Real question… is DCUM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Urban Moms and Dads active zip codes. And I know for a fact some relatively high level people are on here and I bet the % of influential people on this board are pretty high conmpared to another random area. NOt saying the people on DCUM are running the world tho

The irony here....

What should bother you is that the high-powered people can't figure out to order pizza, boil water, or use a gift card.

DP. How is that surprising? The only advice anyone ever has on here is outsource, divorce, or seek therapy/meds. These are not people who never learned to work through life’s common road bumps. So much focus on GPAs and HHIs and Big 3s and top 10 universities, and not an ounce of common sense.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Urban Moms and Dads active zip codes. And I know for a fact some relatively high level people are on here and I bet the % of influential people on this board are pretty high conmpared to another random area. NOt saying the people on DCUM are running the world tho

The irony here....

What should bother you is that the high-powered people can't figure out to order pizza, boil water, or use a gift card.

DP. How is that surprising? The only advice anyone ever has on here is outsource, divorce, or seek therapy/meds. These are not people who never learned to work through life’s common road bumps. So much focus on GPAs and HHIs and Big 3s and top 10 universities, and not an ounce of common sense.

Correcting my own post to say these are not people who ever learned, not never learned. Important distinction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster. You can't have a realistic conversation on there.

A fair amount of posts are bored people trolling or creating hypothetical problems for the fun of it.

The money forum seems to have an average HHI of $1M.

There's kids posting on here pretending to be adults.

I'm not sure if it's less interesting or that there's only so many times you can have a thread on any given topic and after so many years it feels like you've heard everything already. Several times.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

+1000

It's been that way since Trump was elected - sometimes getting slightly better, then devolving again into something much worse. As a Jewish person who has never been hawkish on Israel but also doesn't like being called a dirty Zionist for thinking that Israel does maybe have some right to protect itself against terrorism, I would say the Gaza threads really epitomize this lately.

[Anonymous]

I honestly think this is just the internet, in general. It's way more accessible now and it's more mainstream to use social media, visit forums, blogs, etc.

But fwiw I don't find DCUM to be a reflection of my actual real life in DC AT ALL. It's a resource for info (sometimes), but I treat it for what it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

I agree that the censorship has lessened greatly.

DCUM has always been highly censored and if anything has become more so in the last 5-6 years, it just depends on what your views are. One side is hardly ever censored where the most wild things are posts and they gain traction, the other side sneezes and is blocked and posts deleted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

I agree that the censorship has lessened greatly.

DCUM has always been highly censored and if anything has become more so in the last 5-6 years, it just depends on what your views are. One side is hardly ever censored where the most wild things are posts and they gain traction, the other side sneezes and is blocked and posts deleted.

No one sane wants to read your “alternate facts”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

I agree that the censorship has lessened greatly.

DCUM has always been highly censored and if anything has become more so in the last 5-6 years, it just depends on what your views are. One side is hardly ever censored where the most wild things are posts and they gain traction, the other side sneezes and is blocked and posts deleted.

No one sane wants to read your “alternate facts”.

I consider myself pragmatically in the middle and politically agnostic (which I suppose makes me a fascist in the eyes of some and a dummy in the eyes of others). I agree censorship has lessened. During most of the COVID years a lot of threads about covid, the origin of covid, Fauci and CDC and the vaccines were heavily censored to prevent criticism. And the other topic I've seen less censoring is sexual/gender identity, mainly trans. There was a period when you just could not talk about trans except in the most positive manner but I've seen posts openly critical of trans ideologies survive that wouldn't have been the case a few years ago.

This forum is heavily to the left, whether moderately center left Bill Clinton old school Democrats or to the far left rainbow queer identities and full out Trump Derangement Syndrome. There are some "Maga" but they are a distinct minority and half the time someone is accused of being "Maga" it's a far left person disagreeing with anyone to the slight right of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster. You can't have a realistic conversation on there.

A fair amount of posts are bored people trolling or creating hypothetical problems for the fun of it.

The money forum seems to have an average HHI of $1M.

There's kids posting on here pretending to be adults.

I'm not sure if it's less interesting or that there's only so many times you can have a thread on any given topic and after so many years it feels like you've heard everything already. Several times.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

+1000

It's been that way since Trump was elected - sometimes getting slightly better, then devolving again into something much worse. As a Jewish person who has never been hawkish on Israel but also doesn't like being called a dirty Zionist for thinking that Israel does maybe have some right to protect itself against terrorism, I would say the Gaza threads really epitomize this lately.

^ But yes, I also agree with the PP that some DSA types seem to have taken it over recently. They did last election cycle, too, though - kept insisting that we couldn't win with Biden because he wasn't Bernie. I guess since Trump, it seems like the forum swings between MAGA dummies taking it over, and DSA types. I'm sure it's just that I notice those people's posts more, but it would be nice if normal people could have a normal conversation there every once in a while.

