DCUM Weblog

After nearly a week of not writing blog posts I was not sure whether I should treat today as just another Monday and write about the most active threads over the weekend or discuss the most active threads during the entire period I skipped. I decided on the latter option. So today I will write about the most active threads for the past week. The most active thread during that period was the thread I've already discussed about Republican women. I'll skip that one today and move on to the next most active thread which was titled, "Princess of Wales to attend public event tomorrow" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread was created on Friday in expectation of an appearance on Saturday by Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, at the annual "Trooping the Colour" parade which celebrates the King's birthday. As I am sure everyone is aware, the Princess has been undergoing treated for cancer and has almost entirely been out of the public eye. This thread is already 42 pages long and that does not include at least 5 pages of inappropriate posts about the the Prince and Princess' children that I removed. Needless to say, I have not and will not read all of these posts. Threads about Kate Middleton all have a familiar pattern by now. Like this thread, they often involve a photo. In this case, the photo shows Kate standing in front of a tree and is said to have been taken earlier in the week. These photos are picked over as if they are the Zapruder film with one group of posters interested in her appearance, desparate to find any impact of her treatment, and another group eager to reveal the photo as fake. Kate fans generally find things to praise about the photos while her detractors pull any possible thread to weave whatever conspiracy theory currently has their attention. Not only is the pattern of the threads consistent, but so are the posters that show up to comment. There are, of course, the Kate fans who are unwilling to brook any criticism. But there are also the Kate haters who, purely from the point of analysis, are far more interesting. The number of ways in which they can find to dislike someone is simply astounding. Central to this thread is the topic of Kate's weight. She has always been thin but whether she has a healthy weight or is clearly suffering from an eating disorder is, let's say, subject to interpretation. Moreover, there is some expectation that cancer treatment might have caused further weight loss. The topic of Kate's weight is so touchy, especially with those posters convinced that she has an eating disorder, that posts complimenting her on her appearance were reported for allegedly encouraging eating disorders. I had to work my way through the logic of those reports but, as best I can tell, the theory is that describing a thin woman as "looking great" is providing support for disordered eating as a means to stay thin. Another aspect of the pattern these threads follow is that posters soon run out of substance on which to comment and begin discussing each other. Instead of, for instance, talking about Kate's outfit, posters will say, "Kate fans do such and such" while others discuss Kate haters who always say x and y. More time then gets spent on posters describing each other rather than discussing the actual topic of the thread. This normally leads to the thread being locked which probably soon to be the fate of this thread.

Quite a few of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I have already discussed. This seems to be an emerging trend as the same thing happened last week. But, that was not the case for the most active thread. Titled, "Help me understand Republican women in their 30s and 40s" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, not only had I not previously discussed the thread, I hadn't even read it. Now it is 40 pages long and there is no way that I will read the whole thing. The original poster states that she understood Bush-era Republicans, but "cannot wrap my mind around how any remotely educated woman today could consider herself a part of the Republican party." She asks others to explain the appeal of the Republican Party to women. Based on some of the responses I read in the thread, many posters — and perhaps the original poster as well — assume that the Republican Party's hostility toward reproductive rights and the former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's history of brutish behavior toward women (which includes being found liable of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll) would push women away from the party. Recent election results have demonstrated that there may be some truth in this theory, though the trend is clearly not universal. Based on the responses from Republican women in the thread, I don't think that Republican women are all that different than Republican men. The traditional view of Republicans is that they are motivated by interest in low taxes, business-friendly regulations, tough on crime measures, and a strong defense. That view is outdated, or if not outdated, those concerns taken a backseat to other priorities. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump recently wrote about Pew survey results regarding race, immigration, and gender. Bump's findings are consistent with the posts by Republican women in this thread. While crime remains a concern, they tend to be much more motivated by cultural issues. In each of the three topics, race, immigration, and gender, the Republican women feel that they are being disadvantaged by Democratic policies. Like White men, White women frequently believe that the interests of non-White people ar put above theirs. One of the first Republican women posters to respond in the thread cited the claim that White women have "privilege" as something she resents, implying that it hurts the employment opportunities for White women. Immigration in Republican thinking is often connected to crime, reminiscent of Trump's claim that Mexico was sending rapists and murderers to the US. But an equal concern seems to be the belief that Democrats are encouraging immigration in order to gain Democratic voters. Again, these women think that Democrats are putting the interests of others above theirs. The gender issue is more complicated. One would be inclined to think that the motivating issues around sex and gender would be reproductive rights, equality for women, and other women rights issues. But, again, Republican women see themselves as being disadvantaged in preference to others. In this case, transgender women who, these women believe, are men impinging on women's rights. In general, I think it is safe to say that Republican women, like Republican men, are primarily motivated by a series of issues which cause them to feel that their position in society is being eroded by trends towards diversity.

