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Friday and Saturday's Most Active Threads
The topics with the most engagement over the past two days included the killing of Tyre Nichols, UMD Early Admissions, differing reactions to mothers who kill their children, and LGBTQ students in middle school.
Because I wasn't able to write a blog post yesterday, today I'll cover the most active threads of the last two days. The most active thread of that period was titled, "Memphis Cops Kill Motorist After Traffic Stop" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Obviously this thread is about the death of Tyre Nichols caused by a beating at the hands of Memphis police officers. The thread was actually started back on January 20, but didn't receive a single reply until the 27th when the media began publicizing the imminent release of body worn camera video. In the two days since, the thread has reached 36 pages. I haven't read all of the pages but it looks like much of the thread consists of debates about what exactly the videos show with some posters thinking that the videos document an unprovoked killing and others arguing that Nichols failed to obey police instructions. Just as in the case of much of the media coverage, considerable attention is paid to the possibility of riots with some posters appearing to be nearly salivating at the chance that liberals would burn down cities. Those posters later hyped any incident consisting of more than a raised voice and even invented a few riots about which to complain. One thing I noticed about this thread was how cynical most posters appeared regarding the criminal charges lodged against the police officers who had been involved in the beating. Almost nobody seemed to accept the possibility that the charges reflected the proper application of the law. Most posters suspected an ulterior motive for the charges even if they couldn't agree on what that motive was. Some posters attributed the charges to an effort to head off riots. Some thought the quick filing of charges was due to the officers being black and suggested that white officers would not have been charged so rapidly. As you would expect of a thread of this length, there are numerous disagreements that are keeping the thread going.