2024

Sub-archives

Tuesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Sep 25, 2024 12:20 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included the U.S. News and World Report top colleges list, a field trip to a peanut butter factory, problems with the U.S. News and World Report top colleges list, and a troll thread about the difficult job market for new graduates.

The biggest day of the year for participants in DCUM's college forum may be the day that U.S. News and World Report releases its college rankings list. That day was yesterday. Technically, it was the day before but so late in the day that most of the discussion didn't take place until yesterday. The result is that two threads on the topic are among the most active threads that I will discuss today. The most active thread overall yesterday was again the thread about Israel and Lebanon, which I've already discussed. Skipping that one, the next most active thread was titled, "US News best colleges 2025" and, of course, posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster wrote nothing more than, "The rankings are out now." which was enough to provoke what is currently a 21 page thread. The normal rule of threads such as this is that posters claim to hate rankings in general and this one in particular. However, if the ranking happens to place a poster's favorite university highly, or at least above a rival university, then the list is, of course, praised for its accuracy. The U.S. News rankings were subject to considerable criticism last year when the methodology was changed in ways that many posters considered to be "woke". This year U.S. News dropped the graduation rate of 1st generation students from its formula and continued its focus on outcomes such as student retention and post-graduate earnings. Many of the posts in this thread were complaints about the ranking or methodology. But those issues were the focus of a second thread that I will discuss today so I will save those points for later. A number of posters suggested that this ranking were reasonably accurate, though almost everyone had at least one nit to pick. For instance, the positioning of UCLA at 15th was the subject of considerable discussion. The University of Virginia was another college whose ranking — tied at 24 — inspired considerable criticism along with a significant amount of smugness. Much of the discussion in this thread is about the value of such rankings. Some posters want to be able to rank colleges based on their own criteria rather than a magazine's methodology. Others suggest that these lists are good screening tools and are reasonable starting points for further research. This thread, like so many threads before it, got bogged down in an unnecessary discussion about yield protection. The forum has one or more posters who are completely obsessed with yield protection to the exclusion of almost any other topic. The single-mindedness is remarkable and I have to think that it must be motivated by a very painful rejection that was rationalized as being due to yield protection. Then the thread turned to a big debate about Notre Dame with participants accusing each other of being insufferable. That actually is a good summary of this thread. Everyone claims the U.S. News rankings are meaningless and nobody cares about them, but they will also fight to the death about whether a school deserves to be in the top 20.

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Wednesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 25, 2024 01:49 PM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included polls of the presidential race, a husband who doesn't complete tasks, President Joe Biden's address, and the value of an English Literature major.

Yesterday was another day dominated by presidential politics. The most active thread was the thread that I've already discussed about Vice President Kamala Harris running for president. After that was a thread titled, "Harris vs Trump poll numbers" which was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster started the thread with an excerpt from a National Public Radio story discussing a new poll that it had conducted along with PBS and Marist. The results showed that former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump led Harris by a single point and in a five-way contest that included the minor candidates, Trump and Harris were tied. A significant change from previous polling was a large increase in the number of undecided voters which the original poster suggested was a good omen for Harris. Any polls at this time need to be taken with a grain of salt. While the latest polls were conducted after President Joe Biden withdrew as a candidate, they still covered days in which his replacement by Harris was not a sure thing. Moreover, she has not yet selected a running mate, a decision that will likely have an impact. Also, as the original poster points out, national polls are not all that significant. Of more importance are polls of battleground states. These caveats, along with the immense desire of some posters to engage in advocacy instead of analysis, leads posters to generally interpret the data according to their partisan perspectives. Some posters argue that polls are useless altogether and have been consistently wrong, something that is not actually true. Others see what they want to see in the data and interpret it thusly. One thing that is clear in the early polling — and explicitly stated in the excerpt included by the original poster — is that Harris has caused a reset of the election. She clearly has momentum and I believe it is beyond dispute that she has a much greater upside than either Trump or Biden. Whereas voter opinion about the older candidates was fairly well set, Harris has shaken things up. More importantly, there is enthusiasm for her among groups that had been luke warm, if not outright hostile, to Biden. A major topic of discussion in this thread was the importance of Harris' choice for Vice President. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was suggested repeatedly on the basis that he might help Harris carry the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Others suggested that he would be just as helpful if he remained as governor. U.S. Senator Mark Kelly was similarly proposed based on his presumed ability to help carry his home state of Arizona. Because of the perceived importance of the VP selection, the thread devolved into a debate mostly about that topic. In addition, a number of posters are disappointed, either in Harris or the method by which she replaced Biden. These posters seem to show up in every thread and disrupt it with their off-topic rants. Polling results mean nothing to these folks because they have everything figured out already. But, for the rest of us, we will probably have to wait a bit longer for things to shake out and for the polls to provide more useful results.

