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The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Having an overweight teenage daughter is so hard" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster is venting because her 16-year-old daughter is overweight and getting heavier day by day. The poster makes clear that she has not said anything to her daughter about this, but is concerned because her daughter gets very little exercise and, despite eating healthy food, has gone up 4 pants sizes in the past year. The original poster is very discouraged and not sure what, if anything, to do. One of the first things I learned after we started DCUM is how much the first response in a new thread can influence the resulting discussion. Another unhelpful phenomenon is a negative poster who joins the thread early and insists on contributing endlessly. This thread suffered from both of these blights. Not only the first, but also the second response were nearly identical suggestions that the original poster should herself get therapy. I thought that both responses were inappropriate due their implication that the original poster's concern was not valid. Moreover, one of the two posters turned out to be one of those who treats a DCUM thread the way a starved pitbull might treat a raw steak. Once she got her teeth into it, there was no way she was letting go. So, while other posters offered the original poster support and advice for how best to address the situation, this poster continued to focus her acrimony on the original poster. Thirteen pages in, she was still repeating the same criticisms of the original poster that she posted on the first page. As a result, the thread is as much a debate about the original poster as it is a discussion her daughter's weight gain. Weight, especially a woman's weight, is an extremely touchy subject on DCUM at the best of times. Add in an argumentative poster like the one I've described and it is no surprise that the thread was the most active of the day.