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Monday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jun 25, 2024 01:45 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included "ratting out" a neighbor's son, choosing between Wake Forest, the University of Georgia, and Tulane University, a lie on a college applications causing admission to be rescinded, and racist text among teens.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Would you rat out the neighbor’s kid?" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster says that their neighbors went out of town leaving their high school sophomore son at home alone. At 7:30 a,m., the boy's mother texted the original poster asking if a specific car was at their house. The car belongs to the son's girlfriend and the original poster says that the car was there when she left for the gym at 5 a.m. The original poster says that her husband doesn't think that they should tell the mother about the car but the original poster does. She asks what others would do. After reading this thread this morning, I locked it because I believe the entire scenario is made up. I was already suspicious that anyone would immediately remember at 7:30 a car they had seen at 5:00. In some situations, sure, but I was skeptical in this case. But, what sealed my suspicion was a follow-up post the original poster made saying that at 7:40 a.m. her husband — remember the one who didn't want to tell — had texted the neighbor a photo of her home showing the car still there. One poster incorrectly suggested that this had occurred prior to the original poster starting the thread. In fact, the thread was started at 7:37, so her husband would have sent the photo after the thread was started. But the timeline provided by the original poster claimed that the original text from the neighbor was at 7:35. So, we are to believe that the original poster received a text, had a discussion with her husband during which they disagreed, and sat down to post on DCUM all in the course of two minutes. The real kicker, however, is that after her initial post and prior to providing the timeline, the original poster responded several more times. All of those responses were at 7:40 or later. In other words, according to the original poster's timeline, she posted multiple times after her husband sent the photo but she did not bothered to tell anyone what her husband had done. This despite many posts criticizing him for not wanting to tell the truth. That simply doesn't seem believable to me. As for the responses from others, the most common reaction is that posters would not go out of their way to tell on the neighbor's son, but since the neighbor had asked a direct and specific question, they would answer honestly. Some posters would find creative ways of not revealing that the car had been there at 5:00, particularly if it was not there when they were asked. Others said that the would either not reply or reply several hours later claiming not to have seen the text. Some posters theorized that the girl's parents might be frantically trying to find her and, therefore, being honest about the car might be important for them. The original poster had described the boy simply as a "high school sophomore". This led to a debate about whether he was 15, as most kids are at the beginning of their sophomore year, or 16 as kids tend to be when they finish their sophomore year. This was particularly relevant regarding the girlfriend given that she would apparently be old enough to drive. I think this is one more hole in the original poster's made up story. Given how she described her relationship with the neighbors, I doubt she would know exactly what year in school the boy might be or his exact age.

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