2023

The first thread that I'll discuss today was titled, "NYT Article on ‘Rise of Single-Parent Families is Not a Good Thing’" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster commends and briefly quotes from an opinion article in the New York Times which discusses an increase in single-parent families and the disadvantages those families face. The original poster agrees with the article's emphasis that while stable two-parent families have significant advantages, single-parent families should not be shamed. Reading the article, I felt that the Times' headline writer had done both the author and the article itself a disservice by framing single-parent families negatively as "not a good thing". The author's book upon which the article was based and the article itself looks at things from the opposite point of view, focusing on the advantages of two-parent families. It's not that single-parent families are inherently bad, but that they generally lack the advantages of two-parent families. The two major advantages of two-parent families that the author cites are fairly obvious. The first being greater financial resources due to normally having two incomes instead of one and the second being greater parental involvement as a result of two parents being able to contribute to childrearing. The author laments that the government is unlikely to step into to help resolve either of these disadvantages single-parent families face and argues that society must find ways to promote two-parent families. I think a number of issues are ignored in what is obviously a brief overview of the author's entire body of work on this topic. For instance, when the financial disadvantage of single-parenting is removed, most of the negative factors impacting single-parent families also go away. Several posters in the thread describe examples of single-parents who are doing amazing jobs raising children. Almost exclusively, these parents are financially successful. The article mentions the Covid-era expanded child tax credit but fails to mention the tremendous success that program had in reducing childhood poverty. Instead of giving up hope on future government assistance, perhaps we should campaign for this program to be reinstated? Moroever, as several posters note, anti-abortion policies being implemented by several state governments directly contribute to single-parent families. This should also be part of any discussion of this sort. Moreover, the article does not discuss the quality of parenting or two-parent relationships. Is it really better for a child to be raised in a toxic environment involving two parents whose relationship is destructive than to be brought up in a supportive single-parent family? I would argue that it is not and, therefore, a two-parent family should not be promoted as a magical solution. It is not enough to simply encourage two-parent families, but rather healthy and nurturing families regardless of the number of parents. We should also make efforts to reduce the financial challenges often faced by single parents.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Handling fancy destination wedding with small kids" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster is thinking about how to handle her brother-in-law's wedding which will be held next year in an expensive tourist town located two time zones away. Her main concern is what to do about her two young children. In past blog posts, I've discussed threads about destination weddings and threads about children and weddings. So, I expected a wedding that both involves children and a destination wedding would be full of challenges. But, it turned out to be almost completely to the contrary. In contrast to past threads in which children were not invited, the original poster's children are not only invited, one of them has been asked to be the ring bearer. Where in previous cases finding childcare at the location of the destination wedding seemed all but impossible, the original poster has a nanny that they could bring along and her own parents, who are also invited to the wedding, have offered to provide childcare. The original poster is reluctant to bring the nanny due to the added expense. She originally forgot to mention her parent's offer and, after bringing it up, still seemed hesitant to turn to them. Those responding simply don't see many hurdles in this situation, but instead, see many readily available solutions. They recommend renting an Airbnb instead of staying in a hotel and then bringing the nanny. Alternatively, they suggest missing a couple of the planed events in order to handle childcare. After it is revealed that the original poster's parents have already offered to help with childcare, that becomes the obvious solution. Many posters actually appear exasperated that solutions are so easily available and are frustrated with the original poster for not recognizing it.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "VA Democratic House candidate performed sex acts online for tips". This thread, which was posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum, is about the revelation that Susanna Gibson — a 40-year-old mother of two who is running for Virginia's House of Delegates in a suburban Richmond district — has been posting sexually explicit videos of herself and her husband online. This is really going to test the maxim of whether there is such a thing as bad publicity. But, on the positive side, Gibson will probably soon rival all Virginia politicians in terms of name recognition. For those who want their politicians to be transparent, Gibson has left very little to the imagination. There was a time when it didn't take much of a scandal for a candidate to withdraw from an election. But, that time appears to be gone. Numerous politicians have attempted to ride out — many successfully — scandals of varing degrees. Who can forget that former President Trump, while still a candidate, was caught on tape admitting to sexually assaulting women? Gibson shows no indication of backing down and has, instead, gone on the offensive against the Republicans who are behind the disclosure of the videos. Whether it is due to increased partisanship or changing mores, it is not clear whether this controversy will hurt Gibson. The first indications are that she has successfully increased her campaign fundraising in the aftermath of the disclosure. Those responding in the thread are divided between posters who think the videos are disqualifying and those who believe that consensual sex with a spouse is completely acceptable even if there is a bit of a twist. Conservative posters accused liberals of only being concerned about abortion and gun control and, therefore, ignoring anything negative about Democratic candidates. Democratic posters agreed that they only care about abortion and gun control and don't care what Gibson is live streaming herself doing. A significant number of posters contended that they would have to watch the videos in order to have an educated opinion. Gibson and her husband apparently solicited monetary tips in exchange for requested activities. This, Republicans argued, made this more than a matter of consensual sex and instead made it a form of prostitution. I am fairly certain that prostitutes are viewed more favorably than politicians among significant numbers of voters, so this line of attack may backfire on conservatives.

