Sunday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday was a day on which people around the world gathered around their televisions for one of the most watched events of the year: the broadcast of Super Bowl commercials. So naturally, the most active thread on DCUM was titled, "Super Bowl commercials". Posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, the thread managed to rack up 13 pages in just over 12 hours. Pretty amazing considering that most of our users were asleep during much of that time. Started with a prompt by the original poster to discuss the commercials, the thread is mostly a collection of opinions about the ads that appeared during the football game. Many users expressed dissatisfaction with all of the ads, opining that none of them were very good. Others found favorites, with the Dunkin' commercial being praised by several posters. Probably the most controversial ads of the evening were the "He Gets Us" ads promoting Jesus. Many posters pointed to the right-wing, evangelical Christian groups behind the ads, especially the family that owns Hobby Lobby. This provoked criticism from both liberal-leaning and anti-religious posters. However, posters who supported the message of the ads spoke up to defend them. Two commercials that featured dogs, one by the Farmer's Dog and the other from Amazon, were lauded by multiple posters. The Remy Martin ad featuring Serena Williams provoked some debate over the appropriateness of an athlete promoting an alcoholic beverage. At some point the thread was temporarily hijacked by discussion of the half time show and Rihanna's apparent pregnancy, though there was an entire separate thread devoted to that topic. One or two posters even posted about the game that periodically interrupted the commercials.

Just when I thought we had put Christmas-related threads behind us, another one has already popped up. Posted in the "Family Relationships" forum and titled, "How to explain to Ils that parents don’t want to share Christmas", the original poster says that her in-laws love spending Christmas with her family, once even joining when it was hosted by the original poster's parents some distance away. The original poster's parents have now asked to have a Christmas in which the in-laws were not included. The original poster understands that her husband will need to be responsible for discussing this with his parents, but she would like advice for how to handle it. The thread is 11 pages long and I don't have the energy to slog through it. I am actually surprised that anyone could find 11 pages worth of things to talk about on this topic. Whether there is any useful advice in the thread for the original poster's husband will forever be a mystery for me, but feel free to read the thread if it interests you.

Next was a thread titled, "US has shot down 2 more objects since the balloon. What do you think they are?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Last week, one of the most active threads that I discussed was about the Chinese surveillance balloon that transited the US before being shot down off the US east coast. Subsequent to that, two more objects were identified — one in Alaska and one in Canada — and shot down by the US Air Force. At least one more object was located and downed, but frankly, I've lost count of the total at this point. The original poster wants to know if we should be worried by these objects. Responses include both those from posters who are concerned about what is going on and from those who think that it is no big deal. The government has offered scant details about the objects, which has spurred suspicions and provoked conspiracy theories. During the earlier balloon incident, President Joe Biden was criticized for not having the balloon shot down earlier. Now, however, he received praise from his supporters. But, Biden's detractors still found reason to fault him. Some posters went so far as to imply that nothing had actually been shot down this time and it was all a face-saving gesture by the President. When a top US General was asked if the objects could involve aliens and responded by saying that he had not ruled anything out, it provoked considerable discussion within the thread. Other discussion focused on why these objects are suddenly being discovered now and whether that was something for which Biden should be blamed or something for which he could take credit.

The final thread at which I'll look today was titled, "Is Rhianna pregnant" and was posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. The thread was started by a poster who was obviously watching the Super Bowl Half Time show and was confused about the state of Rihanna's body. She was not alone as several posters replied saying that they also shared such suspicions and some had been Googling just that question. Eventually, Rihanna's pregnancy was confirmed and there was brief discussion of that. However, the thread then turned to discussing her show. Overwhelmingly, posters were disappointed. Even several self-professed Rihanna fans found the show lacking. There were complaints that she didn't dance, criticism that she may have lip-synched in parts, arguments that her song choices were terrible, and that the show was boring, etc. Some posters claimed that it was among the worst half time shows that they could remember. A smaller number of posters enjoyed the show and both defended Rihanna and praised her performance. Ultimately, however, I suspect that the show will be remembered more as a pregnancy announcement than for its entertainment value.