DCUM Weblog

Many of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed and, therefore, will skip today. The first new thread among the most active was titled, "NFL quarterback's wife tells podcast she slept with his backup to make him jealous" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. The original poster embedded a TikTok clip of Kelly Stafford, wife of Matthew Stafford, the quarterback for the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, discussing her early relationship with Mathew. It isn't often that a thread on DCUM makes me downright angry, but this is one of those times. What upset me is that this thread was not posted in good faith and misrepresents the facts to serve the original poster's personal agenda. I am not sure exactly what motivated the original poster, but perhaps jealously. At any rate, in the TikTok clip, Kelly implies that while in college she and Matthew had an on again and off again relationship, saying "I hated him, I loved him" while Matthew was just trying to date casually. Kelly goes on to say that at one point she dated the back-up quarterback who lived in the same dorm as Matthew. She says that she did this to "piss him off" and "it worked." Seeing her car there, Matthew jumped in her car as she was leaving and told her that the backup quarterback was not right for her. It was left unsaid, but we can deduce, that this led to Matthew becoming serious about their relationship. They went on to get married and now have four children. Kelly obviously meant this as a cute and funny story. But the original poster is apparently outraged by this and made it a personal mission to disgrace Kelly to the fullest extent possible. Posting well over 20 times in the thread, the original poster described Kelly as "trashy", "jersey-chasing", an "idle rich housewife", having hit the "bimbo lottery", "shameless and shallow", and a "whore". In addition, the original poster repeatedly accused both Kelly and Matthew of being serial cheaters and also suggested that Kelly's mother had advised her about how to manipulate Matthew. The original poster did not bother identifying herself as the original poster and, as such, her numerous follow-up posts may appear to most posters as coming from different posters. But, having the ability as I do to distinguish the original poster's posts and read them all at once, they paint a picture of someone with a deep-seated psychological problem. Just for the record, in the TikTok, Kelly only said that she "dated" the backup quarterback and didn't detail what level of intimacy may have occurred. The original poster insists that Kelly and the other player had sex, which may be the case but certainly was not confirmed. Moroever, the original poster also made it sound like this occurred while she and Matthew were married, which it obviously did not. Basically, this thread was one person's effort to exercise her own rage over the fact that another women had reached a point in her life in which she could comfortably laugh at earlier behavior about which she may not be particularly proud. Personally, I can unequivocally say that in this thread Kelly Stafford comes off looking considerably better than the original poster.

Yesterday's first and second most active threads were both on the same topic, but in different forums. I didn't know there were two different threads until just now and, having discovered it, I locked one. Rather than discuss the same topic twice, I will combine the two and talk about them both at once. The most active of the two was titled, "Louisiana orders every classroom to display Ten Commandments" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The second was titled, "Ten Commandments at LSU" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The topic both of these threads are discussing is a bill recently signed into law by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry that requires every public school classroom in the state to display a poster of the Ten Commandments. Civil liberties groups are challenging the law which they say is unconstitutional due to violating the Establishment Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Kentucky, ruling in the 1980 case Stone v. Graham that posters of the commandments violated the First Amendment. This suggests that the civil liberties groups are correct and will prevail in their litigation. Though, with today's Supreme Court, who knows? One justice, Samuel Alito, was recently recorded saying that the U.S. should return to a "place of godliness" and will likely support Louisiana. Justice Clarence Thomas has held that the Establishment Clause does not apply to states, meaning that he is also likely to support Louisiana. The Louisiana law attempts to frame the display of the Ten Commandments as being a document of historical value that is important to American history. One issue that I noticed with this law is that there is not a universally agreed upon version of the Ten Commandments. Catholics, for instance, have a different version than most Protestant denominations. Indeed, by my count, the version included in Louisiana's law actually contains 12 commandments. This may be an effort to appease both Catholics and Protestants. Probably the most disappointing aspect of both of these threads is that very few posters showed an inclination to adhere to values. In a perfect world, everyone would have a set of values. They might not be the same values — differences would still exist — but everyone would have some sort of code by which they lived their lives. An issue such as this would be measured against those values. Those who valued separation of church and state would naturally oppose it. Those who valued the spread of Christianity would support it. The two groups could debate in good faith. But that's not what happens in these threads. Instead, partisanship has divided folks into separate tribes and they they react on the basis of tribe rather than values. This is particularly evident among conservatives who normally claim tremendous appreciation of the U.S. Constitution, but in this case are willing to ignore or at least brush off the plain statement that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", the so-called "Establishment Clause". They argue that the U.S. is a Christian nation and, therefore, the Ten Commandments should be an acceptable document. Personally, I look forward to seeing how teachers who conservatives believe should never talk about sexual relations explain the commandment forbidding adultery to young children.