Thursday's Most Active Threads

Today's post is going to be a little different. One reason for that is because almost half of the most active threads yesterday were on the topic of the decision by the US Supreme Court to prohibit race as a factor in college and university admissions. The most active thread of the bunch on this topic, as well as being the most active thread of the day and already the fourth most active thread of the last 30 days was titled, "US Supreme Court Rules Against Affirmative Action in College Admissions" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. This thread is already 73 pages long and has almost 1,000 posts. All in less than 24 hours. The second was titled, "SCOTUS outlaws race as college admissions factor" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. In comparison, this thread is positively subdued at only 42 pages and less than 600 posts. Mind you, that would be enough for the most active thread of the week most times. Several posters reported these threads expecting that I would want to lock one rather than have duplicate threads. But, I was afraid that mixing the Political and College forum users might have an impact similar to that of of crossing the proton streams in Ghostbusters. I couldn't take that risk. When there are events like this court decision that spur incredibly active threads, some posters fear their posts will be lost in the mix and, instead of joining an existing thread, start new ones. The more clever among them will try to find an unique spin because I will lock or delete an obvious duplicate. One such thread was posted in the "Private & Independent Schools" forum and titled, "Won't the AA ruling be particularly bad for private school URMs?" Similarly, another thread was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum titled, "So what is changing? Questions about SC affirmative action decision". I didn't actually know about the last two until just now or I might have locked them. I haven't read any of these threads, other than a few posts that were reported. We have been preparing for weeks for this Court decision expecting this type of reaction on DCUM and assuming that we would be inundated by reports and basically have to devote ourselves fulltime to moderating the threads. However, there have been very few reports and for the most part we ended up ignoring the threads. They likely could benefit from some supervision, but the threads are simply moving too quickly to keep up.

The one thread among yesterday's top five most active threads that didn't deal with the affirmative action ruling was posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)". Titled, "BOE Rally", the thread is another in a never-ending series of threads about the desire of some Montgomery County Public Schools families to opt-out of reading books the address LGBT topics. This thread started off discussing a protest involving Ethiopian families. A previous rally featured Muslims. Right-wingers are very excited to have found a wedge issue to divide Black and Brown families from White liberals. I haven't read much of this thread and, therefore, don't have a lot to say about it. What I did read suggested that thread is very much like the previous ones, some of which I've discussed in blog posts. I hope these immigrant families will enjoy their new bedfellows who, any other day of the week, would be complaining that they are even in this country.

The next most active thread was titled, "Yes it’s another MIL vent thread" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. Mother-in-laws often take a beating in this forum, frequently for good reason. The original poster of this thread has apparently just returned from a 10 day vacation in Hawaii which, according to the original poster, her mother-in-law made "miserable". The original poster provided a list of actions her mother-in-law took that were, I assume, supposed to represent egregious transgressions of civility. I see that later in the thread there are a number of complaints about posters criticizing the original poster. Sadly, my instinct is to sort of join in that pile-on. I didn't think many of the things on the list — especially spread across 10 days — were really worth a second thought let alone an entire thread after the trip. As one poster responded, "Most don't require a response at all much less a confrontation." But, before the naysayers got involved, most posters were supportive of the original poster with several advising her not to vacation with her mother-in-law in the future. Basically this thread consists of posts by the original poster trying to convince everyone that her mother-in-law was much worse than the list made it seem, posters siding with the original poster against her mother-in-law — though even some of them blamed the original poster for inviting her in the first place — and posters who think the original poster is the problem, not her mother-in-law.

Instead of discussing another thread, I'm going to discuss one of the more prolific DCUM posters. Because almost all DCUM users are anonymous, I invent nicknames for posters who come to my attention so frequently that I begin to recognize them. One such poster is one I've named "The Rude Poster". This poster has a very clear routine. She almost never starts threads. Instead, she generally posts multiple replies to an existing thread. I have not deduced any rhyme or reason to her selection of threads. Her replies are normally short, rarely over a few words long, and they are almost always gratuitously rude (hence her name). For instance, this morning she posted in a thread dealing with weight loss by calling other posters "pigs". She did the same thing yesterday and I removed the post. But, as is a habit of hers, she returned to the thread and reposted. Her name-calling is incessant and her posts frequently consist of little more than calling another poster "dumb". She uses the word "dumb" so often that it is almost rare to find one of her posts that don't include the word. This morning she called a poster's children "dumb". In a display of variety, she also referred to thread participants as "lunatics". She frequently includes profanity in her posts, though generally misspelled or otherwise modified to avoid filters. And, if all of this isn't enough, she sock puppets by replying to her own posts. Sometimes, I think that "she" is actually a "he", but it's hard to tell. The poster is very active in the forums, routinely posting 20-30 posts a day. I suspect that this poster has a long history with other forums because she displays some understanding of how to avoid being blocked. As a result, I haven't been able to block the poster completely. There are days when I feel that DCUM is little more than a laboratory for studying people with mental health issues. I am not sure what diagnosis would apply to someone obsessed with repeatedly posting rude responses in an anonymous forum, but I am sure something would fit. I often wonder what this poster's life would be like if she didn't have DCUM as an outlet for this obsession? Is DCUM saving a dog from being repeatedly kicked or flies from having their wings pulled off? At any rate, the next time someone calls you a dumb pig on DCUM, just remember that regardless of your weight or lack of intellect, you are likely living a far better life than the poster calling you that.