Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Sheryl Sandberg Releases Screams Before Silence, A Free Documentary About the Sexual Violence on October 7" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The war in Gaza and the resulting college campus protests have spurred an endless series of threads, many of which have been among the most active topics that I've discussed in this blog. This thread is one more of the genre. As the title makes clear, this thread is about the documentary "Screams Before Silence" which was led by Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook/Meta fame. The film is about sexual violence allegedly used by Hamas during and after its October 7 attack on Israel. My use of the word "alleged" will likely be controversial because a significant number of DCUM users do not think that there is anything "alleged" about this and that Hamas' sexual violence is beyond question. To be clear, I abhor sexual violence whoever it is committed by. Those who commit such crimes should be exposed and punished. Unfortunately, like so much else involved with the the Israel-Gaza war, sexual violence has been caught in the fog of war and the endless propaganda surrounding events. It is undeniable that in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, Israel and some of its supporters engaged in spreading manufactured accounts of atrocities. Many of these accounts made it into the Western media and become accepted as fact. Chief among these stories was the allegation of 40 beheaded Israeli babies, something that proved to be completely untrue. A number of other high-profile incidents similarly turned out not to have occurred. Just as these stories of Hamas violence were initially widely believed, allegations of sexual violence committed by Hamas has been accepted as fact among much of the public. A highly-publicized article by the New York Times initially seemed very persuasive in documenting widespread sexual violence. However, that article soon proved to be very problematic and has been shown to have relied on several discredited sources. Chief among these was ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer group that responds to emergencies to recover bodies. Israeli newspapers have documented that many of the stores of atrocities on October 7 that were later shown to be false originated with ZAKA. ZAKA's leader has attributed this to mistakes resulting from the difficult circumstances following the attack. Either because of intention or error, ZAKA's allegations must be approached skeptically. Like the New York Times, Sandberg's film relies heavily on ZAKA. As a result, critics of the documentary argue that its allegations are not to be believed. Defenders of the film point to a report by the United Nations that found "reasonable grounds to believe" that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas attack. While the report did find evidence to believe such attacks occurred, it did not find anything near the scale that is commonly claimed. Moreover, the report explicitly found that some well-publicized allegations were unfounded. All of this is to say that while there is evidence that some sexual violence did occur during Hamas' October 7 attack and has probably occurred afterward involving the Israelis being held hostage, the allegations of widespread and systemic sexual violence have not held up to scrutiny. This has provided justifiable grounds for critics to challenge portrayals such as that in this film. Unfortunately, as demonstrated in this thread, posters are less interested in separating fact from fiction than they are in utilizing the topic for their own partisan benefit. I eventually locked the thread when it devolved in simply another debate about all aspects of the conflict without specific relevance to the initial topic.

The next most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" and was titled, "BCC student with weapon today". The original poster offered very little information beyond the fact that she had received an email from the principal of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School that was apparently about a student at the school allegedly being in possession of a weapon. The original poster simply asked whether the weapon was a gun. The principal's email was quickly posted, showing that a student had allegedly been observed with a weapon in the school but had immediately fled the building. School safety officials had coordinated with Montgomery County police to investigate and provide safety measures for the school. This is a serious topic worthy of serious discussion. While I am sure that there are many posters interested in such serious discussion, very few of them immediately appeared in this thread. Rather, as is unfortunately to be expected, the most eager to respond were posters making snide remarks and those hoping to exploit the incident for their own agendas. Moreover, because elections for school board members are being held today, many posters seized on this opportunity to make pitches for their favored candidates. Watching this discusion as an outside observer, it is difficult not to be dismayed by the posts. One poster proclaims, "I will vote for anyone that prioritizes safety and learning over ‘equity’." I am not sure what "equity" had to do with this thread. But subsequent discussion seems to confirm my worst interpretation, that "safety" is threatened when "equity" results in having "the wrong kind of kids" in the school. After that, posts focused on the racial breakdown of the student body of the school. Then the thread was partially hijacked by a debate about private school with private school parents arguing that it is practically child abuse to send kids to public school. Between the electioneering, private school promotion, and harping on unrelated issues, I don't think I've ever seen a less useful thread about a serious incident. In the end, as far as I can tell, nobody really knew anything about the actual event. There was some speculation and some posts claiming knowledge but not offering any information about why they should be believed (one poster explicitly said she didn't care if anyone believed her or not). It is entirely possible that there wasn't actually a weapon at all. A constant claim in the MCPS school forum is that the school system has collapsed and is a shell of what it once was. I don't know if that is true about the school system, but it is certainly true for discussions about the school system on DCUM. Threads in this forum have become nearly indistinguishable from one another with posters posting the same things regardless of the topic.

