DCUM Weblog

Today I'll look at the most popular threads of the last week. When I do these weekly wrap-ups, I skip threads that were already mentioned in one of the daily posts. While the majority of this week's most active threads have already been discussed, one that wasn't is a thread that was started in October but was very active last week. Due to the new methodology I'm now using to identify the most active threads, the thread titled, "The White Lotus season 2" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, came out on top as the most active thread of the week. The topic of this thread is self-explanatory. Since the season started airing, posters have weighed in weekly to discuss the lastest episode and share insights on new developments. With the season finale being made available a week ago, attention turned to that episode as well as broader discussions of the season. White Lotus, especially season 2, seems to have been very popular among DCUM posters and this thread is 183 pages long, making it one of the most active threads of the entire past year. Unfortunately, the thread was taken over by a few crazies and I ended up locking it. One poster was weirdly fixated on the Harper character and appeared to have difficulty distinguishing between a television show and real life. Continually having to remove that poster's inappropriate posts and the responses to them was more than I could handle. That poster was far from being the only one obsessed with some aspect or character of the show, however, and plenty of strongly-held opinions were shared.

Before I get started discussing the most active threads I want to explain a change I've made to my methodology for identifying which threads are most active. Prior to today, I only considered threads that were created during the time frame being discussed. That is generally the prior day but on Sundays it is the previous week and on Mondays it is the prior weekend. Doing this overlooked threads that were created earlier but received a high number of replies or views during the relevant timeframe. It also generally meant that threads created late in the day had little chance of making the most active list. Starting today, I will no longer limit threads to those created during the time period being discussed, but will rank them by number of replies within the timeframe regardless of when the thread was created. Because views are recorded as a simple incremental number in a topic's record, there are no dates associated with them as there are with replies. So, I have no easy way of telling how many views occurred during a specific period and, therefore, the most viewed threads will still be determined based on when a thread was created. I will use a combination of the most views and most replies to somewhat arbitrarily determined the top threads. The bottom line is that while there will still be some subjectivity in determining the most active threads, the list of threads with the most replies will no longer depend on when threads were created.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Start to feel suicidal when I’m alone with kids for multiple days and not getting out" and posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum. The original poster says that her husband is away on a business trip and she has been stuck inside with sick children for multiple days and feels trapped. She explains that while she rationally wouldn't commit suicide, she has been considering it as a way out of the situation. Posters writing that they are considering suicide is not an uncommon thing on DCUM. Frequently when such threads are started, posters ask if I can use the poster's internet protocol (IP) address to identify them and alert authorities. IP addresses don't provide that level of identification and several levels of intervention by authorities would be required to identify the poster. Many times, including in this case, the poster doesn't appear to be located anywhere near the DC metro area, meaning that I wouldn't even know which authorities to contact. As such, there is not really anything I can do that would be effective. DCUM posters are good about offering support to suicidal individuals and providing references to the suicide hot line. That was the case in this thread. One somewhat unique aspect of this thread is that many posters reported that such feelings in the type of situation the original poster described are normal. Other posters strongly disputed this notion. Another issue of dispute in this thread which, frankly, was unnecessarily distracting, was whether the original poster was "situationally suicidal" — meaning it could be relieved by correcting the situation. Some posters argued that this was a situational case and could be addressed by her husband coming home or getting other types of support. Opponents of this suggestion argued that the original poster was suffering a mental health crisis which should be addressed by therapy and possibly medication. Moreover, a situational response such as having her husband return early from his trip would not resolve the underlying issues and is not a practical solution. Intermixed between these two debates were suggestions for less dramatic ways the original poster could improve her mood such as listening to music or letting her kids watch TV while she took a break from them.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Twitch dead by apparent suicide: This is HEARTBREAKING!" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. The thread is about the death by suicide of Stephen "tWitch" Boss, a dancer, actor, and television personality. I had never heard of tWitch until I saw this thread but learned that he was popular due to his appearances on "The Ellen Show" and "So You Think You Can Dance", two shows I have not watched. I was surprised by the rush of posts expressing sadness and I don't think I've ever seen such an outpouring of grief due to a celebrity death previously on DCUM. It was strange seeing so many who had obviously been touched by this individual, but not being able to relate. Among the posts expressing surprise and sadness, were many discussing the dangers of depression. Mental health is something which our society struggles to address. While not as bad as it once was, many don't seek help due to fear of stigmatization and, for those who do want help, it is often hard to find or unavailable. Differing views of mental health were demonstrated in the thread when one poster asked why tWitch couldn't have stayed strong for his children and another poster asked if this would be said about someone who died from cancer or a heart attack. It is clear from the thread that many consider this to be a tragic loss and I am sorry not to have learned about tWitch earlier.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "is DH being an unreasonable brat, or am i stressed and being too sensitve?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster has planned a celebration to recognize her husband's achievement of a personal and career milestone. Her husband has helped with one aspect of the planning, but has told her that he expects to be treated as the guest of honor rather than a co-host of the event. Therefore, he asked the original poster to plan for handling their kids and other logistics. It appears that he expects to be free from responsibilities not only during the party, but the entire weekend. This has tremendously upset the original poster who has come to DCUM to vent. All of the initial responses sided with the original poster and criticized her husband. There were some suggestions of having guests or family pitch in to help with childcare, or hiring someone to help. However, the original poster's husband has also questioned the need to pay for assistance. This caused many responders to suggest an ultimatum for the husband. Either he should help or be willing to hire people to help. Some posters took the opposite view and expressed sympathy for the husband's position, saying that his expectations were understandable. Beyond the husband's desire to be relieved of responsibilities, many questioned his entire attitude and the scale of the event. Some posters claim that the celebration is more involved than their weddings. The original posters resolutely refused to disclose the achievement that is being celebrated. This caused a few posters to suggest that the significance of the event was such that the original poster would look bad by revealing it. Others made guesses about what it was and then posters debated whether those suggestions merited such a celebration. For a few posters, this was just another battle in the gender wars in which men are portrayed as immature narcissists who demand to be babied, while women are expected to take responsibility for everything. This view is unlikely to go down well with DCUM's incel batalion if they ever stumble across the thread,

