DCUM Weblog

Because I didn't write blog posts for a couple of days, today I'll cover the top threads for the past three days. The most active thread during that period was titled, "Man killed in Tyson’s Corner shooting" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Crime in general has been getting a lot of publicity lately and violent incidents in or near the Typson's Corner mall have been popular, if heated at times, topics of discussion on DCUM. As such, this thread fits perfectly with this trend. The thread was first started on March 22 with a post linking to a WTOP article about the police shooting a suspected shoplifter. Very few details beyond that were available and, apparently bereft of anything more important to debate, posters immediately engaged in an argument about whether a strand of trees where the incident occurred could properly be described as "woods", Beyond that, some posters, despite not knowing any important details of the shooting, immediately weighed in to claim that the police had acted correctly. Others questioned why shoplifting, especially if it is only suspected, should result in the use of deadly force. As more information came out, many of the pro-police posters held firm in their conviction that the shooting was completely proper and that, hopefully in their view, it would act as a deterrent to future crimes. Other posters, however, insisted that they support the police but were still uneasy about an unarmed shoplifter being shot while running away. Those who thought the shooting was unjustified presented a variety of arguments to support their case, but most vocally argued that those who thought death was the proper punishment for a property crime should move to Saudi Arabia. Some posters justified the shooting after the fact by pointing to the victim's criminal history, suggesting that he presented a violent threat. Of course, the police officers would not have known that at the time.

Fixed again and I'm going to bed.

Broken Again. I tried to fix a problem with the Nanny Forums and something went wrong. Working on it now.

This evening I was doing some maintenance on the database cluster when suddenly an error message appeared and the forums stopped working. The cluster consists of four nodes and two of them had crashed completely and two were in a not-working state. I tried several times to bring the cluster back up, but what appears to be a corrupt file prevented that. I am now restoring yesterday's backup. Unfortunately, since backups are done at night, any post or thread from about 4 am Friday morning will be lost.

UPDATE: The DCUM Forums are back up but are working very slowly. Posting is very slow. The page times out but the posts actually go through. Please don't resubmit because that will cause duplicate posts. Recent Topics also doesn't seem to be working. 

