Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the one that I discussed yesterday about the presidential candidates and McDonald's. I finally locked that thread because it was ridiculous. After that was a thread titled, "Divorced women in their 40s seem to be doing better in the dating market", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster repeats the claim made in the thread's title that divorced women in their 40s seem to be doing better in the dating market. Better than what is not quite clear. Better than when they were younger or better than other age groups? Who knows? The original poster makes a second claim that divorced men in their 40s are having less success. So perhaps she means that women in their 40s are doing better than men in their 40s? The original poster wonders why the women are more successful then men in this age group. If you detect an underlying note of skepticism in my tone, it is not your imagination. The original poster provides no information concerning how she arrived at these conclusions. Did she conduct a nationwide poll? Survey online dating sites? Or has she relied on purely anecdotal examples? Again, who knows? Nevertheless, most of those responding seem to accept the original poster's claims as true. This thread was really hard for me to follow because many of the posters seem to be on a completely different wavelength than me, and frequently from each other. Like the original poster, those responding kept making broad pronouncements about the state of dating but then, almost universally, someone popped up to contradict the statements. For instance, in response to the claim that men in their 40s are having less success, men in that age bracket posted about having tremendous success with dating, even — as one says — when balding with a "dad bod". Several responses suggest that short-lived flings are not hard to find. Many posters made clear that there are lots of divorced women in their 40s who are not interested in long term relationships, but rather are seeking short term intimacy. In those cases, there are plenty of younger guys willing to serve, not to mention men of the same age. Therefore, the success that divorced women in their 40s may be experiencing could be simply due to their interest in brief sexual encounters, something for which there is obviously always a market. One suggestion that comes up repeatedly is that while women in their 40s interested in sexual hookups can easily find younger guys, who for that specific purpose might be better prospects, guys in their 40s can't as easily find younger women. But guys in their 40s don't seem to be suffering from relationship droughts. In some cases they are finding matches with women who are seeking longer term or more serious relationships and, in other instances, their wallets make up for their other shortcomings. After reading this thread, I am fairly confident that the only generalization that can be made about divorced folks in their 40s and dating is that you can't make any generalizations. If there is anything eye-opening about this thread — and it is only eye-opening because I really hadn't thought about it before — it is the large number of women, especially those who are divorced, in their 40s who are not interested in long term relationships. If they were seeking such relationships, I suspect that their rate of success would be considerably lower.

Yesterday's next most active thread was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Anyone have a high stats kid who ended up at their true safety school?", the original poster wants to know if anyone had a child whose stats justified applying to top 30 universities but struck out and ended up at their safety school. If so, the original poster would like to know how they are doing. November 1 is the deadline for many colleges' Early Decision applications. As such, the anxiety of parents who are deeply involved in their children's college application achievements will be rapidly increasing in coming weeks. The original poster of this thread appears to be already preparing for the worst. Several of those responding had stories of kids who faced challenges due to not being accepted by the universities that they targeted. These students found other opportunities and are generally doing well. But, in true DCUM college forum style, discussion almost immediately turned to Monday morning quarterbacking those student's application strategies. One student had applied for the nursing programs at two universities. This was obviously a bad idea because nursing is a competitive program and admissions are very selective. She should have applied to more than two universities. Nevertheless, the student ended up at a state university in another major and is thriving. Another student applied to more than two universities, but failed to include a true safety school. When she wasn't accepted by any of the schools, she scrambled to apply to a university in the United Kingdom that has rolling admissions. Another student ended up at his safety school, but that was computer science at the University of Maryland, one of the top computer science programs in the nation. So that is not most people's definition of a "safety" school. This provoked a debate about what is a "safety" school and what isn't. This is obviously dependent on the student and one person's safety can be another's reach. But DCUM's college admissions fantasy league is never content to leave things at that. Instead, they delve into acceptance stats, rankings, and other data to beat this horse until it is dead, ground up, and served as dog food. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the college forum or my blog posts about threads from that forum should be expecting the topic of "yield protection" to come up. Indeed, "yield protection" is first mentioned on the second page of the thread and then repeatedly discussed throughout the thread. There is apparently no topic in the forum for which yield protection is not relevant. I am not sure that this thread was very helpful to the original poster since other then a few examples, there was very little discussion of the thread's actual topic. For that matter, I am not sure that the thread is very helpful for anyone else either. Arguing about which schools are safeties is a bit like having a debate about Presidential candidates. Lots of people have opinions but they are unlikely to change either their own or anyone else's.

