The Most Active Threads since Friday

I take the weekend off from this blog and wavered over whether to take today off as well since it is a holiday. I've decided to go ahead but looking at the the threads I will have to cover, I'm already regretting the decision. As such, I'll keep things short today. Many of the most active threads over the past three days have already been covered and, therefore, I'll skip them. That is sort of leaving me with the junior varsity threads. The first of those was titled, "People you know that died in a freak accident. What happened?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster doesn't offer much information about what she wants from this thread other than fuel for her "existential anxiety". The thread is 19 pages long so I am not going to read the whole thing. From what I can tell, however, posters have listed several usual deaths. In many cases, those deaths involved people the posters knew, others they had simply heard about second or third-hand. I see a number of clearly made-up posts with some describing scenes from movies or TV shows. This is really not my type of thread so that's all I'll say about it.

The next thread that I'll discuss was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "3% raise for teachers? What a joke FCPS!", the original poster does not believe that 3% raise being offered to Fairfax Country Public Schools teachers will be sufficient to attract and retain talented teachers. You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict how this thread will go. The near-universal consensus on DCUM is that teachers are overpaid, lazy, lack intelligence, and are probably grooming our kids to become transgender. They are expected to work 24/7, never complain, and show nothing but appreciation for their circumstances because they have summers off. Teachers should expect little sympathy regarding pay raises and, in this thread, that's exactly what they get. As one of the first to respond says, "Boo boo. Plenty of people are getting less". One poster pointed out that eligible teachers will also get a step increase. A few lonely voices speak up to express support for teachers, but by and large this thread appears to mostly consist of parents explaining to teachers just how great teachers have it and teachers trying to explain the reality which sounds like it sucks. I don't think there has been a single post on DCUM about teaching that makes me anything other than pessimistic about the future of education in America and this thread does nothing to change that.

For some reason, topics about affairs have taken over the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. I wrote about one such thread in my post Friday and another one was among the most active since then. This is titled, "If you had an affair with a married person". The original poster says that she has been approached by married men with romantic interests in her but is never receptive out of respect for their spouses. She couldn't do that to another woman, she says. She would like to know more about the thinking of those who do have such affairs. There are a lot of "standard" responses that occur in the countless affair-related threads. One of those, that you should be angry at the cheating spouse rather than the other woman, is among the first responses in this thread. A number of "other women" who responded said that they had no sympathy for the cheated-on spouses. They tended to think that the spouses should have known they were marrying cheaters so  affairs should have been expected. It looks like this thread devolved fairly quickly into just another thread about affairs, indistinguishable from the numerous similar threads.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum. Titled, "How many times have you had Covid?", the original poster says that she has caught COVID twice despite trying to be careful. Her friends that don't take precautions have only gotten it once. Just like every teacher-related thread is basically the same, and every affair thread is basically the same, COVID threads tend to be basically the same. As such, there are posters who are extremely careful and still get COVID one or more times. Their are posters who don't take any precautions and either don't get COVID at all or have only caught it once. Those posters are extremely smug and think everyone else is an idiot. There are disputes about the efficacy of the vaccines and all sorts of theories about the fallout from the pandemic. Nobody seems to believe anyone whose experience does not match their own. Anyone who thinks precautions are justified is accused of being paranoid and told to hide in their basement. Anyone who does not believe COVID presents a significant threat is accused of being narcissistic and lacking empathy. Politics has affected the thinking of some posters so that facts have little meaning.