The Most Active Threads over the Weekend

The most active thread since my last blog post was the thread about the Big Ten expansion that I discussed last week. Therefore, I'll start with a thread titled, "hahaha Fox is sooo mad about Dark Brandon being turned on them" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster embedded a clip from Fox News in which a group of Fox News hosts view video of President Joe Biden drinking out of a "Dark Brandon" coffee mug. For those of you who have not followed the "Brandon" saga, this began following a NASCAR race in which the winner, Brandon Brown, was being interviewed. The crowd behind him was chanting "[Profanity] Joe Biden!" The interviewer misheard them as saying, "Let's go Brandon". "Let's go Brandon" was then adopted by anti-Biden folks as a non-profane version of the original chant. Biden and his staff eventually embraced the "Brandon" moniker and when "Dark Brandon" memes showing Biden with lasers emanating from his eyes began flooding the Internet, the Biden campaign started selling merchandise with the theme. The anti-Biden folks who once thought that they were clever referring to Biden as "Brandon" have now seen the joke completely turned on them. What the Fox News video highlighted by the original poster shows is how poorly those on the right are reacting to be hoisted on their own petard. Originally, "Let's go Brandon" was a way for the right to "own the libs", or provoke liberals into irrational anger. Now, it is a panel of five Fox News hosts left sputtering in rage — clearly completely owned by the Biden campaign — by a meme they helped inspire. As an aside, I really think that not enough attention has been paid to the fact that Fox News is a 24/7 propaganda network for Republicans. Right-wingers can talk all they want about CNN and MSNBC, but neither network would air a segment anywhere close to this one focused on a Republican. The attacks on Biden by the Fox hosts are personal and vicious and include outright falsehoods. From the network's lies about Seth Rich to the misinformation about Dominion Voting Systems that have cost the Network millions, the Fox News is consistently caught having complete disregard for the facts. Sadly, as many responses in this thread demonstrate, far too many Americans are susceptible and accepting of the indoctrination the network conducts. Nevertheless, it is fascinating that the Biden campaign managed to completely knock the network out of kilter with something as simple as a mug.

The next most active thread over the weekend was posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. The topic of working from home has been dominating this forum for some time with some posters absolutely obsessed with the topic. There currently are at least 7 threads related to working from home on the first page of topics in the forum. One of those is titled, "For those who are anti wfh, curious why you care?". The original poster wants to know why people care whether or not someone else works at home. The first poster to respond claims that it is simply due to jealousy, a theme that is echoed throughout the thread. But others claim, and many of the responses demonstrate, that it is often more complicated than that. There is a widespread feeling that those working from home are simply not working as hard or are as productive. One poster even writes that he only cares about working from home when it involves federal employees because those are his tax dollars being wasted. This belief that those who work at home are less productive than those working in the office leads to a number of posts arguing that those who work from home should have their pay cut. There seems to be far more posts complaining about "work from home crazies" than there are those offering rational explanations for their opposition to working from home. One poster does cite advantages of the collaborative work environment provided by working together in an office, but then spends much more of her post deriding a work from home supporter. Similarly, a number of work-from-home proponents join in to criticize the presumed motives of those who favor returning to the office. There are some posters who have returned to the office that describe complications that having part of the staff working from home can create. But, most of those posters say that they are not actually opposed to working from home. Having read a number of these threads, I think that the biggest difficulty of resolving this dispute is that there is so much suspicion of the motives of others. Return to office proponents are convinced those working from home are essentially cheating the system, doing less work and taking advantage of their employers. Those in favor of working from home refuse to accept arguments about productivity or advantages of being in an office and, instead, attribute the motivation to managers' ego trips or a desire to support commercial real estate. Nobody seems to think that their opponents are arguing in good faith.

The next most active thread was titled, "How do people afford it?" and posted in the "Private & Independent Schools" forum. The original poster explains her family's financial situation in which she and her husband have a combined income of $310,000 annually and a $750,000 mortgage. They would like to send their two kids to private school, but at $40-50 thousand a year she doesn't know how they could afford it. She asks whether there are others in her situation that have made it work. Those responding didn't have a lot of good news for the original poster. Most said that it would be difficult for them. Some suggested downsizing their housing because their mortgage was so high and the equity they have in the house would make it unlikely that they would be eligible for financial aid. Others proposed only sending the kids to privates for high school. A few of those replying that said that they were in similar situations were either stretching themselves very thin or relying on grandparents to help out. The mention of grandparents paying for private school provoked an off-topic tangent in which posters argued about the propriety of grandparents paying tuition. One poster described her child's struggle to find a school for their child during which they determined private school was not affordable. The poster said that her child did not ask her to contribute to her grandchild's education and she would have refused had she been asked. Some posters disagreed with this position, claiming that it showed a lack of commitment to education, but others concurred saying that they would not want to have to rely on grandparents to pay for school. The thread fairly quickly moved on from the original poster's specific situation and, instead, became a collection of anecdotes about posters' own experiences or the experiences of people they know. There are lots of posts about the wealth of families whose kids attend private school. Some posters find this intimidating but impressive while others consider it to be a negative aspect of the environment.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Diet and Exercise" forum. Titled, "Express Scripts denied pre-authorization for Ozempic. What to do now?", the original poster says that she is about 50 pounds overweight and pre-diabetic. Her doctor prescribed Ozempic but Express Scripts denied it. She wants to know what she should do now. Just as work-from-home debates are taking over the jobs forum, discussions about weight loss drugs have dominated the Diet and Exercise forum. Even before reading a single response to the original poster, I had a pretty good idea where this thread would go. As I expected, the original poster's entire post was ignored by a poster telling her to eat less and exercise more. For whatever reason, the forum is full of posters like this one who react to weight loss drugs in a manner similar to Meghan Markle haters reacting to news about her. They are completely single-minded and totally blind to any aspect of a thread other than their own personal obsession. Other posters told the original poster that there is likely an appeals process that she can pursue. But most of the thread is devoted to second guessing the original poster's need for Ozempic or suggesting that she and her doctor were not following the correct protocol. Many posters describe insurance company policies that they don't think make much sense and simply create a lot of unnecessary red tape. They provide advice for navigating this bureaucracy. But other posters see this as cheating or lying to the insurance company. Many of the haters ignore the original poster's statement about being pre-diabetic and argue that overweight people are simply using diabetes as an excuse to obtain weight loss drugs which the posters don't believe are necessary. The bottom line with a lot of these posters is that they believe weight loss drugs are an unfair method of losing weight. They see it as a form of cheating. I am not sure why they care or why they think it is their business, but they basically ruin every thread even remotely related to weight loss drugs. It is beyond tiring.