Anti-Dementors : The AD’s

[MinkyGreen]

Anti-Dementirs. These are a long running group of threads on Mumsnet.
I’ve recently been on a Covid thread and felt attacked by a group of posters for stating a consensus science view.
I then looked into who this group are - and they have formed threads called the ‘Anti-Dementors”. Dementors being those who wore masks/followed lockdown rules.
The groups they perceive as ‘dementors’ are dismissed/ridiculed as putting ‘cheese in coffee’, - or sitting in their garden with laptops during lockdown. The fact is that many were vulnerable/protecting the vulnerable.
There us also support/links to publications like ‘Unherd’ and ‘State of Fear’ which are bordering conspiracy theory territory.

While I think the discourse is important - it makes me very uneasy when people form ‘echo chambers’ and ridicule/attack/make snide comments in a group towards those with opposing views.

I look forward to your response!

Yeah no apology from me either. Those threads were a response to us being hounded off the main boards when we tried to express any concerns over lockdown policies. No one had to read them if they didn’t have to. And they made up probably 0.01% of posts at the time, with the rest of the boards being entirely dominated by those telling us to just ‘stay the fuck at home’.

Hearing twilight zone music reading this thread like. What is it you're wanting OP?

Why is this being brought up now, 3 years after the threads were active?

Very odd.

Eloquent as always, CoffeeWithCheese. ❤️

I don't think we're going to get an answer on that one, despite several people asking. All I can see is an appeal for women to be kiiiiiiiind; which, given how the covid boards went and the fact it was three years ago, is really shutting the stable door after the horse is to hell and long gone.

I'm not sure the OP even knows what she wants from this thread.

No apology from mr either.

I was told, when I feared that my business would be destroyed, that any successful business should be able to survive with months of no income at all, and that if it wasn't, then it wasn't viable anyway and I deserved it

I'm willing to bet this was from a working from homer, who was on full salary throughout.

I think she's changed her mind. She wanted the threads pulled at the start, before she found out what a Dementor actually is 🙄

Me not Mr!

And got her arse handed to her.

On that basis, would you like the whole Covid 19 topic to be deleted? What you have said there does seem to cover a large majority of the threads in it?

On the milk thing I have just advanced searched and - the quote was:

"Milk isn’t an “essential” as long as you have taps. Fine to pick up as part of a proper shop but a trip out just for that and chocolate goes against gov guidance and potentially undoes what a lot of us are doing bu literally staying at home."

On this thread, from April 2020 where a poster was asking whether it was OK to have a bbq in her garden, just her and the people she lived with.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3868979-AIBU-to-plan-on-having-a-BBQ?page=1

It seems the op was used to having the majority defend her point on threads, then posted on a thread and the usual lockdown cheerleaders were not there so she feels she was bullied as the majority of posters were arguing against her. So her response to this is to complain to mnhq. A vague complaint, possibly asking for people to be deleted for quoting unheard as a source, talking about the laptop class or calling themselves anti dementors.

The BBQ thing just reminded me of a family having one in their front garden because that was the sunny side and the police turning up to tell them they had to use their back garden away from passers by.

Our police got fed up with conflicting advice being thrown about by different public bodies V the government.

I'm sort of glad the OP picked this up, despite disagreeing with them.

I've found this thread interesting reading in hindsight and with the knowledge we now have.

One thing really stood out to me at the time I think is reflected in the OP's position is the fact that we were "sold" the premise that lockdown was something we experienced collectively and was a equitable social burden.

Yet it was very, very clear that there was no universal experience and the lockdown rules had a very disproportionate impact on some families whilst being little more than an inconvenience to others.

My local FB page was riddled with the sentiment of "we are all in it together" whilst posting comments such as "I won't name and shame but to the family of 5 living near x street with the 3 pink children's bikes, you spent 2 rather than 1 hour out of your property today. I know it's hard but if I can follow the rules so can you".

Not naming, but giving enough info to make that family identifiable whilst showing zero self awareness that after they had done their hours walk, their family went to play in their huge garden, in the massive above ground pool they'd bought due to savings from Dad not having to commute to his safe job. Mum was in a good place as a SAHM to home school the kids and wasn't tearing her hair out because they'd bought the kids individual laptops re: online lessons and the house was big enough for everyone to have their own workspace.

Unlike their neighbours of 5 whose Dad's business was on the verge of folding due to lockdown and were worrying about losing their small 2 bed home with a tiny yard, all on top of each other with kids using parents mobile phones to do lessons whilst Mum is trying to hold onto her job, working out of the kitchen on the only laptop in the house - and going to the park for a few hours was the only respite from the shit show their home life had become.

Same rules very different experiences but so many people - especially those who sailed through lockdown seems oblivious to, apart from when it came to policing other people.

I was lucky re: lockdown so I've no axe to grind but I was (and remain) shocked at how many people failed to understand how the universal rules created massive social and financial inequality and seemed to take great joy/pride in shaming people who bore the weight of those govt decisions and derided them when they questioned the cost some families were paying.

I was on a Covid thread, and there was a group of posters being pretty unpleasant, and making out that I was inferring things that I wasn’t or trying to twist my words

Don't lie. You were on that thread with the intent to derail and now you're here to cry about it.

Dementors was from Harry Potter btw.

I notice the OP has now mentioned Covidiots now It was the ADs who were called Covidiots You have left it a bit too late to try and look more objective OP

I’ve just read the thread you’re referring to and you’re completely misrepresenting that, as well as the AD threads. Seems to be a habit of yours.

