Friday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the Christmas version of a thread that was one of the most active at Thanksgiving. Titled, "Petty Holiday Vent thread 2022" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum, the purpose of the thread apparently is to recount petty vents involving the holidays. I'm not a fan of this genre of threads which consists almost entirely of whining about, well, petty things. It would be one thing if the complaints were funny, but based on the few posts I bothered to read, they aren't. If your idea of fun on Christmas Eve is reading 14 pages of posts about mother-in-laws bringing opened milk containers to dinner or sending you unwanted gifts, then you are in luck because DCUM has come through for you. If you, like me, would rather have teeth pulled then read such a thread, then we are also lucky because there are plenty of other threads for us to read. Because that is exactly what I intend to do, I have nothing more to say about this thread.

The second most active thread was titled, "62 yo man killed in Silver Spring garage" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The thread is about the killing of Charles Reynolds of Silver Spring. Reynolds had just eaten dinner with his family at a downtown Silver Spring restaurant and was bringing leftovers to his car that was parked in the Wayne Avenue Parking Garage when he was shot and killed in a stairwell of the garage. Very little is known about the killing other than nothing appears to have been taken from the victim so the police have said that it was likely not a robbery. Crime has become a very political issue and in this time of highly polarized politics, posters tend to react from partisan perspectives. The thread almost immediately deteriorated into bickering about which political groups want more or less police deployed to Silver Spring, whether more police would be a good or bad thing, which high schools those who commit crimes are likely to attend and the racial makeup of those schools. Many news websites and local blogs have policies of not allowing comments on crime-related stories and threads like this demonstrate the reason for such decisions. As I write this, the current discussion in the thread is focused on the race of those stopped for traffic violations, which has, at best, an extremely tenuous relationship to the thread's topic. So, this thread may be getting locked soon.

Yesterday's third most active thread was posted in the "Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)" forum and titled, "TJ Failure to Notify Letter of Commendation Winners". I created the AAP forum at a time that I didn't know very much about advanced academic programs. The District of Columbia doesn't have such programs beyond a small number of application-only high schools. But, advanced programs are a big deal in Maryland and, especially, in Virginia. In Virginia, much of the focus on advanced education is on Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, often simply called "TJ". It would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that this forum should be renamed the "TJ Forum" given how much of the forum's discussion is devoted that school. TJ has been enmeshed in several controversies over the years. The biggest involves changes to the school's admissions policies aimed at admitting a more diverse student population. These changes have been labeled by some as anti-Asian. As a result, almost everything about the school these days is viewed through a prism of the past controversies. Any change is criticized as "woke", "racist", and aimed at hurting Asian students. Opponents to changes are generally accused of being elitist, also racist (but against black and Hispanic students rather than Asians), and politically right-wing, especially MAGAs. This thread links to an article by Asra Nomani accusing TJ administrators of withholding notifications to students that they have been recognized as Commended Students by the National Merit Society. Nomani is a prominent right-wing critic of changes at TJ and goes to great lengths to spin this issue as part of "equity" efforts on the part of the school system. Her article is so convoluted as a result as her determination to frame the issue within her partisan perspective that it is hard to devine the actual facts. As best as I can tell, the school didn't withhold notification entirely, but notified students in a way that many recipients missed the notification. The school system has admitted error and promised to correct things in the future. There is also some disagreement in the thread about the importance of this recognition in the first place.

The final thread at which I'll look today was titled, "60 yr old woman eaten by shark while snorkeling in Hawaii" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread is destined to become a DCUM classic. Multiple posts are prefaced with the declaration that "Only on DCUM" would something had been said. As the title says, the thread is about a 60 year old woman who was apparently eaten by a shark while snorkeling in Hawaii. But, the particular DCUM treatment of this story is something to behold. An early comment that the victim looked great for her age and much younger than 60 sparked a debate that continued throughout the thread. While some posters found this comment to be crass, others hoped that the same would be said about them in the event of their own tragic deaths. The original poster was criticized for linking to an article about the event in the Daily Mail, a publication that is much derided on DCUM (and deservedly so in my opinion). Some posters blamed conservationists for shark attacks while others blamed over-fishing and said we need more conservation. One poster related a first-hand story of nearly being attacked by a shark while snorkling and provided advice about how to react to sharks encountered while swimming. Apparently, my preferred response of swimming like mad in the opposite direction is the exact opposite of what you should do. One poster currently in Hawaii provided an update from the scene. Several posters were skeptical that this was really a shark attack and given the DCUM tendency to suspect husbands and men in general, suspicion was focused on the husband. Others wondered how he had managed to coordinate with the shark which eye witnesses had reported seeing when the woman disappeared. If it wasn't the husband, posters agreed, it was probably a male shark.