The most active thread yesterday was the same one that was the most active the day before. That was the thread about the husband who revealed his college roommate's affair in retaliation for the roommate suggesting that the original poster's daughter was fat. I'll skip that thread and go to the next one which was titled, "Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites two anecdotes involving two different popular universties that suggest those schools are experiencing overcrowding and wants to know which other universities have such issues and how that can be found out. The DCUM college forum has increasingly become one of our more popular forums. Moreover, the caliber of the threads is often quite high with quite a bit of useful information being shared. This thread, unfortunately, is not one of those. Rather, this thread gets bogged down in some of the worst divisions that plague the forum. Many of the forum's participants are obsessed with college rankings and, therefore, it was no surprise that a debate broke out about whether the two universities named by the original poster were really "top tier" schools. The same happened with other colleges named by posters. There was also a debate about whether this was solely an issue with public universities and could be avoided by choosing private colleges. Posters quickly broke into two camps, each defending its favorite type of school and attacking the other. Schools in the University of California system received particularly harsh criticism with a number of extreme allegations about them being made. Those schools also had their defenders, who denied a number of the claims. I had to laugh at one exchange that began after a poster insisted that overcrowding issues were limited to public universities. Another poster provided an anecdote involving Boston University in which the dorms were so crowded that students were housed in hotels. Rather than acknowledge that overcrowding apparently did impact private schools, a poster argued that "being in a hotel in Boston is almost like (or even better than) being in a dorm". But the biggest issue with this thread was the sparsity of substantive data to back up the claims being made. Posters routinely made claims about schools that appeared more likely to be urban legends than reality. When asked to support their allegations, they often turned to sources such as Reddit, provoking incredulity. The discussion in this thread is scattered and goes all over the place with a number of separate topics being discussed. It might have some usefulness for anyone considering University of California schools, but otherwise it is hard to separate fact from fiction.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Who Is Most Out Of Bounds Here?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that she recently posted a graduation photo of her daughter and mentioned the college she plans to attend. An old college roommate of her husband commented on the photo saying that it looked like the girl would enjoy the food at the college, apparently referring to her weight. The original poster says that her daughter "is not fat but she is still carrying a little baby weight around her hips and she is naturally large chested" and that the comment was wildly out of bounds. Her husband flew into a rage and posted a public comment asking the guy if his wife knew about his affair with an old girlfriend. The old roommate's wife saw the comment and has been calling the original poster non-stop leaving angry voicemails accusing the original poster of sabotaging her marriage. The original poster simply told the roommate's wife to take it up with the her own husband and blocked her. The original poster says that she knows that her husband was wrong, but asks whether he justified due to the insult to their daughter. For some reason this thread just took off. As far as I can tell, the original poster hardly provided any additional input. Nevertheless, the thread has already reached 22 pages. Much of that is owed to a small number of posters who apparently got very invested in the thread. Two of them posted over 40 times each, another nearly 60 times, and a fourth over 30 times. It is possible that one of these was the original poster, but I don't have evidence of that. These posters were split with two on each side of the debate. There are several different perspectives in this thread. One is that the old roommate was wrong to alude to the original poster's daughter's weight and is solely responsible for any damage to his marriage because that was caused by his own cheating. In this perspective, the original poster's husband has nothing about which to feel bad. In contrast to that is the view that the roommate's comment was rude, but the original poster's husband's reaction was far too strong. Moreover, his action did not take into account the innocent bystanders who would also be hurt, primarily the roommate's wife. In addition to possibly blowing up the roommate's marriage, hurting his wife and, potentially, any children they have, the original poster's husband sent a dangerous signal to their daughter about her weight. Some posters feared that she would understand that being fat is very bad, possibly triggering an eating disorder. Other posters faulted the original poster's husband for sitting on the knowledge that his roommate had had an affair. They believe that he had a responsibility to inform his roommate's wife earlier. Some of these posters are upset by the original poster's husband's treatment of women, citing his failure to disclose the affair, his lack of concern about the impact of his subsequent revelation on his roommate's wife, and the messages he is sending his daughter about weight. Generally there was plenty of blame to go around in this situation with no agreement on who was the most wrong.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Do women expect a ring at 1 year?