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Most young men are single - most young women are not" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The thread, which was started with the original poster linking to an article in "The Hill" discussing a survey showing that 60 percent of young men are single while nearly half that number of women are unattached, gained a whopping 23 pages of responses in less than 24 hours. Given the length, there is no way that I am reading much of it. But, from what I see on the first couple of pages, discussion is divided between those blaming men for their own bad luck and those thinking these numbers don't add up. The numbers do raise the question of just with whom the women are involved? The answer seems to be a combination of "each other", "the same guy", and "older men". Another explanation suggested was that men and women view relationships differently and while a woman might answer a survey question by saying that she is in a relationship, the guy with whom she is involved might not view things the same way and, therefore, answer by saying he is not in a relationship. If this is true, the disparity might not be as stark. It would be kind of ironic if a guy dating three different women resulted in three women saying they are in relationships and one man saying he was not. This thread is ripe to attract DCUM's Incel Battalion, but I didn't read enough to see if they actually showed up. Even without their overt appearance, some posters were already arguing that society is biased against young males. In contrast, several posters insisted that young men need to put down their phones and start paying attention to other people if they don't want to end up single.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "My wife is going to lose me" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that he is very close to leaving his wife because of a lack sex in their relationship. He says that he does his share of parenting and work around the house, is a supportive husband, and is in reasonably good shape, but doesn't feel like they are a real couple. Posts of this nature are pretty common in this forum and the men rarely get much sympathy. But, responses to this poster seemed especially unsupportive. Many posters told him to just leave and get it over with. Others suggested talking to his wife about it, even if that was just to give a warning that he was considering divorce. The thread is 13 pages long and I don't have time to read it all, but from looking through a few posts one thing I noticed is that responses are sort of all over the place. Some posters have suggestions for fixing things but many feel that there is no repairing the relationship. Some posters accuse him of having the wrong priorities and blame him for any problems. These topics always attract both posters who believe that sex is an obligation in a marriage and those who do not think it is something that should be expected. Posters representing both views makes appearances in this thread, but there is a big variety of opinions between these extremes.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Who are these families with household incomes of $45k or $60k? $70k?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites the salary levels mentioned in the thread's title as being necessary to received college financial aid. He is surprised that anyone with a child of college age would have such incomes and wonders who they are. Before this thread even had three replies it was reported to me by someone suggesting that it be removed. I believe that person's concern was that thread would result in bashing poor people. If so, such fears were misplaced. Instead, the thread is mostly posters criticizing the original poster for lacking intelligence and providing examples of those who earn salaries at such levels. The most frequent example was probably single parents. Many posters provided stats showing average incomes which demonstrated that the original poster was very out of touch with salary levels. Quite a few posters described their own personal experiences of either growing up in such a household or living in one now. This is an interesting corrective to the prevailing perception that DCUM posters are all well off. One poster, who said he owned a business, described using loopholes to keep his reported income low and qualify for aid. Needless to say, this did not go over well with many posters.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Please don’t let your children eat common allergens while playing on public playground equipment" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. As the title says, the original poster urges parents to not allow their children to eat foods to which many children are allergic on public playground equipment. Because of the severity of the original poster's child's allergies, this practice essentially makes it impossible for the child to go to playgrounds. This thread is 15 pages long and I only have time to read the first couple of pages. But, that is enough to know that there is a huge fight between parents who consider eating peanuts while climbing on the monkey bars to be a God-given right that will not be infringed and those who are not above physically assaulting someone in order to confiscate their snacks. Beyond that, rather than summarize the thread more accurately, I want to comment on two aspects of the responses that stuck out to me. The first is a topic that I may have brought up before in one of these posts, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. That is the importance of the first response. It has been a longtime observation of mine that the first response is often essential in setting the tone of the thread. In this case, the actual first response was the original poster adding more detail to the initial post. But, the next response was from a poster who essentially ignored the original poster's concerns and asked what she would do when the child goes to school or college, obviously unaware that accommodations for children with allergies are common in both. This poster continued opposing even the most mild of sacrifices and made clear that she wasn't interested in anyone's issues but her own. I think this clearly established the tone of the thread right from the start. The second thing that stood out to me involves the same poster. Admittedly, DCUM can be a pretty rough place at times with posters often being unnecessarily harsh. Frequently, this is blamed on the region's culture with residents of the DC-area being described as unkind or overly competitive. The original poster was even guilty of this, alluding to "dog eat dog D.C.". But, the poster responsible for the negative posts and who adamantly insisted nobody mattered but her was not posting from the DC area and appears to be a couple of states away. In my experience, actual DC people are more than willing to make reasonable accommodations for children with allergies and I would hate for this thread to give the opposite impression based mostly on the unrepresentative posts of someone from outside the area.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Conservative confusion over schools" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster has composed a thoughtful post describing how Republican elected officials such as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have exploited fears over public schools to their electoral advantage. Much of what the original poster touches upon has been discussed in other threads that I've summarized, but the original poster provides cohesive overview of what has been happening. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't notice this thread, which was just started yesterday, until now and it has already reached 15 pages. I don't have time to read the entire thread, but from what I did read, the discussion has mostly gone as one would expect. Certainly, many of the liberals that dominate DCUM agree with the original poster. What is notable, however, is the nature of the conservative response. Conservatives, at least as I saw in this thread, don't seem capable of addressing the issues raised by the original poster directly. Instead, the conservative reaction is one that is worth being looked at more fully. Republicans have a well-established opposition to public education. More recently, Republican operatives, especially Chris Rufo, discovered that fanning parent concerns about public schools could be turned to their political advantage. Rufo explicitly turned Critical Race Theory (CRT), something that he acknowledged that he doesn't even understand, into a major controversy which, in part, propelled Youngkin into the governor's seat. The Republican strategy has been to either outright invent horror stories involving schools or massively distort the reality. They've found that if they can get their story out first, corrections or explanations of the truth generally get drowned out. This manufactured "truth" not only lives on, it becomes accepted reality within conservative circles. This "realty" is then used to justify Republican attacks on public education. The upshot is that the Republican response to what the original poster describes is to talk about "groomers", "pedophiles", and CRT, with very little of what they are discussing having a firm basis in reality. The real world impact of DeSantis' actions, in particular, is mostly ignored.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Was this rude of me?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster describes having a lazy Saturday during which her husband went to the gym and then generally relaxed at home. During that time, the original poster tended to their child and did some housework. Needing a break and also wanting to finish a work project, the original poster suggested that her husband take their child to the park. Her husband seemed put out by this request and the original poster asks if she had been rude. I personally would have no issue with the original poster's approach and several posters who identified themselves as men similarly said her request was fine. Some posters argued for a more direct approach and, frankly, I found most of their suggestions far more off-putting than what the original poster described. But, what pushed this thread to 9 pages and put it at the top of the most active list was one particular poster. There is an Internet phenomenon known as the "reply guy". These are men who are prone to respond to women in ways that are generally inappropriate. DCUM has its very own reply guy who, when joining this thread, described the original poster as "manipulative" and selfish. In true "reply guy" fashion, he would not give up and was still posting on what is currently the last page of the thread. In the course of the thread he accused the original poster of being a liar, of being "passive aggressive", of having "poor organizational skills", of being "an abusive person" and "mentally ill", and of precipitating an inevitable divorce. Ultimately, the reply guy worked himself up to the point where he declared the child involved did not even belong to the original poster's husband. As entertaining as this fellow is, I've blocked him. Though generally posters like this have plenty of experience being kicked out of forums and know how to find their way back.

Starting off today I would like to thank everyone who posted condolence messages in response to yesterday's post about my brother Doug. That meant a lot to me and I greatly appreciate it.

Since I didn't cover Thursday's most active threads yesterday, today I'll look at the most active topics over the past two days. The most active thread during that period was titled, "My wife is furious with me for not standing up for her when my brother told her off" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster goes to some length to describe a conflict between him and his wife. This is the second marriage for each of them and the original poster has one daughter from his previous marriage and his wife has three daughters. The original poster's brother has no kids, but has repeatedly taken the original poster's daughter on exotic trips around the world. His wife's children are jealous of the trips and would like to be included, an idea that the original poster knows is a non-starter with his brother and he warned his wife not to bring up. Nevertheless, the original poster's wife went behind his back to ask his brother to include her daughters in an upcoming trip. The brother responded very rudely and the original poster's wife now wants the original poster to stand up for her. He doesn't want to do that because he feels his wife was wrong, but he is now sleeping in the guest bedroom and wants advice about what to do. Many posters suspected this was a troll thread or copied from Reddit. I have no evidence to support either allegation. However, the original poster only seems to have replied once, which is sort of strange in a 17 page discussion. Most of those responding side with the brother, though some believe that he was unnecessarily rude. A few posters believe that the original poster's relationship with his wife is more important than his relationship with his brother and, therefore, all of the children should go on the trip or none of them. Of course, this being the relationship forum, several posters immediately told the original poster to get a divorce — advice that could be expected regardless of the circumstances.