Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Strange comment" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster explains that her mother-in-law gave her husband a check for $1,000 as a birthday gift. When the original poster's husband opened the card containing the check, apparently in the presence of both his wife and mother, the original poster immediately proclaimed that they could use the money for their ongoing home renovations. The original poster's mother-in-law interjected to say that the gift was for her son and that he would decide how to spend it. The original poster was upset by that remark and now wants an apology. In the two pages of replies that I have read, every single one of them sided with the mother-in-law. Given the normal treatment of mother-in-laws in the family forum, that is fairly incredible. One would think that the original poster would get the message and accept that she was wrong. But, in that case, the thread would not have reached the 18 pages it managed to accumulate in less than a day and I probably would not be writing about it now. So, no, the original poster did not accept that she was wrong. To the contrary, she continued to argue that she was perfectly justified in making a unilateral decision about what her husband would do with his gift. I don't have time to read all 18 pages but I jumped to the last page and see that the original poster is still arguing this morning. Therefore, this thread may continue for a while.

The next most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "Incident on FCPS middle school bus", the original poster linked to a news report about an attack by one middle school student on another that occurred on a school bus. Since the original poster did not provide any information about the attack other than one comment that really didn't clarify anything, I'll try to describe the event as best I can. The news report includes a video showing one student first hitting and then choking another student. The attacker was subsequently suspended from school. In addition, the victim's parents pressed charges and obtained a protective order requiring the attacker stay at least 50 feet away from the victim. However, the two students continue to come within fairly close contact with each other at school and it turns out that the school system is not responsible for enforcing protective orders. Much of the discussion in this thread focuses on whether the response to the attack has been appropriate. Many posters do not believe that the attacker should have been allowed to return to the school. Moreover, quite a few posters strongly advocate in favor of a punitive approach to addressing incidents of this nature. Other posters stress that the attacker is a child and, while punishment is certainly appropriate, it should not be the primary focus. Instead, the attacker should be given support to overcome behavioral issues. I spent considerable time removing posts from this thread that fixated on race. Really, the entire thread is colored by the races of those involved which is unfortunate. But, the overt focus on race became so bad that I eventually locked the thread.

The third most active thread is one that I suspect a number of readers have been gleefully hoping to see. Titled, "I want my thread removed after your write up" and posted in the "Website Feedback" forum, the original poster was upset by my description yesterday of a thread that she started. She felt that I had mocked her and been mean-spirited and, therefore, wanted me to remove her original thread, my summary of it, and the thread I am now discussing. In response, the original poster was lambasted pretty severely by other posters, creating enough interest in the second thread that we are now getting meta and summarizing her protest of a summary. A number of other posters sided with the original poster and criticized my posts as mischaracterizing their threads, mocking them, or otherwise upsetting them. To those who think I have been unfair or even mean, I apologize. My goal with these posts is to be both informative and fun. The fun part often results in being flippant or snarky and I certainly understand how that might not be well-received when directed at a thread into which a lot of effort has been put. At the same time, I can't necessarily promise to do better. I write these posts very quickly, mostly just putting my honest reaction to a thread into words as fast as possible without much thought. If my reaction to a thread is that it is inane, that's what I'm going to write. It should be clear that is my personal reaction and definitely not reflective of everyone else's reaction. If these posts have established anything, it should be that my interests are much different than those of a significant number of our posters. So, please don't take it too seriously. If I get something wrong, which I am sure that I do at times, call me out on it. I am far from infallible and occasional reminders of that fact certainly wouldn't hurt me.

Speaking of inane threads and just to demonstrate that I haven't learned anything from yesterday's admonitions, the last thread I'll discuss today was titled, "Why do we have to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This poster is either DCUM's current trolling champion or someone with far too much time on her hands. She routinely posts multiple threads per day, posting four, including this one, yesterday alone. This is the second of her threads about which I've written just this week. The original poster doesn't like celebrating St. Patrick's Day because she doesn't drink, is not Irish, and has trouble remembering to wear green. There is not a lot of sympathy for the original poster found in the responses. Most posters don't share her feeling of being pressured to celebrate the holiday and suggest that she can just ignore it. Nor are most of those responding aware of anyone being harassed for not wearing green, something the original poster claims to have repeatedly happened to her. The original poster attributes much of her distain for St. Patrick's Day to major depression from which she suffers. In that case, I hate to pile on, but criticizing a day that many people find fun and enjoyable is probably only going to make things worse. I haven't read much of this thread but it seems mostly repetitious. There are a few divergences in which posters discuss other holidays. Also, there are other posters who don't celebrate, so the original poster is not alone.

Note: Tomorrow I will not being writing a summary of the most active posts. Instead, I will be devoting the blog to a personal matter that is neither fun nor entertaining, but is of some importance to me. Everything should be back to normal on Saturday.