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Thursday's Most Active Threads
The topics with the most engagement yesterday included things that make posters irrationally angry, Ivy League admissions results, women changing or not changing their last name when getting married, and DC school lottery results.
As I have said a number of times, DCUM has almost entirely grown organically with very little of it being planned. For the most part, we have followed the direction set by the users rather than trying to steer things in any particular direction. But to the extent that we had a vision for the website, we saw it as being primarily used for the exchange of helpful information. We wanted it to be a place where struggling parents might find advice to help them confront the challenges of parenthood in the District of Columbia. Obviously, things have turned out somewhat differently. For one thing, rather than relying on DCUM to indulge in their role as parents, for many users it is a temporary escape from those responsibilities. As such, DCUM is often simply a distraction and mindless entertainment. Today's most active thread is a case in point. Titled, "Things that make you irrationally angry" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum, the original poster is irrationally bothered by people in the grocery store taking too long to choose pasta sauce or bananas. She wonders what similarly irrational irritations others have. The original poster is not alone in being bothered by the behavior of others at grocery stores. A number of other posters are similarly angered by various grocery-shopping activities. The other major provocation for irrational anger seems to be driving. Just as with grocery shopping, almost any aspect of driving, no matter how normal, is likely to make someone nuts. Obviously this thread was not meant to be taken too seriously, though some posters did address serious topics. More often posters took a humorous approach, such as the poster who is irrationally angered by monocles. Some posters get so irrationally angry when they can't find the scissors that I would hate to be anywhere near them when they finally did find the scissors. Adults eating various types of fruits also seems to set off a number of posters. Eating in general is apparently the source of much irrational anger. I was going to say that all of my anger is rational so I personally have nothing to add to this thread. But then a poster used the term "narc" to refer to someone that they considered to be narcissistic and I nearly flung my laptop across the room. A "narc" is either a narcotics officer or someone who narcs on you. Look it up.