Sunday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Conservative confusion over schools" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster has composed a thoughtful post describing how Republican elected officials such as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have exploited fears over public schools to their electoral advantage. Much of what the original poster touches upon has been discussed in other threads that I've summarized, but the original poster provides cohesive overview of what has been happening. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't notice this thread, which was just started yesterday, until now and it has already reached 15 pages. I don't have time to read the entire thread, but from what I did read, the discussion has mostly gone as one would expect. Certainly, many of the liberals that dominate DCUM agree with the original poster. What is notable, however, is the nature of the conservative response. Conservatives, at least as I saw in this thread, don't seem capable of addressing the issues raised by the original poster directly. Instead, the conservative reaction is one that is worth being looked at more fully. Republicans have a well-established opposition to public education. More recently, Republican operatives, especially Chris Rufo, discovered that fanning parent concerns about public schools could be turned to their political advantage. Rufo explicitly turned Critical Race Theory (CRT), something that he acknowledged that he doesn't even understand, into a major controversy which, in part, propelled Youngkin into the governor's seat. The Republican strategy has been to either outright invent horror stories involving schools or massively distort the reality. They've found that if they can get their story out first, corrections or explanations of the truth generally get drowned out. This manufactured "truth" not only lives on, it becomes accepted reality within conservative circles. This "realty" is then used to justify Republican attacks on public education. The upshot is that the Republican response to what the original poster describes is to talk about "groomers", "pedophiles", and CRT, with very little of what they are discussing having a firm basis in reality. The real world impact of DeSantis' actions, in particular, is mostly ignored.

The second most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. Titled, "My sister is having her best friend be called aunt", the original poster explains, as the title says, that her older sister is pregnant and plans to have her child call her best friend "aunt". The original poster is hurt by this because in her culture they put importance on calling actual aunts "aunt", but she wonders if she is being irrational.  On the first page, every single response was in favor of the friend being called "aunt", But, rather than accept these responses, the original poster doubled-down on her insistence that that her preference was more important than her sister's desire. It immediately struck me that this reaction was very familiar. Sure enough, the original poster is the author of another thread that recently made the most active list, primarily due to her insistence — in the face of almost complete agreement that she was wrong — that she was right. Either this poster is a troll, or so stubborn that it is useless to waste time telling her something that she doesn't want to hear. In the case of this thread, the answer was obvious because I found that she was sock puppeting throughout the thread, frequently answering in support of the friend being called "Aunt". As such, I have locked both this and the previous thread.

The next most active thread was titled, "Oh, Maryland, what happened to you?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster says that she grew up in Maryland and then moved to Virginia. She recently went to Rockville and Bethesda for the first time in over a year and was upset by the visit. She found panhandlers at all major intersections, was upset by the bike lane along Old Georgetown Road (the subject of a 72 page thread on DCUM), and had several near traffic accidents due to terrible drivers or inattentive pedestrians. She wonders how people can stand living there. Obviously, Maryland vs Virginia threads are fairly common on DCUM with one such thread being a recent "most active" thread that I summarized not long ago. As such, there is probably not any new ground being covered in this thread but I don't know because I haven't read much of it. From what I did read, many Marylanders see far fewer panhandlers than the original poster claims, but there is near total agreement that Maryland drivers suck. For every Maryland-hater, there is a Virginia hater who is glad to have a river separating the two states. There are a few DC residents posting who, like me, have trouble telling one state from the other. Both Maryland and Virginia also have current residents who are capable of seeing pros and cons to each state.

Unless I missed something, more than a week has gone by without a thread from the "College and University Discussion" forum appearing on one of these blog posts. Making up for that yesterday was a thread titled, "VT this Friday?". This thread was actually started back on February 15, but gained considerable traction yesterday. The thread was started in anticipation of Virginia Tech's announcement of its Early Action (EA) admissions decisions. Based on the date of last year's announcements, the original poster was expecting decisions on Friday, the 17th and, sure enough, that's just what happened. Similar to other threads about admissions decisions, this one starts with posters expressing anticipation and wishing each other luck. Once decisions were announced, posters announced their happiness if their child was admitted or disappointment if they were not. There was one poster who happily announced that her child was accepted though they had no intention of the child attending due to the cost. This created considerable consternation from other posters who wondered why the child had applied in the first place. That dispute continues to rage. All threads dealing with Virginia Tech, and even some that don't, attract a poster fixated on VT's efforts to attract underrepresented minority applicants. In response to posts about white students not being accepted, this poster claimed that this was due to those efforts. Seeing some of the responses to this poster, I was glad to see that I am not the only one tired of hearing this broken record. It appears most of yesterday's activity was a result of posters who received unwelcomed decisions, having had time to digest the news, and coming to DCUM to complain. Frankly, these posters didn't find a lot of sympathy. A number of theories of how VT makes admissions decisions were bandied about, with anecdotes being used to support or refute each of them. Many of the posters in this thread described complex admissions strategies which either worked or didn't and considerable attention is paid to debating those strategies.