2023

I want start with another reminder of our new "Contribute" page for those of you who may want to help keep video ads off of the website. The response so far has been very gratifying and we are very thankful for those who who have supported us.

Today marks one year since I started writing the "most active threads" series. So, I thought that I would take a moment to revisit the origin of these blog posts. Back in 2007 when we moved to this website platform after two years of using another, my vision of the home page blog was that it would be a place for DCUM users who have an interest in writing to contribute blog posts. A communal blog for DCUM posters, if you will. That worked okay for a while with a small group of writers offering regular articles that kept the content fresh and interesting. But, slowly, those authors moved on to other endeavors. That left me as the primary contributor and I was often pressed for time or, more often, simply out of ideas. As a result, the home page content grew stale. Often it was little more than republished press releases. A year ago, the most recent post on this blog was nearly 10 months old. Moreover, we were at the beginning of what would be a seemingly non-stop decline in advertising revenue. Among the advice I received from advertising partners was to keep content fresh. "Surely, that is not a problem for DCUM", I thought. "Our content changes every few minutes if not more often." But, that was the forum content, not the home page. So, I stretched my imagination to its limits — obviously a very short horizon — and came up with the idea of writing about active topics on the website. If popular threads would provide writing prompts, I could write about anything, I believed. My goal was not to attract readers — indeed I couldn't imagine why anyone would read such posts — but only to appease Google's search engine and algorithm. The result was my first post in this series. Originally I also posted on the weekend but eventually stopped that in order to give myself a break. But, outside of weekends I am pretty sure that I have posted every day except the day of my brother's funeral and the day we drove our younger son to college.

Frequently when I look at the list of the most active threads there are a few that I don't recognize and know nothing about. That's normally an indication that no posts from that thread were reported but also means that the topic didn't catch my eye for whatever reason. However, it is rare when every thread in the list is unfamiliar to me. That is essentially the case today. The most active thread was titled, "Where are people’s manners?" and posted in the "Travel Discussion" forum. When I saw the thread's title, I was quite sure that this was the first time I was encountering it. But, then I remembered that there had been a single report complaining that posters were piling on the original poster. I had glanced at the last page of the thread and decided things didn't look too bad and left it alone. So, while, strictly speaking, this morning was not the first time I've been exposed to the thread, I really didn't know anything about it. The original poster says that her family and another family rented a beach house together. They invited a third family to visit for one day. When that family arrived, the kids were hungry and immediately ate all the snacks in the house. Even the dog was hungry and the orignal poster had to feed it. The family went through the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, bedroom closets, and made use of the bedroom and swimming equipment. All without asking. The original poster wonders whether people have no sense of personal space or personal property anymore. Based on the responses, people do not. Surprising to me, posters seem to have no problem with the guests rummaging through the cabinets and closets and eating everything in sight. Most of those responding found ways to place blame on the original poster. The original poster might be faulted for not having adequate snacks on hand and maybe could have been a bit more assertive in offering things before the visitors were compelled to take things into their own hands, but generally those responding seemed eager to find fault with the original poster. Some posters straight out claimed that the original poster was either inventing or embellishing the story. This leads me to an observation about the DCUM forum. The perceived tone of a post has a hugely significant impact on how others respond to it. If a poster is perceived to be whiny, they are not likely to find much sympathy. Similarly with posters who appear to be exaggerating or over-reacting. The forum can be very supportive of those whose situations appear to be objectively difficult, but it can be quite mean to those believed to be complaining unnecessarily. Several posters were almost explicit about this, complaining that the original poster was being overly dramatic and justifying their unsupportive responses on that basis. Multiple posters said that the original poster sounded "really uptight". A few posters did pay more attention to the facts than the tone and those posters tended to side more with the original poster. It makes me wonder whether the same post, written slightly differently in order to evoke a different tone, would have generated a more supportive response.