On Monday one of the most active threads that I wrote about dealt with a fight between Montgomery County Public Schools high school students from Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walter Johnson high schools. As I noted in that post, I had locked that thread because several users had fixated on the race of those involved with some posts including racist statements. Posters asked me to unlock the thread so that more details about what had occurred could be learned, but I asked that a new thread be started instead. That thread, titled, "WJ/BCC Fight - No racism please!" and, of course, posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum, was the most active thread yesterday. Despite the interest in the thread, there was not much news to be shared. Posters reported that the police were investigating the incident and relayed rumors learned from students at the school. There was considerable discussion about the reaction by MCPS officials, something with which several posters expressed dissatisfaction. Filling the vacuum of actual news were esoteric discussions such as whether the incident Friday night constituted a "fight" which some posters argued might be legal or an "assault" which would clearly be against the law. Similarly, a number of posters debated why students would have been congregating near the Metro station. One poster seemed completely incapable of understanding that kids might actually be there for the purpose of accessing transportation. In addition to the Metro train, several Metro buses have pickup locations at the station. Moreover, nearby restaurants are popular with the students. As in the earlier thread, some posters argued that what had occurred was less a fight between students from opposing schools and more of an attack on WJ students by students from B-CC. In contrast, at least one poster questioned whether students from either high school were actually involved. There was continued discussion about the appropriate punishment for the attackers. The lack of news about what, if anything, would be done frustrated some posters, while others reminded that information about juveniles was normally not released. There was a lot of concern expressed about the condition of the students who were seen on video being beaten and hope that they would recover quickly. But, as with most other aspects of this topic, there were very few actual facts in this regard to be shared.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "dominate spouse during game night if you're intellectually superior?". The thread was originally posted in the "Off-Topic" forum but I moved it to the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum where it is more appropriate. The original poster considers himself to be considerably more intelligent than his wife. For the past two months they have been playing a game that involves statistics and math principles. The original poster has been letting his wife win. However, the previous night he decided to play seriously and won all four games they played that evening. This upset his wife and she went to bed in a huff. He wants to know what other couples in which one member is "far more intellectually superior" do about games. One of the reasons that the original poster considers himself much more intelligent than his wife is that he has a graduate degree in engineering while his wife has a degree in political science. As could be expected, the original poster doesn't find a lot of sympathy from those who respond. Some posters focus on the competitive aspects of the question and suggest games that rely more on luck and chance which would probably be more fun for the couple. Others suggested choosing games that were more compatible with his wife's skills. Other posters responded about his attitude towards his wife which they found disappointing, arguing that he was contemptuous of her. Still others addressed the topic of intelligence and arguing that strength in some areas does not necessarily translate into overall intelligence. Moreover, several posters noted that while the original poster might have a high IQ, he was severally challenged when it comes to EQ, with many thinking that EQ was more important. I didn't read much of this thread so I am not sure about everything that was discussed. But one other thing that I did notice were a number of posters who are extremely proud of the Scrabble skills.

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.

