DCUM Weblog

The most active thread yesterday is one that I won't name because I immediately identified the poster as a troll and deleted the thread. The next most active thread was one that I've already covered. So that brings me to the third most active which was titled, "This is really bothering me- always being ‘on’ as the parent" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that her husband is an involved father who generally pulls his weight around the house. However, he travels for work frequently, recently has had to work late for several nights, and some times behaves in an inconsiderate manner in which he takes the original poster for granted. The couple has toddler and preschool-aged kids and the original poster is, as the title says, bothered that she always is the default parent who is always expected to be responsible for the children. She asks how others have handled such situations. I've only read the first page of this nine page thread, but I suspect responses didn't change much. There was fairly unanimous agreement in the responses that I did read. Posters described this scenario as very common and, in fact, most of those responding were themselves experiencing it or had experienced it. Most of the posters also agreed that the original poster's husband likely had no clue about what the original poster was experiencing because he had never acted as the primary parent. As such, posters advised talking to him about her the situation, standing up for herself more and not just willing accepting that she would automatically be the parent who had to be "on", or taking a lengthy trip and leaving her husband alone so that he would experience what she goes through. A male poster weighed in to second the idea of a trip, saying that his wife had done that and it had multiple benefits. However another male poster responded that he was actually the default parent in his relationship, showing that this phenomenon is not strictly gender-based.

The two most active threads yesterday were both threads included in yesterday's blog post. So, I'll skip to the third most active thread to start this post. That thread was titled, "Jessa Duggar had an abortion" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As a topic, the revelation that Jessa Duggar — a rabidly anti-abortion reality TV star — had undergone a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure following a miscarriage, probably was the most active because there was a second thread about it in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum which I locked. Pro-choice posters in this thread were quick to describe the procedure as an "abortion" and criticize Duggar and her supporters as hypocrites. Duggar backers, on the other hand, argued that the miscarriage caused the death of the fetus and therefore, no abortion had occurred. I haven't read all 14 pages of this thread, but from what I have read, most of it consists of variations of these two arguments. What the thread highlights is the unclear legal environment in which the overturning of Roe vs Wade has left much of the country. Duggar is a resident of Arkansas which prohibits abortion and has strict limitations on D&C procedures. Because so much of the law surrounding abortion relies on individuals' interpretation and judgement, making absolute determinations in cases such as this is difficult. Duggar's supporters were quick to interpret things in her favor while those viewing her as a hypocrite did exactly the opposite. What is clear is that other women in exactly Duggar's condition have been denied the same procedure. Moreover, this highlights another complaint by the pro-choice movement: the wealthy and connected will generally find a way to access such procedures either by favorable interpretations by their doctors or through travel to another state, or even country. The rest, however, won't be so fortunate as we are already learning.

Because I didn't write blog posts for a couple of days, today I'll cover the top threads for the past three days. The most active thread during that period was titled, "Man killed in Tyson’s Corner shooting" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Crime in general has been getting a lot of publicity lately and violent incidents in or near the Typson's Corner mall have been popular, if heated at times, topics of discussion on DCUM. As such, this thread fits perfectly with this trend. The thread was first started on March 22 with a post linking to a WTOP article about the police shooting a suspected shoplifter. Very few details beyond that were available and, apparently bereft of anything more important to debate, posters immediately engaged in an argument about whether a strand of trees where the incident occurred could properly be described as "woods", Beyond that, some posters, despite not knowing any important details of the shooting, immediately weighed in to claim that the police had acted correctly. Others questioned why shoplifting, especially if it is only suspected, should result in the use of deadly force. As more information came out, many of the pro-police posters held firm in their conviction that the shooting was completely proper and that, hopefully in their view, it would act as a deterrent to future crimes. Other posters, however, insisted that they support the police but were still uneasy about an unarmed shoplifter being shot while running away. Those who thought the shooting was unjustified presented a variety of arguments to support their case, but most vocally argued that those who thought death was the proper punishment for a property crime should move to Saudi Arabia. Some posters justified the shooting after the fact by pointing to the victim's criminal history, suggesting that he presented a violent threat. Of course, the police officers would not have known that at the time.

Fixed again and I'm going to bed.

Broken Again. I tried to fix a problem with the Nanny Forums and something went wrong. Working on it now.

This evening I was doing some maintenance on the database cluster when suddenly an error message appeared and the forums stopped working. The cluster consists of four nodes and two of them had crashed completely and two were in a not-working state. I tried several times to bring the cluster back up, but what appears to be a corrupt file prevented that. I am now restoring yesterday's backup. Unfortunately, since backups are done at night, any post or thread from about 4 am Friday morning will be lost.

UPDATE: The DCUM Forums are back up but are working very slowly. Posting is very slow. The page times out but the posts actually go through. Please don't resubmit because that will cause duplicate posts. Recent Topics also doesn't seem to be working. 

