October

The thread about the Gaza war has been the most active thread every day since Hamas launched its attack on Israel. On Friday that thread reached 1,000 pages so I locked it and started a part 2. Despite being locked Friday evening, the thread was still tied as the third most active thread over the weekend. The new thread, titled "Gaza War, Part 2", and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, was easily the most active. The thread has already grown to more than 150 pages. There is no way that I can keep up with a thread that is growing at that rate and, as a result, I have read very little of the new thread. Rather than discuss the thread itself, I thought I would provide some of my observations of the two threads. The first thing to understand is that the majority of the participants are pro-Israel. "Pro-Israel" does not mean "Jews". Not all of the pro-Israel posters are Jewish and not all of the Jewish posters are necessarily pro-Israel. Moreover, "pro-Israel" describes a fairly wide spectrum and these posters are not always in agreement with their opinions. For instance, some of these posters are very quick to label almost any criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitism" while others are more measured and less likely to make such accusations. One result of this is constant complaints about criticism of Israel being called "anti-Semitic" and equally common responses by pro-Israel posters saying that they do no such thing. Based on what I've seen, both claims appear to be true. There are quite a few questionable accusations of anti-Semitism and most pro-Israel posters are not cavalierly tossing around the term. My second observation is that some of the pro-Israel posters have been posting incessantly. I noticed one poster who had posted over 200 times in a 24 hour period. That comes out to one post approximately every 7 minutes, but since the poster presumably took breaks, posts were not spread equally over the day. We have mechanisms in place to alert to potential bots that occasionally plague the site and multiple posters have triggered those alerts. They are posting faster than we expect humans to be able to do. Consequently, these posters simply don't have time to read carefully, consider their replies, or compose thoughtful responses. This results in responses that often are simply repeated talking points that generally do a poor job of addressing the post to which they are responding. Moreover, the original post is often misrepresented or distorted. My experience when posting messages that didn't align with pro-Israel views was a bit like dropping chum into a shark tank. There was an immediate onslaught of responses and by the time I had replied to one of those, several more had been added. While some of those responses were serious and clearly were posted in good faith, many were little more than knee jerk reactions that demonstrated little thought and did nothing to further a serious discussion. I was frustrated to see even some of the serious posters take my posts out of context or purposefully ignore the nuances that I had purposely included. I also acquired my own personal troll who followed me from thread to thread posting misrepresentations of my posts in completely unrelated threads. Obviously, many of these same things are happening to the pro-Israel posters, but that just reinforces my criticism of these threads. Posters are prioritizing quantity over the quality of their posts. It seems that a sensible process of "read, think, respond" has been replaced by simply "respond".

Yesterday the Gaza war thread continued as the most active. But, with a comparatively paltry 464 new posts — almost half of the previous day's — interest may be flagging. The next most active thread was, like the Gaza thread, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Huge mass shooting incident in Lewiston, ME", the thread was created just after news broke about the mass shooting that took 18 lives in Lewiston, Maine. At first, the thread concentrated on reporting details of what had happened and who might have committed the atrocity. It is a sad reality that in the aftermath of these shootings a significant number of people are poised to spring into action if they can take political advantage from the identity of the shooter. In this case, multiple posters immediately blamed Hamas or Arabs. I removed those posts and I suspect many Arabs and Muslims gave a sigh of relief when the shooter turned out to be a White American with no connection to the Middle East. Once the shooter was identified and details of his background were provided, left-leaning posters began painting him as a MAGA right-winger though the evidence of this was rather thin and based on his meager social media history. Others focused on his clear mental health issues. Gun proponents have latched onto mental health as their primary means of deflection from demands for gun control, but in this case mental health is obviously an issue. Despite the professed interests in mental health always evidenced by gun proponents in the aftermath of mass shootings, they never really seem to do much about it. To the contrary, in 2017 Congressional Republicans passed a resolution, which was subsequently signed into law by former President Donald Trump, to make it easier for those with mental illnesses to purchase guns. As such, it is difficult to assume much sincerity on the gun proponents' part. Predictably, there was considerable discussion of gun control in the thread, but with what has become an equally predictable refrain that after Sandy Hook, posters know gun control is not possible. One poster noted another phenomenon that I've also seen, including in this thread. Whenever gun control is discussed, gun enthusiasts seize the opportunity to flaunt their knowledge of guns and to speak contemptuously of anyone not capable of field striping an AR-15 while blindfolded and correctly naming every component. For instance, if a gun control proponent argues that extended clips should be prohibited, they will likely be met with a response along the lines of "it's a magazine not a clip so your opinion is invalid". One notable development arising from this shooting is that moderate Democrat Jared Golden, who represents Lewiston and who had previously opposed banning assault rifles, changed his position and now supports a ban. Of course, gun proponents will argue that there is really no difference between an AR-15 and a Red Ryder BB gun so it is impossible to draft legislation for an effective ban.

