Monday's Most Active Threads

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I've already discussed. The first continued to be thread about the Gaza war. The number of posts in that one dropped to less than 600 which is about half of what the thread had been seeing daily. The second thread was also in the political forum and is about the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. That was revived because there will be a vote today that could result in Jim Jordan becoming Speaker. Skipping those threads brings us to a thread titled, "Homecoming dresses are so short!" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. Exactly a week ago I discussed a thread that I predicted was the kickoff of DCUM's annual "criticize how teen girls dress" season. The original poster (who, by the way is definitely not "judgy") continues that honored tradition by finding current homecoming dresses to be too short and "slutty looking". The thread immediately entered the predictable pattern of some posters agreeing with the original poster that girls are dressing like "street walkers" while other posters argue that teens always push the limits and that their parents didn't like the way they dressed either. But, then the thread turned to the suggestion that this all was a demonstration of internalized misogyny. As a poster pointed out, regardless of style changes, boys stay fully dressed while girls' attire becomes increasingly revealing. There was quite a bit of agreement with this notion, but then that discussion sort of got lost in a debate about whether criticizing how girls dress is "slut shaming" with the implication being that this was also misogynistic. Some parents described how they managed their daughter's fashion choices, in some cases requiring that biker shorts be worn underneath short dresses and in other cases helping to choose looser and longer outfits. There was also quite a bit of comment on a trend of which I was not aware in which girls wear sneakers with their dresses. One more big debate had on one side posters who argued that girls should either be taught or develop a sense of style. Rather than wearing what everyone else does, they should choose clothing that fits their style and body type and flatters them. The other side contended that girls don't need to do anything to please the first group, could wear whatever they wanted, and that the first group should leave them alone. Just as I was about to publish this post I received a fairly angry report demanding that I lock this thread because it was degrading high school girls. I decided to comply and, therefore, the thread is now locked.

The next most active thread was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Coca Cola Scholar Profiles — Making Me Reconsider Things", the original poster linked to a web page showing profiles of the 2023 Coca-Cola Scholars, students who have been awarded $20,000 college scholarships sponsored by the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. In addition to academic excellence, the Foundation looks for students who "demonstrate a sustained commitment to bettering their community". As such, most of the students profiled appear to have put considerable effort into creating organizations or programs to benefit others. The original poster suggests that being focused on achievement at this level does not leave much room for an active social life or leave room for more freedom of adolescence. She believes that stories such as these are necessary for unhooked students to get into top universities and, as such, is causing her to reevaluate what she wants her kids to be. The implication is that she is not really willing to see her children make this sort of sacrifice in pursuit of an elite university. While many posters acknowledge that these are exceptional kids, a considerable amount of effort is devoted to knocking down their achievements. Some of this is due to cynicism regarding the plethora of non-profits that seem to have been started by high school kids which really turn out to be fully-funded ventures orchestrated by their parents. But, other posters seem way too invested in undermining them. One poster reported Googling the "non-profits" from about 20 profiles and finding dead links, inactive websites, and low follower counts. She therefore deduced that the organizations were only established for college application purposes and abandoned as soon as that goal was achieved. But, seriously, who has time to make this effort simply to diminish the accomplishments of a bunch of kids? Eventually the thread devolved to little more than snarky responses ridiculing the achievements listed in the profiles. Things didn't quite reach the point where posters where declaring it to actually be a negative thing to be one of the scholars, but it wasn't too far off.

The third thread for today was titled, "Is Quinn a male or female name to you?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster simply asks the question contained in the thread's title. I always thought of "Quinn" as a male name and was surprised to learn that it is frequently used for females. I was also somewhat surprised to see that so many people know Quinns since I can't remember encountering someone with that name in person, at least as a firstname. It turns out that part of this may be cultural. Among the Irish, Quinn is a male name. But, apparently the name is common among Vietnamese but is a girl's name in that case. The bottom line is that the name can be used by either males or females and doesn't strictly indicate a gender. The only real controversy in this thread was off-topic and I removed the posts involved. In that case, a poster described himself as Irish but was only determined to have one Irish parent or something along those lines. Another poster took umbrage with this as a false description of the poster's heritage. The second poster obviously is not acquainted with the Irish-American community wherein simply having a maternal great-grandmother who had a layover in Dublin on her way from the Old World is enough to be considered fully Irish.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. Titled, "How did generations with unlimited TV and no enrichment…", the original poster concludes the sentence in the body of the post by continuing, "…succeed in life?" The original poster says that when she was young children just watched TV and had no enrichment activities beyond maybe an instrument and a sport. There were no Kumon classes or the like. Yet, they went on to have successful careers and great lives. She wants to know if standards were lower then or whether kids are smarter now. Responses are divided with one group claiming that the original poster's description of how things were when she was young doesn't apply to them. They had limits on TV, had tutoring or parent's help instead of Kumon, and so on. The other group agreed that there is more competition now and standards are higher. The thread turned into a bunch of anecdotal reminiscences of posters' youths describing differences between then and now. This thread was plagued by one of the stranger trolls to afflict DCUM and, therefore, I had to repeatedly remove his posts from the thread. This particular troll has the habit of repeatedly posting very short nonsensical posts, often full of misspellings. The poster started posting early yesterday morning and continued throughout the day until well into the evening. This was not the only thread targeted, but was one of a handful. I have no idea how this thread attracted his attention, but he was very obsessed with it.