Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "The 'White People Are Mosquitoes' Video in FCPS" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. The right-wing has perfected the art of manufactured outrage. This is particularly true around school issues, this thread being one example. The original poster launches things with the falsehood that, in the video, "white people are mosquitos". This is not only falsely stated in her subject line, but repeated in the body of her post. The video neither says nor implies that the mosquitos represent white people. The video twice says that microaggressions are mosquito bites, but the mosquitos themselves are not identified beyond merely being mosquitos. Since anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, is capable of committing a microagression, there is no basis for the original poster's allegation. Second, the original poster says that the video suggests that minorities "reasonably could engage in violence against white people". This is also misleading. To repeat, the mosquitos don't represent "white people". Moreover, to interpret the part of the video in which the narrator says that microaggressions can be so annoying that it makes "you want to go ballistic" as condoning violence requires a certain amount of willful ignorance. In reality, the video is a creative attempt to communicate the harm potentially caused by microaggressions. Whether the reaction to the video by the original poster is an authentic fear that white people are the real victims of efforts to combat racism or just a manufactured reaction based on political partisanship is not clear. But one thing that is clear is that the performative outrage around school issues mostly gets oxygen due to social media platforms including, in its limited role, DCUM. I am not at all comfortable with our forums being used in such a manner. As this thread ultimately demonstrates, the original poster's attempt to portray white people as victims is immediately exploited as a justification for racism by white people. Which, if not the actual goal of the thread, was an easily foreseeable outcome.

More often than I wish, there are threads that make me ask, "why would anyone post this?" Then, unfortunately, I am often provoked to ask, "why would anyone reply to this?" In the worst instances, as in the case of this thread, I end up asking, "how did this thread get to be among the most active?" Originally posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum, the thread was titled, "Class mom communicates with her law firm work email but forgets to inform teacher's birthday". Since the thread involves schools, I moved it to the "Schools and Education General Discussion" forum. The original poster writes that there is a class mom who exclusively uses her law firm email which includes her title. The class mom recently forgot about the teacher's birthday. Moreover, the original poster considers the class mom not be a nice person. Where to begin? Who cares if the woman uses her work email? Who cares if it includes her title? Who celebrates teacher's birthdays? I've never heard of that happening. Nobody can comment on whether or why you don't find her to be nice. My final question is why did you post such an inane message? I can't bring myself to wade through the 10 pages of this thread, but as best I can tell, much of its length is attributed to posters arguing about whether teacher's birthdays are celebrated or not. Please, for the love of God, find something more interesting to discuss.

The third most active thread yesterday was titled, "fewer spots available for next year?" and posted in the "Private/Independent Schools" forum. The original poster quotes a message from Georgetown Day School saying that due to increased enrollment and a decrease in the number of students leaving, GDS is over its enrollment cap and, as a result, it will admit fewer students next year. The original poster asks if this will be the case at other schools as well? This thread is 11 pages long and while I think it is probably interesting to those considering independent schools, it is not interesting to me. So, I've only read a few posts here and there. It looks like there is general agreement that admissions to private and independent schools across Metropolitan DC will be constrained during the current admissions season. There is an argument that began on page 1 and inexplicably is still continuing on page 11 about whether families are having more kids these days. Those who believe they are consider this one factor for admissions spots being limited. But, there are posters who are determined to argue current family size statistics to the death. A similar argument is taking place involving traffic generated by GDS, particularly during drop-offs and pickups. This diverges into DC politics and even ropes in Janney School for some reason. GDS is housed on a new campus that was controversial during its development. DC's Ward 3 tends to be especially touchy about development issues and GDS has always attracted a significant number of detractors on DCUM. Combine Ward 3 NIMBYs with GDS-haters and you get this sort of thread.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "I’m wandering the aisles of Walmart….AMA", I almost skipped discussing this thread because it kind of ridiculous. But, its also kind of fun. The original poster says she is wandering around the nearly empty aisles of Walmart and welcomes any questions. Predictably, questions range from the practical such as "How much is the cheapest dozen eggs?" to the somewhat mean like, "How many People of Walmart poster children can you count?" to those only DCUM insiders will understand such as, "Did you bring your passport?". A scold asks, "How do you feel shopping at a store that refuses to pay fair wages...", starting a squabble that continues throughout the thread. In fact, this discussion eventually took over the thread, taking the fun out of it. Before the thread was swamped in politics and debates about capitalism, the original poster dutifully answered as many questions as she could. One poster asked about the number of people wearing masks, to which the original poster answered that about 50 percent were masked. This, of course, inspired an argument about COVID and mask wearing because some people will never miss such an opportunity.