Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Dating a conservative" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster states that she is a woman who "is pretty progressive and liberal and works in gender equity" but has been dating a conservative man and wonders if there would be any long term issues with this relationship. The phrase "gender equity" in this post was a big red flag to me. Therefore I made a quick search for additional posts by the original poster in the thread and didn't find any. That was a second red flag. So I looked at the original poster's other threads. I am reasonably certain that the original poster is actually a man. Moreover, I think the poster has a habit of posting from the point of view of women with whom he is in a relationship. He seems to be struggling with dating and this may be an effort to better understand a woman's point of view. I haven't read much of this 14 page thread, but what I have read probably was disappointing to him if he was hoping for reassurance that a liberal woman might be happy dating a conservative man. I won't bother deleting or locking this thread at this point because, while it was probably started as a bit of a troll thread, the original poster has checked out. Whatever discussion is going on now is entirely between other posters.

The second most active thread yesterday was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Most over-ranked/under-ranked LACS on USNWR?", the original poster asks which liberal arts colleges are the most misplaced in the US News and World Report rankings. I assume that the original poster is referring to the USNWR "National Liberal Arts Colleges Rankings" and not the full national list, but she doesn't specify. Regardless, posters start tossing out names, with other posters immediately disputing some of the suggestions. My view of this thread, and others like it, was summed up by a post saying "There is extraordinarily little probability that you know anything about more than a very small number of those colleges other than vague notions of reputation." Exactly this. I suspect that colleges being named reflect the posters' own personal frame of reference and biases. Without knowing those, it is hard to evaluate the posters' opinions. In any case, the thread quickly diverged into a debate about merit aid. There were disputes about how merit aid was used, which schools provided it, whether it was fair or not, and so on. Of course, no education-related thread on DCUM would be complete without a poster complaining about colleges being "woke" and, in this thread, that poster was actually the original poster. When the original poster's arguments are broken down, it is exactly the colleges that she believes are too "woke" that she also believes are overrated. As such, the orignal poster might have more accurately titled this thread, "Which LACS on USNWR are too Woke?" However, I am fairly certainly we have already had several threads very similar to that.

In what I think is a first for this blog, the final two threads were both started by the same poster. I use the term "troll" to describe posters who intentionally attempt to provoke other posters, often by posting completely false threads. "Sock puppets" are those who reply to their own posts or participate in a thread in the guise of different posters. I think a third term is necessary to accurately describe the original poster of this thread and the next. Good terms might be "troll-lite" or "provocateur". They are trying to provoke, much like a troll, but not necessarily for nefarious purposes. It's just their way of starting a discusion. The first of these threads was titled, "Marriage is a horrible deal for women" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster argues that women do most of the domestic labor in the home, use their bodies for childbirth, and are responsible for most of the childcare. Unless a husband is rich, she questions what he brings anything to the table. This is a fairly inflammatory topic and the original poster does post twice more generally supporting her initial argument. But, I am hesitant to describe her as a troll exactly. Primarily, because in a 14 page thread, she was only responsible for three posts. I've only read the first page of the thread, and based on those posts, men suck regardless of their wealth. Posters either agree with the original poster that men don't add a lot to the equation or go even further to deny that a man's wealth changes things. According to those posters, even rich men don't bring anything beyond money to the relationship and most wealthy men are described as being even more controlling than poor ones (who would at least want their wives to work). So, if the original poster was having a man-hating type of day and wanted pages of posts to provide a cathartic experience, I think her mission was accomplished.

The second thread by the same original poster was also posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. It was titled, "Ladies, how did you meet your rich husband?" and, posted roughly two hours after the previous thread, is clearly related to it. In this thread, the original poster claims to be married to a wealthy man that she met in college. She describes him in very positive terms and claims to be very happy. There is a lot in this post to suggest that much, if not all, of it was made up. For instance, as the first poster to respond noted, the original poster describes her husband as doubling his salary from $200,000 to $400,00 in a single year. I can't find a single response in this thread from the original poster. So, much like the previous thread, she has tossed a match into a barrel of gasoline and moved on. But, unlike the previous thread, most posters didn't take this one particularly seriously. Instead, following the example of a similar thread from some time ago, they started answering with the plots of movies. I immediately recognized "Crazy Rich Asians". But, even more funny were the posts from those who took the thread seriously that were intermixed among the others. Just to show that some things on DCUM will never change, even Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton made appearances in the thread. I always suspected that they posted here. Similarly, there is an argument about whether the original poster's husband's $400k even qualifies him as being "rich". Based on the DCUM finances, that is upper middle class at best and after paying for private school, they can probably struggle to make ends meet.