He's not called Steve, is he?

[MasterBeth]

Do some people on Mumsnet not realise how big the internet is?

There's a post on here today about a rowdy family on a UK beach and someone's reply is "It's not Polzeath, is it?"

What are the chances, eh?

It's like when someone posts about a grumpy shop assistant and someone answers "Do they work in Tesco Express in Hull?"

Or someone mentions their terrible boss and the reply comes in "Are their initials P.H?"

AIBU in thinking the people who post these things have the most restricted and delusional worldview?

Don't they say that we are only 7 connections away from any other person on earth?

Strangely on here there was a thread about ireland i asked the poster if she knew the town my Dad was born and i said he was born in a pub ( it was his parents pub)
And they did know the pub!

I can beleive it.

This is absolutely hilarious! I confess, it was me. To be fair, I could have named any of the nicer beaches in Cornwall where you would witness the type of performative parenting the OP in that thread was describing.

Polzeath just stuck in my mind as having the worst behaved children too. I did not expect it to actually be Polzeath. 🙄😂

Yeah but sometimes it is obvious. I've twice recognised people from real life on here, people I didn't have any reason to suspect used Mumsnet. So while asking if a belligerent checkout worker is X from Barnsley might be a bit of a push, it isn't entirely unlikely that individual circumstances might be recognised.

I was going to disagree but then I thought you'd recognise me if I did so I agree.

If you named a current Welsh celebrity it's usually possible to find a connection, though.

Wales is not like London.

Apart from those from North Wales, they're totally foreign from those in the South.

I don't know if yabu or not.

It's true that this site can be accessed all over the world, but what are the ages, nationality, gender of those likely to use it?

I think that this narrows things down a heck of a lot.

General things? Could be anybody.
More specific things? Probably not.

And of course if you pay for premium you can access a poster's entire posting history (I think this is true, happy to be corrected) and this can confirm it for you.

I've started one thread here but you know what, if I wanted to, I could, provided I thought somebody posted here, draw somebody out using knowledge of things they were interested in by starting threads on that subject.

That's if I had the desire to. I really flipping don't.

I have woken up in a hostel in Amsterdam next to a girl in my English class. Met a bloke st the same hostel and stood behind him at Glastonbury 2 yesrs later ,(took us a while to work out how we knew each other). Met a Mexican in Guatemala who had lived with my next door to my parents in London and knew them.

However, generally speaking people are joking!

I think most people have missed the point of
your thread!

I grew up near a major US city in the suburbs and was studying abroad in London before eventually moving here. Once I was chatting to an American couple in a long line for ice cream at a stand in north London. I said I grew up near said big city, they named a south suburb, I say my mom works there, they ask where, I tell them, they say they know the small business well and were there the previous week, had asked after my mother and she was off sick. Later I rang here up and said you were sick last week, eh? And she was shocked! We used to argue they'd never tell me about illness (theirs or my grandparents) to avoid burdening me when I was away and this gave me a point scored! So you never know!

I think I recognised a former work colleague on here years ago. She posted in the Employment section about her suspension from work, the circumstances of which were quite specific so I recognised her from the description of events. Based on her version the suspension was unfair and she got advice about how to fight back. However she left out some salient information which would have shown the company was right to suspend (and eventually fire) her. I couldn’t make that that point without blowing my own identity though!

Nobody really thinks that the OP might have been shopping in Tesco Express in Hull, they are just making that comment because there also happens to be an equally grumpy person working there too!

Steve?
where did you get that preposterous hypothesis

Hoping some will get the reference 😁

I worked in newspapers up until a couple of years ago and it was the same. Oh do you know X? And tbf 70% of the time I DID know them.

My mother also shockingly found a photo of me as a child at a Disco in the Canary Islands. Behind me was a little boy…. My future husband who I met at university it turns out. He was at the same hotel on the same date, we just didn’t meet.

But who cares? Maybe it was Taunton

There are quite a lot of posters who genuinely accuse OPs of being trolls because 'they've read something similar before' - as if it's impossible to have a similar tale of an affair or such among 70m people in the UK!

He speaks to non-celebrities.... I know Wales isn't like London - I lived there for over a decade! 'Those in North Wales' - what are you talking about? Not totally foreign from 'those in the South' - what rot. Causing division where non exists.

I'm not sure why people are being so obtuse (or genuinely dim?)

I know exactly what you're talking about and have the same reaction.

I think it's a joke, but I have been to North Wales with my South Eastern Welsh relatives. It feels like a very different place. Divided by an uncommon language. 😁

You only lived in Wales for a decade. So are you even Welsh?

No offence mun It was only meant in humour, like see.

I lived in London for a decade - your reading ability is lacking, but no surprise given your nonsense post. Not rising to your faux Max Boyce vernacular.

My mistake. Jokes are usually funny. Hence my confusion. Might feel different to you, it doesn't to me. Not sure what you mean by uncommon language when a quarter of the country speak Welsh.

I've had some insanely coincidental connections in my time.

On MN- someone was talking about a friend of theirs. I pricked my ears up, did a search and confirmed that yes the poster was someone I knew and the friend she was talkig about was another person I knew. I then purposely forgot the user name and could not tell you now what it was.

DH- living in London. Had a lodger. Lodgers mother was on a cruise to Tasmania. Chatted to another person she met in a cafe from the UK. Mentioned her daughter was lodging in such and such a street, and it turned out the random person in cafe was DH's cousin.

Last summer. We have a huge festival where we live. I was in two towns over at the pharmacy and a girl was crying and her BF was trying to confort her. Turned out she had an obviously broken wrist, and the pharmacy had told them to get to A&E. They were here for the festival and had no transport. I butted in and said I could take them to A&E as I was heading that way. On the way, turned out that the BF shared a hobby with DH's sister (as in, in the same group and knew her) and the girl came from the same very small town I was from in Australia. This is in the UK.