Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the same one that was the most active the day before. That was the thread about the husband who revealed his college roommate's affair in retaliation for the roommate suggesting that the original poster's daughter was fat. I'll skip that thread and go to the next one which was titled, "Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster cites two anecdotes involving two different popular universties that suggest those schools are experiencing overcrowding and wants to know which other universities have such issues and how that can be found out. The DCUM college forum has increasingly become one of our more popular forums. Moreover, the caliber of the threads is often quite high with quite a bit of useful information being shared. This thread, unfortunately, is not one of those. Rather, this thread gets bogged down in some of the worst divisions that plague the forum. Many of the forum's participants are obsessed with college rankings and, therefore, it was no surprise that a debate broke out about whether the two universities named by the original poster were really "top tier" schools. The same happened with other colleges named by posters. There was also a debate about whether this was solely an issue with public universities and could be avoided by choosing private colleges. Posters quickly broke into two camps, each defending its favorite type of school and attacking the other. Schools in the University of California system received particularly harsh criticism with a number of extreme allegations about them being made. Those schools also had their defenders, who denied a number of the claims. I had to laugh at one exchange that began after a poster insisted that overcrowding issues were limited to public universities. Another poster provided an anecdote involving Boston University in which the dorms were so crowded that students were housed in hotels. Rather than acknowledge that overcrowding apparently did impact private schools, a poster argued that "being in a hotel in Boston is almost like (or even better than) being in a dorm". But the biggest issue with this thread was the sparsity of substantive data to back up the claims being made. Posters routinely made claims about schools that appeared more likely to be urban legends than reality. When asked to support their allegations, they often turned to sources such as Reddit, provoking incredulity. The discussion in this thread is scattered and goes all over the place with a number of separate topics being discussed. It might have some usefulness for anyone considering University of California schools, but otherwise it is hard to separate fact from fiction.

The next most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum, though it was more appropriate for the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum and I may end up moving it there because the topic has more to do with the original poster's husband than their teen children. Titled, "AITA? Teens and extended summer trips", the original poster says that because she is able to work remotely from anywhere, she is taking her two teens to her "amazing, cool" hometown for two months. Her husband doesn't want to go and, because of pets he recently acquired over the original poster's objections, leaving home is difficult for him in any case. However, he is angry that his family will be away for that length of time and the original poster wants to know which of them is wrong. I got my second laugh of the day when reading through the thread and noticed the original poster trying to tamp down discussion because "Certainly don’t need Jeff to highlight it in his case summaries." Clearly things didn't go according to plan. It's possible that her reluctance to have me write about the thread is because she didn't want the thread subjected to scrutiny. She did tend to act pretty combative throughout the thread and, after saying she had lost interest in the discussion, returned only to bash those responding as uncultured and uncivilized and to suggest that one specific poster was misogynistic. Posters had lots of questions to help clarify the situation but the original poster never got around to addressing them in much detail. For instance, it is not clear whether the original poster's husband had originally agreed to the two month absence or if this had been a decision made primarily by the original poster on her own. The original poster later offered a vague clarification that her husband had agreed to her and the children spending time in her hometown as a condition to moving to their current home. In addition, a number of posters wanted to know how the teen children felt about being away from their father and friends for so long. Again, the only response from the original poster was that they were having fun. As for who was wrong in this dispute, based on the limited information available, posters leaned both ways. But, frankly, the original poster didn't seem particularly interested in what others thought. Rather she seemed to simply want to argue with those who responded. The key factor in most poster's evaluation was the extent to which the original poster's husband had agreed to the two months away. If he had initially been onboard and later had a change of heart, those responding tended not to have a lot of sympathy for him. But if this had been more of a decision made by the original poster alone, responders sided strongly with her husband. The biggest mystery of this thread was the original poster's hometown and what made it cool and amazing. In that regard, the original poster left everyone hanging.

Next was a thread titled, "School wrongly accused my child" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. The original poster says that her son's middle school accused him of wrong-doing — which later turned out to be using his school-provided computer to access adult content — but that her son was innocent and this was a mix-up due to him having the same first name as another student. Moreover, the original poster, who seems to have been having multiple, long-running disputes with the school because of what she believes is insufficient support for her son's ADHD, believes this incident was retaliation for threats she made to complain to Fairfax County officials about the school. The original poster is obviously quite stressed, something she repeatedly mentions herself. Her posts are often difficult to follow and she posted very frequently, often multiple consecutive posts. Moreover, since her initial post alleged both a sort of conspiracy theory and a hard-to-believe mixup of identities, a number of posters were very skeptical of the original poster's story. Even those responders who were inclined to believe the original poster were not necessarily sympathetic, in some cases suggesting that if her posts in the thread were an example of how she communicates with the school they can understand why she is having problems. Some posters not only took the original poster at face value, but were able to work through the difficult posts and get to the heart of the original poster's difficulties. A number of posters attempted to offer suggestions for helping in the situation. A small number of posters also understood what appeared to be happening, but they blamed the original poster for not addressing her son's issues deriving from ADHD herself. One poster actually accused the original poster of being "the worst kind of parent". The original poster seemed appreciative of the advice that was offered and mostly ignored the harsh posts, or at least didn't let them get to her. The original poster would really like to go above the school in some manner, either to higher up officials or to the media, to draw attention to what she believes to be the inadequate support being provided to her son. Posters tended to disuade her from that idea and suggested what they believed to be more productive courses of action. Ultimately, the original poster reluctantly decided to move her son to private school because she had no hope in obtaining better support from his current school.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Food, Cooking, and Restaurants" forum. Titled, "Potato salad, coleslaw, macaroni salad", the original poster says that these were very pleasant dishes at picnics in the 1980s but that she rarely comes across them now. She asks posters if they had to pick one of these at a picnic today, which would they choose. She caveats the choice by stressing that these are not their grandmother's recipe or from a homestyle restaurant, but rather "standard supermarket deli counter style". If forced to pick, the original poster would choose potato salad but would rather avoid all of them. Personally, like the original poster, I would do my best to avoid all three. That also seemed to be the most popular response from other posters. Many posters expressed a dislike for mayonnaise altogether and/or had concerns about its ability to last without making those who ate it ill. Among those who would make a choice, coleslaw — especially added to a sandwich — was probably the most popular followed by potato salad. There were not many takers for the macaroni salad. The hatred of mayonnaise inspired a counter reaction from mayo defenders. They accused mayonnaise detractors of having eating disorders. In turn, the anti-mayo posters claimed that mayonnaise eaters are all obese. What commenced were several pages of posters slinging virtual mud — or perhaps mayo — at each other. Between the accusations of being either anorexic or obese, some posters proclaimed that neither one of those suggestions played any role in their preference. They simply didn't like mayo because it is nasty tasting. But even this provoked objections from those who couldn't understand what there was not to like about mayonnaise. "It's eggs and oil? So weird", wrote one poster. The response was, "Its white jello and smells like vinegar. No. Just no." I was a little confused by the accusation that those who don't like mayo have eating disorders. If eating a mayo-based side at a picnic immediately gave you food poisoning, causing you to throw up, would't that be considered a positive aspect by the eating disordered crowd? I know, I shouldn't make light of such things, but consider the thread I'm discussing. I think sensitivity went out the window some time ago. While the orignal poster had asked those responding not to call the three side dishes "trashy", the discussion soon went that way anyway. But posters were not actually calling the dishes "trashy". Rather posters for some reason decided to respond to that accusation even though it hadn't been made.