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "What I’m noticing from millennial high achieving moms" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster describes herself as "mid age millennial born in 1990" and notes several characteristics of high-achieving, elite-educated women as they start to have children. Essentially, few of the women stay at home, they commonly have three kids, they travel a lot, and post on social media about their great lives. I am very confused about the purpose of this thread. Clearly, the original poster's observations don't apply to all millennials and or even to all high-achieving millennial women. Basically, this is a list of observations of the original poster's circle of acquaintances and has little significance outside that group. So what is the point? My confusion was apparently shared by others because the responses in this thread were disjointed, fairly random, and often gave the impression of artificial intelligence bots attempting to converse with each other. Rather than a discussion, this thread is more like posters simply typing out whatever thought immediately entered their minds and hitting "submit". Based on these responses, the only thing that you can say for sure about high-achieving millennial moms is that you can't say anything for sure. Despite the sparcity of stay at home moms in the original poster's circle, other posters say such moms are more the rule than the exception among their acquaintances. Whereas the original poster sees three or more children as popular, others say that one or even no children are common. Posters can't even agree on whether or not high-achieving millennial moms run marathons. Depending on the poster, that is either common or rare. In some cases, posters appear to be attempting to create stereotypes where none exists. Instead of stereotypes, what results are a series of archetypes. There is the doctor or lawyer married to another doctor or lawyer with three kids whose social media is filled with photos of their latest skiing trip to the Swiss Alps such as the original poster might have described. But there is also the Ivy League grad who put her investment banking career on hold to start a family and has no interest in returning to work. Then there is the hard-charging careerist who is at the top of her game professionally, has a single child, and wouldn't stay home if you held a gun to her head. True that all three are high-achieving millennial women, but that is about all that they have in common. Many of the observations in this thread are derived from social media. As such, it is likely that what these posters are seeing about others is not actual reality, but simply what those individuals want others to see about them. They are, therefore, creating stereotypes based on carefully curated images rather than what really exits. So again I ask, what's the point?

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Justin Timberlake arrested on DWI in Hamptons" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. Early yesterday morning, singer and actor Justin Timberlake was arrested in Sag Harbor, New York on charges of driving while intoxicated. The original poster started this thread to discuss the arrest, calling Timberlake a "loser" and saying that he clearly has a drinking problem. Most of those replying agreed with the original poster, having very harsh words for those who endanger others by drinking and driving. There was one Timberlake defender whose primary argument was that Timberlake is rich, though it is not clear how that was supposed to exonerate him. Some posters in the thread also took the opportunity to criticize Timberlake for his alleged treatment of Britney Spears during a past relationship. In Spears' recent book, she described having an abortion after Timberlake said that he was not ready to be a father. Posters were divided about whether Timberlake had coerced Spears into having an abortion or whether he had simply stated his feelings on the matter. Some posters argued that regardless of Timberlake's position, Spears was not ready to be a mother at that time either and terminating the pregnancy was for the better. A few posters were still angry with Timberlake because of the famous "wardrobe malfunction" that occurred between Timberlake and Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl. In that incident, Timberlake performed a choreographed move to remove part of Jackson's top and inadvertently exposed one of her breasts to the television audience. According to the posters who are upset with Timberlake due to the incident, Jackson suffered all the consequences while Timberlake had no repercussions. As is to be expected from any DCUM celebrity thread, there are posters who act like they know Timberlake's personal life better than he does and share what they claim is inside gossip. Most of that is likely false. In addition to the robust abortion debate in the thread, there is also a conversation about alcoholism. This includes a dispute about whether alcoholism — referred to as alcohol use disorder in academic literature and scientific studies — is or is not a disease. This thread demonstrates that at least on DCUM, Timberlake has few remaining fans and has been involved in enough controversies to provide a variety of reasons to dislike him. As such, DCUMers tend to dislike him though not always for the same reason.

