Thursday and Friday's Most Active Threads

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.

The second most active thread was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "Teachers Resigning Like Crazy?", the original poster reports that five teachers resigned mid-year from her child's elementary school and wants to know whether this is normal. Posters agree that most of the time this would not be normal but is not unusual these days. Posters on DCUM spent years demonizing teachers. Now, we have repeated threads about teachers quitting. Some posters probably should have been careful about what they wished for. Several reasons are cited for causing teachers to quit. Most common is the lack of discipline in schools. Several teachers responded in the thread and described being caught between demanding parents and unsupportive administrators. Bureaucratic demands have increased but time and resources for actual teaching have not. Plenty of posters still directed blame at teachers, but a lot of responsibility for the current situation is also placed on parents. Much of the discussion revolves around the question of why discipline has become such an issue. Some posters insist that school policies prevent adequate discipline from being applied. Others blame school shutdowns during the pandemic. Many hold parents responsible for doing a poor job. A few blame the increased screen-usage by children. One poster blamed "boomer" parents for doing a bad job of raising today's parents. In this discussion, the buck stops anywhere but with the individual posting. Ultimately this thread turned into a simplistic debate over whether teachers or parents are more responsible for the problems impacting schools. The original topic being all but ignored.

The third thread that I will cover was titled, "death at Dunn Loring metro" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread is about a tragic death that occurred when a man trying to leave a Metro train with his dog was dragged to his death when the leash was caught in the train's doors. Apparently the leash was tied or hooked to the man and the dog did not exit the train after its owner did. There are a few issues that cause DCUM posters to develop severe tunnel vision which makes it impossible for them to see the larger picture. Instead, they focus only on a narrow issue with which they are fixated. Dogs are one of the most common of these topics. As such, the fact that a man tragically died was all but ignored by many of those responding. Instead discussion focused on whether dogs should be allowed on Metro trains, whether this dog was a "service animal" or merely an "emotional support animal", and even on the dogs' breed. Of course all of these topics have some relevance to the discussion, but I am not sure they deserved to dominate it. There are pages and pages of posters arguing over Metro and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. While some posters initially thought the train's driver might have done more to avoid the accident, others strongly defended the driver who, reports say, did his job properly.

And lastly I'll look at a thread in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum titled, "Boyfriend didn't get me a v day gift". The original poster says that she and her boyfriend had a discusion in which they agreed to exchange Valentine's Day gifts. Additionally, the original poster emphasized that celebrating the day was important to her. She bought him a sweater, but he didn't get her anything. Now the original poster wants to know if this would be a stupid reason to break up. Many of those responding suggested that this would be the pattern for gift-giving going forward and that he probably wouldn't buy birthday or Christmas gifts either. Therefore, the original poster should reconcile herself to that fact or break up. Others argued that the issue was not a gift so much, but that he had ignored something that was important to her. This reflects a troubling lack of concern for her feelings. Some posters did not feel that Valentine's Day gifts are really a thing beyond maybe flowers or chocolates and that such gifts were not really important anyway. When some posters described otherwise great marriages in which they didn't get gifts, they were criticized for having low expectations. But, one of those posters described other ways her husband contributes to a successful relationship that she finds more important than gifts. Several posters could not get past the idea that the original poster had given a sweater as a gift, something they found particularly odd.