I didn't post on the AD threads very often but I read a lot and they were a great antidote to the covid threads.

The insults I had were pretty mild compared to what was said to other people but I presume it was ok to insult some but not others.

I was told I'm thick for buying chocolate
If I really loved DH I'd wear a mask indoors to protect him (I didn't have covid)
I shouldn't leave the house in summer as hayfever makes me cough and I might scare people
I'm a liar because I said my garden is only 8' wide (it is, the other half belongs to upstairs)
I'm a liar because I said I didn't have room for a desk to WFH
My home was called a hovel as I only have a one bed flat and no spare room to work (that gem was from one of the biggest troll posters)

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11866947/Norwich-City-coach-jailed-hitting-man-head-pole-Covid-mask-row.html

I left MN a few months into covid because of how utterly batshit some people became.

A lot of MNetters came up with their own rules and attacked anyone they perceived to be breaking their made up rules.

Highlights included someone being piled on and called a murderer for buying hot cross buns with the weekly shop they'd queued outside the supermarket to buy, because hot Cross buns weren't 'essential'. For some reason the rules about only leaving the house for essential things like work, medical appts and groceries was interpreted as only essential groceries, with MNetters judging what they thought was essential or not. Milk not being essential I seem to remember, as everyone should just buy milk powder.

A soon to be first time Mum told to put her newborn in a drawer as driving a 5 minutes to her parents house to pick up the cot that they were going to leave outside for her, wasn't essential travel in their eyes.

Someone piled on and called selfish and dangerous for leaving home baked goods on the doorstep of a friend for their birthday. Someone viciously attacked for eating a packet of crisps on a bench in the park.

Utter stupidity of again, misinterpreting the rules and the one about daily exercise which said something like 1 hr per day of outside exercise e.g walking, running, cycling being taken to mean they were the only acceptable forms of exercise. So you had people complaining about individuals doing yoga in the park or siblings kicking a football about. The latter being an epic argument with people shouting "football has been BANNED, all the matches were called off" 🙄

Plus all the scaremongering and glee some MNetters seemed to take in saying things like "well I'M not sending my kids back to school (even though they've reopened) because I don't want to see them carried out in a body bag". I remember the body bag comment very specifically. I remember when Weston General Hospital closed to admissions because they had a lot of cases (which turned out to be caused by poor infection control and spread by STAFF), people jumping on to say "the dam is BREAKING, this is just the start" and deciding as a seaside town, the cases had to have been caused by all the imaginary fuckers not staying home and going to the seaside to try and kill the locals. That's the kind of thing that started the term dementors being used.

Net twitching. Calling the Police because the neighbours went out more than once a day. Calls to draft in the army to patrol the streets looking for rule-breakers. And a complete lack of empathy for anyone that just might be struggling to STAY HOME. Suicidal, single so no human contact for weeks and want to see an also single friend outside? (ages before support bubbles came in) No! stay home!! Autistic DC struggling being cooped up in a flat all day, could we go to the park twice a day? Or once but stay longer than an hour? No! Rules are rules you snowfake, you're not special.

It was a shit show and I left to protect my mental health as I was horrified by the sheer nastiness.

I can understand a support group.

But to come together with the intention to ridicule another group by forming a thread called Anti-Dementors?

I note others have tried to explain, but I really fail to see the difference between that and forming a group called ‘Anti- Covidiots’. And then if members of that group made assumptions such as ‘Covidiots don’t drink coffee because they think water has been poisoned by the government.”

In terms of freedom of speech yes but law wise :

Under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, it is a criminal offence for a person to pursue a course of conduct which amounts to the harassment of another, which the perpetrator knows or ought to know amounts to harassment.

Does that apply to one group forming to harass/ridicule another group.

Perhaps if someone give me an example of another thread on Mumsnet where a group has formed and the thread title specifically ridicles another group?

I am trying to gauge if I’m overreacting! I know I’ve had a pretty desperate personal time through Covid which could cause me to overreact. I don’t want to stop a support group. Support groups are very much needed. It’s the belittling of another group and the assumptions made about that ‘other group’.

You're referring to the protection from harassment act regarding some old MN threads and asking if you're overreacting?

Yes, yes you are. Get a grip and that's kindly meant.

@KeHuyWinner

Ok, so I need the clarity as to why it’s an overreaction.

Why is ok to form a group where the thread title ridicules another group? And - is it ok to form an ‘anti-Covidiots’ thread?
Where other members specifically ridicule and make assumptions about who they perceive as a ‘Covidiot’ and how they behave? And then ‘jump on’ ‘Covidiots’ on another thread with other members of their group.

To my mind that’s a pretty awful thing to do - and Mumsnet should/would delete such a thread?

It's been explained to you again and again what actually happened, but you're just ignoring it and digging your heels in. You're wilfully misrepresenting how it occurred just so you can stubbornly cling to your point. You have read every thread since the start have you? No you haven't. Just stop now.

Those people didn’t need a support group because they were calling people ‘covidiots’ on every single thread! You don’t need a support group when you’re by far the majority. And they weren’t ‘assumptions’, they were ‘observations’. People were saying that they were having a great time working from their laptops in the garden, there was no need to assume anything.
Yes you are overreacting, with one large reason for that being that this happened 3 years ago. The AD’s obviously didn’t offend you too much at the time otherwise you would have reported them then, no?