Yesterday, once again the Gaza war thread led as the most active thread. But, with less than 500 new posts, interest in the thread may be waning. The most active thread after that one was titled, "WWYD? Being asked NOT to bring a new spouse and children" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. This thread managed to produce 14 pages of posts in less than 24 hours. I've long been astonished that these threads produce so much interest. A significant number of them turn out to be the work of trolls — another thing that baffles me — and the rest are normally suspected of being trolls even if they aren't. I am convinced that there is a significant number of posters who simply enjoy drama regardless of whether it is real or invented. I guess there are worse passtimes, and I should hardly complain since this one earns revenue for us, but I don't understand it. In this thread, the original poster says that her brother who has children with his first wife is married to a woman who has her own children. His first family does not accept the second and has told the original poster's parents that they will not attend their traditional Thanksgiving gathering if the second family will be there. The original poster asks whether they should invite her brother without his new wife and step-kids. The original poster authored a handful of replies and then disappeared after the first couple of pages. But that didn't prevent the discussion from continuing without her. One of the most common responses was that this was not her business and she should stay out of it. Another common response was that everyone should be invited and the kids could work things out for themselves. But, even more common was for posters to offer their own stories of being in such situations. Some of these posts became subject to more discussion than the original poster's situation. The thread also provided an opportunity for a number of posters to opine on their own views of marriage. On the 13th page of the thread, a poster identifying herself as the original poster provided another response that included details about which posters had previously been speculating. Another weird phenomenon of this and other DCUM forums is posters claiming to be the original poster when they are not. In this case, I can't say whether this was the actual original poster or an imposter. But, frankly, I don't think that matters to most of those participating in the thread.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I have already discussed and will, therefore, skip. The first of those was the Gaza war thread which racked up nearly 700 new posts. The second was the thread about the murders in Fairfax. That was has turned into more of a discussion of au pairs and the family's income than the crime itself. The most active thread after those two was titled, "Student with Gun found at Walter Johnson" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster simply pasted the text of a message from Walter Johnson High School's principal which informed parents, students, and staff about an incident involving a gun that had occurred at the school. Apparently, one student informed school administration that another student was believed to have a gun. Police were called and, when the second student was searched, a gun was found. No information was found suggesting that there was any threat to the school or an intention to harm anyone. Nevertheless, the situation is being taken very seriously. To explain the responses in this thread, a little background is in order. In Montgomery County, there is a group of high schools, including Walter Johnson, that have the letter "W" in their names. A second group of schools are joined in a consortium called the Downcounty Consortium, or DCC. The "W" schools are frequently considered to be better and more prestigious whereas the DCC schools are stereotyped as having more problematic students and not being as academically strong. It is fairly common for posters who are believed to be associated with a "W" school to make derogatory comments about DCC schools. Posters supportive of DCC schools, in turn, have developed chips on their shoulders. This conflict was apparent in the very first response to the original poster in which a poster claimed that she has been chastised for sending her kid to a DCC school and, in light of this incident, the "W" school parents should rethink their "false sense of security and superiority". I wish someone had immediately reported this post so that I could have removed it. But, since that didn't happen, the thread largely devolved into a rehash of the "W" school vs DCC animosity. Intermixed among the airing of DCC grievances were a few posts injecting other hot button topics such as some posters' desire to have metal detectors installed at schools and continued anger over the removal of police officers, or School Resource Officers (SROs) as they are called, from schools. Every few pages there is a post about the incident itself, the main one being that the 17-year-old student will be charged as an adult. But, for the most part this thread is a fight between "W" school and DCC school partisans with a few posts — almost seeming to be off-topic — about the gun incident.