I woke up this morning feeling really good, sort of had an extra spring in my step, and thought to myself, "I'm going to kill it today". Then I sat down at my computer, pulled up the list of yesterday's most active threads and there, right at the top, was a thread about Meghan Markle. More specifically, a thread titled, "Meghan Markle Pink Short Suit at Lakers Game" and posted in the "Beauty and Fashion" forum. So, this is why I got out of bed this morning? To write about Meghan's clothes? What is there to say? Meghan wore a suit. It was pink. She was at a basketball game and the suit got wrinkled. She also rolled up her sleeves. Apparently having wrinkled clothes and rolled up sleeves are major fashion faux pas (I say as I look at my wrinkled shirt and rolled up sleeves). I know nothing of fashion, but my intuition suggests that Washington, DC is not on the cutting edge of fashion trends. Similarly, I suspect that Los Angeles is light years ahead of us. So, when posters started complaining that Meghan's outfit was out-of-date and more fitting for the 90s, I remembered the one rule of fashion that I ever learned. "Keep your old clothes because they will eventually be in fashion again". Sure enough, it turns out that our future is going to look a lot like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman". Surprisingly, this thread stayed pretty much on topic. Only toward the end did it start to diverge into the sort of Royal Family in-fighting that characterizes most of these threads. Of course, Meghan and her outfit had both their fans and their detractors. To her credit, the original poster was definitely a fan. But, other than the wrinkles and rolled-up sleeves, most of what posters thought was wrong with the outfit turned out to have been choices made by the designer. Perhaps Meghan didn't wear it well, but she wore it correctly. Given the number of posters insisting that the suit represents the current style, I suspect that a year from now DC will be filled with women dressed in colorful boxy shorts with blazers draped over them like a towel hanging from a bed post. There will be one group that will conspicuously stand out by not adhering to the trend: the Meghan haters for whom the look as been forever ruined.

The thread I discussed yesterday about white women and beauty standards and the thread about Trump's indictment I discussed earlier this week held the top two spots on the most active list yesterday. So, I'll skip to the third most active thread which was titled "How to talk to 14yo about waiting to have sex" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster says that her 14 year old daughter has had a boyfriend for about six months and while she has discussed birth control and other topics related to sexual activity, she would like advice about additional things to say to encourage her daughter to wait for sex. I am not really going to discuss this thread because I assume that I will be forced to delete it due to Google's terms of service. As such, I'll take this opportunity to talk about Google and it's impact on DCUM discussions. For advertising, we rely on several ad networks, but manage all of them through Google's Ad Manager product. We also use Google's Adsense and Ad Exchange advertising services. Google has robots that scan our site looking for content that violates their terms of service. When such content is identified, it is flagged in Ad Manager's Policy Center. Google provides very little information about why the content violates their TOS, but in our case it is almost always labeled as "Adult: Sexual content". There are two types of violations: 1) the regular violation that restricts advertising on the page with the content; and, 2) "must fix" which cause advertising to be restricted across the entire site. We receive anywhere from 10-30 violations a day. The problem we face is that Google doesn't identify the specific content that triggered the violation. The Policy Center has links to the pages, but a page in a DCUM thread likely has 15 different posts and identifying which post is the culprit can be a challenge. Moreover, Google's system is completely braindead. Repeated mentions of the word "sex" are often enough to cause a thread to be flagged. Because this thread has "sex" in the subject line, it is repeated at least 16 times per page (once in the title and as part of each individual message). It is probably mentioned many additional times in the text of posts. To be clear, there is probably nothing sexually explicit in the thread but that is enough. The thread is currently 8 pages long and Google has already flagged 5 of the pages. I imagine the remaining 3 will eventually be flagged as well, Currently all of the violations are in the normal category rather than being "must fix". As such, I am willing to leave the thread for a while, but will eventually have to remove it. If the classification changes to "must fix", I will have to remove it immediately. One strange thing is that despite being flagged and subject to restricted advertising, there are still plenty of ads on those pages. This is just another oddity of Google's system. In short, we are subject to an arbitrary system that does not function in a coherent manner. But because nearly all of our revenue depends on it, we have to attempt to comply. As a result, many interesting and useful discussions are removed for no other reason than because of Google.

