This Weekend's Most Active Threads

Today I'll look at the most active threads over the weekend. Coming in at number 1 was a thread titled, "Feel terrible about my finances after reading this site" and posted in the "Money and Finances" forum. The original poster explains that he and his wife immigrated to the US, landing in northern Virginia, after he completed a PhD program. He now works as an engineer while his wife is a stay at home mom. After reading posts in the DCUM finance forum, he feels that his finances, especially retirement savings, are in terrible shape. As things stand, he plans to rely on his daughter, whose education he took out loans to finance, to support him and his wife in their retirement. But, wait, there's a plot twist. On page 12 of the thread the original poster reveals that she is actually the daughter in this scenario. She works in investment banking and hates the job, but feels tied down due to her parent's expectation that she support them. In a later post she explains that her purpose in starting the thread was to get feedback on whether to remain in investment banking or not. This could have been done in a simple straight-forward manner without the subterfuge. Moreover, I found a few posts in which the original poster sock puppeted. Several of her posts criticized "white" families and in one case she had the audacity to accuse another poster of trolling. Basically, there are a ton of things wrong with this thread and the original poster's conduct. As a result, I've just locked the thread.

The second most active thread over the weekend was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "I’m a young woman who is a conservative Republican. AMA.", this may well have been another troll thread. As the title says, the original poster describes herself as a young, female, conservative Republican and invites posters to ask her questions. At first the thread goes mostly as expected with posters asking questions and the original poster responding. But, fairly soon, the thread devolved into a simple political debate with the original poster no longer identifying herself or actually answering questions. In one case she straight-up sock puppeted a response. There is really nothing particularly enlightening about the views expressed by the original poster. Like so many Conservatives these days, her politics are defined more by what she opposes rather than what she supports. She opposes immigration, abortion, and student loans. She does support "American Exceptionalism" and increased birthrates. Regardless, the thread ceased to be an "Ask Me Anything" and became mostly an argument about Catholicism, so I locked it.

The third most active thread was titled, "Father not involved in child’s life" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that her friend had a baby after a short-term relationship. The father of the child was aware the friend was pregnant and advised her to have an abortion. He then cut off contact with the woman before the child's birth. He has never seen the child who is now two years old. The original poster asks whether the father might come around at some point. Obviously nobody can predict whether the father will change and want to be a part of the child's life, so few posts address that aspect of the original post. There is a considerable amount of second guessing of the mother who many posters argue should have had an abortion. There is not much that can be done about that now, so I am not sure why so many felt a need to express this view. Much of the discussion in the thread delves into who is responsible in this situation with some posters holding that since it was the mother's choice to have the baby, it is solely her responsibility. Others are not so quick to relieve the father of his obligations. Several posters argue that the mother should file for child support and there is quite a bit of discussion about whether the father has a financial obligation and, if so, how much.

The final thread at which I'll look was posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum and titled, "Name an absolutely random song". This is an example of a genre of posts of which I am not particularly fond. The idea, apparently, is simply to post the name of a random song. I have no idea why anyone would want to do this or why anyone else would want to read it. While there have been a rash of threads focused on posting various types of songs, this one seems particularly pointless. It appears that only a few posters were interested in this thread and they posted repeatedly. While several posters posted four or five times each, one poster was responsible for a whopping 33 posts. I guess if your choices of activities are "watch paint dry" and "post the name of a random song on DCUM", the second one would have a slight edge. But, really, it would come down to the color of the paint. Certain hues can be very relaxing.