2024

The most active thread yesterday was one I've already discussed about the presidential election poll numbers. I'll skip that one and start with a thread titled, "I’m breadwinner, dh asked me to help with side hustle", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster and her husband are both attorneys. However, the original poster's husband lost his job several years ago and, while he currently works full time, he is severely underemployed. For these many years, the original poster has been the family's breadwinner, earning almost twice as much as her husband. However, during that time the original poster has also acted as the default parent, dealing with the bulk of the parenting tasks. This has understandably stretched her pretty thin and, in a moment of having too much to do and not enough time to do it, she lost patience with her husband. The original poster revealed her resentment about not having a full partner and feeling like the only adult in the home. A week after this, the original poster's husband approached her about a side gig opportunity in which he is interested. However, he said that because he is not very organized, he would like the original poster to participate and handle the organizing. The original poster lost her patience, not believing that after describing how she is overwhelmed her husband would approach her with the idea of adding more work to her plate. The original poster wants to know who is right or wrong in this issue. What is going on here seems pretty clear to me. Early in their relationship, the original poster's husband out-earned her. That justified to both of them that the original poster should undertake the responsibilities of the default parent. In a better world, they would have shared responsibilities more evenly even then. But many families don't live in such a better world and the original poster's situation is not unusual. Problems began when the couple's salary disparity reversed but their responsibilities didn't. Not only does the original poster's husband show no interest in correcting the current imbalance, but he actually wants to make things worse. No wonder the original poster is resentful. As clear as this seems to me, the vast majority of the responses in this thread are really disappointing. A good portion of the responses appear to be from women who may well be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. They argue that the original poster and her husband should be a team and that the original poster should support her husband with his new venture. This ignores that the couple has not hitherto acted as a team and that the original poster's husband's concept of a team is him as captain and the original poster as team manager. Another large portion of the responses are from misogynist males who believe that it is unquestionably the original poster's duty to attend to parenting tasks and that she should fully support her husband by helping with his new business. Intermixed are a number of responses from posters who are trying to be helpful by suggesting strategies for the original poster to deal with her husband. Many of these seem to infantilize the man, something that I don't think is either required or appropriate. Eventually the thread more or less turned into a battle between wives who do everything and like it and those who want equal partnerships.

The most active thread yesterday was the thread about the Democratic National Convention which had a big night last night. But since I have already discussed that thread, I'll move to the next most active thread which was titled, "To my husband’s work AP", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster writes an open letter to her husband's affair partner who works with the original poster's husband. The original poster tells the affair partner that after working with her husband for so long, she should know that the man can be sloppy. As a result, he didn't cover his tracks regarding the affair very well and the original poster found out about it. Now, the original poster warns, she plans to tell the affair partner's husband about the affair. The original poster seems to take considerable delight regarding the problems that this wil cause in the affair partner's family. This thread is a bit of a mystery. The original poster sock puppeted throughout the thread, repeatedly offering support for herself. In one post, she alluded to earlier threads which she posted on this topic and I did find an earlier thread that is mostly consistent with this one. While I initially thought that the "open letter" format used by the original poster was just a stylistic technique, later in the thread the original poster demonstrated that she truly believes that the affair partner has not only been reading, but participating in the discussion. The original poster posted several messages in response to posts she believed were from the affair partner. As if to confirm the original poster's suspicions, another poster responded to say that she was the affair partner and because she and her husband have an open relationship, her husband would not be bothered by the original poster's revelations. The original poster did not immediately buy what this poster was saying and asked for evidence that the poster really was her husband's affair partner. The original poster has not posted on DCUM since then and the evidence has not been provided by the other poster, who I believe was trolling in any case. That is all to say that I am not sure what to make of this thread. On the one hand, the original poster may be a troll with a flair for the dramatic, being trolled by another poster who also enjoys drama. On the other hand, the original poster could be a slightly deranged, revenge-seeking, obsessive who probably should not be left alone near bunny rabbits and pots of boiling water. I am not sure which alternative is preferable. Frankly, it is not clear to me that most of those reading the thread care whether it is true or not since they are enjoying the drama so much. A few even managed to sleuth out one of the original poster's earlier threads. At this point the original poster might have legitimate concerns that one or more of those involved — assuming the story is true — might be identified.