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Thomas Jefferson High School drops to 5th in latest US News ranking" and posted in the "Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)" forum. This thread was inspired by a new release of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best High School Rankings”. Thomas Jefferson High School, or TJ, as the school is normally called, has led these rankings for the past three years but is listed as 5th in the latest list. U.S. News says that this is not a big deal, the school's supporters say it is not a big deal, and those who think it is a big deal are largely ignoring the facts. So, in many ways, this thread is a whole lot of todo about nothing. First, regarding the position change itself. As a U.S. News managing editor is quoted as saying, the top schools are so close that very small changes in the data can result in what appear to be big changes. "But it doesn’t mean too much has really changed there." Next, the reason for the change. As anyone even vaguely familiar with the recent history of TJ will well know, the school recently underwent a change in its admission policies. Opponents of the changes have warned that the best applicants are no longer being selected and, as a result, the quality of the school will decline. Therefore, some saw this drop in rankings as an indication that their prediction is coming true. The flaw in that thinking, however, is that, as the article to which the original poster linked makes clear, the data on which the rankings were based was collected prior the admissions changes. This did not prevent some posters from still blaming the changes. One poster was so insistent that the admissions changes have harmed the school's quality that he literally wrote that it didn't matter how many times others posted the quote saying that the data was prior to the changes. He claimed that the significant impact of the changes was being ignored. Other posters pointed out that TJ must indeed be a leading STEM school if it was capable of developing a time machine that went back to the past to influence data based on changes that hadn't occurred. As is the case with almost all TJ threads these days, this one soon devolved into a debate about race and ethnicity. Posters argued that Asian students were denied admissions in favor of less-well prepared minority students. Others pointed out that Asians remain the largest group of students admitted to the school. The rhetoric suggesting that Asians have been victims of discrimination often has as unfortunate tendency to become racist itself. One poster suggested that minority students admitted under the new policies are "lazy kids who just want a quota for them to get in". To be clear, no quota exists and the new admissions system is race blind. The racist slant of these threads tends to snowball, causing me to lock the threads. So, it's not clear how long this thread will remain open.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Leaked training shows teachers being directed to allow gender & name changes without parent consent, transitioning?" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Let me be clear and say that this thread was an extremely successful trolling exercise. How schools deal with transgender issues has been a hot topic in most of our schools forums (and even a few non-school forums), but the Fairfax County Public Schools forum has been absolutely obsessed with the topic. Much of that has to do with the school system's refusal to strictly comply with new model policies released by Governor Glenn Youngkin's administration. This thread starts out with the original poster linking to a Fox News report about "leaked" FCPS training documents regarding names that students wish to use at school. One document displayed shows three scenarios in which students might choose to use names other than their legal names. In each of the cases, the document indicates that parental permission is not required in order for teachers to use chosen names instead of legal names. The original poster described these documents as "recently leaked" and complains that they do not adhere to the state guidelines. While nobody seems to have noticed until the 10th page of the thread, the X (formerally tweet) that the original poster embedded is from August 2022, just over a year ago. I have no way of knowing whether the original poster intentionally misrepresented this news or was simply unaware of the date of her own sources. But, either way, the training material preceded the new state guidelines and is certainly not "recent". Regardless of the age of the material, heated debate ensued. Several posters agree with the training document and don't believe parental permission should be required for something as mundane as which name is used in school. Both parents and teachers alike argue that teachers are far too busy and have more important things about which to worry than what name a child wants to be called. Other posters fear that schools' adoption of chosen names of a different gender affirms a student's gender transition which they believe should not be done without parental involvement. I think from now on whenever I have to discuss a thread of this nature I am going to remind readers of the Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board decision. The US Supreme Court let stand a decision that sided with Gavin Grimm, a transgender Virginia high school student, and required that he be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms matching his gender. While several posters in this thread criticized FCPS for not adhering to the state model policies, they seem to ignore the fact that Youngkin's guidelines are not consistent with current legal precedence. The only mention of the Grimm case I saw in the thread was a single link that offered no explanation concerning to what it was linking. But, I think this case needs to be part of all of these discussions.