The most active thread since my last blog post continues to be the Gaza war thread which added over 1,600 new posts. The most active thread after that was one titled, "Fairfax County Double Murder" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Several months ago a thread on the same topic was among the most active threads about which I wrote. I eventually locked that thread after it degnerated into little more than lurid gossip. At the time, a poster asked whether a new thread could be created if or when there were additional news on the topic. I agreed that would be okay. But, when this thread was created on October 1st, it was not because of news updates, but rather by a poster asking whether there was anything new. There wasn't, so this thread lingered until this past Thursday when there was a surprise development. First, to review the facts. Nearly seven months ago, police were called to the home of Christine and Brendan Banfield in Reston, VA. Christine had been stabbed and Brendan told police that he had shot an unknown man who was later identified as Joseph Ryan. Also in the home were the family's nanny, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, and the Banfield's young daughter. Ryan was dead when police arrived and Christine later died at the hospital. Exactly what occurred has been a mystery with heated disputes about why Ryan was in the home. On Thursday, police revealed that Christine and Ryan knew each other prior to the event and they announced that they had arrested Peres Magalhaes and charged her with second degree murder in the death of Ryan. Nobody has been charged in Christine's death. The bombshell about Peres Magalhaes unleashed a flury of posts in the thread. Posters speculated about why Brendan had told the police that he had shot Ryan when it now appears that it was Peres Magalhaes. There is considerable speculation about the relationship between Brendan and Peres Magalhaes. According to news reports, Peres Magalhaes has been seen caring for the Banfield's child but it is "unclear whether she was still working in her capacity as an au pair". One poster produced a photo that he claimed came from Peres Magalhaes' Instagram account that showed Peres Magalhaes and Brendan looking quite cozy together in a restaurant. The caption on the photo suggested that the two were in a relationship. There is still no official word on why Ryan was in the home, leading to considerable comment and several theories. The murder mystery aspects of this combined with it being a local story — friends and neighbors of the Banfield's and Ryan have posted — has led to the thread having considerable interest.

The thread about the Gaza war continued to lead as the most active thread yesterday with nearly 900 new posts. Another conflict which looks like it may continue forever — the selection of a new Speaker of the US House of Representatives — was the subject of the second most active. Moving to the third most active thread because I've already discussed those two takes us to sort of an oddball topic. Titled, "Montgomery County Council recognizes International Pronouns Day" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum, the original poster complained that while Virginia was seeing the benefits of Amazon's HQ2, the Montgomery County Council had passed a resolution recognizing International Pronouns Day, something the original poster considered to be a joke. One of those responding embedded a 16 minute video of the portion of the Council meeting dealing with this topic. The event consisted of Councilmember Kate Stewart introducing a group of supporters of the resolution, most of whom represented local organizations, and then speaking about why she considered the resolution to be important. In addition, Council President Evan Glass and Councilmember Kristin Mink spoke. A few of the supporters also spoke and then the Councilmembers read the resolution. The resolution was the first item on the agenda and from what can be seen on the video, most Councilmembers hadn't yet arrived and had little to no involvement with the resolution. I mention all of this because many of the responses complained about the Council wasting time on what those posters considered an unimportant issue. But, in fact, very little actual time was lost. Many of those responding appeared to be quite angry that the Council passed this resolution, some even threatened to move out of Montgomery County. One poster — who could probably benefit from a government class provided by Montgomery County Public Schools — declared this to be another reason to homeschool. The resolution, of course, has nothing to do with schools. Of course, local government entities pass all sorts of ceremonial resolutions of this type. For instance, the Montgomery County Council also recently recognized National Farmer’s Day and National Service Dog Month. These are simply easy ways to recognize issues of importance to members of the community. There is certainly something ironic about posters spending 9 pages complaining about what they believe to be a waste of time. Personally, I would be in favor of a resolution recognizing "National Make Conservatives' Heads Explode Day", but that may have already been held on September 12 when the Council presented a proclamation "Celebrating the Drag Story Hour and Participants".

Normally I would not post to this blog over the weekend. But, it is clear that the most active thread this weekend is going to be the thread titled, "Looks like a new Gaza war has started" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. So, I may as well address that thread now. As some readers of this blog are aware, I originally came to Washington, DC in order to study at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. I devoted a number of years of my life to studying the Middle East and have lived and traveled in the region. That part of the world remains one in which I have a particular interest.