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Tuesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 24, 2024 11:07 AM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included J. D. Vance, J. D. Vance again, a daughter who wants to take Ozempic, and reclining during air flights.

Yesterday's most active thread was the Kamila Harris thread that I discussed yesterday and will skip today. After that was a thread that was created back in April 2022 but was revived recently due to renewed interest in its topic. Titled, "What the hell happened to JD Vance?", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster expresses surprise that J. D. Vance — at that time known mostly as the author of "Hillbilly Elegy" — had turned full MAGA during his Senate campaign. The renewed interest in the thread is obviously because Vance was recently selected as the running mate of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. I didn't read this thread when it was originally created and looking at it now, the first thing I noticed is how much the discourse surrounding "Hillbilly Elegy" had changed between the time it was published and 2022. When the book originally gained popularity, it was overwhelmingly praised. So much so that, as I wrote in an earlier blog post, when I discussed the book on DCUM I was half convinced that something was wrong with me for not being impressed by it. The posts discussing "Hillbilly Elegy" in this thread generally contained thoughts much closer to mine and the unvarnished praise that originally greeted the book was gone. More importantly, posters were frequently able to discern signals in the memoir that suggested that Vance was perfectly capable of making the transition from "intelligent, reasonable Republican" to MAGA cultist. Nobody seemed to believe that Vance's conversion was authentic. Rather, the general feeling was that Vance understood that turning MAGA was a political necessity. The more generous of the posters suggested that Vance might actually act more responsibly once he was in office. Now, two years after this thread was created, it is even more difficult to determine who is the real J. D. Vance. Vance was never the son of Appalachia as his book led many to believe. He grew up in suburban Ohio in a middle class neighborhood. Far from being a defender or advocate for those trapped in poverty in the mountains, Vance held them in disdain, viewing them as being responsible for their own failures. The people of Appalachia were little more than a prop that Vance used to promote the right-wing ideology favored by his billionaire mentor Peter Thiel. Now, in his new MAGA persona, Vance portrays himself as the proponent of the poor and working class that many wrongly assumed he was when "Hillbilly Elegy" first came out. But whereas this may have been believable back in 2016, despite his memoir demonstrating otherwise, few seem to believe it now. The opinion of Vance most frequently presented in this thread is that he is a valueless opportunist who will do whatever is necessary to gain power.

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Monday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 23, 2024 06:55 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included Kamala Harris for President, 40,000 participants on a Zoom call, suggestions for Kamala Harris' Vice President, and sexless marriages.