Yesterday was another day in which political topics dominated the most active threads with three of the four threads that I will discuss today posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The first of these was titled, "HARRIS IS SELECTING MARK KELLY" and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster started this thread on Wednesday saying that Vice President Kamala Harris would announce that evening that she had chosen Arizona Senator Mark Kelly to be her running mate. The original poster provided no source for this claim, though in a follow-up post said that she has a "source who knows stuff". Apparently her source is a posterior body orifice given that Harris has yet to declare a choice, let alone announce that it is Kelly. I believe that I intended to remove this thread at the time it was created but got distracted. The thread duplicated another thread on the topic of Harris' Vice Presidential pick and was obviously not supported with any sort of legitimate source. Later in the thread the original poster, without identifying herself, claimed that Harris had selected someone other than Kelly and started sock puppeting answers to her own posts. Therefore, all indications are that this was a troll thread from the start. Regardless, the thread did provide the opportunity for many DCUM posters to give their opinion about Kelly. From the moment Harris emerged as President Joe Biden's replacement as the Democratic nominee for President, conventional wisdom assumed that she would choose a straight White male as her running mate. This was exactly what former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had done and such a move would balance the ticket nicely. For the most part, the only question is which bland White man would Harris choose. I agree with many of the posters in this thread that Kelly is as good a choice as any of them. Maybe not my favorite, but certainly not the worst selection. Kelly's strengths are that he can help carry Arizona and has a good reputation as a former astronaut and for his work on gun control. His weaknesses include a lack of executive experience and concern by unions that he has not been as supportive on labor issues as they would like. Generally, Kelly seems like he would be a solid pick and, if he didn't attract a significant number of voters to the ticket, he won't alienate many either. Whether Kelly will actually be Harris' choice remains to be seen. The original poster could turn out to be correct about the VP selection, if not the timing. But, ultimately, a troll could just be a troll and the nod will go to someone else.

The most active threads yesterday were mostly threads in the "Political Discussion" forum that I've previously discussed and will skip today. As a result, the first thread that I will discuss today was actually the sixth most active yesterday. Titled, "so sick and tired of gymnastics Olympics coverage" and posted in the "Sports General Discussion" forum, the original poster is, as the title says, sick and tired of the coverage of gymnastics. Her view is that nobody cares about gymnastics outside of the Olympics and, even then, they are only pretending to care. She is bothered generally by sports that have judges because judges are subjective. So that is another knock against gymnastics. She wants more coverage of archery and shooting. Several posters immediately chimed into say that they have subscribed to Peacock so that they are able to watch whatever events they choose. A month of Peacock for $8 seems like the deal of a lifetime if you really want to watch the Olympics. The original poster presented her complaint as if she were speaking for everyone. As the responses show, she clearly was not. Many posters enjoy gymnastics and are happy about the coverage. Some posters don't care about the judging at all, but simply enjoy watching the routines. A few gymnastics fans had nostalgia for the gymnasts of the past who they considered to be more graceful then today's athletes. Other posters argued that their interest in gymnastics is year long. One poster pointed out that there is nothing wrong with only being interested in gymnastics during the Olympics. It's fun to enjoy something different occasionally. Moreover, several posters were critical of the archery and shooting events that the original poster enjoys. These posters said that while they like participating in those sports themselves, they are boring to watch. Another poster agreed with the original poster but went on to complain that Simone Biles has received so much coverage. I don't understand that complaint. Biles has earned more medals of any U.S. gymnast. Of course she should receive outsized coverage. The original poster was told that if she doesn't like gymnastics, she should just not watch it. For their part, the gymnastics fans were happy to have as much coverage as possible. Throughout this thread posters pitch their favorite sports or athletes while others criticize the ones they dislike. The so-called "pommel horse guy" seems to have a lot of fans in the thread. But, the original poster was not among them. "Literally ZERO people ever care about the pommel horse. What a weird and stupid event", she wrote. This provoked a spirited defense of pommel horse events from other posters. While several sports received criticism in this thread, the announcers received even more. They were almost universally panned and the best defense one poster could rustle up was to postulate that they had been instructed to speak at a 4th grade level.

