Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Private Schools Wokeness Over the Top" and posted in the "Private/Independent Schools" forum. The topic of "wokeness" in schools in general and private schools in particular has been well-covered but those interested in the topic never seem to tire of it. This thread managed to reach 19 pages in less than a day. As the title suggests, the original poster is concerned about "wokeness" in private schools. The original poster admits that since her children are young, she hasn't experienced any of the things about which she is worried. Nevertheless, she feels lost and not sure where she fits in. The poster, who describes herself as "Muslim" and "Arab" and explicitly attributes her views on imperialism to her ethnicity condemns identity politics while simultaneously engaging in it. Moreover, as early as the first page of the thread, the original poster prefaced one of her posts by saying, "Not OP but...". I am not sure whether the original poster identifies as a sock puppet, but the label would appear to fit. The original poster's primary gripe about "wokeness" is that, in her understanding at least, it ignores class. I am not sure why the original poster is surprised that institutions that charge more per year than most people can afford to spend on a car and for whom a primary selling point is the opportunity to avoid public school riffraff are not focused on class. Then again, I don't know why a poster who proclaims herself a staunch proponent of mass solidarity would be interested in the selective environments of private schools in the first place. The original poster goes on to provide reductive and simplistic interpretations of the writings of progressive authors which she criticizes as being reductive and simplistic. Eventually this thread got hijacked by debates about transgender people and Barri Weiss. So, a discussion that wasn't that interesting to begin with got even worse. I suspect that I'll need to lock this thread before long.

The next most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "Marrying a nice rich guy", the original poster asks whether anyone has married a nice, rich guy who they met after age 28. I feel like there have been a large number of similar threads lately, but it didn't look like this poster posted any of them. On the other hand, the original poster does seem to post from the perspective of a number of different identities which include everything from a divorced 39-year-old female struggling with dating to a man who has been in a several months long relationship. So, who knows what to believe? Nevertheless, it doesn't look like the original poster even posted in the thread again after starting it. Instead, the thread takes off with arguments about "gold diggers" and the risks of pursing wealthy guys. I doubt there is anything new in this thread that hasn't been debated in the many earlier threads. So, I really don't have it in me to put much energy into discussing this thread.

Third yesterday was a thread titled, "We've been saving to move to upper NW..." and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. This thread is very similar to the one I discussed earlier this week about the increasing price of Real Estate, but with a specifically DC focus. As with the earlier thread, the original poster of this thread describes being unable to afford a house despite increasing purchasing ability because of rising real estate prices. I've only scanned the responses but it looks like they are a combination of posters commiserating with the original poster and others offering possible solutions. A few posters believe that the original poster should be able to find a house in the area that she is targeting, but she would have to lower her expectations in terms of square footage and probably consider an attached or semi-detached house. Other posters argue that she might have to leave DC proper and consider areas outside the city. There is an interesting discussion on how much where an individual lives is connected to self-identify. This will likely morph into a fight between living in DC versus the suburbs eventually.

The final thread at which I'll look was titled, "Which T30 colleges are your kids happy at ?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Yesterday I wrote about a thread about colleges that posters wouldn't recommend. This thread seems to be a reaction to that and other threads like it. The original poster asks which colleges provided good journeys as well as outcomes. For whatever reason, many posters disparage colleges rather than stick to the topic of the thread, But, I guess that is to be expected. There aren't really any big surprises here as far as I could tell. Just as in the earlier thread in which almost every college had a detractor or two, plenty of colleges have their fans in this one. The original poster arbitrary attempted to limit discussion to the top 30 universities, which caused some questioning by some of those who responded and caused debates about whether some of the institutions mentioned met that criteria. There are also a bunch of unrelated posts by posters whose one track minds apparently prevent them from posting about whatever issue with which they are currently obsessed regardless of its relevance.