Last Week's Most Active Threads

Today I'll look at the most active threads during the past week. I'll skip any threads that were already mentioned in the daily updates. This week, a lot of the threads with the most engagement have already been mentioned so I am kind of getting into second tier today. With that said, one of the threads leading in number of replies was titled, "law school?" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. This thread was not in the top ten for number of views and I also didn't notice it until now. The thread may be low key and under the radar, but it appears to be full of helpful advice. The original poster asks for thoughts about attending law school, such as whether to go directly after college, what speciality to pursue, or other considerations. DCUM, being full of attorneys, is a good place to ask for such advice and, indeed, the thread has reached 15 pages with, as far as I can tell, little to no trolling or off-topic arguing.

I'm not sure if the "Beauty and Fashion" forum has come up yet in these posts, but a thread titled, "Effortlessly cool 'I just threw this on but look like a million bucks' outfit to go out for drinks" was second overall for views during the week. I've really only read the original post of this thread, at which point I spontaneously started silently singing the lyrics to "High School Never Ends" by "Bowling for Soup". But I'm probably alone with that reaction given the high number of views and the 12 pages of replies. Alternatively, the beauty forum is full of Bowling for Soup fans. Regardless, if this topic interests you, the thread is probably worth your time. Looking at a few of the replies here and there, it looks like there are many good suggestions.

A thread that had a high number of replies but was not in the top 10 for views was titled, "1/6 was worse than 9/11" in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster paraphrases former FBI agent Peter Strzok saying that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was worse than the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Strzok is a smart guy who comes off as pretty thoughtful so when I read this I immediately assumed that the original poster had left out a lot of important context. However, it took until the second page for another poster to clarify that Strzok was specifically talking in terms of a threat to our democracy. As he explained it, as bad as 9/11 was, it didn't threaten our democracy. January 6 was a direct attack on our democratic system and the fallout from that attack remains a threat. One of the frustrating aspects of the political forum these days is the large number of bad faith posters. Like this poster, they intentionally misrepresent things to create unnecessary controversy. My rule of thumb when reading the forum is to always check the sources because very often they don't support what the poster is claiming.

The last thread I'll look at today was titled, "Very disturbing incident on metro bus" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The thread is about a video that went viral last week showing a woman being forced off a bus by a group of teenagers (and apparently a couple of older people that I didn't notice in the video). The woman had gotten out of her seat to offer it to another woman and her child. She then asked a group of rowdy teans to stop swearing. At that point she was surrounded and eventually pushed off the bus. Luckily the woman was not hurt beyond a few scratches and a torn jacket. Most responders support and sympathize with the woman while a minority think she should have minded her own business.

Many local websites either don't allow comments on stories about crime or tightly restrict such comments. The reason for that is obvious — anything involving local crime causes racists to come out of the woodwork. I allow these threads, but often lock or remove them and try to moderate them closely. As such, I've had to remove many posts from this thread. In addition, local DC crime threads attract a lot of DC haters. I always wonder why these folks who have such disdain for our city frequent a website called "DC Urban Moms and Dads". Even if they found certain forums relevant to them, why post in the local politics forum? I don't like spinach, but I can't see myself going to a cooking forum and posting in a thread about spinach in order to bash it. It's easy enough to skip the forum — or the entire website — if you if you have such dislike for the District.