April

The most active thread yesterday was the Gaza war thread which is back on top after interest in the war was renewed due to Israel's repeated drone strikes on a convoy of World Central Kitchen aid workers, killing seven. Since I have already discussed that thread, I will move on to the next which was titled "UT Austin lays off DEI employees" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to an article in "The Hill" saying that in order to comply with a Texas law that bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at public universities, the University of Texas at Austin has laid off 60 employees that were involved with DEI. The original poster, who is a proponent of DEI programs, asks if anyone is removing the university from their list of colleges to pursue. DEI is the lastest in a series of right-wing bugaboos following affirmative action and critical race theory (CRT) that have been hijacked by right-wingers to promote the idea that White people are the true victims of racism. There is a well-funded political infrastructure devoted to "exposing" DEI and generating opposition to it. That effort seems to have had considerable success in convincing White people, and to an extent Asians, that they are being discriminated against in favor of less qualified minorities. As such, a number of those responding express happiness that the DEI program is being eliminated and claim that they will move UT higher on their lists. To be sure, many DEI efforts are deserving of criticism. In many cases, especially in the corporate world, such programs are little more than window dressing that have no real impact other than to create frustration. Such programs are seen as a waste of money, which is one of the primary criticisms voiced in this thread. Similarly, many DEI programs are so poorly implemented that they have little positive impact. However, proponents argue that the response to poor DEI programs should be better DEI programs rather than the elimination of them. Moreover, because of the constant politically-motivated attacks on such programs, they are often misunderstood. As the original poster of the thread writes in a follow-up post, "Funny how the people so against DEI don’t seem to have an elementary understanding of the concepts." One of the most common complaints about DEI is about the large budgets often devoted to it. In addition, despite the often lucrative funding, the programs are not seen as contributing to the schools' academic mission. As a poster who is a college professor writes, "They hire consultants, have their own staff, host expensive events, and get paid probably twice what I get paid as a tenured professor." Ironically, even the successes of DEI programs are often used to disparage them. For instance, if a DEI program succeeds in increasing the percentage of minority students at a university, many will claim that these students are unqualified and that they took places from more deserving White students, regardless of whether that is true or not.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "I disconnected my direct deposit" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster, who appears to be highly stressed at the moment, doesn't do the best job of explaining her circumstances which, I think, leads to a somewhat negative tone for this thread. Essentially, the original poster works in a high-pressure job that pays well while her husband works as a professor, earning less than half that she does. They have a three-year-old child and the original poster is currently 32 weeks pregnant. She appears to have had a somewhat long-running resentment due to what she sees as her subsidizing her husband's lifestyle while also trying to be a mother. With a second child on the way, these feelings have come to a boil. The original poster's husband is about to start a year-long sabbatical and they have enough liquid savings to cover two years of their living expenses. Therefore, the original poster has chosen this time to take steps to force the issue of his refusal to increase his earnings. She says that she will "quiet quit" her job with the expectation that she will eventually be pushed out. In addition, she has switched the direct deposit of her paycheck from their joint bank account to her personal account. The bottom line is that she wants financial support of their family to be more evenly divided, something that can be achieved either through her husband increasing his earnings or by downsizing their lifestyle. Since her husband has not been willing to do either, the original poster essentially wants to create a financial crunch for him. I think that it is fair to say that the most common response to the original poster was one of confusion. Posters didn't understand what she meant by "disconnecting" her direct deposit and they were not sure if her problem was with her job or with her husband. Several question why in these circumstances the original poster would choose to have another child. They also are doubtful that changing her direct deposit arrangement will have any real effect. Many posters are concerned that this strategy might simply lead to financial insecurity or divorce. The original poster is willing to accept divorce if her husband continues to refuse to find a higher paying job and doesn't seem very worried about their financial situation. Many of those responding suggest that the original poster switch to job that has less pressure rather than risking getting fired at her current job, but the original poster insists that her skills are only suited for her current job. The most amazing part of this thread is that someone managed to dig up two threads that appear to have been created by the same original poster four years ago. I am simply dumbfounded that someone could remember the two threads sufficiently to connect them to this poster and was able to find the threads now. For what it is worth, despite the many allegations in the thread that the poster is a troll, the two old threads actually support the latest thread being authentic.

The most active thread since my last blog post on Friday was titled, "Let us pick for you…list acceptances" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. For months I've joked about a group of users in the college forum who approach college admissions with the obsessiveness of dedicated sports fans, analyzing the most minute of statistics and debating various rankings and top college lists. I refer to this group as the Fantasy College Admissions League. This thread is the culmination of this phenomenon, the college admissions playoffs if you will. The original poster invites the parents of undecided college applicants to list their options as well as factors influencing their decision and allow others to weigh in. Just in case you doubt the enthusiasm of the College Admissions Fantasy League participants, consider that this thread reach nearly 40 pages in just three days. To be sure, there are some very knowledgeable posters in this forum whose advice is worth considering. But, there are others who appear to be primarily motivated by personal biases rather than the strength of their analysis. The problem is telling which is which. In some cases this is made easier by the amount of effort posters put into their responses. At least in my opinion, the replies that consisted of nothing but the name of the school were not particularly helpful because they didn't explain the reasoning behind the opinion. In contrast, posters who supported their response with substantive reasons for their choice tended to be more persuasive. On the other hand, those posters often opened themselves up to challenges from others who disagreed with their reasoning. Even so, debate between posters was discouraged in the thread with a Northeastern University booster being shutdown when she went a bit far in her advocacy. It is clear that the thread was meant to be lighthearted and mostly for entertainment. That is not meant to disparage the seriousness with which many of the thread's participants approached the topic, but I don't think many final college decisions were made as a result of a DCUM post. I think the highlight of the thread for me had nothing to do with the substance of the topic but rather with a poster who chose to respond with snark to the original poster, "thanking" the original poster for providing instructions because the responder would otherwise not know what to do. This response was on page 34, so clearly a number of posters had found the thread engaging by that point and the snark was not necessary. But the icing on the cake was that the poster messed up the formatting of their post and ended up including their response within the quoted content. The inability of this poster to quote properly suggests that they actually do require instruction. Snark kind of falls flat when it provides evidence of the author's incompetence.