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "AITA: Getting crap for not attending a Friday wedding because we have no childcare" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster explains that she and her husband have been invited to her husband's cousin's wedding which will be held on a Friday afternoon at a location two hours away. The original poster has two children and has not been able to arrange childcare for them. Moreover, both the original poster and her husband are planning to use their paid time off for an upcoming vacation. Therefore, they have decided to skip the wedding. This has led to some family drama due to another relative coming into town with two kids. He first asked whether he could share childcare with the original poster and when told they were planning to miss the wedding, suggested renting short-term housing at the wedding location and hiring a local babysitter. The original poster is not interested in having her children cared for in a strange house by a stranger. Then the original poster's in-laws suggested that she care for all four kids while her husband went to the wedding. This does not solve the problem of a lack of paid time off and the original poster doesn't want to care for four kids. She wants to know if she is wrong in this situation. This thread is 12 pages and I don't have time to read it so I can't say what happened in most of the thread. But, from what I did read, some posters think the original poster is wrong because she doesn't appear to have tried very hard to find a solution for this issue. Others disagree and put blame on the others who are looking to the original poster to solve both her and the relative's childcare problem.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "The Blind Side scandal" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread has been going for a while but apparently took off yesterday, adding 15 pages to reach 25 pages in total. As most can probably guess, this thread is about the lawsuit filed by former NFL player Michael Oher against Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy. Oher and the Tuohys were the subject of the 2009 movie "The Blind Side" starring Sandra Bullock. Oher claims that he just learned in February that he had not been adopted by the Tuohys as he apparently believed. Not being a family member, Oher says he did not receive payments from the movie that were provided to the couple's children. The entertainment forum seems to have attracted a number of obsessive posters who often appear deeply knowledgeable (though that appearance is often misleading) and are capable of a prodigious number of posts per day. We have seen this in threads about Meghan Markle and Taylor Swift. In this case, I don't think these posters are longtime fans of either Oher or the Tuohys, though it is pretty clear that many posters have been influenced by Bullock's portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy. Indeed, quite a few of those posting seem to have gotten most of their information from either the movie or the book on which the movie was based. Many of the posters in the thread are suspicious of the Tuohy's motives and accept Oher's contention that he was misled into thinking that he had been adopted when, in fact, he had not been. Some of these posters believe that the Tuohys exploited Oher, were only interested in him due to his football skills, and had no interest in making him a formal member of their family. Other posters side with the Tuohys, arguing that a conservatorship was more practical than an adoption and that Oher should have been aware of the legal implications. One argument made by Tuohy supporters is that they have not actually received that much money as a result of the book and movie and that the money they spent raising Oher exceeded any income. So they don't expect him to receive anything from the lawsuit even if it is successful. One particularly strong supporter of the Tuohys continually launched attacks on Oher that appear based on nothing more than conjecture. She suggested that Oher is out of money and going after the Tuohys as a money grab. Moreover, she alleged that this was being done at the best of Oher's wife, contending that this was mostly a mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law conflict. I haven't seen anything to support this view, but given the innumerable mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflicts that are routinely fought in our Family Relationships forum, it would fit right in on DCUM.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Wedding offenses: rank according to badness" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Lately there have been multiple threads about posters objecting to one aspect or another of a wedding. Perhaps inspired by such threads, the original poster of this thread wants to rank items in terms of how "bad" they are considered. Her own list starts with "no kids" weddings and ends with "Weddings of couples who ask for cash". But, I don't know which of those is supposed to be the worst offense. She also lists "No +1 weddings", "Destination weddings", "Dry weddings", and "No open bar weddings". My first reaction when preparing to write about this thread is that I don't like summarizing threads that consist mostly of lists. But, then I noticed that the thread was 17 pages long and I knew there is no way that posters had stuck to the program for that many pages. Sure enough, while the initial responders did  pretty much keep to ranking their wedding peeves as the original poster requested, by the third page posters starting ignoring the rankings and just expressing their opinions about things others had listed. As could be expected, this caused the thread to devolve fairly quickly as others responded to those posts and the thread was overwhelmed by debates about wedding choices. The first poster to deviate from the assigned task of ranking offenses defended the practice of not inviting kids which was one of the leading wedding peeves. This provoked a rebuttal from a poster whose kids are always well-behaved at weddings. Of course everything that was listed as an "offense" had defenders. Otherwise, none of those things would ever be done at weddings. Some posters rejected other's lists completely, supporting every practice that was ranked as an offense. This seems to be a very popular thread but the topic is lost on me. I barely remember any wedding to which I've been, including my own. I couldn't tell you which ones had cash bars or were dry and I've never been to a destination wedding. My list of offenses would probably be "too long", "uncomfortable seats", and "bad music at the reception".