The next most active thread was the one I discussed yesterday about sending texts early in the morning. After that was a thread titled, "School refusal after suspension" and posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. The original poster says her son had been attending a private school where he had been bullied during third and fourth grades. They switched him to a public school hoping that things would be better, but they have unfortunately gotten worse. Another student purposely tripped the original poster's son, causing one of his teeth to be knocked out. That kid and others have continued to tease and bully the original poster's son. The original poster's son reacted to the kid acting like he would trip him again by shoving the kid. That resulted in the original poster's son being suspended for two days. Since then the bullying has only gotten worse and now her son tries to avoid school. He claims to be ill, goes to the nurse's office often, and is frequently tardy or absent. His grades have dropped. Despite the original poster's efforts, the school will not take any actions to alleviate the bullying. Posters responded in a host of different ways. Some focused on the fact that the original poster's son has been the victim of bullying in two schools and tried to work out what there is about him that attracts bullies. The original poster attributes that to his combination of being smart, shy, and not athletic. It is almost at the end of the school year so some posters ask if he can hold out for this year and hope that next year will be better. The original poster says that while her son will switch to a different school next year, it is a small school district and the same kids will be there. She is worried that things will get even worse. She doesn't seem to think that returning to private school will be possible, primarily because he was suspended for a violent act. Posters recommend attempting to get special needs support, pushing harder on the school for help, or even looking into a third school option. A lot of the posts are simply inquiring for more information. Posters seem to want to help, but they just don't have enough of an understanding of things. Moreover, many things that posters suggest have already been tried by the original poster without success. Some posters argued that the original poster's son is allowing himself to be a victim and that he should do more to stand up for and defend himself. This presents a bit of a conundrum. When the boy did defend himself, by shoving the other kid, he got suspended and some posters have used that incident to describe the original poster's son as "violent". In response to this, posters suggest various types of social skills support so that he can learn to handle difficult circumstances more appropriately.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Expectant and Postpartum Moms" forum. Titled, "Girl name final contenders", the original poster listed three names, Pippa, Polly, and Poppy and seemed to elicit feedback on them. Before I even finished reading the first post I was sure that this was a troll. Sure enough, this poster's primary use of DCUM appears to be as an outlet for her rich fantasy life. The one thing that I will give her credit for is that she is disciplined about staying in character, never deviating from the persona displayed in the original post. The same is true for her other threads that I checked, though the personas are different. For some reason, threads about names such as this one are rich territory for trolls. Not only are fake threads started, as in this case, but legitimate threads are often disrupted by people attempting to make jokes or otherwise inject snark. It appears that many posters are desperately eager to gain fame as the originator of a name that can replace "Larla" on DCUM. This is at least the original poster's third thread about picking names. While in this one she says the child will be her first, in one of the previous threads the baby would have two brothers. The poster appears to be in California, so excuses about changing details to hide her identity ring pretty hollow. The original poster has posted about boyfriends, dating, her husband, and her children. Who knows what is true and what is not? This is also not the first time that this poster has authored one of the most active threads that I've discussed. I was able to identify 52 threads by this poster, covering everything from salad spinners to Chinese restaurants. I think this poster is probably lonely and doesn't have much of a social life and, hence, DCUM has come to play an important role for her. I don't want to come down too hard on her, but I also don't want her to continue littering DCUM with fake threads. I feel sorry for people like this, but not sorry enough to allow them to use DCUM as their imaginary friend.