The first of yesterday's most active threads that I will discuss was titled, "Shocked at how many families in nice DMV neighborhoods are living in relatives' homes" and posted in the "Real Estate" forum. The original poster says that she has a child who just finished kindergarten in an upscale DC metropolitan area neighborhood and has met "at least a dozen families" who are living in homes owned by elderly relatives. She has also met families in similar living situations in other upscale area neighborhoods and believes this practice is very widespread in the area. The original poster advises others who may be struggling to save a downpayment or afford childcare and who may wonder how others are doing it, that this is one of the ways. She further alleges that this practice is causing others to be shut out of desirable neighborhoods. The high cost of area housing, particularly in highly-desirable neighborhoods, has long been an issue of debate in the DCUM real estate forum. One factor driving up costs is the limited inventory of houses on the market in these neighborhoods. To the extent that elderly residents providing housing to younger relatives rather than selling their homes further constrains inventory, this would obviously limit the available homes for sale and contribute to price increases. Among those responding, there is a bit of a chicken and the egg phenomenon. While some posters, like the original poster, argue that adult child living in their parents' homes helps drive up prices, others suggest that adult children are encouraged to choose such arrangements due to the high cost of housing. A number of those responding are quite aggravated that these parents provide housing to their adult children rather than selling their homes. They consider this one more way in which "boomers" have made things more difficult for younger generations. Never mind that the exact same boomers are making life easier for the members of younger generations for whom they provide housing. Other posters, perhaps some of whom are among that second group who benefits from this practice, are all in favor of it. They cite a number of advantages from the arrangement, especially when parents continue living in the home. That provides either convenient childcare or eldercare as the case may be. Other posters are aware that adult children living in elderly relatives' homes is common in this area, but their feelings about it are heavily influenced by the attitudes of the adult children who are benefiting from this arrangment. In cases where the children are down to earth and recognize that they can only afford to live in the neighborhood due to their relatives' generosity, posters have no problem with them. But, in many cases, posters say that the adult children act entitled and don't seem to understand their advantages. This creates some animosity. The friction created by those who act snobbish despite not having earned their advantages goes beyond their simply being able to live in a nice neighborhood. Posters also complain about these individuals getting access to popular country clubs, often at a reduced rate. This discussion highlights a clear division between the beneficiaries of generational wealth and those who have had to work and pay their own way for everything they have achieved.

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.