Yesterday was a day on which people around the world gathered around their televisions for one of the most watched events of the year: the broadcast of Super Bowl commercials. So naturally, the most active thread on DCUM was titled, "Super Bowl commercials". Posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, the thread managed to rack up 13 pages in just over 12 hours. Pretty amazing considering that most of our users were asleep during much of that time. Started with a prompt by the original poster to discuss the commercials, the thread is mostly a collection of opinions about the ads that appeared during the football game. Many users expressed dissatisfaction with all of the ads, opining that none of them were very good. Others found favorites, with the Dunkin' commercial being praised by several posters. Probably the most controversial ads of the evening were the "He Gets Us" ads promoting Jesus. Many posters pointed to the right-wing, evangelical Christian groups behind the ads, especially the family that owns Hobby Lobby. This provoked criticism from both liberal-leaning and anti-religious posters. However, posters who supported the message of the ads spoke up to defend them. Two commercials that featured dogs, one by the Farmer's Dog and the other from Amazon, were lauded by multiple posters. The Remy Martin ad featuring Serena Williams provoked some debate over the appropriateness of an athlete promoting an alcoholic beverage. At some point the thread was temporarily hijacked by discussion of the half time show and Rihanna's apparent pregnancy, though there was an entire separate thread devoted to that topic. One or two posters even posted about the game that periodically interrupted the commercials.

The most active thread yesterday was the thread about The Satanic Temple offering abortion services. I've already covered that thread so I'll move on to the next most active thread which was titled, "Uninvited from Super Bowl party" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster explains that her husband commands a military unit that has an annual Super Bowl party. The original poster, who has been feeling lonely and isolated, was looking forward to attending the party. The host of the party was scheduled to be on duty during the game, so the original poster's husband volunteered to take his shift. Subsequently, someone else — it's not exactly clear who — emailed the original poster's husband, copying the original poster, to say that due to capacity reasons the original poster and her children could not be hosted this year. Many posters found this behavior by whomever sent the email to be appalling and shockingly rude. Some of those went so far as to propose retaliatory ideas such her husband withdrawing his offer to cover the host's shift. While the original poster and her family had attended the party in previous years, this was the first year that her husband held the command position. Some posters suggested that those attending the party were planning to relax and maybe engage in gossip and didn't want the boss's wife around. As such, they argued, the original poster should not take this as a personal slight. It was just something that went with the job. They further hypothesized that the previous commander's family did not attend and that the original poster should not have expected to have been invited this year. Beyond that, multiple posters urged the original poster to focus on why she was feeling isolated and lonely and to work on fixing that rather than worrying about the Super Bowl party.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "How do you stay married to an ASD HFA Aspergers husband?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster writes that her husband was recently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), something that she says explains the problems they have had in their marriage. She wants to stay married but doesn't know how she can do it given the difficulties that she attributes to his condition. She asks if others have made such a relationship work and, if so, how? This is a controversial topic that has come up repeatedly in the last several months. The controversy begins with the name of the condition, something the original poster demonstrates by using three different terms to describe her husband's diagnosis. Traditionally referred to as Asperger's Syndrome, this condition was later referred to as High Functioning Autism, but is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1. Regardless of what it is called, several posters attribute problems in their marriages to the diagnosis. An immediate point of dispute concerns why these women didn't notice the symptoms in their husbands earlier. This leads to a debate about whether those with ASD are able to "mask" or hide their symptoms. This highlights a paradox. Those with ASD are prone to difficulties in social communication and trouble reading social cues. Yet, these same individuals are allegedly capable of faking a persona for for long enough to get married. Some posters don't buy this scenario. Moreover, one poster strongly believes — and "strongly" cannot be emphasized enough — that "ASD" is being wrongly used to describe behaviors that have nothing to do with the condition. In this poster's view, the men being described are not on the spectrum, they are just jerks. Intermixed within these various debates are some helpful suggestions and advice for those involved in such relationships. But, of course, even the lessons posters have learned from their own experience are disputed.