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.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "What I’m noticing from millennial high achieving moms" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster describes herself as "mid age millennial born in 1990" and notes several characteristics of high-achieving, elite-educated women as they start to have children. Essentially, few of the women stay at home, they commonly have three kids, they travel a lot, and post on social media about their great lives. I am very confused about the purpose of this thread. Clearly, the original poster's observations don't apply to all millennials and or even to all high-achieving millennial women. Basically, this is a list of observations of the original poster's circle of acquaintances and has little significance outside that group. So what is the point? My confusion was apparently shared by others because the responses in this thread were disjointed, fairly random, and often gave the impression of artificial intelligence bots attempting to converse with each other. Rather than a discussion, this thread is more like posters simply typing out whatever thought immediately entered their minds and hitting "submit". Based on these responses, the only thing that you can say for sure about high-achieving millennial moms is that you can't say anything for sure. Despite the sparcity of stay at home moms in the original poster's circle, other posters say such moms are more the rule than the exception among their acquaintances. Whereas the original poster sees three or more children as popular, others say that one or even no children are common. Posters can't even agree on whether or not high-achieving millennial moms run marathons. Depending on the poster, that is either common or rare. In some cases, posters appear to be attempting to create stereotypes where none exists. Instead of stereotypes, what results are a series of archetypes. There is the doctor or lawyer married to another doctor or lawyer with three kids whose social media is filled with photos of their latest skiing trip to the Swiss Alps such as the original poster might have described. But there is also the Ivy League grad who put her investment banking career on hold to start a family and has no interest in returning to work. Then there is the hard-charging careerist who is at the top of her game professionally, has a single child, and wouldn't stay home if you held a gun to her head. True that all three are high-achieving millennial women, but that is about all that they have in common. Many of the observations in this thread are derived from social media. As such, it is likely that what these posters are seeing about others is not actual reality, but simply what those individuals want others to see about them. They are, therefore, creating stereotypes based on carefully curated images rather than what really exits. So again I ask, what's the point?

The first of yesterday's most active threads that I will discuss was titled, "Shocked at how many families in nice DMV neighborhoods are living in relatives' homes" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster says that she has a child who just finished kindergarten in an upscale DC metropolitan area neighborhood and has met "at least a dozen families" who are living in homes owned by elderly relatives. She has also met families in similar living situations in other upscale area neighborhoods and believes this practice is very widespread in the area. The original poster advises others who may be struggling to save a downpayment or afford childcare and who may wonder how others are doing it, that this is one of the ways. She further alleges that this practice is causing others to be shut out of desirable neighborhoods. The high cost of area housing, particularly in highly-desirable neighborhoods, has long been an issue of debate in the DCUM real estate forum. One factor driving up costs is the limited inventory of houses on the market in these neighborhoods. To the extent that elderly residents providing housing to younger relatives rather than selling their homes further constrains inventory, this would obviously limit the available homes for sale and contribute to price increases. Among those responding, there is a bit of a chicken and the egg phenomenon. While some posters, like the original poster, argue that adult child living in their parents' homes helps drive up prices, others suggest that adult children are encouraged to choose such arrangements due to the high cost of housing. A number of those responding are quite aggravated that these parents provide housing to their adult children rather than selling their homes. They consider this one more way in which "boomers" have made things more difficult for younger generations. Never mind that the exact same boomers are making life easier for the members of younger generations for whom they provide housing. Other posters, perhaps some of whom are among that second group who benefits from this practice, are all in favor of it. They cite a number of advantages from the arrangement, especially when parents continue living in the home. That provides either convenient childcare or eldercare as the case may be. Other posters are aware that adult children living in elderly relatives' homes is common in this area, but their feelings about it are heavily influenced by the attitudes of the adult children who are benefiting from this arrangment. In cases where the children are down to earth and recognize that they can only afford to live in the neighborhood due to their relatives' generosity, posters have no problem with them. But, in many cases, posters say that the adult children act entitled and don't seem to understand their advantages. This creates some animosity. The friction created by those who act snobbish despite not having earned their advantages goes beyond their simply being able to live in a nice neighborhood. Posters also complain about these individuals getting access to popular country clubs, often at a reduced rate. This discussion highlights a clear division between the beneficiaries of generational wealth and those who have had to work and pay their own way for everything they have achieved.