As I often do, I am not really going to discuss the thread itself, but rather use it as a jumping off point for my own thoughts. Writing about Israel and the Palestinians is like walking through a minefield. One wrong step and you blow yourself up, or at least upset a lot of people who are unlikely to be shy about expressing their displeasure. So, if I in anyway offend anyone, I apologize in advance.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Son blind sided by GF" and posted in the "Adult Children" forum. Someone reported this thread yesterday asking if the original poster is a troll. I don't think she is, but I knew the minute I saw the thread that I would be writing about it today. The original poster's adult son has had a girlfriend for three years who has suddenly decided that she wants to move back to her hometown about 6 hours away. She wants the original poster's son to move with her. The son is not interested in moving because his friends and business network are located here. The original poster doesn't seem to like the girlfriend much and says that if her son and the woman would have a family, she knows she would never see her grandchildren. Knowing DCUM posters, I assumed that there would be a massive wave of responses telling the original poster to stay out of it. Indeed, one of the first responses was exactly that. But, there were a number of responses supportive of the original poster because her son had contacted her about the situation. In a follow-up post, the original poster described her son's girlfriend as having "misrepresented herself". That didn't go over well with many posters and provoked a considerable amount of criticism of the original poster. She basically bowed out of the discussion at that point, telling everyone to "Keep on hating". By that time, many of the responders were too invested in the thread to let it go and heated exchanges continued so that the thread reached 12 pages before the end of the day. Some posters sided with the girlfriend, saying that she had the right to change her mind about where to live while still dating and several suggested the original poster was herself a good reason to move away from Washington. Others argued that her son should take this opportunity to break up with the woman due to several negative characteristics they attributed to her. Critics of the original poster accused her of painting the girlfriend in a negative light and not being objective. Defenders of the original poster said that of course a mom wouldn't be objective, that is not her role. There is a huge debate about to whom a man can turn to for advice. For reasons not entirely clear to me, posters rule out moms. Others rule out friends. Dads get a vote of confidence, but that's about it. In addition, an incredible number of posters read only a couple of posts and immediately replied only to repeat the same thing that had already been posted numerous times on previous pages. When you boil the thread down, there are probably less than a half-dozen unique replies and one of those is some guy suggesting the original poster's son date "latinas and Asian babes".

I'm going to be a bit briefer today because I am running behind and, frankly, none of the most active threads are particularly interesting to me and I am not very enthusiastic about writing about them. The most active thread, by a significant measure, was titled, "Charlotte Sena - Missing NY 9YO" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread is, as the title says, about nine-year-old Charlotte Sena who went missing while riding her bicycle in a state park in upstate New York. When I first noticed this thread, my immediate reaction — even before seeing a picture of the victim — was that this would be another case of "missing white girl syndrome", which is what it turned out to be. I don't begrudge posters from being interested in the fate of young white girls, but I wouldn't expect a case in upstate New York to be the leading topic on our DC-focused forum. From what I understand, the girl was kidnapped and was safely rescued after police were able to trace fingerprints on a ransom note. I think it is worth considering why and how cases such as this attract so much attention while so many other cases are virtually ignored.

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "I'm a DC resident, applied for my CCW, and I'm now carrying concealed". Posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics", the original poster says that he is a Democrat who believes in sensible gun control but because of increased crime in Washington, DC he has now obtained a firearm with which to defend himself. Crime and guns are two topics that can always be guaranteed to generate a lot of traffic and this thread combines both So, there is no surprise that it was the most active thread. While rates of violent crime in DC are up and far too high, they are considerably lower than at other times during my nearly 40 years of living in DC. I've been wondering why feelings such as the original poster expresses seem much more common now than in the past. The original poster says that he has "never before experienced so much random, reckless, and violent crime". I wonder if this is a literal statement in that the original poster himself has been a victim of such crimes or that by "experience" the original poster means that he knows about such crimes. As far as I can tell, that point was never clarified in the thread. I think that the most obvious instigator of fear of crime is being a victim of crime or having acquaintances, relatives, or neighbors who are victims. But, almost as important, I suspect, is simply knowing about crime in relatively close vicinity to you, even if you don't have any personal connections to it. I've written before how violent crime in DC today seems a lot more geographically distributed than in the past. So, while murder rates were higher when I first arrived in DC, they were concentrated in a few areas and most DC residents simply ignored the violence. Now, murders occur throughout the city which naturally spreads concern and fear much wider. But, another element I think adds to heightened fear of crime is social media and the rise of social media crime reporters. The DC area has a number of individuals who follow police scanners and other information sources and immediately post about violent crime on social media. Those posts get reposted elsewhere and spread by others, often being the basis of DCUM threads. This spreads knowledge of crime beyond what it was in the past. There is the old expression that "ignorance is bliss" and this is one case in which I think that increased knowledge — in addition to having positive effects — can also have negative outcomes. In this case, it might have the impact of creating fear that is not necessarily supported by reality. Others can obviously argue that increased knowledge of local crime actually leads to a more rational risk analysis. I can see both arguments. The bottom line is whether people "feel" unsafe is more important for their individual actions than whether they actually "are" unsafe. I frequently feel that social media crime reports contribute to making us feel less safe while, in actuality, whether we really do face more of a threat may not have changed. It would be interesting to know whether this poster was drive to purchase a gun by an actual or perceived threat of violent crime.