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that his one-year anniversary of dating his girlfriend is coming up and he is being pressured by friends and family to propose to her. He is not ready to take that step and feels thats one year is not enough time to decide to make such a commitment and doesn't understand the rush. Apparently the only question that the original poster has is the one in the title of his thread. I don't think any of those responding believed that there is any sort of one-year cut-off at which the original poster would be expected to make a decision. Rather posters emphasized that what is important is what his girlfriend wants. Many posters said that the urgency to get married was strongly correlated to age. Several pointed out that women who plan to have children don't want to waste their fertile years with someone with whom they had no future. Therefore, a younger couple would not necessarily need to make a decision about marriage right away. But that would change with age. The original poster explained that his girlfriend had said she is not in a rush to get married but that she wanted to have children at 30. She is currently 28 and he is 35. One poster quickly did the math and pointed out that if they got engaged now and had a wedding in a year, his girlfriend would be nearly 30 by the time she went through pregnancy. Therefore, it is probably time to think about making the commitment. The point that posters kept emphasizing was that the original poster should think about his girlfriend's needs. It would be really unfair to string her along if he doesn't plan to marry her. In addition, several posters warned that at his age, the original poster might not be able to find anyone better than his current girlfriend. The original poster didn't find that argument convincing and seemed to be certain that he could easily find another girlfriend equal or better than his current one. For no apparent good reason, he argued that it is older women, not older men, who have trouble finding new relationships. The original poster repeatedly pointed out that he is Catholic and neither he nor his family believe in divorce. Therefore, marriage is a very important decision because it will be for life. Frankly, there is something that seems a little off to me about this poster. To hear him tell it, he and his girlfriend are on the same page and the only issue is pressure from others. He describes his life as being completely on track according to his personal goals. So, after being assured that there is not a one-year deadline as he claimed to fear, I am not sure what was left to discuss. The original poster, however, found plenty to discuss, posting over 60 posts in the thread. A significant number of his posts were anti-woman, starting with his views on older women and continuing to his claim that many women expect a man to be their provider and the failure of posters to understand this explained the "many unhappy bitter women on this thread". I very much suspect that this poster is a troll, though I don't have any evidence beyond my intuition to support this suspicion.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Does your community pool have a dress code?", and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster complains that college "girls" home for the summer are all wearing thong bikini bottoms which she doesn't think are suitable for a family venue. The topic of how girls and women dress is always a bit touchy. Prom season routinely provokes threads complaining about the cuts of dresses. But, exchange swimwear for dresses and the debate is amplified exponentially. The thread is full of posters like the original poster who have no issue with nearly naked swimmers if they are confined to adult beaches, but don't really want their children exposed to such things. However, based on the replies in the thread, their concern would probably be more appropriate for their husbands and sons. A number of male posters, extolling the benefits of dark sunglasses, are quite happy to see as much of the young females bodies as the girls choose to expose. Several of these posters asked the original poster to identify the location of her pool, presumably so that they could come visit. Other posters, likely female, argue that the original poster should mind her own business and let girls dress as they please. Moreover, probably futilely, these posters also argued that others should not "ogle" women's bodies and if those like the original poster don't like how others are dressed, they should close their eyes. While the original poster's criticism was directed at college students, other posters said the same dress habits extend to even younger girls. A few posters commented that older women, including formerly heavy moms who have discovered Ozempic, are also flaunting their bodies. This provoked some posters to argue that skimpy swimwear should be left to the young. But others took the opposite view and expressed happiness that women with less than perfect bodies can get away with bikinis. Some posters who enjoy wearing revealing swimwear explained that they have great bodies and like the way they look in such outfits. As for being ogled, one poster was clear that she didn't care if others looked at her or not. Posters also disagreed on the motives for wearing thongs and similar attire. Many assumed it was the current style and the girls were following the trend. But others argued that such clothing had a practical application of minimizing tan lines. An entirely different debate broke out over men, with some posters arguing that if women are going to wear thongs, men should adopt "banana hammocks". But other posters found the thought of this appalling. A few of the moms in the thread suggested that their daughters were so uncomfortable with this trend toward revealing outfits that it might have contributed the growth of those identifying as non-binary.