Next was a thread titled, "APE screenshots: this is how they play to win" and posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. "APE" is "Arlington Parents for Education" and is an educational advocacy group that prominently, and often controversially, lobbies the Arlington Public Schools (APS) on various issues. The group has a number of detractors and there is sort of a cottage industry of posters starting DCUM threads to complain about things posted in the APE Facebook group. In this case, while it wasn't immediately clear to me, the original poster is complaining about posts in another Facebook group, one belonging to Alexandria parents. Just to be clear, Alexandria is not part of the Arlington Public Schools system. The original poster linked to two screenshots that she had made of posts in the Alexandria forum. The posts were from someone associated with APE and in one the author discussed a proposed cell phone policy that is currently under discussion within APS. The APE representative asked members of the group to submit responses to a survey being conducted by Arlington Public Schools. The original poster considers this to be encouraging outside influence on an issue local to APS and roughly equivalent to former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump soliciting election interference from Russia. Put simply, the APE representative is accused of basically saying, "Alexandria, if you're listening, I hope you are able to game our survey." Some of those responding in the thread are happy to have outside assistance. Others are quite appalled and if, like Trump, APE could be impeached they would surely support it. Instead they settle for demanding that APS no longer have dealings with APE. A lot of the discussion in this thread deals with attitudes towards the proposed cell phone ban which could prohibit phones for the entire school day or for most of the day — that is what is being discussed. Posters whose position is closer to APE's are less concerned about the input from Alexandrians. Others, however, consider APE to be a right-wing association and call anyone supporting the group "MAGAs" and "Trump supporters". There were repeated attempts to divorce cell phone policy from the issue of APE soliciting outside support, but those were mostly unsuccessful. Because the original poster framed this topic as a matter of ethics, I am compelled to point out her dalliance with sock puppeting. I removed one of the original links because the original poster had not redacted the name of one participant in the conversation. The original poster later reposted a redacted version in the thread. But she then replied to her own post saying, "Oh wow wow WOW. I admit that I was a bit confused before at all of the comments, but that link changes everything!" Obviously, the original poster had not been confused and the link didn't change anything as far as she was concerned. As if this wasn't enough, the original poster followed up with another sock puppeted post thanking herself for posting and claiming to have been newly converted by the screenshot. As for APE, one of its board members posted saying that the original post that caused this controversy had been poorly worded and not meant to say what everyone thought that it did. Moreover, the board member strongly agreed that only Arlington residents should participate in the survey. I don't have a dog in this fight either way, but I do suggest an alternative to APE named "Sockpuppets Imitating Anybody", or SIMIAN.

Next was another thread that I've already discussed and I'll skip that one meaning that the final thread that I will discuss today was another one in the "College and University Discussion" forum. That thread was titled, "For those who ever wondered if putting a Repubican/right-wing extracurricular was a good idea...don't". At risk of disclosing too much personal information, I want to describe my own circumstances with regard to this thread yesterday. I try to maintain a daily exercise regime which means that I am normally offline for an hour or more at some point during the day. After yesterday's exercise, I immediately took a shower and then headed out to get COVID and Flu shots. During that time I checked email using my phone, but I had too many reports to really do anything about them. So I asked Maria to step in and help. When I returned, fully vaccinated, she was in a bit of a frazzle and said that she had no idea what was happening with this thread but had decided to lock it. There were probably close to 50 reports about this thread alone. I still have not read the thread and have no idea what it is about or what upset so many readers. I am actually reading it as I type this. From what I've now read, the original poster linked to and quoted from an article in the New York Post. The article is about a blog post written by a college admissions officer accusing Trump supporters of tolerating rape, homophobia, and xenophobia. The original poster concludes that if applicants mention extracurricular activities linked to right-wing causes, college admissions officers will discriminate against them. While I guess that is not out of the question, it seems like a stretch in most circumstances. Other posters point out that this is another instance of right-wing manufactured outrage. The author of the blog post appears to be a new employee, having graduated this year from the college at which she now works. It is hard to believe that she is representative of many in the college admissions world. Nevertheless, it take very little to end up in right-wing tabloids and, from there, to be circulated throughout right-wing social media and, eventually, even DCUM. I can see that much of the controversy in this thread is caused by posters who agree with the admissions counselor. As she writes, "Not all Trump supporters lied about and defamed legal immigrants but they all decided it wasn’t a deal breaker. Not all Trump supporters disrespect our military. But they decided that it wasn’t a deal breaker. Not all Trump supporters tried to lynch the vice president. But they decided it wasn’t a deal breaker." This is all obviously true. Nevertheless, Trump supporters love playing the victim. There is nothing they enjoy more than complaining about a perceived insult. They are still running around today complaining about Hillary Clinton calling them "deplorables". So this opportunity to portray themselves as victims is like Christmas coming early. To hear them tell it, just because they support a candidate who has been convicted of multiple felonies, found liable for sexual assault (described by the judge as being equivalent to rape), who routinely lies about and demonizes immigrants — including legal immigrants, who tried to get his own Vice President killed, and who wants to both give police full immunity and have them engage in a "violent day", it shouldn't cause anyone to question their character. These, according to them, are just policy disagreements no different than a debate about marginal tax rates. I still don't know what provoked so many reports or caused Maria to lock the thread, but I don't think Trump supporters have much room for complaint. They should just write their college essays about how they are victims, don't get treated fairly, and everyone misunderstands them. Those will be sure winners.