Wednesday's Most Active Threads

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.

The second most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Things I don’t understand why anyone likes", the thread is another example of the genre of negative threads that I find very unproductive. In fact, were I to post in this thread, my answer would be "Threads like this one." This type of thread normally becomes little more than an excuse for posters to be as insulting as possible, resulting in a lot of unnecessary negativity. Posters in this thread tended to simply list things they don't like, rather than things that they don't understand why other like them. But, to its credit, this thread stayed mostly reasonable with many posters not appearing to take things very seriously. One poster listed "Taylor Swift", and was completely ignored. Swifties must still be on hold waiting to buy tickets from Ticketmaster. The two topics that I noticed getting some debate were long flights and dogs, both of which had their fans in addition to their detractors. I am very surprised that this thread made it to 15 pages without turning into a dumpster fire.

Third was a thread titled, "If you are of European descent…" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Despite this thread reaching 10 pages in less than a day, I did not notice it until just now. I have to say that it turned out to be a lot different than I expected. Seeing the title, I expect the first post to be something along the lines of "...are you surprised that Americans refrigerate their eggs?" Instead, the original poster describes her feeling that she should return to the land of her ancestors — in her case Germany or Norway — where she might have a stronger feeling of belonging and to leave the US to its indigenous inhabitants and descendants of slaves. Clearly a post of this nature is going to be triggering to DCUM's more nationalistic posters. But, they must obviously face a certain cognitive dissonance when encountering a person who they instinctively want to tell to "go back where you came from" but being unable to because that's exactly what the poster wants. Instead many posters remind the original poster that the countries of her ancestry likely wouldn't want her. Several posters respond that despite foreign ancestry and criticisms of the US, they feel American and have no interest in leaving. Others posters explain that their ancestors often were forced to leave their native countries due to persecution or other factors which make returning unattractive. A common trend I see among those who are reluctant to admit to America's warts is to claim that whatever the US has done wrong historically, other countries have done worse. Others argue that the original poster should stay in the US and work to bring about positive change. This provokes an obvious white supremacist to question why policies should be reshaped to help people who mostly were not here 50 years ago.

The final thread at which I'll look was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "URMs Feeling Pressure to Prove Themselves", the original poster says her child is from an underrepresented minority family and achieved high stats leading to acceptance by sought-after universities. However, even though the original poster is aware of white students with similar stats being admitted to similar universities, the original poster has encountered parents saying that her child has an easier time getting into college because of the child's minority status. As a result, the original poster feels that her child must constantly prove that they belong at a prestigious university. There are a significant number of posters in the college forum who simply lose their minds regarding any topic dealing with race, affirmative action, or minorities. Several posters argue that it is true that the original poster's child will have advantages. Another poster refuses to believe that anyone would say such a thing despite, as I just noted, several posts already posted that say exactly that. Other posters commiserate with the original poster, often relating their own experiences as URMs. I haven't read enough of this thread to understand exactly why (though I can guess from experience), but a considerable portion of the thread appears to be devoted to Asian-Americans and the ways in which they experience discrimination. Apparently the point they are making is that the original poster should appreciate that her kid was able to obtain a place that should have gone to a better qualified Asian. This more or less proves the original poster's point.