Sometimes when people are honest and/or blunt, it’s interpreted as being mean because people want to hear what they want to hear. This is especially true for kids who have never been allowed to suffer any disappointment and/or have a sense of entitlement.
Lol, @Dr. Google. I’m from NY but went to high school in the south. You sound very charming.
New Yorkers are straightforward, @moooop. We probably don’t suffer entitled people very well, but I disagree that straightforward = “blunt and harsh.” Honest, sure, but not necessarily “mean.”
I’m not from the NE either. Born and raised in Calif…lived there for over 40 years…then moved to the South with H’s job.
I agree with the consensus that when some people are told something that they don’t want to hear, they will accuse the other person of “being mean.”
Sometimes the honest truth is seen as being “mean”. I once replied to a poster who asked to be chanced: “My SAT is 2000, UW GPA 3.6 and I am white. What are my chances for HYP?” I told her they were out of reach and that she should consider a school like Boston University. She replied back to me accusing me of “destroying her dream” and that she would never go to a school like BU because it was “too ghetto”. With those stats HYP is a fantasy not a dream.
Who was the “mean” person in that exchange?
By “blunt and harsh” I assume you mean “honest”.
I know that I can be very blunt and harsh in regards to particular posts:
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those with modest stats who think it’s ok to borrow a huge amount for undergrad because “I’m going to become a doctor”. The chances of such people ever applying or getting accepted into med school are very low…way too low to risk big undergrad debt.
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those that are expecting/asking their lowish income parents to cosign big debt.
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those seeking eng’g degrees and think that they HAVE to go to a top 10 school in order to get a good job.
I am from California too and I can list at least a dozen other user names from California.
I think that all the adults on this thread grow exasperated with high school students referring to “decent” or “good” colleges, and even more so with the “ask-holes” (will that pass moderation?) who initiate threads requesting advice, and then proceed to argue with everyone who posts or who repeatedly “bump” their threads on the hope of receiving answers different from the ones they got.
@woogzmama I don’t know if that word will pass moderation but I love it!
I believe “glass bowls” has become the internet euphemism guaranteed to pass moderation. 
P.S. Count me as another Californian (at least for the first half of my life).
A lot of students and families make huge mistakes in the college application process and either end up with a ton of debt or attending a safety school that they don’t like. I think those of us who are parents are sort of desperate to give these folks that facts and help them make better choices…and we can get a little intense about it. It feels like if they don’t listen, disaster awaits…and it does! So what I see is a lot of very informed people giving really good advice to a lot of uninformed people. And the informed people are not always perfectly patient or tactful. But the intentions are good, I believe. 
And personally, I am eternally grateful to the informed people on this board for giving me really fantastic advice when I was uninformed!
@profparent - I wasn’t attempting a euphemism for the better-known, anatomical expletive. I used a specific play on that term to describe a certain sub-species (whom we all know) that persistently ask for advice, and then insist that the answers and suggestions proffered are wrong . . . and then ask again . . . and again.
Another thing that gets me is posters asking questions that could be easily answered by going to the university’s website.
^ I don’t actually mind that so much. At least they’re easy to answer.
^ Sometimes the person can’t find it, so we as a site help the person!
How hard is it for an applicant to find an answer on the school website to “Does X university offer engineering?”.
Or, “what subject tests are required?”
Haha @moooop , I don’t disagree. But frankly, I much prefer my fellow blunt and honest New Yorkers to many of the truly terrifying people with “the Southern charm.” I have no shame.
Lots of northeasterners with bad manners and no tact think the only way to be honest is to be harsh and insulting. News bulletin: you don’t have a monopoly in honesty…most of the rest of the country has figured out how to be honest without being an a%&h@#$ about it.
OP,
Agree, some can be “mean”, seemingly always looking for a confrontation or argument…
Just ignore and listen to the helpful ones, even if harsh!