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Most young men are single - most young women are not" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The thread, which was started with the original poster linking to an article in "The Hill" discussing a survey showing that 60 percent of young men are single while nearly half that number of women are unattached, gained a whopping 23 pages of responses in less than 24 hours. Given the length, there is no way that I am reading much of it. But, from what I see on the first couple of pages, discussion is divided between those blaming men for their own bad luck and those thinking these numbers don't add up. The numbers do raise the question of just with whom the women are involved? The answer seems to be a combination of "each other", "the same guy", and "older men". Another explanation suggested was that men and women view relationships differently and while a woman might answer a survey question by saying that she is in a relationship, the guy with whom she is involved might not view things the same way and, therefore, answer by saying he is not in a relationship. If this is true, the disparity might not be as stark. It would be kind of ironic if a guy dating three different women resulted in three women saying they are in relationships and one man saying he was not. This thread is ripe to attract DCUM's Incel Battalion, but I didn't read enough to see if they actually showed up. Even without their overt appearance, some posters were already arguing that society is biased against young males. In contrast, several posters insisted that young men need to put down their phones and start paying attention to other people if they don't want to end up single.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "My wife is going to lose me" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that he is very close to leaving his wife because of a lack sex in their relationship. He says that he does his share of parenting and work around the house, is a supportive husband, and is in reasonably good shape, but doesn't feel like they are a real couple. Posts of this nature are pretty common in this forum and the men rarely get much sympathy. But, responses to this poster seemed especially unsupportive. Many posters told him to just leave and get it over with. Others suggested talking to his wife about it, even if that was just to give a warning that he was considering divorce. The thread is 13 pages long and I don't have time to read it all, but from looking through a few posts one thing I noticed is that responses are sort of all over the place. Some posters have suggestions for fixing things but many feel that there is no repairing the relationship. Some posters accuse him of having the wrong priorities and blame him for any problems. These topics always attract both posters who believe that sex is an obligation in a marriage and those who do not think it is something that should be expected. Posters representing both views makes appearances in this thread, but there is a big variety of opinions between these extremes.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Who are these families with household incomes of $45k or $60k? $70k?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites the salary levels mentioned in the thread's title as being necessary to received college financial aid. He is surprised that anyone with a child of college age would have such incomes and wonders who they are. Before this thread even had three replies it was reported to me by someone suggesting that it be removed. I believe that person's concern was that thread would result in bashing poor people. If so, such fears were misplaced. Instead, the thread is mostly posters criticizing the original poster for lacking intelligence and providing examples of those who earn salaries at such levels. The most frequent example was probably single parents. Many posters provided stats showing average incomes which demonstrated that the original poster was very out of touch with salary levels. Quite a few posters described their own personal experiences of either growing up in such a household or living in one now. This is an interesting corrective to the prevailing perception that DCUM posters are all well off. One poster, who said he owned a business, described using loopholes to keep his reported income low and qualify for aid. Needless to say, this did not go over well with many posters.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Please don’t let your children eat common allergens while playing on public playground equipment" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. As the title says, the original poster urges parents to not allow their children to eat foods to which many children are allergic on public playground equipment. Because of the severity of the original poster's child's allergies, this practice essentially makes it impossible for the child to go to playgrounds. This thread is 15 pages long and I only have time to read the first couple of pages. But, that is enough to know that there is a huge fight between parents who consider eating peanuts while climbing on the monkey bars to be a God-given right that will not be infringed and those who are not above physically assaulting someone in order to confiscate their snacks. Beyond that, rather than summarize the thread more accurately, I want to comment on two aspects of the responses that stuck out to me. The first is a topic that I may have brought up before in one of these posts, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. That is the importance of the first response. It has been a longtime observation of mine that the first response is often essential in setting the tone of the thread. In this case, the actual first response was the original poster adding more detail to the initial post. But, the next response was from a poster who essentially ignored the original poster's concerns and asked what she would do when the child goes to school or college, obviously unaware that accommodations for children with allergies are common in both. This poster continued opposing even the most mild of sacrifices and made clear that she wasn't interested in anyone's issues but her own. I think this clearly established the tone of the thread right from the start. The second thing that stood out to me involves the same poster. Admittedly, DCUM can be a pretty rough place at times with posters often being unnecessarily harsh. Frequently, this is blamed on the region's culture with residents of the DC-area being described as unkind or overly competitive. The original poster was even guilty of this, alluding to "dog eat dog D.C.". But, the poster responsible for the negative posts and who adamantly insisted nobody mattered but her was not posting from the DC area and appears to be a couple of states away. In my experience, actual DC people are more than willing to make reasonable accommodations for children with allergies and I would hate for this thread to give the opposite impression based mostly on the unrepresentative posts of someone from outside the area.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Conservative confusion over schools" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster has composed a thoughtful post describing how Republican elected officials such as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have exploited fears over public schools to their electoral advantage. Much of what the original poster touches upon has been discussed in other threads that I've summarized, but the original poster provides cohesive overview of what has been happening. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't notice this thread, which was just started yesterday, until now and it has already reached 15 pages. I don't have time to read the entire thread, but from what I did read, the discussion has mostly gone as one would expect. Certainly, many of the liberals that dominate DCUM agree with the original poster. What is notable, however, is the nature of the conservative response. Conservatives, at least as I saw in this thread, don't seem capable of addressing the issues raised by the original poster directly. Instead, the conservative reaction is one that is worth being looked at more fully. Republicans have a well-established opposition to public education. More recently, Republican operatives, especially Chris Rufo, discovered that fanning parent concerns about public schools could be turned to their political advantage. Rufo explicitly turned Critical Race Theory (CRT), something that he acknowledged that he doesn't even understand, into a major controversy which, in part, propelled Youngkin into the governor's seat. The Republican strategy has been to either outright invent horror stories involving schools or massively distort the reality. They've found that if they can get their story out first, corrections or explanations of the truth generally get drowned out. This manufactured "truth" not only lives on, it becomes accepted reality within conservative circles. This "realty" is then used to justify Republican attacks on public education. The upshot is that the Republican response to what the original poster describes is to talk about "groomers", "pedophiles", and CRT, with very little of what they are discussing having a firm basis in reality. The real world impact of DeSantis' actions, in particular, is mostly ignored.