The Most Active Threads Since Friday

I took Memorial Day off from writing which means that today I will discuss the most active threads over the past four days. Many of the most active threads were ones that I've already discussed and will skip today. Frankly, the threads that were left over were not that interesting and it is kind of disappointing that they were popular. First among those was a thread titled, "Kate spending time with ‘birth family’". This thread was disappointing because it is about the British Royal Family, and more specifically, the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton. That is guaranteed to attract crazies of all sorts. Moreover, the original poster did a spectacularly poor job with the original post. The original poster did not provide a link supporting the claim in the thread's title or provide any further information about the allegation made there. Instead, the original poster implied that the Princess had moved in with her parents, something that appears not to be true. Rather, the original poster seems to have misread, misunderstood, or misrepresented an article in "The Daily Beast". According to the Daily Beast article, the Princess will be spending time at Sandringham, the country house used by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The article explicitly says that Prince William and their children will be there as well because it is a school holiday. Her "birth family" will simply be visiting. But, why bother with the truth when fiction is so much more fun? Posters immediately engaged in all sorts of speculation that the Princess is dying, that she and William are divorcing, that William wants her out of the way so he can engage in affairs, and on and on. These Royal Family threads present a problem for me. I don't like them and would be happy to delete every one of them. But posters enjoy them and continually create them. If the threads involve either Kate Middleton or Megan Markle, they will provoke a slew of reports. There was a poster who was particularly determined in this case to report any post that she thought was even the slightest disparaging of Middleton. As such, this thread immediately became a headache. Anytime I got up from my computer I would return to find a mailbox full of reports. I quickly determined that I was not going to spend the Memorial Day weekend removing posts about the Princess of Wales, someone who will never read this website, has to deal with much more visible criticism daily, and is not going to be harmed in any way by a bunch of raving lunatics on DCUM. The result is nearly 40 pages of some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories that you can imagine. I finally locked the thread last night, mostly to save my email inbox from the hundreds of reports the thread was generating (mostly by a single poster). But at that time discussion was focused on a theory that the Palace had hired a "body double" to appear as Kate in a recent video. Intermixed between the various conspiracy theories were complaints by posters who are certain that Kate is near death but are upset that she is not publicly working until she takes her last breath.

Next was a thread that was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Trump's rally in the Bronx", the original poster embedded a tweet saying that a rally held in the Bronx by former president and current cult leader Donald Trump had attracted "tens of thousands" of people. This thread immediately divided into posters clearly living in different realities. The pro-Trump version of the Bronx rally is that it had been attended by a huge crowd that had surprised everyone by its size and suggested that President Joe Biden could be in danger of losing New York. Moreover, the diverse nature of the crowd showed that Trump's appeal spanned races, indicating even more danger for Biden. The anti-Trump version of the event is that the crowd was actually fairly small — aerial photographs suggest it may not have numbered much more than 3,000 — and was not particularly diverse. According to this view, the size and makeup of the crowd did not in anyway suggest that Trump might have a chance of winning the state. As has become normal these days, Trump supporters posted fake photos apparently aimed at exaggerating the crowd size. In the past, such photos have included such things as a Rod Stewart concert in Rio de Janeiro being misrepresented as a Trump rally in New Jersey. In this thread, a photo of a crowd attracted by former President Barack Obama in St Louis was presented as showing Trump's Bronx rally. These photos demonstrate the extent to which Trump is operating on illusion over reality. Frankly, even a heavily-attended rally in New York City would not indicate much of anything about Trump's chances in New York. New York City is a big place. Even a group of tens of thousands, which this crowd clearly was not, would not be that significant. Similarly, almost any collection of people in the Bronx is likely to be diverse. However, a few people of color that are highlighted by pro-Trump media don't indicate anything significant about their larger communities. But Trump is more concerned about image and his followers are not likely to put much in the way of critical thinking into anything he does. Trump apparently wanted to project himself as showing strength in a Democratic stronghold and among Democratic constituencies. With the help of a lot of misrepresentation, he may have been able to have done that, at least among his cult followers. But what is the impact of that in reality? The old question about whether a tree that falls in the forest when no one is around makes a sound comes to mind. If a tree falls in the forest and thousands of Trump fanatics tweet that the tree made a huge sound, one of the biggest sounds ever, does that make it true? Who would ever believe that Trump would provoke metaphysical questions? Between perception and reality, Trump is much more concerned about perception. He does not care what is real, but rather what people believe. If people are convinced that a photo of a crowd in which the famous green dome of St. Louis' Old Courthouse is clearly visible shows a Trump rally in the Bronx, that is a success for Trump. Whether these perceptions based on falsehoods will have any impact on November's election is, of course, the important question.

