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For the first time in a long time, none of the top 10 most active threads were ones that I previously discussed. That almost made me feel that something is wrong. The most active thread was titled, "SMU? Really?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. As I have been saying in recent blog posts, we are now in the college admissions season and will have many threads such as this one dealing with admissions decisions. The original poster says that her son applied to Dartmouth University during the early decision round and was turned down. He is now considering Southern Methodist University, and the original poster and her husband are worried about job prospects from a non-elite college and find the choice very disappointing. Unfortunately, the original poster is a troll. Almost immediately after starting the thread, the original poster began posting replies using different personas. Mostly, the original poster posed as a third party responding to the original poster and fluffing SMU as a great college and Dallas as a liberal bastion in conservative Texas. The original poster defended herself from criticism from other posters and, in turn, posted criticism of others. The personas used by the original poster changed, sometimes having a son, sometimes having a daughter, sometimes claiming to live in Dallas, and sometimes claiming to live somewhere else. Looking at other threads started by the original poster — which I subsequently removed — it appears that the original poster has been following this pattern from as far back as August. Since then, the original poster has undergone racial transformation, gender changes, had children who experienced gender changes, and considered a baffling range of colleges. Just yesterday, the original poster started a second thread titled, "Reed v Swarthmore". Strange that a student planning to commit to SMU is also planning an early decision strategy (presumably for next year) for those two schools. Based on the IP addresses used by this poster, my guess is that the poster is a college student who is currently home for winter break. If so, it is sad that trolling DCUM is the best way the individual has found to spend their free time. As an anonymous website, DCUM is very easy to troll. It really takes no talent. However, as this poster shows, if you do it long enough, you will eventually be caught. Perhaps that doesn't matter, but hopefully, the karmic effect of a significant number of people simultaneously thinking you are a loser will have some impact.