your own risk or don't. I come here open minded that most posts aren't 100% true or one sided. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of my day.

You’ve got to be pretty lonely and bored to bother with doing it. It’s actually quite sad.

Whats bullying about referring to something a particular poster has posted in the past?

In some instances you may be correct but absolutely not a given

Haha, wonder how much these MN private investigators get paid?! God, how could you even be bothered.

I don't think it's bullying if a poster brings up something another poster has mentioned in the past. It happens quite often. Everything is out there somewhere waiting to be recalled, but I can't be bothered to spend time trawling around.

I come here open minded that most posts aren't 100% true or one sided.

Isn’t it an unwritten best practice that people change a few details anyway? So it’s not “outing”.

Looking at previous posts saves a lot of wasted time and effort when people constantly post variations of the same thing for years and years ‘is my man BU by being out 24/7 with his work wife, or am I too sensitive’

Yes definitely. I change details so looking back my posts will never quite add up. Hopefully

Thats interesting. So would people think oh that’s familiar and go look it up, or will people routinely just check to see if that poster did it already?

I agree it’s a bit creepy on some threads. On some, I understand as it might be a poster reposting the same story but in others it’s strange as they’ve gone back to threads from ages ago. It’s not too easy to search either.

Some people are such bullshitters though.

I'm sure you wouldn't sit there in real life listening to someone going on about something that was untrue, if they'd told you the complete opposite a couple of weeks ago.

Of course you're going to question them on it.

I think it’s never occurred to me to not believe a post 😂 unless I see replies calling them out. I have once looked someone up because someone pointed out OP had an unhealthy relationship with make up and it added a whole new dimension to the thread

The other option is being overly invested. There's no reason to back check a poster unless you work for MN. It's just a chat forum.

Quite often they do.

"My partner of 5 years called me a name"

"Is this the one you've been posting about who's been using you as a punchbag last month?"

This is why

It can work both ways, though. During a long-ago MN 'war', somebody kept on posting that I'd said things I was unlikely to have said. Thanks to AS, I was able to prove I hadn't and this person was ... mistaken.

Let’s just say that the RF threads are a law unto themselves 😔😁

People lie. When something feels a bit off about a post some people look for the reason. That's why.

There are so many trolls here now due to mumsnet’s way of moderating that it’s not surprising that posters are suspicious and use advanced search. I don’t think it matters and the only time I’ve seen people bothered by it is when they’ve been shown to be lying. It’s a forum, you can’t believe most of it.

But mumsnet must secretly love the drama and clicks generated as they wouldn’t provide an advanced search function. And a function that allows as many name changes as you want.

I have used it before. I am neither bored or lonely.

I’ve noticed an uptick in it lately too, OP. It has always happened, I was here in the early days under a different names and the bullying was off the scale. I didn’t really understand that’s what it was then but now I am older and far more internet savvy, I see it for what it is/was.

Of course there are some cases where the OP is coming out with very unlikely stuff when it is perhaps warranted but generally it is just bullying. Some of the old Mumsnet “Royalty” could write the book on passive/ aggressive internet bullying.

I wonder how many posts are genuine and how many actual users there are. When mn introduced the ‘eye’ that showed how many posters were viewing a post, there weren’t ever that many.
I’ve used the function usually where they’ve posted part 2, part 3 etc and I can’t find the links.

Threads with parts 2, part 3 etc, are often the unbelievable ones ime.

I find it pathetic and can’t believe that some posters have time and energy to do this. Get a hobby!