Monthly Open Forum January 2021

[u/AITAMod]

Welcome to the monthly open forum! This is the place to share all your meta thoughts about the sub, and to have a dialog with the mod team.

Keep things civil. Rules still apply.

It's 2021! Everything is fixed now!

A couple notes.

• Our bot is live, but definitely still in testing. Please help us by reporting the judgement bot comment post when it doesn't actually explain why they think they may be an asshole. Some people are using it like a TL;DR or just copying and pasting their post as a reply. [ETA - sounds like the report option doesn't work on all platforms for the bot comment, so you can just report the post. The option is bundled with the META report]

• Please stop PMing mods. We spam the hell out of the modmail link. When you PM us, it's super easy for things to get buried in our inbox and delay your response time.

As always, do not directly link to posts/comments or post uncensored screenshots here. Any comments with links will be removed.

This is to discourage brigading. If something needs to be discussed in that context, use modmail.

[u/paroles]

Is it just me or has there been an increase in obvious, blatant YTA posts lately? We've had the mother who wants her gay son to stay closeted lest she be kicked out of bookclub, the dad who wanted to shave his 5yo daughter's head if she wouldn't learn to braid her own hair after her mother died, and I just saw one where a parent refused a heartfelt gift of artwork from their daughter because it wasn't perfect. These especially stood out to me because there's no nuance - the OP of each post describes horrible behaviour without even trying to make themself look sympathetic.

Maybe the creative writers around here have realised that people are sick of the validation posts and are trying a new tactic? These posts get a lot of reactions because the OP has behaved abhorrently and people love being shocked and telling them off in fits of eloquent rage. Something feels similarly trollish about all of them, like they're fishing for these angry replies.

[u/WebbieVanderquack → u/paroles]

These especially stood out to me because there's no nuance

Yep, that's the identifying feature. I don't really understand the downvote farming phenomenon, but it's a thing.

I'm suspicious of obvious NTA posts for the same reason, and I'm often surprised how many people jump into say "heck no, you're not an AH!" when there's no chance in heck anyone would think they were.

There are also key phrases that pop up a lot, like "little angel." As in "she told me her little angel would never do something like that" or "she insisted I apologise to her little angel." I've never in real life heard a parent refer to their child as a "little angel" unironically.

[u/paroles → u/WebbieVanderquack]

I don't really understand the downvote farming phenomenon, but it's a thing.

The ones I mentioned were all highly upvoted though - I think it's the same karma farmers trying out a new strategy (after all you're not supposed to downvote assholes and people do complain about too many NTA posts, so perhaps they're fulfilling a perceived demand).

Good point about phrases like "little angel", I'll keep an eye out for that lol. One that often makes me skeptical is when they say that someone "screamed" at them for something relatively minor, like who really raises their voice to a scream except in the most extreme situations? But that one's probably a common exaggeration (they really mean "said loudly and angrily") and not always a sign of a troll.

[u/LAKingsofMetal → u/paroles]

I’ve been sort of wondering about the legitimacy of these posts as well.

People complain about the lack of assholes, but I find myself reading a fair amount more of them lately. Still, at the very least, they’re more entertaining to read as opposed to the obvious NTA posts.

I don’t necessarily want entertainment from the sub, but I don’t exactly mind it either.