The most active thread yesterday was the same one that was the most active the day before. That was the thread about the husband who revealed his college roommate's affair in retaliation for the roommate suggesting that the original poster's daughter was fat. I'll skip that thread and go to the next one which was titled, "Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites two anecdotes involving two different popular universties that suggest those schools are experiencing overcrowding and wants to know which other universities have such issues and how that can be found out. The DCUM college forum has increasingly become one of our more popular forums. Moreover, the caliber of the threads is often quite high with quite a bit of useful information being shared. This thread, unfortunately, is not one of those. Rather, this thread gets bogged down in some of the worst divisions that plague the forum. Many of the forum's participants are obsessed with college rankings and, therefore, it was no surprise that a debate broke out about whether the two universities named by the original poster were really "top tier" schools. The same happened with other colleges named by posters. There was also a debate about whether this was solely an issue with public universities and could be avoided by choosing private colleges. Posters quickly broke into two camps, each defending its favorite type of school and attacking the other. Schools in the University of California system received particularly harsh criticism with a number of extreme allegations about them being made. Those schools also had their defenders, who denied a number of the claims. I had to laugh at one exchange that began after a poster insisted that overcrowding issues were limited to public universities. Another poster provided an anecdote involving Boston University in which the dorms were so crowded that students were housed in hotels. Rather than acknowledge that overcrowding apparently did impact private schools, a poster argued that "being in a hotel in Boston is almost like (or even better than) being in a dorm". But the biggest issue with this thread was the sparsity of substantive data to back up the claims being made. Posters routinely made claims about schools that appeared more likely to be urban legends than reality. When asked to support their allegations, they often turned to sources such as Reddit, provoking incredulity. The discussion in this thread is scattered and goes all over the place with a number of separate topics being discussed. It might have some usefulness for anyone considering University of California schools, but otherwise it is hard to separate fact from fiction.

