Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "No Kids at Wedding - Why So Much Anger?!" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster says that she and her husband did not allow children at their wedding. She now has three kids and understands the challenges of childcare and other issues when invited to a "no kids" wedding. However, she supports other couples not inviting children to their weddings and wonders why some people get so angry about "no kids" weddings. This topic comes up routinely on DCUM, and I have even discussed threads on the topic previously in this blog. There are a few issues involved, all of which are discussed in this thread. As one poster early in the thread points out, this really is the confluence of two different trends. On the one hand, couples desire "perfect", or as the poster puts it, “Instagram worthy," weddings. On the other hand, there seems to be an increase in unruly kids whose parents don't parent them. Both of these trends increase the pressure for childfree weddings. Contrary to the proponents of childfree weddings, however, are posters who see weddings as family events and, therefore, believe children should be invited. They are willing to put up with disruptions in order to be inclusive. As one poster put it, "I would rather have kids at my wedding than have a perfect wedding." Things get more complicated depending on the relations of those who are involved. Leaving out the children of close relatives, especially nieces or nephews, can cause resentment. But making exceptions for them but not for friends who might have travelled a long distance to participate has its own set of problems. Several posters outline their own personal parameters for how they react to childfree weddings. For instance, one poster says that she is happy to attend a local wedding without her kids. However, if a wedding is out of town or scheduled to involve several events over multiple days, she will decline if her family is not invited. Still, for others, this is a much more emotional topic. The bottom line for many posters is that the wedding is for the couple getting married, and they have the right to set whatever rules they want. They should not be criticized for their choices. On the other hand, everyone invited has the option to decline if the arrangements don't work for them.

Yesterday's next most active thread was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "NYT article on men struggling with their place in society", the original poster describes an article in the New York Times which reports on a focus group consisting of 12 men who voted for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. The men recounted their feelings of not finding a place in current society and that traditional male roles are being devalued. The original poster says that there is not an "eye roll emoji" big enough to reflect how ridiculous she finds the article. In her view, men own society and she is astonished that they feel alienated. She asks if others can explain this to her. The idea that men, especially White men, are not getting a fair shake in society is not new and has been the subject of many earlier threads. Essentially, this is a question of perspective. The average White man does not feel that he is getting a ton of breaks. In their view, others — especially other White men — often have advantages, sometimes unfair, over them. What they generally fail to realize is how many additional advantages others would appear to have if they were minority men or women instead. Minorities and women, on the other hand, often feel that White men have inherent advantages. This has obviously been true historically and continues to be true to some extent today. This creates a contradictory situation. The average White man probably has a boss that he hates, a mortgage that he struggles to pay, and a future that does not appear as rosy as he might hope. What he fails to realize is that, had he been anything other than a White man, he might not have the job or the mortgage and his future would probably appear even less rosy. There are increasing inequities across society which are affecting the average White man just as they are everyone else. At the same time, there has been advancement of the interests of non-White men. As a result, White men are not the beneficiaries of as much privilege as they once might have been. To those who expected advantages that are not available, life seems unfair. The challenge is how to address structural unfairness that affects most White men, but that generally affects minorities and women more. Until that is figured out, the two groups will most devote themselves to fighting each other while the wealthy, regardless of race and gender, gets richer and richer.

Next was a thread titled, "Are Americans really this stupid?" which was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster recounts a conversation he overheard in which two individuals were convinced that Boston and Rhode Island border on the Pacific Ocean. Many posters are convinced that Americans are poorly educated and especially lack knowledge when it comes to geography. Several posters have anecdotes of Americans displaying tremendous ignorance when it comes to basic geography. For instance, one poster said that in a recent thread many posters thought that Alaska is an island. One poster's explanation is that in today's schools, geography is being minimized due to an obsession with STEM. The same poster further argued that basic geography is taught in school, but if this knowledge is not used, it is lost. According to this poster, many Americans never travel outside their home state and have no opportunity to encounter an ocean. Many posters are offended by the original poster, with some suggesting that the entire conversation was invented. Others questioned whether the individuals that the original poster overheard might not be Americans but rather foreigners whose lack of knowledge did not reflect upon Americans. Others thought the original poster might be foreign and taking an unfair swipe at Americans. Other posters attributed a declining knowledge of geography to the popularity of GPS. Where once we were forced to learn to read maps and understand the layout of cities to get around, now people mindlessly follow their GPS's directions and end up with no idea of how they got from one place to another. Few people even look at a map nowadays. Because DCUM is full of contrarians, a number of posters showed up to argue that knowing which oceans border our country is not necessary knowledge. One poster went so far as to argue that the individuals who didn't know which ocean was on our East Coast were less ignorant than the original poster because they were going to travel while the original poster simply indulged in trivia. The original poster argued that knowing the names of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was not trivia, but rather basic knowledge. This discussion ran far afield of its original topic at times, even delving into accents at one point. Several posters went to great lengths to demonstrate that everyone has holes in their knowledge, something that is obviously true. But the original poster, supported by several others, continued to insist that there should be a few basic things that everyone knows, and the locations of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are two of them.

The next two most active threads — the Blake Lively thread and the thread about the Fairfax County Public Schools boundary review — were ones that I've previously discussed and will skip today. After those was another thread posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "11 year old Black girl arrested for falsely stealing a car", the original poster embedded a video which she also described that showed an 11-year-old girl being handcuffed by police officers due to suspicion that she was a car thief. The original poster is understandably outraged and calls the police officers "incompetent". The original poster says that the police were looking for an "adult woman" and had, instead, detained an 11-year-old. However, the video actually says that police were looking for a "young person". The suspect for whom the police were searching was Black and wearing a pink jacket, just like the 11-year-old. However, the police had a photo of the suspect which showed that the suspect had longer hair than the girl they detained. According to the video, it was actually the hair length rather than age that finally convinced the police that they had the wrong person. The similarity of the girl to the suspect is the biggest point of contention in this thread. Those like the original poster think that an 11-year-old girl carrying a backpack on her way from school should not be confused with a car jacker. These posters also argue that Black children are routinely believed to be older than their actual age. Other posters argue that the girl was a legitimate suspect and that 11-year-olds do commit carjackings. Furthermore, they claim that proper procedure was followed. In their view, the 11-year-old looked remarkably similar to the suspect and, therefore, it was reasonable for police to detain her. Once they determined she was not the suspect, she was let go. No harm, no foul. But, in the view of other posters, there was considerable foul. Close scrutiny of the photo was not required to see that it did not depict the 11-year-old. Moreover, the police behaved extremely unprofessionally. They refused to allow the girl to call her mother, saying that she would just lie to them, and kept her handcuffed the entire time. One officer even said to the girl that, "You all look alike."