The Most Active Threads Since Friday

The most active thread over the weekend was one that was only started yesterday but managed to reach 34 pages in that short time. Titled, "Golden Globe Awards 2025" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, the thread is, of course, about last night's Golden Globe Awards show. This is one of those topics about which I know very little and care even less. As posters started making predictions about movies, I realized that I hadn't even heard of most of them and have not seen any of them. I did note that the first poster declared that the gathering would be one of the largest of "known rapists and pedophiles in America". So, right up there with the Republican National Convention and maybe even rivaling one of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's future cabinet meetings. In contrast, another poster predicted that "Wicked" would win because the movie "highlighted diversity, minority, and women as main characters." Apparently, the Globe judges are the wokest group of rapists and pedophiles ever. As for the thread, I didn't really need any TV or movie knowledge because the posts were dominated by photos of the attendees. This is really more of a fashion thread than anything else. Based on the comments I read, none of the DCUM posters liked what anyone was wearing. I suppose someone may have won an award for something, but you really wouldn't know it from this thread. Instead, it is photo after photo, often with repeats. Zendaya seemed to be a thread favorite as she appeared over and over again in different poses and even different outfits. I don't really have much to say because there is not much to summarize other than there were a lot of pictures. As for my own opinions about the awards, the only strong one I have is that "The Bear" should have won an award for gratuitous yelling. After watching that show, I instinctively yell “YES, CHEF" at the top of my lungs whenever someone talks to me while I am in the kitchen. I really have no opinions on the night's fashion. That's even further outside my area of expertise than movies and television. There was some discussion of the hosts, but since I didn't watch the show, I didn't know to what the posters were referring. However, based on the feedback in the thread, Ricky Gervais was a bit too hostile, and Nikki Glaser exceeded expectations.

Few things excite DCUM posters as much as the possibility of a school snow day. Therefore, it is not surprising that a snow day-related thread is among the weekend's most active. The thread, which was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum, was appropriately titled, "Snow day". Even by DCUM standards, this was an impressive thread. First of all, it was started nearly a week ago. As a result, there were over 35 pages of posts before the first snowflake hit the ground. The thread is currently 43 pages long. I am not going to bother reading this thread because I have read enough similar threads in the past to know what is said in this one. Basically, when it comes to snow, school systems can only lose. There is no winning. If they close schools, it upsets parents who have to arrange childcare. If they don't close schools, it risks putting students in danger and causing transportation hardships for families and staff. If school closings are announced too far in advance, it upsets some posters. If they are announced too late, it upsets other posters even more. It would be nice if there were some "Goldilocks" announcement time that was just right, but there isn't. Regardless of the timing of a closure announcement, someone will be upset. Some posters have concerns about whether the snow day will cause the school year to be extended. Some will love that schools are closed and can't wait to spend the day with their kids. There will be plenty of discussion about the coming days with some posters predicting, and hoping for, schools to open tomorrow and others suggesting that schools will be closed for a long time. Fairfax County Public Schools, like Montgomery County Public Schools, is a large school system that covers a sizable geographic area. This often means that parents in one area have a completely different experience, and hence opinions about closings, than parents in another area. Similarly, the views of teachers — who rarely live very close to the schools at which they teach — are often significantly different than the opinions of parents whose houses may be quite close to the schools. Some parents expect teachers to be at school regardless of the driving conditions they may face. For other parents, the mere hint of snow is enough for them to demand immediate closures. The only thing for sure is that whatever decisions school systems make and regardless of when they make them, they will be roundly criticized.

Next was a thread titled, "Will Meghan Markle’s Show be a Success?", and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. In the previous post, I said that few things excite DCUM posters as much as a snow day. One of the few things that does, however, is Meghan Markle. Exactly why Markle has such an effect on DCUM posters is a mystery to me. Regardless, she causes DCUM posters to go completely insane. In this case, Markle was the subject of a 32-page thread before I had the good sense to lock it. This is another thread that I am not going to bother to read beyond the posts I read in the course of responding to reports. Essentially, Markle has a show coming out on Netflix. As I understand it, it is a cooking show. However, Markle's spin on the genre is accessibility. Instead of concocting perfections, she will show how to make easier things that are good enough (that's my terminology, not hers) and items that most people might be able to prepare. If posters could simply stick to discussing the show, there would probably be few to no problems with the thread. But, DCUM posters, when it comes to Meghan Markle, are completely incapable of sticking to the topic at hand. A significant number of posters have an incomprehensible hatred of Markle that prevents them from engaging productively at all on any topic related to her. They spout off about her relationship with the royal family, her husband Harry, her father and mother, and just about any other topic other than the one that the thread is supposed to be about. Just about the only thing they have to say about her show is that they expect it to be terrible and that they don't plan to watch it other than the occasional hate watch so that they can then say how bad it is. I've said it before, but the best way to treat those you don't like is to ignore them. The constant refreshing of this thread by Markle's haters gives her show much more exposure than the Markle fangirls could ever dream of doing on their own. Speaking of Markle fangirls. Most of them are fine, and I have no issues with them. But almost any post short of "Meghan Markle is the kindest, gentlest, most generous person on Earth" will get reported for some reason. The upshot is that some posters have nothing good to say about Markle, and some have no tolerance for anything that isn't good. This results in a huge number of reports. Meghan Markle threads are simply a nightmare for me. I locked this one when discussion turned to her mother being mistaken for a drug dealer and her father being accused of pedophilia. Keep in mind that this was in a thread about a cooking show.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "What colleges are in Boston College's tier group?", the original poster says that he or she is trying to build a college list. This is a strange thread, however. Contrary to the apparent belief among many posters, there is no authoritative ranking of colleges. As has been apparent in the threads about college rankings that I have discussed in this blog, posters are more likely to disagree than to agree about rankings. For one reason, the metrics for ranking colleges are often subjective with individuals valuing different aspects of schools. Moreover, colleges often differ in the strength of the various programs that they offer. So a school might be considered highly in one major but not another. A question such as that posed by the original poster is really nothing more than a request for opinions. Yet, posters respond as if they are providing facts rather than opinions. Moreover, I am a bit suspicious about the original poster's motives. Not only did the original poster not provide any information about what priorities they valued for schools, the subsequent responses from the original poster that I identified did not suggest much esteem for Boston College. Rather, the original poster seemed to go to pains to argue that most colleges suggested as being on par with BC were actually better. But the strangest thing that happened in this thread was the appearance of a user using the username, "tomtownsenduhb". As DCUM users will know, very few posters log in. In fact, a login name is one of the more obvious indications of a new user. Tomtownsenduhb joined this discussion on the fifth page and ultimately would post nearly 100 times in the thread. Generally, like the original poster, his tendency was to present Boston College as worse than other options. His tone was often insulting and rude, and I removed a few of his posts that were reported. Tomtownsenduhb appears to be posting from California, and as such, I am unsure of his interest in either DCUM or Boston College. One poster alleged that Tomtownsenduhb had been rejected by Boston College, and that explained his dislike of the college. I have no idea whether that is true, but I will note that despite his prevalent posts, Tomtownsenduhb didn't respond to that allegation. Leaving aside Tomtownsenduhb and the original poster, many posters in this thread could agree on a group of colleges that they considered to be on the same tier as Boston College. However, their suggestions were repeatedly challenged by Tomtownsenduhb and the original poster, who considered BC to be below those colleges. I eventually locked this thread as it had become repetitive, and I was not sure that it had ever been genuine in the first place.