Fully six of the ten most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed. Moreover, two of the remaining four address topics that were the subject of other threads about which I've recently written. As a result, this won't be the most original of posts. I'll start with a thread that was the sixth most active. Titled, "Gaza war and College Campus Protests" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created instead of a part 4 of the Gaza war thread. When the Gaza war threads have reached 1,000 pages, I have locked them and started a new part. When the previous thread was nearly 1,000, a thread about college campus protests was also getting very long and there was quite a bit of overlap between the two threads. Therefore, I combined them into this thread. The thread is currently 72 pages and I am not going to bother reading very much of it. From what I have read, it appears to consist mostly of the same things over and over. Strategies for debate the war and discussing the protests have really solidified with each side having established its talking points which are simply repeated over and over. Those supporting the Palestinians tend to highlight atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza and discuss the Biden administration's involvement in supporting such actions. Of course these posters fully support the protesters, whose actions they defend. The pro-Israel posters mostly take the exact opposite positions. They tend to describe the protesters, as well as pro-Palestinian posters in the thread, as being "pro-Hamas". They are unwilling to accept that someone can be opposed to the death and destruction being wrought on Gaza while also opposing Hamas. To them, any opposition to Israel is simply pro-Hamas. They, of course, for the most part are unwilling to recognize any Israeli excesses in Gaza. To the contrary, every action is justified and blamed on Hamas. Ironically, the pro-Israel posters are also critical of Biden at times. There are a few hardliners who actually consider Biden to be pro-Hamas himself. The mutual antagonism of both sides in this thread doesn't make for a very substantive discussion. A lot of it is simply attempts to score points. For instance, the most recent topic of discussion was a disruption by pro-Palestinian protesters of New York's pride parade. Pro-Israel posters claimed that this demonstrated antipathy toward the LGBTQ community on the part of the protesters. Such posters have often highlighted LGBTQ issues due to Hamas' normally anti-gay stances and the generally welcoming environment in Israel. The fact that neither Hamas nor Israel actually measures up to their portrayal is simply one of those details that gets ignored. But the disruption of the parade fed directly into the pro-Israel narrative. In point of fact, some pro-Palestinian protesters have adopted a strategy of disrupting any large event simply to obtain publicity and to demonstrate that they will not be ignored. The parade's disruption was not meant to be anti-gay, but rather to simply draw attention to the plight of Gaza. Whether this is a good strategy or not is another argument. But such nuances are impossible to discuss in threads of this sort.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Trump found Guilty on all charges!". Posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was started just after 5 pm yesterday but has already grown to over 60 pages. Obviously, the thread is about the verdict in the trial of former President, current cult leader, and now convicted felon Donald Trump. The jury found Trump guilty of all 34 charges. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11. I have written a number of times recently about the different realities in which many DCUM posters currently dwell. That phenomenon was on full display in this thread. Trump opponents were overjoyed, seeing the verdict as long overdue justice for someone who has a long history of behaving cavalierly toward the law. They viewed this as the legal system demonstrating that nobody is above the law. In contrast, Trump supporters see the trial and verdict as a politically-motivated witch hunt that is completely illegitimate. These posters repeatedly pointed out that the judge was allegedly a Democrat, that the jurors were allegedly liberal, and that New York is a Democratic state. Never mind that just days ago Republicans were claiming that Trump had attracted a crowd of tens of thousands to a rally in the Bronx and this was supposed to be evidence that the Democratic hold on New York is in danger. That story, which was not true in the first place, is as they say, no longer applicable. Today's story is that it is impossible to find a New Yorker who is not a card-carrying liberal. But, more to the point, the posters arguing this are making clear that they can't envision themselves acting in an objective manner and, therefore, don't believe anyone else is capable of doing so either. The possibility that the jurors considered the evidence and decided that it showed Trump's guilt is simply not comprehendible to these posters. Trump supporters also engaged in a number of arguments are simply not factually based. For instance, many argued that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan prosecutor, had campaigned on a promise to prosecute Trump and that this demonstrated that the charges were politically-motivated. In fact, there is no evidence that Bragg campaigned on such a promise. Moreover, Bragg — who had inherited the case against Trump from his predecessor — initially dropped it. Another argument is that former President Bill Clinton made the same type of payment to Paula Jones. Clinton personally made a payment to Jones to settle a lawsuit. Had Trump made a similar personal payment to Daniels, that would also have been legal. Trump's transgression was falsely reporting the payments as businesses expenses. Some posters also doubted the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer who was previously convicted and served jail time for his role in the payment scheme. However, Cohen's testimony was far from the only evidence of Trump's role in misclassifying the payments. Prosecutors also had 11 invoices, 12 vouchers, and 11 checks that created a paper trail linking Trump to the payments. But Trump supporters were not interested in evidence. Support for Trump has often been driven by resentment and his supporters thrive on seeing themselves as victims of powerful forces outside their control. Trump has fed this narrative as well as portraying himself as a victim of the same forces. As a result, many Trump supporters are even more determined to support him as a result of the verdict.