Yesterday's most active thread seems perfectly designed to drive me insane. Hence, it is a good thing that I did not become aware of it until just now because the irritation it has provoked has not yet blossomed to full on rage. The thread, which is posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum, seems innocent enough at first glance. Titled "Disappointed in junior staff". the original poster explains that her staff works from home most days but recently there have been two non-mandatory social events organized by her boss for which staff was requested to come to the office. Two junior staff members failed to attend either event and a third junior staffer also missed one. The original poster's boss was upset and mentioned noticing who missed the events and the original poster asks whether this should be brought up during year end reviews. It seems obvious to me that missing non-mandatory events does not rise to review material but the original poster would be doing her junior staffers a favor by informally letting them know how their office politics appears to work and that facetime at social events would benefit them professionally. Obvious as the answer may seem to me, the thread is currently at 9 pages. The reason the thread has reached that length is because posters have brought up every issue that is likely to drive me crazy. The second response says that Millennials lack work ethics. This is all of my pet peeves about generational labels wrapped up in one. First, not all Millennials, or members of any other generation for that matter, are the same. Second, while nobody can really agree on when generations begin and end, junior staffers these days are just as likely to be Gen-Z as they are Millennials. I guess when you've been using the same derogatory for a decade, it becomes a habit that is hard to break. Then, as if we have not discussed Covid enough, that became part of the discussion as a reason to avoid group events. Several posts diverge to debate the current threat presented by the virus. Intermixed in the generational bashing and Covid analysis are a bunch of posters explaining why they would also have skipped the social events. A word of advice from a grumpy old guy who hasn't worked in an office in years. If you have a chance to get free food and drink and butter up your bosses, take it.

In order to write these posts, I begin each day by checking which threads were most active and since today is Monday, that means the most active threads over the weekend. Some days the list makes me want to turn around and go back to bed. Today is one of those days. The most active thread over the weekend, by some measure, was titled, "Question for the smart girls who snag the good guys early in life" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Yes, the thread is just as nauseating as the title suggests that it would be. The original poster laments that the "good guys with the potential to make good money" are all spoken for early in life and that, because she lacked the skills to identify such guys, she missed out on finding one. Now she wants to know how those who did grab such guys learned to do it. In what I envision as a perfect world, nobody would have replied to this poster. In a slightly less than perfect world, posters would have only replied to tell the original poster that her post was ridiculous. But, in the world in which we live, most posters actually took the thread seriously. The original poster was advised to skip the "frat boys" and concentrated on the nerdy guys, especially engineers. Some posters disclosed that their mothers had taught them what to look for in a guy. Others said they had established their own plans and goals and found partners that would help achieve them. Several posters described their personal experiences, not all of which led to happiness. It took until page 7, but finally a poster replied in a manner that wasn't completely discouraging, writing "This thread is so dated. Tell your daughters to snag a degree that will enable the life they want."