Quite a few of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I have already discussed. This seems to be an emerging trend as the same thing happened last week. But, that was not the case for the most active thread. Titled, "Help me understand Republican women in their 30s and 40s" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, not only had I not previously discussed the thread, I hadn't even read it. Now it is 40 pages long and there is no way that I will read the whole thing. The original poster states that she understood Bush-era Republicans, but "cannot wrap my mind around how any remotely educated woman today could consider herself a part of the Republican party." She asks others to explain the appeal of the Republican Party to women. Based on some of the responses I read in the thread, many posters — and perhaps the original poster as well — assume that the Republican Party's hostility toward reproductive rights and the former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's history of brutish behavior toward women (which includes being found liable of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll) would push women away from the party. Recent election results have demonstrated that there may be some truth in this theory, though the trend is clearly not universal. Based on the responses from Republican women in the thread, I don't think that Republican women are all that different than Republican men. The traditional view of Republicans is that they are motivated by interest in low taxes, business-friendly regulations, tough on crime measures, and a strong defense. That view is outdated, or if not outdated, those concerns taken a backseat to other priorities. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump recently wrote about Pew survey results regarding race, immigration, and gender. Bump's findings are consistent with the posts by Republican women in this thread. While crime remains a concern, they tend to be much more motivated by cultural issues. In each of the three topics, race, immigration, and gender, the Republican women feel that they are being disadvantaged by Democratic policies. Like White men, White women frequently believe that the interests of non-White people ar put above theirs. One of the first Republican women posters to respond in the thread cited the claim that White women have "privilege" as something she resents, implying that it hurts the employment opportunities for White women. Immigration in Republican thinking is often connected to crime, reminiscent of Trump's claim that Mexico was sending rapists and murderers to the US. But an equal concern seems to be the belief that Democrats are encouraging immigration in order to gain Democratic voters. Again, these women think that Democrats are putting the interests of others above theirs. The gender issue is more complicated. One would be inclined to think that the motivating issues around sex and gender would be reproductive rights, equality for women, and other women rights issues. But, again, Republican women see themselves as being disadvantaged in preference to others. In this case, transgender women who, these women believe, are men impinging on women's rights. In general, I think it is safe to say that Republican women, like Republican men, are primarily motivated by a series of issues which cause them to feel that their position in society is being eroded by trends towards diversity.

The most active thread yesterday was the same one that was the most active the day before. That was the thread about the husband who revealed his college roommate's affair in retaliation for the roommate suggesting that the original poster's daughter was fat. I'll skip that thread and go to the next one which was titled, "Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites two anecdotes involving two different popular universties that suggest those schools are experiencing overcrowding and wants to know which other universities have such issues and how that can be found out. The DCUM college forum has increasingly become one of our more popular forums. Moreover, the caliber of the threads is often quite high with quite a bit of useful information being shared. This thread, unfortunately, is not one of those. Rather, this thread gets bogged down in some of the worst divisions that plague the forum. Many of the forum's participants are obsessed with college rankings and, therefore, it was no surprise that a debate broke out about whether the two universities named by the original poster were really "top tier" schools. The same happened with other colleges named by posters. There was also a debate about whether this was solely an issue with public universities and could be avoided by choosing private colleges. Posters quickly broke into two camps, each defending its favorite type of school and attacking the other. Schools in the University of California system received particularly harsh criticism with a number of extreme allegations about them being made. Those schools also had their defenders, who denied a number of the claims. I had to laugh at one exchange that began after a poster insisted that overcrowding issues were limited to public universities. Another poster provided an anecdote involving Boston University in which the dorms were so crowded that students were housed in hotels. Rather than acknowledge that overcrowding apparently did impact private schools, a poster argued that "being in a hotel in Boston is almost like (or even better than) being in a dorm". But the biggest issue with this thread was the sparsity of substantive data to back up the claims being made. Posters routinely made claims about schools that appeared more likely to be urban legends than reality. When asked to support their allegations, they often turned to sources such as Reddit, provoking incredulity. The discussion in this thread is scattered and goes all over the place with a number of separate topics being discussed. It might have some usefulness for anyone considering University of California schools, but otherwise it is hard to separate fact from fiction.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Who Is Most Out Of Bounds Here?