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Just for laughs - a sex talk with my tween". The thread was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum and described a converstation between the original poster and her 11 year old daughter. The original poster's daughter had just completed a class about puberty and seemed comfortable talking about such topics with the original poster. The original poster took advantage of this opportunity to have a broader discussion about sex with her daughter based on the idea that it is better for her daughter to be informed before sex actually becomes an issue. The original poster explained the converstation which legitimately had me laughing out loud. I don't want to give the story away, but suffice it to say that it involved dressing up like cows. Personally I applaud the original poster's ability to have open dialogue on such topics with her daughter and I give her extra points for creativity. Many posters had reactions similar to mine. But not all. One poster in particular was quite angry because she believed that the original poster's daughter would immediately tell her own daughter about what she had learned. This poster much prefers for her daughter to remain ignorant until such time as, well, it was not clear until what time exactly. Strangely, despite this poster's displeasure with the possibility of the original poster's daughter spreading the word to her own child, the exact same poster later insisted that "kids are supposed to ‘learn’ this from other kids." The issue is not that the original poster's daughter might tell this poster's daughter about sex apparently, it's that the original poster talked to her daughter about sex. If the original poster's daughter learned about sex from an older sibling and then told the other poster's daughter about it, I guess that would be okay. Needless to say, quite a few posters disagreed with this thinking. Their main argument was that it is better for kids to learn about sex from their parents than from other kids, especially other kids who might be in the process of pressuring them for sex. Moreover, with so many kids having access to smart phones, kids are being exposed to sex and porn at a much younger age. But then the original poster received criticism from an entirely different angle. Whereas the earlier scold poster had accused the original poster of "pushing oral on your child", the new criticism seemed to be that the original poster — by including warnings about being pressured and mentioning that oral sex still has dangers of spreading disease — might have been too dismissive of the practice. Posters with this perspective were eager to minimize any threat of disease and, instead, emphasize the pleasure that could be derived. Because that discussion would not be appropriate in the original poster's circumstances, these posters ended up making strange bedfellows with the initial scold poster. The same poster who accused the original poster of "pushing" oral sex ended up on the same side of the debate as posters who absolutely want to promote oral sex as a pleasurable and safer alternative to intercourse. The dispute about just exactly how safe from disease this actually is basically took over the thread, leading me to lock it. What a disappointing end to something that had started out seeming to be such fun. That of course, some might say, could be a suitable metaphor for many sexual experiences, especially among those who don't know better.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "I am sad for DD--this past weekend" and was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster says that almost every kid she knows went to Viva Vienna with someone this weekend but neither her 13-year-old daughter nor her 15-year-old son, despite reaching out to friends, were able to find someone with whom to go. Moreover, they saw on social media that those same friends attended without them. The original poster feels sad for her kids and wants to remind parents to teach their kids to be inclusive. For those like me who had previously not heard of Viva Vienna, it is a three day festival in Vienna, Virginia that includes food, entertainment, amusement rides, and venders selling all sorts of things. I was prepared to be sympathetic to the original poster, especially when most of the responses were not very supportive and, in some cases, downright hostile. But then I noticed that the original poster had extensively sock puppeted responses, including her first reply in which she criticized the way girls at the event were dressed, calling them "low brow". The original poster's sock puppeting was quite bizarre actually. She posted with many different personas. At various times she was the parent of other kids who had been excluded, the parent of a kid who had attended, but without her good friend, and the mother of teen girls (as opposed to a girl and a boy as in the original post). I am not sure what the goal of the original poster might have been other than to guilt trip other parents. If so, she was not very effective. Most posters could not have been less receptive to her pleas to be inclusive. Moreover, if the original poster's sock puppeted posts can be believed, her kids have a history of being left out of this event. The original poster even claimed that previously they purposely planned to be out of town for the weekend so that they would not have to deal with the stress. Many of the other posters in the thread come across as uncaring or even mean. As a whole, this thread does very little to promote Vienna and I suspect that after reading this thread, more than one person may consider it a place to avoid. The carnival itself also got mixed reviews. In contrast to the importance the original poster placed on it, others didn't consider it to be much of an attraction. The basic tenor of the thread is, yes, it is sad to be left out but learning to deal with that is part of growing up. Moreover, posters cited multiple actions the original poster's kids could have taken to find others with whom to attend. As I read through the thread I kept hoping to learn why, if both of the original poster's kids had been left out, she only felt sorry for her daughter. But, sadly, this question was never answered. I suspect that, like many of the identities used by the original poster when sock puppeting, the son is a figment of the original poster's imagination. That would also explain why the two kids simply didn't go to the event together.