Thursday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday, unfortunately, appears to be the creation of a troll. Titled, "Was I wrong in telling my girlfriend she has no say when my kids come over?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, the original poster describes a conflict he is having with his girlfriend about his adult children's habit of coming and going from his house at will. Reading the post triggered my troll-dar and I immediately checked to see what other threads this poster had started. This thread is at least the second by this poster to be included among the most active. In this thread, the poster, who appears to be male, is divorced but has had a girlfriend for about three years. Based on other threads, since the beginning of this year the poster has also been married for six months, has been unmarried with a boyfriend, and had a girlfriend for about six months. While this poster may not be consistent in his relationship situation, he does appear to have established a pattern when posting. His posts are lengthy, generally laden with an abundance of background information, and focused on a problem which is actually fairly minor but has caused him to consider somewhat drastic action (in this case breaking up with his girlfriend of three years because she wants his kids to stop unannounced visits). In a previous thread, he broke up with his girlfriend of six months because she asked him to help with home repairs. Personally, I find these posts to be too long, too boring, and not the sort of thing that I would want to read. But, the formula does seem to work with many of our readers given the length of the threads. This is not a case of the poster sock puppetting or otherwise trying to keep the thread alive through artificial means. The poster only responded once in this thread and only once as well in the home repair thread. He just seems to have a knack for getting posters to engage.

If you need further evidence that far too many people have far too much time on their hands, the next thread will do it. Posted in the "Off-Topic" forum, the thread, titled, "Doordasher yells at customer that left 25% tip" is about a DoorDash delivery person who rudely commented to a customer that her house was pretty nice for her to only leave a $5 tip. The driver followed that by cursing at her. This was all captured on camera which the customer turned into a TikTok video. The TikTok video was then reported on by a website to which the original poster of this thread linked. This episode tells a lot about the current state of our society and very little of it is good. First, let's start with the delivery guy. So many people these days are relying on gig jobs to make ends meet. While convenient for getting extra work, such jobs generally don't pay as much as applicants might hope. In this case, the driver probably had to drive a fairly long way to deliver a single pizza. His disappointment over his renumeration is understandable, though his rudeness is still inexcusable. Next, while a complaint to DoorDash would be understandable, in today's social media-dominated world, this incident was of course turned into TikTok content. But, that was not the end of it because the TikTok video became fodder for a news article. An actual journalist sat down and wrote about this incident. And, even that was not the end of it because that article became the basis of a thread which was the second most active on DCUM yesterday. So, think about this, the driver's resentment over his tip has not only produced a viral video, but at least two websites were able to generate advertising dollars that likely exceed his $5 tip. If that doesn't add insult to injury, I don't know what does. And, on top of that, he lost his DoorDash job. I haven't read any posts beyond the first one in this thread because similar topics have been repeatedly covered and I suspect that I know how this thread goes. Many DCUMers hate tips. They will give the bare minimum or none at all. Their view is that if the person receiving the tip doesn't like it, they should get a better job. They don't seem to consider the fact that if everyone did get a better job, there would be nobody left to deliver their pizza. My view, which I've tried to imbue on my kids, is that if you can afford to pay for deliveries, you should also be able to afford to compensate the delivery person fairly. My preferred way of doing that is to simply place orders large enough that a standard tip is a reasonable amount of money. So, in this instance I would have ordered at least two pizzas and saved the extra for later. Alternatively, just tip more. Or, don't. Who knows, maybe angry delivery drivers will continue to translate into advertising revenue and I'll be able to afford to keep tipping generously.

I'm running a little behind today and I see the reports of inappropriate posts are building up. So, this will be the final thread that I discusse today. Titled, "professors are leaving florida - and turning down job offers in florida - because of desantis" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was apparently written by someone whose "shift" key didn't work. Continuing to not include a single capital letter, the original poster linked to an article in the Tampa Bay Times saying that departures by professors from universities in Florida are up while acceptance of job offers are down. This is resulting in concerns about staff shortages at colleges. This trend is blamed on recent laws signed by Governor Ron DeSantis. Like the topic of tipping discussed above, the politics of Florida have been repeatedly discussed on DCUM. Liberal posters see DeSantis as destroying the state while Conservatives strongly support his actions. Posters can't agree on much of anything and even basic facts are disputed. The bottom line seems to be that DeSantis-defenders are not worried about the universities which they consider to be breeding grounds of "wokeness" which DeSantis has identified as his primary enemy and promises to destroy. They believe that low tax rates and fewer regulations will attract more residents than quality higher education. Liberals believe that professors leaving the state is an understandable and expected outcome of DeSantis' policies. It looks like the thread diverged from its original topic and became a discussion of conservative versus liberal universities.