Today I'm back to looking at the most active threads from the previous day. The most active thread yesterday was one I've already covered so I'll move on to a thread titled, "White women try to ‘reclaim power’ through #vanillagirl and #cleangirl beauty posts??" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster discusses an interview on NPR with Buzzfeed News reporter Steffi Cao about an article she has written arguing that certain fashion styles such as "the clean girl, coastal grandmother and – most importantly – the vanilla girl trends" are efforts by white women to reclaim "soft power". I have no clue what any of those fashion trends entail and I don't recall ever even hearing about them until just now. I was all set to ridicule this thread as a giant waste of time. But, it only took reading a couple of posts to change my mind. It is actually a quite intriguing topic. Cao's contention is that in recent years Black women seized the initiative in setting beauty trends and cites examples ranging from the Kardashians to Miley Cyrus of White women adopting, some would say appropriating, from Black beauty ideals. In Cao's telling, the "vanilla girl" and other trends are efforts by White women to regain influence over fashion and with it, the "soft power" associated with beauty. Enough of the responses on the first page of this thread were interesting enough to compel me to read Cao's article. I thought she made some interesting points, but overall I think she is unconvincing. I get the impression that she believes that White women somehow got together to plan their retaking of the beauty industry. I'm sure almost all of the female DCUM users will attest to having missed that meeting. Moreover, as posters in the thread point out, White women never controlled the the beauty industry which is primarily owned or controlled by White men. This is emblematic of much of the discussion in this thread which centers on differing views of the status of White women. In the perception of some, White women have been victims of misogyny and prevented from having a fully equal role in society. Moreover, any attempts to assert themselves provoke negative reactions and criticism. Others, including Cao, view White women as exploiting their alleged victimhood to wield power over others, the classic example being Amy Cooper who famously called police on a Black bird watcher in New York's Central Park. Whereas Cao provides "balletcore" (no, I have no idea what that is) as an example of a beauty trend fixated on "whiteness", some posters argue that the most popular ballet figure today is a Black women. In response, others argue acting like ballet is diverse because of one start is similar to suggesting that the presidency of Barack Obama means that US presidents have been diverse. In response to that, posters argue the lack of diversity of ballet is related to age and at the younger ages is actually is diverse. So, point, counterpoint, counterpoint, etc., before we even get to the issue of whether ballet-influenced styles are an effort to reassert white supremacy. Beyond the substantive disputes in this thread, which I admit much to my chagrin, fascinate me, there are several arguments about whether this is a real issue or a media-driven contrivance aimed at generating controversy and, hence, clicks. I think that this can both be a media-driven hyping and also touch on some real issues. At any rate, very much contrary to my initial reaction, I think this is a great topic for DCUM discussion.

The most active thread yesterday was one that was started back on March 17 titled, "Indictment Monday?". Posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster optimistically cited reports that former President Donald Trump might be indicted the following Monday. Of course, that didn't happen but for the next few days discussion in this thread would seesaw as the chances of a Trump indictment seemed to rise and fall. The thread started off very slow yesterday with a self-described Democrat expressing hope that Trump was not indicted in this instance, another poster sarcastically predicting an indictment "any week now", and a third poster claiming to have heard an indictment might come next week. But, at 5:30 pm, the thread went crazy, adding eleven pages of posts since that time. Most of the posts expressed jubilation about the news but a few posters cautioned that the indictment would strengthen Trump. Debates broke out over whether the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had acted in a politically partisan manner or was simply following the rule of law. Some posters viewed the indictment in nearly apocalyptic terms with one predicting that it would lead to a "right wing dictatorship" when Republicans inevitably retaliated, things escalated, and civil war resulted. While this case did not involve the January 6 insurrection, many posters referred to that event as justification for holding Trump legally accountable. Many posters seemed to experience considerable schadenfreude that Trump supporters who once yelled "Lock her up!" were now disparing that Trump was facing legal consequences. Some of the Republican posters questioned whether Trump could get a fair trial in heavily-Democratic New York. Others warned that red states would now start indicting Democratic politicians. If grand juries in conservative states are able to find evidence of wrong-doing by Democrats, more power to them I say.