The Psychology of those who look to depress others

[Outseyeder]

This situation has created a unique opportunity for a particular group of people. Those who gain enjoyment and self-esteem from controlling others emotions, specifically people who are looking for reassurance about when the existing restrictions might be eased.
The pattern is now quite clear. First there is an OP saying words to the effect of "when do you think we will have a normal life again". Sometimes there are specific variants like "Am I being optimistic booking a holiday for x date".
You can almost smell the glee in the Controllers' when they see post like this (or are they planting them there themselves??). They pounce with a formulation along the lines of "if you think this is going to be over by y you're going to be sorely disappointed. I think it will be at least z...." with some added justifications and virtue signalling. The Controllers seem to have engineered a sort of reverse takeover of MN, especially this section, and lurk and lurk waiting to pounce.
It is hard not to conclude that these people are absolutely REVELLING in the lost quality of life of others around them, and their great ally is uncertainty. This allows them to make prediction after prediction, once they have assessed the expectations of the other side which they want to undermine. They will never ever admit to being what they are, but they are all over this website at the moment and it is time they were called out.

Nellodee it was on MN back in the spring. A poster was being admonished for having the audacity to need milk and go to the shop for it. Someone suggested that cheese in her coffee instead was the least thing she could do to stop people DYING, which is what would DEFINITELY happen if she went to the shop.

I think I remember this but it went something like

1. "Well I'm going to carry on going to the corner shop everyday for bread and milk"

1. "You don't really need to go to the corner shop everyday for bread and milk, it's also a wider community risk"

This somehow, over time, morphed into

"Dementor says bread and milk are not essential and that I'm a murderer who should put cheese in my coffee"

I remember it some way between the two. Poster A said they needed to go out (just then? Regularly? Not sure) for a visit to the shop because they were out of milk, poster B said they shouldn’t do that just for milk because milk wasn’t essential and if you needed dairy you could get it from other things like cheese. Cue a lot of jokes about grating cheese into tea.

I think it was one of those “why does anyone need to go shopping more than once a week” threads about which there were certainly a lot of strong feelings back in spring.

GoldenOmber

Yes I think it was one of those "everyday" things. Something like " surely you can go one day without milk if you really had to" and it was a hypothetical discussion anyway

I don't remember a "cheese in coffee" comment though, I first that around summertime, I think an exaggerated tacked on thing that's become mythical and the stuff of legend

Oh God last spring there were self appointed Covid police telling us what and wasn’t essential/allowed.
Posters who aren’t satisfied that people are obeying the rules. We must all go much further then that.

*first saw

You would probably have to serve it up in a penis beaker, I imagine.

There was a thread about whether anyone should walk in areas with stiles - because touching them would potentially kill people.

The Easter Egg discussions

Also the thread about whether cars should be banned from the road in case any of us should break down and thus require assistance - thus potentially killing people.

The thing that most irks me is when someone asks a question like ‘am I allowed to take my child to the supermarket?’

And you get responses like OF COURSE NOT COVIDIOT DON’T YOU KNOW THERE’S A PANDEMIC ON??? DO YOU WANT BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS???

When that is not in fact the correct answer and a person who was a bit more polite might say yes, you are but if you have anyone you can leave them at home with you might prefer to do that. I can’t recall any specific examples of this sort of thing on here but it’s all over Facebook.

I think people just deal with it differently and interpreted the rules differently and became upset or defensive, because let's face it, it WAS scary, it really was and still is, and I think we were all on edge, on whatever side and so lashing out at each other. Maybe we are all putting on a bravado act, one way or another. Trying to take control of a situation that is out of our control.

The virus is the enemy, not each other

Flaxmeadow - I like your posts. I think also, we're all bored.

Very.
Very.
Bored.

Your posts too Nellodee, and yes we all are, very much so.

Extreme optimists don't hope for the best and plan for the worst. They don't plan. There is no need because everything will be ok. They don't understand that declaring that they will not cope if x,y or z happens is purely subjective and has no objective effect. Uber optimists deny objective reality to such an extent they think it's all fake news - someone else's subjective view. Part of this is the paranoia that people who are pessimists or realists are primarily motivated to make you feel bad.

Extreme pessimists don't hope for the best and plan for the worst. No plan will work because we are all going to hell in a handcart. So contingency plans are pointless. Hope is pointless. . Extreme pessimists make extreme plans to survive the coming apocalypse.

Realists hope for the best but make contingency plans for how the worst will impact them and their dependants. Hope is essential but is groundless without planning. Personal resilience is about coping with uncertainty by hoping and planning.

@Flaxmeadow

Nellodee it was on MN back in the spring. A poster was being admonished for having the audacity to need milk and go to the shop for it. Someone suggested that cheese in her coffee instead was the least thing she could do to stop people DYING, which is what would DEFINITELY happen if she went to the shop.

I think I remember this but it went something like

1. "Well I'm going to carry on going to the corner shop everyday for bread and milk"

1. "You don't really need to go to the corner shop everyday for bread and milk, it's also a wider community risk"

This somehow, over time, morphed into

"Dementor says bread and milk are not essential and that I'm a murderer who should put cheese in my coffee"

Nope. That wasnt what happened at all. I saw that thread and it didnt go down like that.

Someone DID tell a poster to put cheese in her coffee or else she was "murdering" people.

Found it!

Like I said.

Very.
Very.
Bored.

lmaooooooooooo so ridiculous

Someone DID tell a poster to put cheese in her coffee or else she was "murdering" people.

I don't remember anyone saying it, but even if they did, and probably as a joke anyway, so what? What's the point in mentioning it, ad nauseam, other than to discredit that person, or imagined group of people, by just repeated sneering. It doesn't go anywhere in terms of conversation.

Its the same with the repeated use of the term "dementor", what's the point of saying it over and over again. It isn't an argument, it's just name calling for the sake of it. It also seems to be a mechanism of encouraging others to name call. A kind of rallying cry of "come on others, let's be the anti-dementor gang". It's all a bit silly really and is soley based on forming a group to personally attack some other imagined group that they see as an enemy but in reality there is no "dementor" group. it doesn't exist.

So

1. "You're a dementor"
2. "No I'm not"
3. "Yes you are"
4. "No I'm not"

And round and round the silliness goes. Forever and ever. World without end

I wouldn't have joined it, but like I say, peri-menopausal and pre-menstrual. It was the anti-dementors or my husband, but one way or another, I needed a good argument!

Sorry. I'm not proud of myself!

Found it!

Brilliant .

So they didn't actually say put "cheese in your coffee", just that cheese is and alternative to milk, presumably for calcium intake?

I think there are some people who have been waiting years for the apocalypse and really felt their time had come. All that “I’m not a hoarder, I’m a prepper “ nonsense. To justify their mad stockpiling of 3 million loo rolls and 400 tins of Oxtail soup they insist that anyone who isn’t peering out of a slit in their bunker is deluded and that This Is It.

Likewise those who seem to like “the new normal” and any suggestion that things won’t stay like this forever they shoot down. Also some horrible bitter miseries who seem to relish the misfortunes of others. There was one on a thread about what do you miss. They said they were glad that people were unhappy

The anti- dementors were taking mocking those who thought there was going to be a second wave not so long ago...

I think the anti-dementor threads have (she says politely) diverged somewhat from their original remit some time ago.

@Nellodee

Found it!

The original!

@Flaxmeadow

Found it!

Brilliant .

So they didn't actually say put "cheese in your coffee", just that cheese is and alternative to milk, presumably for calcium intake?

Um... yes they did- thats exactly what they suggested lol