DCUM is a Washington, DC-based forum and Washington, DC, as the center of the federal government, is a political city. Nevertheless, it was still a bit surprising this morning when I looked at the list of yesterday's top 10 most active threads and discovered that 9 of the 10 were political. The most active was the thread about President Joe Biden's announcement that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for President. I discussed that thread yesterday and will skip it today. Not surprising, I guess, is that the next most active thread was titled, "Kamala Harris for President". The thread, of course, was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. In another thread over the weekend someone asked if Vice President Kamala Harris could defeat former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. I responded saying that not only did I think that she could, but should do so fairly easily. I was then asked to explain why I felt this way. My argument was that Biden has done a fairly good job as President. Inflation is under control, unemployment is low, the stock market is at near record highs, and the economy is growing. Biden has a fantastic record of passing legislation, something is even more impressive in light of the difficult political environment on Capitol Hill. As a result, if Biden were 20 years younger, this election would not even be close. Kamala Harris is not a 20 year younger version of Joe Biden, but she is as close as we are going to get. As Biden's partner during his administration, she can claim partial credit for his successes. While Biden achieved a lot, he believes that there is more to do. Harris will be the one to do it. Despite holding this position, I was still surprised by the wave of enthusiasm Harris' candidacy has met. As the original poster of this thread described, fundraising since Biden stepped down has been at record-breaking levels. Perhaps even more importantly, there appears to have been a massive psychological change among Democrats. Over night, a pessimistic, almost depressed, and — let's face it — kind of sour group has been transformed into a hopefull, enthusiastic, and excited bunch of believers. It will take a few days for the polls to catch up, but I expect huge poll shifts in favor of Democrats. In several states, Democratic Senate candidates have been over-performing Biden. I expect Harris will close that gap and maybe even exceed the Senate candidates in some cases. Meanwhile, it is now Trump — the oldest presidential nominee in history — who is old, confused, and worn out. He is still "truthing" about Biden and clearly has no plan to take on Harris, already trying to find an excuse not to debate her. To make things worse for Trump, early indications are that his vice presidential nominee, J. D. Vance, is a dud. In his first solo outing Vance practically put the audience to sleep before musing over whether he would be accused of racism for drinking a Diet Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew has long been associated with Appalachia and Vance was probably attempting to fake authenticity by choosing it as a drink. But the soft drink has also been blamed for tooth decay throughout the region — Vance even discussed "Mountain Dew mouth" in his novel, "Hillbilly Elegy". That probably explains why Vance chose the inauthentic, but less dentally problematic, Diet version.

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Thursday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 19, 2024 12:24 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included the possibility of President Joe Biden stepping aside, Usha Vance's dresses at the Republican National Convention, and responsibility for sending high school transcripts to the correct college.

The most active thread yesterday was the one about the Republican National Convention which I've already discussed and will, therefore, skip today. After that was a thread titled, "NYT and WaPo report Biden is close to stepping down" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster overstated things in the thread's title. The two articles to which he linked were not as definitive. One, in the Washington Post, said that U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi had told members of the House that President Joe Biden can be persuaded fairly soon to leave the presidential race. The second, in the New York Times, reported that people close to Biden have said that he has begun to accept the idea that he may have to drop out. There have been multiple reports that Pelosi is now leading the effort to convince Biden that he cannot win the election and that he should leave the race. My assumption is that leaks that lead to articles such as these are part of the process. Going public with expectations that Biden will soon agree to drop out is probably aimed at creating an air of inevitability that will lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy. This effort has been mishandled from the beginning. In the aftermath of Biden's disappointing debate performance, Democrats were really faced with two choices: 1) accept that Biden had had a bad night but rally around him nevertheless; or 2) launch a full-court press to replace Biden. But Democrats split between the two option and some chose a third alternative of simply giving up altogether. What resulted was a continual trickle of Biden opponents calling for him to withdraw and, as I described it before, subjecting Biden to a death of a thousand cuts. That many of the first to publicly call for replacing Biden were wealthy and elite only made matters worse. Those statements got publicity, but only made Biden and his supporters even more determined to resist. This soon developed into a worst-case scenario for Democrats who face going into their convention completely divided. Pelosi, the adult in the room if you will, apparently decided it was time to step in. It may have been true the day after the debate that Biden still had a chance to defeat former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. The argument can be made that those calling for him to be replaced jumped the gun. Regardless, I am fairly confident that Biden has been so seriously wounded by the ongoing public efforts to convince him to step down that whatever chances he may have once had have evaporated. Regardless of whether those initially in favor of replacing Biden were prescient or have simply created enough damage to make their desire inevitable, we are at the point where a continued Biden candidacy is untenable. As the posts in this thread demonstrate, there is considerable frustration that we have arrived at this point and quite a few posters are clearly not pleased. Others, however reluctantly, accept that it is time for Biden to step down. Others are happy and predict that this will give the Democrats their best chance of defeating Trump. If the Band Aid could not have been pulled off quickly in the first place, let's hope that the process will not be drawn out very much longer.

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Monday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 16, 2024 01:19 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the dismissal of the classified documents case against former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, "dumpy and unimpressive" top universities, and the departure of the head of school of Sandy Springs Friends School.

