Thursday's Most Active Threads

The thread leading in number of replies yesterday, and third in number of views was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "FCPS new FLE curriculum", the thread is about a proposed curriculum for "Family Life Education", or what was once called "sex education". This has become a very contentious issue — especially in Virginia — because a significant number of parents are convinced that schools are turning their children gay or transgendered. A lot of hysteria, much of it manufactured, surrounds the topic. In fact, I removed one multi-page thread on this topic because it was so full of misinformation that it was not possible to simply clean it up. Despite starting over from scratch, this thread still managed to lead the day in replies. Almost all of the discussion is focused on semantic changes such replacing the terms "girls" and "boys" with the phrases "assigned male at birth" or "assigned female at birth" and the fact that classes that used to be separated by gender are proposed to be combined. The fact that a child assigned male at birth will have to sit in a room with another child assigned female at birth and learn about menstruation is just too much for many parents.

A thread titled, "We can’t afford it but she wants it. What do I say?" and posted in the "Money and Finances" forum was second in number of replies and first in number of views for the day. The original poster's wife is intent on sending their children to private school despite the strain this would put on their fiances. The thread might have been more appropriate for the relationship forum because I don't think there is really much financial advice that would resolve the dispute. Whatever advice that is offerred seems to focus on how to convince his wife of the financial realities. Much of the thread consists of debate over the merits of public versus private school, with a number of ill-informed opponents of public education making appearances.

At one point a couple of posters engaged in a back and forth of name-calling. When one of the posts was reported, I removed the entire series. The author of the final post of the group then started a thread in "Website Feedback" saying that I had five minutes to restore his post. I deleted that thread. Our software does not have the capability to restore deleted posts and I wouldn't do so in such circumstances anyway. The poster repeatedly tried to repost his name-calling post and made additional threats against me such as saying that I "would be sorry". I deleted all of those posts. The only thing about which I am sorry is that this individual suffers from such an obvious personality disorder which prevents him from controlling his name-calling and threatening posts.

After the first two threads, there wasn't much consistency yesterday between threads with high numbers of replies and threads with high numbers of views. The thread that was third in replies was only 7th in views. Titled, "What to do about depression or laziness in retired spouse", the thread was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster describes her husband as retiring last year at age 58. Since then, he hasn't done much other than "Surfs the Net, watches old tv shows and re-reads old books". The original poster now finds her husband boring and he reacts angrily when she tries to get him to be more active. I haven't read this thread but, based on experience, I would expect the original poster to receive a mix of sympathetic support and outraged accusations that she is the one at fault. My first reaction was that her husband has exactly the characteristics to be one of the posters spending all day posting in our political forum. She might want to check his browser history.

Speaking of the "Political Discussion" forum, a thread in that forum titled, "The 'recession' that never was" had the fourth highest number of replies yesterday. However, the thread didn't make the top 10 in number of views. The original post links to a Washington Post article reporting that the US economy grew at rate of 2.6% in the third quarter. This growth came as a surprise as many expected that our economy was headed into recession. The US economy is a bit of a mixed bag right now with low unemployment, a healthy job market, and economic growth, but with inflation driving up prices. Partisan media outlets have hyped the inflation aspect and higher prices are something that individuals encounter in their day to day lives. Therefore, despite there being plenty of jobs and a growing economy, many are feeling pretty down about their financial situations. That is reflected in this thread, exaggerated even more by partisan political leanings, as posters argue contrasting views of the economy. It is notable that this thread which is reporting something that most people would consider good news — unexpected economic growth — is received mostly with a shrug and not many views. I assume that people are less interested in government reports than they are the price of their groceries.