Friday's Most Active Posts
Another entry in the ongoing series about popular posts in the DCUM Forums. This time its a sister-in-law, the happiest states, and the stock market.
In many ways I am unsuited to be the primary administrator of this forum. As is frequently pointed out, while the site is dominated by moms, I am a dad. Beyond that, I often find myself completely out of touch with the topics that are most popular on the website. Let's not get started on the British Royal Family threads that I detest or the Kane Show threads which generated more engagement than any other single topic (I had never even heard of Kane before the threads here and didn't listen to single one of his shows). Just consider yesterday's most active threads.
A thread in the "Family Relationships" forum titled, "My sister-in-law wants to borrow $9600 for emergency" completely clobbered all other threads in terms of views. The thread also led in number of responses. I believe that I removed a couple of posts from this thread that were reported, but I'm not completely sure. I do know that I haven't read the thread and have no interest in reading it. I am dumbfounded that such a topic could be so popular. There have been a rash of these "sister-in-law" related threads and most of them get reported as potential troll threads. It's possible that they are but it seems like such a strange thing to troll about.
The thread with the second most responses was titled "Happiest state in the US.." and is posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Again, this is a topic which I have no interest in discussing. Yet, it managed to generated 11 pages of responses in less than 24 hours. I haven't read the thread beyond the first post which explains that Maryland is the second happiest state while Virginia is the eleventh. Unhappily, the District of Columbia was not included. DC-MD-VA debates are generally contentious and bitterly fought so I assume that explains the number of responses. Personally, I would be happier discussing something else.
The number of responses and views often correlate to one another. But one thread that demonstrated that this is not always the case was titled "pulled all my money out of the stock market before the crash, remember 2008 it crashed 50%" in the "Money and Finances" forum. While it had less than half the number of responses as the "Happiest State" thread, it had about 50% more views. Given the state of the stock market yesterday, the interest in this thread is understandable. But, again, it's not a thread that I have read or am interested in reading.
Maybe my interests are too narrow and perhaps I should broaden my horizons. With a little effort, I might become a royal family loving, sister-in-law hating, proponent of happy states just like our user base. Or, maybe not.