The most active thread yesterday was once again the thread about the attempted assassination of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. But I'll skip that thread today because I have already discussed it. After that was a thread that was also Trump-related. Titled, "Official Trump VP thread", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created back in January to discuss potential candidates to be Trump's vice president. The original poster provided a list of frontrunners for the position and third on that list was J. D. Vance, the junior Senator from Ohio. Yesterday Trump announced that he had picked Vance to be the Republican candidate for Vice President. Nearly 40 pages were added to the thread after that, consisting of sometimes heated back and forth about Vance. Vance first gained public stature due to his book, "Hillbilly Elegy". When the book was first published, my Twitter feed was filled with praise making it sound like one of the most enlightening analysis of recent times. When I read it myself, I found the book to be severely lacking and was confused that so many who I believed to be more knowledgeable than me were impressed by it. I wrote a very cautious review of the book on DCUM in which I outlined some of my criticisms. Now, years later, I believe that I was correct in my judgement and that I was far too tempered in my review. My criticism, in short, is that Vance took an ideological framework and fit the facts of his life — sometimes with a bit of artistic license — into it. In other words, he made the facts fit his conclusion rather than the other way around. In doing so, he put far too much blame on individuals while ignoring the external influences that impact their lives. I think that it is somewhat ironic that Vance's thesis in the book, that hillbillies suffer because they make poor choices, is at odds with the MAGA ethos that the plight of the White working class is caused by immigrants, coastal elites, the government, and "globalization", or almost exactly the opposite of Vance's earlier position. To the extent that Vance may have values and beliefs, they are far from rock solid and extremely flexible. Also of concern with Vance is his relationship with billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel contributed $15 million to Vance's Ohio senate campaign, a record contribution at the time. Thiel has been unabashed about his political leanings, once writing that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Vance appears to be quite sympathetic to this viewpoint and is an admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, both of whom represent this "freedom through dictatorship" style of governing. Vance appears to be primarily focused on self-promotion and willing to contort himself as necessary for personal advancement. Having once suggested that Trump might be an "American Hitler", it is really no surprise that Vance would seize the opportunity to serve as Trump's vice president. Vance's ambition is such that advice I read saying that, if Trump wins the presidency, Vance should not be allowed to have sharp instruments in Trump's vicinity is not much of an exaggeration.

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The Most Active Threads Since My Last Post

by Jeff Steele last modified Jun 20, 2024 09:42 AM

Since I last posted, the topics with the most engagement included Princess Kate, Hunter Biden, FCPS early release Mondays, and Joe Biden's age.

After nearly a week of not writing blog posts I was not sure whether I should treat today as just another Monday and write about the most active threads over the weekend or discuss the most active threads during the entire period I skipped. I decided on the latter option. So today I will write about the most active threads for the past week. The most active thread during that period was the thread I've already discussed about Republican women. I'll skip that one today and move on to the next most active thread which was titled, "Princess of Wales to attend public event tomorrow" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread was created on Friday in expectation of an appearance on Saturday by Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, at the annual "Trooping the Colour" parade which celebrates the King's birthday. As I am sure everyone is aware, the Princess has been undergoing treated for cancer and has almost entirely been out of the public eye. This thread is already 42 pages long and that does not include at least 5 pages of inappropriate posts about the the Prince and Princess' children that I removed. Needless to say, I have not and will not read all of these posts. Threads about Kate Middleton all have a familiar pattern by now. Like this thread, they often involve a photo. In this case, the photo shows Kate standing in front of a tree and is said to have been taken earlier in the week. These photos are picked over as if they are the Zapruder film with one group of posters interested in her appearance, desparate to find any impact of her treatment, and another group eager to reveal the photo as fake. Kate fans generally find things to praise about the photos while her detractors pull any possible thread to weave whatever conspiracy theory currently has their attention. Not only is the pattern of the threads consistent, but so are the posters that show up to comment. There are, of course, the Kate fans who are unwilling to brook any criticism. But there are also the Kate haters who, purely from the point of analysis, are far more interesting. The number of ways in which they can find to dislike someone is simply astounding. Central to this thread is the topic of Kate's weight. She has always been thin but whether she has a healthy weight or is clearly suffering from an eating disorder is, let's say, subject to interpretation. Moreover, there is some expectation that cancer treatment might have caused further weight loss. The topic of Kate's weight is so touchy, especially with those posters convinced that she has an eating disorder, that posts complimenting her on her appearance were reported for allegedly encouraging eating disorders. I had to work my way through the logic of those reports but, as best I can tell, the theory is that describing a thin woman as "looking great" is providing support for disordered eating as a means to stay thin. Another aspect of the pattern these threads follow is that posters soon run out of substance on which to comment and begin discussing each other. Instead of, for instance, talking about Kate's outfit, posters will say, "Kate fans do such and such" while others discuss Kate haters who always say x and y. More time then gets spent on posters describing each other rather than discussing the actual topic of the thread. This normally leads to the thread being locked which probably soon to be the fate of this thread.