Today I'll look at the most active threads over the past week, but skip over any that I've already discussed. That leaves the most active thread being a thread in the "Schools and Education General Discussion" forum titled, "Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?" The original poster links to a video in which a teacher begins a monologue by responding to someone asking her about her day. She says that her day is not yet over because she has a stack of material to take home, that she couldn't deal with the papers during her planning period because a parent made an unannounced visit, and that she hadn't been able to eat lunch. She says that her job forces her to pit her students against her own children because she has to choose to either fall behind at work or take work home and neglect her kids. That's the most information you will find about the video unless you watch it yourself because I didn't see any indication that anyone that responded in the thread had bothered to watch the video. Instead, posters simply launched into screeds representing their previously-held views about teachers. Generally posters in the DCUM education forums hold very dim views of teachers and such opinions are well-represented in this thread. Teachers are portrayed as complainers who don't understand how good they have it. Posters claim that only unmotivated college students choose to become teachers. Some respond that teaching is an easy job and, hence, doesn't deserve better pay. There is a fixation on teachers having the summer off which apparently justifies any and all difficulties teachers face. In the midst of this negativity, a few teachers try to explain the hurdles they face. By almost all accounts, things have become significantly more challenging since the pandemic. Hence, teachers are stressed more than usual. Some of the teachers who respond have a somewhat less negative view of things and describe how they are able to manage their job successfully and don't feel overworked. In the end, this thread is simply another demonstration of what I think will coin as "The DCUM Paradox": teachers are lazy, incompetent, overpaid whiners with too much vacation and it is absolutely essential that they spend several hours a day teaching our children. To be clear, that is not my view, but it does appear to be the prevailing opinion among our posters.

When the Covid pandemic led to many people working from home, couples that were used to being apart for much of the day often found themselves together almost all of the time. This was not an easy adjustment for everyone. A thread titled, "DH WFH is a huge turn off" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum describes one such example. The original poster explains that she has always worked from home and, prior to the pandemic, her husband went to an office. Since the pandemic, he has worked from home which has led to him staying up later at night, waking up later, showering later, and putting on pajamas earlier in the day. All of this is a huge turn-off to the original poster who has been unsuccessful in convincing her husband to return to his office. Most of those responding are not very sympathetic to the original poster whom they admonish for wanting to work from home while not wanting her husband to have the same arrangement which he clearly enjoys. Some of those responding are supportive of the original poster, often being able to relate because they are in similar circumstances. Several posters offer advice for improving the situation such as ways to get some time apart from one another. Some posters have a hard time finding anything to criticize about the original poster's husband and, therefore, don't find the original poster's anger believable. This actually led to one poster creating a thread in the "Website Feedback" forum asking if the original poster was a troll. I didn't find any evidence of trolling, but I did find that the original poster had sock puppeted a single response. Looking at the thread again today, I see that subsequent to that, the original poster sock puppeted almost exclusively. I still don't think that she is simply trolling. I suspect that she did not appreciate the responses she received and, as such, decided to manufacturer replies that were more to her liking.

When it was announced early yesterday morning that WNBA basketball star Britney Griner had been exchanged for Russian arms merchant Viktor Bout, a poster quickly started a thread in the "Off-Topic" forum titled, "Brittney Griner Coming Home!". Undoubtedly, this thread would have been the most active of the day yesterday. However, the thread quickly turned political and, because there was an existing thread about Griner in the "Political Discussion" forum, I locked the new thread and directed posters to the older one. That thread, titled, "Britney Griner deal", gained enough new pages yesterday that it could have topped the most active list itself. The two threads combined easily eclipsed all other topics in activity for the day. Unfortunately, rather than celebrate the release of an American who had been unjustly imprisoned in Russia, many posters immediately focused on the fact that another American held in Russia, Paul Whalen, was not being released. Indeed, the entire text of the original post in the Off-Topic thread was "Paul Whalen staying in jail." The poster did not bother providing any details about Griner who was the subject of the thread. Criticism that Whalen had not been freed continued even after the Biden Administration explained that Russia refused to release Whalen in exchange for Bout. The criticism continued even after Whalen's family expressed support for the exchange. Whalen supporters almost exclusively referred to him as a "marine" or a "former marine" despite the fact that he had been dishonorably discharged from the Corps over a decade ago. Generally, this was a very disheartening rush to unfairly disparage the exchange and, coupled with attacks on Griner herself, present Griner as undeserving and not worth the value of Bout. To be sure, Griner had her supporters who expressed joy at her release and who sought to combat the misinformation being spread about her. Most upsetting were the posts, thankfully few in number, that were blatantly racist or homophobic. I removed such posts as soon as they came to my attention.