I'd like to have normal conversations on everything. Politics, race, religion, fashion, you name it. Some people get so offended about everything (especially ethnicity type questions on culture and norms) and discussions are shut down. As someone said earlier, we do want whackos and conspiracy folks shut down, especially covid deniers, etc. I think a good job is done in that sense. It's not that subjective. Those are pretty obvious.

[Anonymous]

There seems to be an uptick in trolling responses, commenters who pretend to be someone else or make absurd nonsense commentary. I see it on teen and college forum, elsewhere as well I’m sure.

[Anonymous]

The quality of any internet site, or of any community for that matter, converges over time unless there is some sort of filtering mechanism to keep out low-quality posters/people. Back in the day, it was not so easy to get on the internet, so posters were filtered for a certain baseline level of intelligence. Other sites were protected by the niche nature of their subject matter. The glory days of UB and YBM, for example, were when they were super NYC focused. (Even those of us in DC were entertained by clever flame wars about which UES playgroup best positioned one’s DC for the preschool admissions process.) DCUM is a victim of its own success, and while Mr. Steele does a great job here, any modestly successful Internet forum eventually drowns in noise. Sic transit gloria mundi.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The quality of any internet site, or of any community for that matter, converges over time unless there is some sort of filtering mechanism to keep out low-quality posters/people. Back in the day, it was not so easy to get on the internet, so posters were filtered for a certain baseline level of intelligence. Other sites were protected by the niche nature of their subject matter. The glory days of UB and YBM, for example, were when they were super NYC focused. (Even those of us in DC were entertained by clever flame wars about which UES playgroup best positioned one’s DC for the preschool admissions process.) DCUM is a victim of its own success, and while Mr. Steele does a great job here, any modestly successful Internet forum eventually drowns in noise. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Sorry, converges to zero.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

I agree that the censorship has lessened greatly.

DCUM has always been highly censored and if anything has become more so in the last 5-6 years, it just depends on what your views are. One side is hardly ever censored where the most wild things are posts and they gain traction, the other side sneezes and is blocked and posts deleted.

No one sane wants to read your “alternate facts”.

I consider myself pragmatically in the middle and politically agnostic (which I suppose makes me a fascist in the eyes of some and a dummy in the eyes of others). I agree censorship has lessened. During most of the COVID years a lot of threads about covid, the origin of covid, Fauci and CDC and the vaccines were heavily censored to prevent criticism. And the other topic I've seen less censoring is sexual/gender identity, mainly trans. There was a period when you just could not talk about trans except in the most positive manner but I've seen posts openly critical of trans ideologies survive that wouldn't have been the case a few years ago.

This forum is heavily to the left, whether moderately center left Bill Clinton old school Democrats or to the far left rainbow queer identities and full out Trump Derangement Syndrome. There are some "Maga" but they are a distinct minority and half the time someone is accused of being "Maga" it's a far left person disagreeing with anyone to the slight right of them.

Like I said, no one wants to read “alternate facts”. Fortunately, Jeff deletes the nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The political forum is a disaster.

On the whole, it's not bad. I've noticed that, if anything, there's less censorship and moderation going on compared to even a year ago. There were certain protected topics that you just could not have a pragmatic discussion without getting censored and banned.

I agree that the censorship has lessened greatly.

DCUM has always been highly censored and if anything has become more so in the last 5-6 years, it just depends on what your views are. One side is hardly ever censored where the most wild things are posts and they gain traction, the other side sneezes and is blocked and posts deleted.

No one sane wants to read your “alternate facts”.

I consider myself pragmatically in the middle and politically agnostic (which I suppose makes me a fascist in the eyes of some and a dummy in the eyes of others). I agree censorship has lessened. During most of the COVID years a lot of threads about covid, the origin of covid, Fauci and CDC and the vaccines were heavily censored to prevent criticism. And the other topic I've seen less censoring is sexual/gender identity, mainly trans. There was a period when you just could not talk about trans except in the most positive manner but I've seen posts openly critical of trans ideologies survive that wouldn't have been the case a few years ago.

This forum is heavily to the left, whether moderately center left Bill Clinton old school Democrats or to the far left rainbow queer identities and full out Trump Derangement Syndrome. There are some "Maga" but they are a distinct minority and half the time someone is accused of being "Maga" it's a far left person disagreeing with anyone to the slight right of them.

Right-wing troll here: the problem is the low quality of most right wing trolls here. Mr. Steele actually moderates with a very light hand, and so long as you are clever and reasonably well-informed, he lets a lot go. It’s more fun that he bans a lot of the lower-quality right wingers here, anyway—like when Howard Stern was on terrestrial radio and you got to see just how far he could push the envelope without getting punished by the FCC. Actually the removal of the worst right-wing posts does the rest of us a service by screening out the riff-raff.