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Thursday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jun 01, 2024 08:39 AM

The topics with the most engagement included Trump's guilty verdict, the Montgomery Virtual Academy, choosing a college for a "bro" student, and a wedding that morphed into several events.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Trump found Guilty on all charges!". Posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was started just after 5 pm yesterday but has already grown to over 60 pages. Obviously, the thread is about the verdict in the trial of former President, current cult leader, and now convicted felon Donald Trump. The jury found Trump guilty of all 34 charges. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11. I have written a number of times recently about the different realities in which many DCUM posters currently dwell. That phenomenon was on full display in this thread. Trump opponents were overjoyed, seeing the verdict as long overdue justice for someone who has a long history of behaving cavalierly toward the law. They viewed this as the legal system demonstrating that nobody is above the law. In contrast, Trump supporters see the trial and verdict as a politically-motivated witch hunt that is completely illegitimate. These posters repeatedly pointed out that the judge was allegedly a Democrat, that the jurors were allegedly liberal, and that New York is a Democratic state. Never mind that just days ago Republicans were claiming that Trump had attracted a crowd of tens of thousands to a rally in the Bronx and this was supposed to be evidence that the Democratic hold on New York is in danger. That story, which was not true in the first place, is as they say, no longer applicable. Today's story is that it is impossible to find a New Yorker who is not a card-carrying liberal. But, more to the point, the posters arguing this are making clear that they can't envision themselves acting in an objective manner and, therefore, don't believe anyone else is capable of doing so either. The possibility that the jurors considered the evidence and decided that it showed Trump's guilt is simply not comprehendible to these posters. Trump supporters also engaged in a number of arguments are simply not factually based. For instance, many argued that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan prosecutor, had campaigned on a promise to prosecute Trump and that this demonstrated that the charges were politically-motivated. In fact, there is no evidence that Bragg campaigned on such a promise. Moreover, Bragg — who had inherited the case against Trump from his predecessor — initially dropped it. Another argument is that former President Bill Clinton made the same type of payment to Paula Jones. Clinton personally made a payment to Jones to settle a lawsuit. Had Trump made a similar personal payment to Daniels, that would also have been legal. Trump's transgression was falsely reporting the payments as businesses expenses. Some posters also doubted the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer who was previously convicted and served jail time for his role in the payment scheme. However, Cohen's testimony was far from the only evidence of Trump's role in misclassifying the payments. Prosecutors also had 11 invoices, 12 vouchers, and 11 checks that created a paper trail linking Trump to the payments. But Trump supporters were not interested in evidence. Support for Trump has often been driven by resentment and his supporters thrive on seeing themselves as victims of powerful forces outside their control. Trump has fed this narrative as well as portraying himself as a victim of the same forces. As a result, many Trump supporters are even more determined to support him as a result of the verdict.

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The Most Active Threads over the Weekend

by Jeff Steele last modified Apr 30, 2024 11:38 AM

The topics with the most engagement since my last blog post on Friday include college campus protests, paying a spouses' student loan debt, mom cliques, and the difference between being anti-Israel and being anti-Semitic.