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that she recently posted a graduation photo of her daughter and mentioned the college she plans to attend. An old college roommate of her husband commented on the photo saying that it looked like the girl would enjoy the food at the college, apparently referring to her weight. The original poster says that her daughter "is not fat but she is still carrying a little baby weight around her hips and she is naturally large chested" and that the comment was wildly out of bounds. Her husband flew into a rage and posted a public comment asking the guy if his wife knew about his affair with an old girlfriend. The old roommate's wife saw the comment and has been calling the original poster non-stop leaving angry voicemails accusing the original poster of sabotaging her marriage. The original poster simply told the roommate's wife to take it up with the her own husband and blocked her. The original poster says that she knows that her husband was wrong, but asks whether he justified due to the insult to their daughter. For some reason this thread just took off. As far as I can tell, the original poster hardly provided any additional input. Nevertheless, the thread has already reached 22 pages. Much of that is owed to a small number of posters who apparently got very invested in the thread. Two of them posted over 40 times each, another nearly 60 times, and a fourth over 30 times. It is possible that one of these was the original poster, but I don't have evidence of that. These posters were split with two on each side of the debate. There are several different perspectives in this thread. One is that the old roommate was wrong to alude to the original poster's daughter's weight and is solely responsible for any damage to his marriage because that was caused by his own cheating. In this perspective, the original poster's husband has nothing about which to feel bad. In contrast to that is the view that the roommate's comment was rude, but the original poster's husband's reaction was far too strong. Moreover, his action did not take into account the innocent bystanders who would also be hurt, primarily the roommate's wife. In addition to possibly blowing up the roommate's marriage, hurting his wife and, potentially, any children they have, the original poster's husband sent a dangerous signal to their daughter about her weight. Some posters feared that she would understand that being fat is very bad, possibly triggering an eating disorder. Other posters faulted the original poster's husband for sitting on the knowledge that his roommate had had an affair. They believe that he had a responsibility to inform his roommate's wife earlier. Some of these posters are upset by the original poster's husband's treatment of women, citing his failure to disclose the affair, his lack of concern about the impact of his subsequent revelation on his roommate's wife, and the messages he is sending his daughter about weight. Generally there was plenty of blame to go around in this situation with no agreement on who was the most wrong.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Do women expect a ring at 1 year?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that his one-year anniversary of dating his girlfriend is coming up and he is being pressured by friends and family to propose to her. He is not ready to take that step and feels thats one year is not enough time to decide to make such a commitment and doesn't understand the rush. Apparently the only question that the original poster has is the one in the title of his thread. I don't think any of those responding believed that there is any sort of one-year cut-off at which the original poster would be expected to make a decision. Rather posters emphasized that what is important is what his girlfriend wants. Many posters said that the urgency to get married was strongly correlated to age. Several pointed out that women who plan to have children don't want to waste their fertile years with someone with whom they had no future. Therefore, a younger couple would not necessarily need to make a decision about marriage right away. But that would change with age. The original poster explained that his girlfriend had said she is not in a rush to get married but that she wanted to have children at 30. She is currently 28 and he is 35. One poster quickly did the math and pointed out that if they got engaged now and had a wedding in a year, his girlfriend would be nearly 30 by the time she went through pregnancy. Therefore, it is probably time to think about making the commitment. The point that posters kept emphasizing was that the original poster should think about his girlfriend's needs. It would be really unfair to string her along if he doesn't plan to marry her. In addition, several posters warned that at his age, the original poster might not be able to find anyone better than his current girlfriend. The original poster didn't find that argument convincing and seemed to be certain that he could easily find another girlfriend equal or better than his current one. For no apparent good reason, he argued that it is older women, not older men, who have trouble finding new relationships. The original poster repeatedly pointed out that he is Catholic and neither he nor his family believe in divorce. Therefore, marriage is a very important decision because it will be for life. Frankly, there is something that seems a little off to me about this poster. To hear him tell it, he and his girlfriend are on the same page and the only issue is pressure from others. He describes his life as being completely on track according to his personal goals. So, after being assured that there is not a one-year deadline as he claimed to fear, I am not sure what was left to discuss. The original poster, however, found plenty to discuss, posting over 60 posts in the thread. A significant number of his posts were anti-woman, starting with his views on older women and continuing to his claim that many women expect a man to be their provider and the failure of posters to understand this explained the "many unhappy bitter women on this thread". I very much suspect that this poster is a troll, though I don't have any evidence beyond my intuition to support this suspicion.