Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the one about women continuing to pursue careers even though their husbands can support them. But I've already discussed that thread and will skip it today. The next most active thread was titled, "Not welcome on vacation" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster, in an extremely long post, describes how her fiancé's mother frequently excludes her, most recently not inviting her on a trip on which the mother had invited the original poster's fiancé. But, I am not really going to talk about this thread. Rather, I am going to describe the original poster's repeated trolling over the last couple of days. First, the story of this thread. Early in the thread at least one poster suspected the original poster of being a troll and accused her of faking the thread. This started a lot of back and forth and, at some point, another poster defended the original poster. The poster who didn't believe the original poster immediately accused this new poster of being the original poster and hiding her identity. That was not true, though ironically the original poster had been posting defenses of herself and claiming to be a "new poster". At any rate, the troll-calling poster and the poster defending the original poster got into a heated exchange which led a report to me and a thread in the "Website Feedback" forum. When I looked into the thread, I saw the posts by the original poster in which she falsely identified herself as a new poster. That spurred me to check what other threads she had been posting. It turned out that two days earlier she had posted a thread titled, "Helping him" in which she claimed that she was divorcing her husband and his mother was paying for his lawyer. Yesterday, the same day that she started the thread complaining that her fiancé's mother left her out, she started a thread titled, "Doesn’t want that time with him" in which she says her mother-in-law doesn't want to spend time alone with her husband. I locked all three threads and exposed the original poster as a troll. But, that didn't stop her. This morning she started a new thread titled, "Feeling guilty about being ‘too’ sad" in which she describes being heartbroken by the death of her husband's grandmother. This one is a real tear jerker. Then, she followed that up a few minutes later with a thread titled, "Delicate DIL situation" in which she is suddenly a mother-in-law complaining about her daughter-in-law. But that post is so convoluted that I can't be bothered trying to figure out what it is supposed to say. To summarize, over the course of three days, the poster has had three different marital statuses, engaged, married, divorcing and has been both a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law. I understand that sometimes posters fudge details to maintain their anonymity, but this poster also claimed to live in Georgia (something about which I also suspect is not true). Her anonymous posts on DCUM are unlikely to expose her back home. But, beyond that, two threads directly contradict each other with regard to her feelings about the relationship of her husband/fiancé and his mother. Who knows if any part of any of this is true. I suspect it is just a bored person with an overly-active imagination and too much time on her hands.

I am skipping the next two most active threads because I've already discussed them. Therefore the next thread for today's post was posted in the "Private & Independent Schools" forum. Titled, "2024 Washington DC area College commits", the thread was started back in mid-December to list college commitments by area private and independent high school students. Most schools these days have Instagram pages on which students post their college choices. Therefore many of the posts are simply links to those pages. But eventually the thread turned into discussion about the colleges chosen and debates over any significance of the commitments. The thread is currently 80 pages long and was among the most active threads yesterday because it added nearly 10 new pages. Obviously, I haven't read all 80 pages, but I have looked over the most recent posts. While private school families, like everyone else, are all different and generalizations are often inaccurate, I think it is safe to say that for many families that have anted up the cash for expensive private schools, college acceptances are among the most important rewards. The commitments are important indications of whether families received their money's worth. Last year there was considerable debate over whether private schools were paying off with many arguments that public schools might be providing better college opportunities. So one theme of this thread is to show that is not true and that top private schools are performing better with college placements than other schools. But, like all discussions about college admissions these days, there is little agreement about which factors lead to admissions at top colleges. Acceptances at prestigious schools are often attributed to "hooks" such as legacy status, family connections, or athletic recruitment. This implies that admissions success has less to do with the high school and more to do with the family or student involved. Similarly, the success of some schools is accorded to the allegedly easier grading of those schools. Posters claim this easier grading leads to higher grade point averages and, therefore, better college acceptance records. Other posters claim this analysis is hogwash and post data they believe demonstrates excellent college results from schools that are believe to have rigorous grading. There is a lot of measuring of male genitala in this thread as advocates of one school invite advocates of another school to lay it on the table, so to speak. In the end, I think lots of different conclusions can be drawn from this debate, but I suspect that things are not as simple or as clear as some might wish. College admissions is often a crap shoot at the best of times and it is difficult to know how much of a role an applicant's high school plays. But some schools do seem to, if nothing else, maximize a student's opportunties.

Next was a thread titled, "What is a secret you have kept from your spouse?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that she has not told her spouse that she was previously engaged because she wants him to think that he was the first to propose to her. I am not going to spend much time discussing this thread. Almost all the secrets are either sexual or financial in nature. Because of all the sexual secrets that are described, this thread may have to be removed. But, if you have a strong interest in hearing about secret affairs, wild sexual adventures, or secret hoards of cash, read this thread while you still can.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Bad people get theirs eventually", the original poster says that she still feels hurt by some people in her life but has moved on. However, she has heard that people get their comeuppance in the end. She asks for stories of people eventually meeting their fate. While many of those replying say that they believe in karma or something similar, they offer very few of the examples that the original poster is seeking. Other posters, however, cite a number of examples of people they believe deserve a terrible fate, but instead repeatedly succeed. This suggests that such people are not getting their due. As one poster writes, "Don’t delude yourself into thinking it all evens out—at least as far as our known, rational existence and universe are concerned." Others find some solace in the thought that those who do them wrong are likely to suffer down the line. This thought apparently makes it easier for them to move on. One poster was able to cite a number of examples of what goes around coming around. With one example, the poster described having been cheated in a real estate transaction only for the house to burn to the ground within a year. As the thread continued, several more examples of people reaping what they sowed were provided. But still some posters argued against the existence of anything such as karma. Many posts in the thread deal with former President Donald Trump, someone who many seem to think has not been forced to face the consequences of his actions. For many he is practically the poster child for demonstrating that what the original poster is asking about doesn't exist. But others think he about to get his due. For some posters, the provided examples not only don't convince them of the existence of something of the nature of karma, they actually cause more skepticism. For instance, some posters ask, why would a governing force of the universe care about, for instance, the house mentioned above but ignore the horrible things being done to children?