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "Protests on college campuses" which was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The student protests against the Israeli devastation of Gaza which has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and placed most of the remaining population at risk of famine, have provoked thread after thread. I've essentially been playing whack-a-mole trying to prevent the threads from taking over multiple forums. While Columbia University and the University of Southern California were the initial focus, protests soon spread to colleges across the nation. The original poster of this thread specifically mentioned a protest at DC's George Washington University and asked what effect the protests might have. The nature of the demonstrations has varied from campus to campus, as has the response of college administrations and local governments. Israel and its supporters clearly view the protests as a serious threat and their reaction has been extreme. Israeli Prime Mininister Benjamin Netanyahu described the protests as "antisemitic" and "horrific". US Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson called for the National Guard to be deployed. Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a man whose job is supposed to be contesting defamation, went so far as to call the protesters "Iranian proxies" and compare them to Hezbollah. DCUM posters have been similarly hostile to the protests, often criticizing the students as uninformed and entitled. One tactic that has been used across the board by those who oppose the protests is to conflate incidents that don't involve students with the campus protests and to exaggerate, if not outright lie, about events. At Columbia University, protesters who are not associated with the school have gathered outside campus. The media has routinely portrayed aggressive behavior and anti-Semitic incidents involving that crowd as being part of the student demonstrations. The students, for their part, have condemned and disassociated themselves from those instances. At Emory University in Atlanta, video shows a college professor stopping to question police about why they were violently arresting a student. A police officer hurled the professor to the ground, knocking her head on concrete. Similarly, at the University of Texas in Austin, police were filmed violently throwing members of the media to the ground. In an outrageous event at Northeastern University, video shows a member of a pro-Israel counter protest crossing over to the anti-war group and, while in the midst of them, yelling "kill the Jews". University administrators had the anti-war demonstrators arrested on the basis of this statement. All of this is in reaction to students who largely are doing nothing but sitting in the grass with protest signs listening to speeches. But the clear overreaction by authorities has strong support among DCUM posters who, let's be frank, are getting old. They have no time or patience for today's youth. There is lots of advice concerning the "proper" way to protest which basically requires avoiding anything that anybody would notice. Protests are to be neither seen nor heard. But hats off to the kids. They are clearly getting under some skins and the overreaction aimed at suppressing the protests shows that those in power view them as a real threat. They may call you naive, but they clearly fear you.

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Monday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Apr 02, 2024 12:04 PM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included a service for snowflake college students promoted by a sock puppet, a professor who dislikes Elon Musk, comparing today's new hires to those of 25 years ago, and homosexuality and the Bible.

The most active thread yesterday was one that I already discussed. That thread was the one about the double murder in Fairfax County. There was a court hearing yesterday which not one, but at least two, DCUM posters attended and posted first-hand accounts. The most active thread after that one was titled, "College ‘Moms’ Service Provider" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Let me start off by saying that I hate everything about this thread. Most of all, I hate that nobody reported it within the first few posts so that I could have deleted it before it really got started (some posters did report subsequent posts but I'll get to that later). The original poster posted a link to a site that provides "moms" to provide comfort and care to kids away at college and asked how she could find such a service at Cornell University. The original post looks very much like an ad. Removing any doubt of that suspicion was the second post in the thread which was sock puppeted by the original poster. The original poster would go on to post throughout the thread promoting the service. As most people would expect, there is a huge outcry from posters who think that such a service is a terrible idea created to coddle "snowflakes". There are repeated posts urging the original poster and others like her to cut the cord and allow their children to learn independence. The original poster simply sock puppeted replies defending and justifying the service. The original poster ultimately posted at least 12 times, not once mentioning that she was the original poster and occasionally responding directly to her own posts. There was a suggestion that this was an April Fool's joke, but the service is real. Moreover, adding to the things I hate about this thread, it took a decidedly unfunny turn when a poster made a snide reply about the demographics of two universities at which the original poster — sock puppeting — claimed the service was popular. This was interpreted by other posters as an allusion to the large number of Jewish students at those schools and, hence, as anti-Semitic. This led to discussion about anti-Semitism. I did receive a report of the first post and I removed it. But, unbeknownst to me, the post had already been quoted and provoked its own discussion that I didn't notice until this morning. While readers of this blog are probably aware, I want to reiterate a few things about how the site is moderated. I can't possibly read all of the posts. As such, I probably won't know about an inappropriate post unless it is reported. I try to respond to reports quickly, but sometimes a response may be delayed. Reporting a post, but then also replying to it, will only make things more difficult for me and make the thread harder to clean up. It also risks, as in this case, that I won't notice the replies. Because I removed the inappropriate post after it was reported, it continues to exist on the site only because it was repeatedly quoted.

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