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Wednesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Apr 20, 2023 01:59 PM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included a warning that a daughter is a “mean girl”, a troll thread about a cancelled trip to New York, Young Republican clubs in MCPS, and what happened to millennial men?

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "I got an email telling me my daughter is a mean girl." and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster explains that she received an anonymous email saying that her teen daughter is a "mean girl" who gossips and excludes others. The original poster says that she knows that her daughter is popular and is sometimes frustrated by expectations that she be everyone's friend, but does not have a feeling that she is a mean girl. The original poster asks for advice about what to do. This is a 14 page thread and I've only read a few pages of it. Based on that limited exposure, I am inclined to say that the original poster is one of the most level-headed participants in the thread. She is neither ruling out nor completely accepting the accusations in the email. While she recognizes that her daughter has faults and is therefore willing to consider the possibility that she is a mean girl, the original poster doesn't feel like the email is sufficient evidence of this being true. Some posters were prepared to accept the email as fact and declare the child a certified mean girl and, by implication, her mother a bad parent. Others were more skeptical, suggesting nefarious explanations for the email in which the original poster's daughter was more a victim than a victimizer. Much of the discussion in this thread is less about how to react to the email and more about the appropriateness of anonymous emails. Quite a few posters view this as a completely valid means of communication while others are critical of both the practice and those who condone it. Personally, as a recipient of many generous, but unlikely to be true, proposals from random Nigerian governmental officials, I don't trust anything that comes in email these days.

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