Last Week's Most Active Threads

On Sundays my practice has been to review the most active threads from the previous week. Out of the top 15 threads from the past week, 11 have already been discussed in daily posts. So, I will just go over the four remaining threads. The first of those was titled, "Travel on Social Media" and posted in the "Travel Discussion" forum. The original poster simply asks if others post their travel photos on social media and whether they enjoy seeing other's travel pictures on social media. As can be expected, posting travel pictures has its fans and detractors. One of the reasons frequently cited for not posting such photos was safety. Posters don't want the world knowing when they are out of town. Others described posting travel photos as "gauche". On the "pro" side were posters that said they received ideas and inspiration from travel photos posted by their friends and hope that their own photos gave ideas to others. An interesting development in this thread was how much of the discussion was not about posting travel photos specifically, but rather the reaction by others to such posting. For instance, there were disputes about whether posting travel photos made others jealous. Posters detailed how they might mock those who posted travel photos behind their backs, provoking responses calling them "unhinged" or "seething". Posters debated whether unfollowing or muting posters who post travel photos is rude or a reasonable reaction. Some posters attempted to draw distinctions between posting one or two photos of an occasional trip and posting full-fledged photo albums constantly. The first could be tolerated but not the second.

The second thread that I'll discuss was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Is anyone following the story of the missing mother of 3?", this was probably the fourth or fifth attempt to start a thread about the disappearance of Ana Walshe. Walshe, who lived in the Boston area but worked in Washington, DC, went missing on New Year's Day. There were a flurry of threads on the topic, but most immediately turned toward disparaging the missing woman or engaging in outlandish conspiracy theories. As a result, I locked or deleted the threads. This one was started after Walshe's husband was arrested for misleading the investigation. Those familiar with DCUM crime threads will know that the husband is always the first suspect and indeed, in this case, the husband does have a checkered past. During the course of the thread, more evidence suggesting Walshe was likely killed by her husband was discovered. Much of the discussion focused on possible motives for a potential murder and the fate of the couple's three children. One of the stranger aspects of the thread was a very anti-Serbian poster (Walshe was a native of Serbia) who simply wouldn't stop posting. I had to remove a number of posts containing negative stereotypes of Serbians, many of which seemed to justify killing the woman. There was also a surreal discusion about Canada's relationship to the United States resulting from two posters' inability to communicate clearly with one another.

Next was a thread titled, "Claire Danes expecting baby #3" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread combines two topics with which many DCUM posters are obsessed: celebrities; and pregnancy after age 40. Any thread about a well-known person being pregnant at an advanced age is guaranteed to be dumpster fire. The very first response was critical of such pregnancies and things more or less went down from there. The view of many posters can basically be summarized as "it's impossible to get pregnant naturally at that age so the pregnancy was probably achieved via donor eggs and, therefore, it is not a real pregnancy and should not be portrayed as such." Then, every aspect of that statement gets debated with posters who got pregnant naturally at an advanced age providing testimonials, others disputing negative attitudes toward reproductive assistance, and whether or not how someone got pregnant matters at all. Some posters suggest that Danes could help create awareness of the benefits of reproductive interventions while others believe that, if Danes benefitted from interventions, not disclosing it would somehow be dishonest. Most of the thread appears to be little more than those on both sides of this argument fighting with each other. There are accusations of cyberbullying, spreading misinformation, and trolling. All of this when it may well be that Danes became pregnant naturally and all of this fire and brimstone was for nothing.

The final thread that I'll discuss today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled, "Is anyone else super triggered by ppl showing off on social media?", the thread is very similar to the first one described today. The original poster is so upset by posters who do things such as tag business class lounges on social media that she has spoken to her therapist about it. She wants to know if others are similarly bothered. I haven't read many posts in this thread, but since it is 15 pages long, I assume many others are similarly upset. Some posters report that they have stopped following people who engaged in such behavior. Others say that they are not bothered by business class lounges, but are triggered by other topics. Some posters respond telling those who get upset by social media should simply logoff, go outside, and enjoy nature. Another poster wrote a well-thought-out response that explored why posters might get upset about such things. Later a poster reported that the thread had helped her work through some feelings she was having about a friend's social media posts. So, perhaps the thread did some good after all.