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The Most Active Threads Since Friday
The topics with the most engagement since by last blog post included texting etiquette, the bike lane that cannot be killed, kindergarten kids still in diapers, and a soon to be widow with financial challenges.
The most active thread over the weekend was the one asking why people are Republicans which I have already discussed. That thread had twice as many posts as the next most active thread which was titled, "‘Don't Text Me So Early!’" and was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster explains that she texted her sister-in-law at 6:51 AM Saturday morning to invite her to the original poster's son's high school graduation party. The original poster's sister-in-law responded by telling her not to text so early. The original poster doesn't think there should be times when you shouldn't text and asks if she is correct in this regard. I am not sure why the original poster chose this forum rather than the "Family Relationships" forum. For that matter, to the extent this thread deals with relationships, it is more about relationships with technology. So maybe the "Electronics and Technology" forum would have been better. Those responding were split between posters who agreed with the original poster that texts can be sent at all hours and it is up to the recipients to turn off notifications or silence their phones and those who believe sending texts deserves some consideration and that texts shouldn't be sent before 8 AM. In other words, the division is between those who see this as a technical issue and those who see it as a matter of good manners. The technologists argue that it is easy to turn off notifications. The manners folks claim that they have reasons for keeping notifications on such as teens out late at night while parents want to sleep. The technologists respond saying that phones have settings to allow the kids' numbers through and there are ways to block text notifications but still allow phone calls. The manners posters identify other reasons that they can't block notifications for unknown numbers. What is clear is that this is an area in which social norms have not been established and, therefore, posters have much different ideas about what is acceptable. The responses also demonstrate posters' different perceptions of texts. For many, and I probably fall into this group, different forms of communications have different priorities. Email is generally the least time sensitive and phone calls are the most urgent. Texts fall somewhere in the middle. But for some posters, texts seem to be treated with the same importance as phone calls. This is understandable, I guess, when you realize that for some young folks, the idea of using a phone as a phone is almost incomprehensible. They don't expect audio unless it is accompanied by video. Therefore, while some posters can't imagine a text being sent in a true emergency rather than a phone call, for others this is a perfectly normal expectation. This highlights another factor that eventually came to dominate the thread. Many of these divisions are broken down by age. Those who are comfortable setting intricate settings on their devices slag off those who don't want to or are not capable of delving into all the features of their phones as being "old". So a fair number of age-based epithets were slung back and forth. What is clear is that this is uneven terrain and that individuals should, as one poster put it, "know their audience" in order to avoid giving offense.