The next most active thread was titled, "Is there a ‘post-truth’ majority in the US?" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread ties in nicely with the discussion about the previous thread. The original poster is worried that former president and current cult leader Donald Trump and Presidential candiate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will combine for over 50% of the vote, meaning in the original poster's view, that anti-science, post-truth voters will have a majority. I really have no interest in trudging through the 18 pages of this thread. Instead, I'll just continue expounding on the theme on which I got started in the previous discussion. I have said for years that I have witnessed the growth on DCUM of alternative realities. One of the earlier examples of this was climate change, with one side believing that climate change is scientifically proven and the other saying that no such thing exists (or, if it does exist, it wasn't caused by humans). But this really started to become apparent after the 2016 presidential election in which Democrats largely believed that Russia had interfered on behalf of Trump while Trump routinely referred to this as "the Russia hoax". Objectively Trump was wrong. In 2017, PolitiFact named Trump's assertion the "Lie of the Year". Still, countless Trump supporters firmly believe that there was no Russian interference and, if there were, it was in support of Hillary Clinton. Trump seems to have been encouraged by his success in convincing supporters that Russian interference was a hoax and has since engaged nearly full-time in creating his own reality in which his supporters happily dwell. In this reality, COVID was a lab-born creation of the Chinese which, simultaneously, was not as bad as portrayed, the vaccine is worse than the disease, Ivermectin, disinfectant, and sunlight are appropriate treatments, Trump didn't steal classified documents, he never met E. Jean Carroll, his payments to Stormy Daniels were "legal expenses", and, the most important of all, the 2020 election was stolen. No amount of scientific evidence or demonstrable proof will convince Trump supporters differently. Otherwise intelligent people line up to confirm that they believe Trump's reality, often because to do otherwise would be career-ending. This division into different realities is facilitated by a media that has not come to terms with Trump. While right-wing partisan media happily engages in promoting Trump's reality, the mainstream media confines itself to reporting "both sides". The result is that, as reported by the mainstream media, Trump's objectively false reality is as equally valid as actual reality. The media seems to believe that pointing out that Trump is not telling the truth would show bias. But the fact is that by not accurately describing Trump alternative reality as false, the media is actively promoting that reality. The counter argument, of course, is to accuse liberals of having their own alternative reality that is similarly disconnected from fact. The most common example involves transgender people. I would argue that issues involving transgender individuals are split between belief and scientific proof only when the debate is overly-simplified or misrepresented. In reality, the pro-transgender position, while being extremely mockable when simplified beyond recognition, has a fairly sound basis in science. Opponents simply ignore that science.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The thread was titled, "DW not put together around the house" and, on the face of it, involves a man who is upset that his wife only dresses in sweats around the house. I say, "on the face of it" because I doubt that this is the reality. This poster is not so much a troll, as someone with a very peculiar hangup. The original poster is obsessed with clothing, more specifically with jeans. I count at least 8 threads involving jeans created by this poster. While the poster's gender changes with some regularity, the obsession with jeans does not. The poster has started a thread about men's jeans, "mother" jeans, wearing jeans to work, wearing jeans at home, feeling sexy in jeans, and wearing jeans in Aspen. When the poster is not talking about jeans or other items of clothing, he/she also tends to discuss relationships. Depending on which thread you believe, the poster is either married or dating. Generally these relationship threads also involve, if not jeans, other clothing. As in this thread which involves the poster's wife wearing sweats. But in the original poster's first response, he/she describes dressing "much better" which involves "jeans and a polo". Not that jeans would be unusual to wear at home, but a thread in which this poster didn't talk about jeans would be strange. Most recently this poster has moved on to complaining that his wife does not wear lingerie. It is not clear if the poster, regardless of gender, would appreciate a denim bustier, but I suspect the poster would. This poster is representative of a specific type of poster DCUM attracts. The poster is far from DC and likely has no connection to the DC area. But, the poster has found a receptive audience for his/her particular obsession. Who knows what the poster's motivation might be? I blocked an IP address of a poster who was posting threads that seemed to be based purely in fantasy last week. The poster, using another address, asked why I had blocked her and, after I explained why, apologized and promised not to do it again. When asked why she had posted the fake threads, she said she had been bored at work. I think this poster is motivated by something more than boredom, perhaps some sort of OCD. But I am obviously not qualified to offer any diagnosis. To me it is just weird.