Fully six of the ten most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed. Moreover, two of the remaining four address topics that were the subject of other threads about which I've recently written. As a result, this won't be the most original of posts. I'll start with a thread that was the sixth most active. Titled, "Gaza war and College Campus Protests" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created instead of a part 4 of the Gaza war thread. When the Gaza war threads have reached 1,000 pages, I have locked them and started a new part. When the previous thread was nearly 1,000, a thread about college campus protests was also getting very long and there was quite a bit of overlap between the two threads. Therefore, I combined them into this thread. The thread is currently 72 pages and I am not going to bother reading very much of it. From what I have read, it appears to consist mostly of the same things over and over. Strategies for debate the war and discussing the protests have really solidified with each side having established its talking points which are simply repeated over and over. Those supporting the Palestinians tend to highlight atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza and discuss the Biden administration's involvement in supporting such actions. Of course these posters fully support the protesters, whose actions they defend. The pro-Israel posters mostly take the exact opposite positions. They tend to describe the protesters, as well as pro-Palestinian posters in the thread, as being "pro-Hamas". They are unwilling to accept that someone can be opposed to the death and destruction being wrought on Gaza while also opposing Hamas. To them, any opposition to Israel is simply pro-Hamas. They, of course, for the most part are unwilling to recognize any Israeli excesses in Gaza. To the contrary, every action is justified and blamed on Hamas. Ironically, the pro-Israel posters are also critical of Biden at times. There are a few hardliners who actually consider Biden to be pro-Hamas himself. The mutual antagonism of both sides in this thread doesn't make for a very substantive discussion. A lot of it is simply attempts to score points. For instance, the most recent topic of discussion was a disruption by pro-Palestinian protesters of New York's pride parade. Pro-Israel posters claimed that this demonstrated antipathy toward the LGBTQ community on the part of the protesters. Such posters have often highlighted LGBTQ issues due to Hamas' normally anti-gay stances and the generally welcoming environment in Israel. The fact that neither Hamas nor Israel actually measures up to their portrayal is simply one of those details that gets ignored. But the disruption of the parade fed directly into the pro-Israel narrative. In point of fact, some pro-Palestinian protesters have adopted a strategy of disrupting any large event simply to obtain publicity and to demonstrate that they will not be ignored. The parade's disruption was not meant to be anti-gay, but rather to simply draw attention to the plight of Gaza. Whether this is a good strategy or not is another argument. But such nuances are impossible to discuss in threads of this sort.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Just for laughs - a sex talk with my tween". The thread was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum and described a converstation between the original poster and her 11 year old daughter. The original poster's daughter had just completed a class about puberty and seemed comfortable talking about such topics with the original poster. The original poster took advantage of this opportunity to have a broader discussion about sex with her daughter based on the idea that it is better for her daughter to be informed before sex actually becomes an issue. The original poster explained the converstation which legitimately had me laughing out loud. I don't want to give the story away, but suffice it to say that it involved dressing up like cows. Personally I applaud the original poster's ability to have open dialogue on such topics with her daughter and I give her extra points for creativity. Many posters had reactions similar to mine. But not all. One poster in particular was quite angry because she believed that the original poster's daughter would immediately tell her own daughter about what she had learned. This poster much prefers for her daughter to remain ignorant until such time as, well, it was not clear until what time exactly. Strangely, despite this poster's displeasure with the possibility of the original poster's daughter spreading the word to her own child, the exact same poster later insisted that "kids are supposed to ‘learn’ this from other kids." The issue is not that the original poster's daughter might tell this poster's daughter about sex apparently, it's that the original poster talked to her daughter about sex. If the original poster's daughter learned about sex from an older sibling and then told the other poster's daughter about it, I guess that would be okay. Needless to say, quite a few posters disagreed with this thinking. Their main argument was that it is better for kids to learn about sex from their parents than from other kids, especially other kids who might be in the process of pressuring them for sex. Moreover, with so many kids having access to smart phones, kids are being exposed to sex and porn at a much younger age. But then the original poster received criticism from an entirely different angle. Whereas the earlier scold poster had accused the original poster of "pushing oral on your child", the new criticism seemed to be that the original poster — by including warnings about being pressured and mentioning that oral sex still has dangers of spreading disease — might have been too dismissive of the practice. Posters with this perspective were eager to minimize any threat of disease and, instead, emphasize the pleasure that could be derived. Because that discussion would not be appropriate in the original poster's circumstances, these posters ended up making strange bedfellows with the initial scold poster. The same poster who accused the original poster of "pushing" oral sex ended up on the same side of the debate as posters who absolutely want to promote oral sex as a pleasurable and safer alternative to intercourse. The dispute about just exactly how safe from disease this actually is basically took over the thread, leading me to lock it. What a disappointing end to something that had started out seeming to be such fun. That of course, some might say, could be a suitable metaphor for many sexual experiences, especially among those who don't know better.