Goading and group pile ons

[LuckyHazelFox]

I would be grateful if you could confirm what measures you take to deal with goady posters and pile on attacks. I am seeing this on here every day and nothing is being done about it. I have sent you two emails.

Fife schools used to have really good debating societies (as I know from my experience as a pupil).

My understanding is that they've largely disappeared because schools no longer have a full hour for lunch. (Other activities have also been hit.)

I’m not sure it ever was on the curriculum. My school has a debating club. It doesn’t have a ‘don’t be a dick on the internet’ club though which may be more pertinent.

I’ve been on forums since the 90s, this behaviour has always been around.

I think there is more of a problem these days where people are used to broadcasting their views on social media like Twitter or Instagram and there’s very little back and forth. People who post things you disagree with just get blocked.

MN is very unusual in that you can’t curate what you see or who interacts with you. Some people can’t stand seeing things they disagree with and others can’t cope with being disagreed with.

I agree @noblegiraffe - a lot of people only transmit, never receive. Plus the internet gives everyone a voice. Oh for the days when people’s views were limited to the pub or over the garden fence.

Dh was rather surprised to inherit a youngish colleague whose special accommodations include not being disagreed with or criticised. I bet they’re fun on an internet forum!

Just to say I consider the feminism board on MN to be awful.. Nearly all the regulars are brutal if you don't fall in line with the current correct group think..I would never have believed that presumably female posters would turn on other presumably female posters with such venom.

My mother was a feminist before they were born. The irony is not lost on her.

Oh I would, believe me. I've seen it in black and white. The be kind brigade calling everyone else hateful.

I’m so pleased MNHQ have clarified what is/is not acceptable, now.

Yes, me too.

I was too. It’s not lost on me either.

Same. Could have been done with before but grateful to the op on this.

Re women’s rights and that board I’m glad mnhq have allowed the discussion, even when threatened by advertisers.

Speaking of external stakeholders, I imagine that MN has to be sensitive to private equity, given ongoing attempts to sell a minority stake.

Note Labour’s change to carried interest.

So women over a certain age are the only ones who
can do feminism correctly. I see. I bet ‘back in her day’ they just had gender non conforming men aka old school tranvestites and not TWAW! and if you said otherwise you were getting sacked from the job you managed to fight your shackles off for and called a bigot?

All the hard fought for things I’m sure your mother was involved in are single handedly being rolled back when you include men in the definition of ‘women’. People can also be concerned about things that affect women, SSS being one of them, and care about other things affecting women (the ones with vaginas) at the same time. This only appears to be impossible on MN.

So women over a certain age are the only ones who can do feminism correctly.

There’s no such thing as “doing feminism correctly”. That’s the crux of my beef with it in its current wave. It always used to be a broad church now it’s prescriptive and turns swathes of women off. Totally counterproductive.

seen the multiple user name thing where they forget which one they are posting as!

Me too. That board does have a lot of men and non-feminists though, so I no longer look at it as a "feminist" place IYKWIM.

I also think there's a difference between not believing certain elements of someone's story and thinking they're a troll.

Sometimes I get the impression someone has run a story that may have happened through AI to make it sound more interesting. Or sometimes it genuinely sounds fully made up. But how can I prove it?

They say report it. Fine but to me I want the person to respond in a way that will show me or others who are sceptical just how genuine they actually are.

Then I get reported for troll hunting. Just for actually trying to challenge something. I never reference past posts or anything either. HQ can't be certain that it's not a troll. But they know that I'm not. Or they should know?!

I just scroll on past if the tale is too fantastical. A clue is when there is some game-changing drip feed adding spice to the story. I really couldn’t be bothered to make up an OP. Someone accused me of making up something the other day which really cheesed me off a) because it was true and b) because inevitably if did not fit with the “approved” narrative. And you can’t bellow “Links please!” in response to a real-life anecdote!

Absolutely. Now it's my way or the highway. My mums first battle was fought in the home. Then the workplace, then the wider world. Might seem small beer now but when women everywhere linked arms and were doing this it made a difference.

Spot on.

Thankfully mn has made a difference. People won’t always like it (some men for a start) but it’s been grassroots.

Mnhq have provided a space for the push for change, which is great.

MN has made far less difference than the women who fought for equal pay, paid maternity leave, proper childcare and financial freedom in the 1960s and 70s. It was a world no woman born since about 1980 would recognise. Those women were transformational and those born since owe them a huge debt.

I think that's a fair assessment and the reason why I rarely go on FWR. I don't toe all their right lines.

This is so true. I can’t say I experienced that myself, as I was only a child in the 1970s, but I studied Social Administration at uni and that feminist literature was an important part of my studies.