DCUM Weblog

The Gaza war thread continued as the most active thread again yesterday with just over 500 new posts. That's fewer than we've been seeing so maybe interest is starting to slow. The next most active thread after that one was titled, "In your circle how old are the oldest parents" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster, who became a parent at 40, says that she feels like an outlier among her circle of friends, Most of them started families 7 years or so earlier than her. The first poster to respond assured the original poster that she would not be an outlier in DC-proper and that she knew several parents in the original poster's age-group. This highlights a phenomenon that I've witnessed on DCUM over the years. Within DCUM's original demographic which was heavily biased toward relatively affluent White women, becoming parents at what many might consider an older age was not uncommon. But, outside that demographic, and especially outside the DC area, new parents tended to be younger. For years it was common for young moms on DCUM to complain that they were outliers. But, as the demographics of DCUM users have changed over the years, the opposite situation, as in this thread, has become more common. It is unfortunate that these threads often turn acrimonious. In the case of this thread, responses were mostly straight-forward and simply answering the original poster's question. But, fairly quickly, one poster warned about "ageism" and "jealousy" that might be demonstrated on DCUM. This was soon followed by a poster alleging that this thread was "designed to pump up over-the-hill moms", more or less fullfiling the earlier poster's prediction. But, despite this early contention, the thread more or less went back to posters simply providing the ages of parents in their social groups or their own ages. I didn't run a tally of the ages being reported, but based on my perception, DCUM still slants in the favor of older moms. Though some posters are fairly quick to point out that DCUM is not necessarily representative even of all of DC, let alone areas beyond.

The most active thread yesterday continued to be the Gaza war thread but the next most active thread was titled, "White flight from MCPS" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. Posters in almost all of the public school forums seemed completely convinced that their school systems are collapsing. There is thread after thread complaining about one aspect or another of schools. This thread is another of that genre. The original poster, after three tries, managed to embed a graphic that was taken from a Board of Education presentation that showed trendlines of enrollment by race and ethnicity. The graphic clearly showed a decline in White, Non-Hispanic enrollment and an increase in Hispanic enrollment. Universally, this seems to be considered a bad thing, though exactly why is never quite explained. Several posters offer various explanations for the enrollment trends. One poster blames segregation of schools and suggests boundary changes might fix it. Others say that educated or affluent families are choosing private schools. Some posters don't think White families are fleeing, but rather fewer White families are having children and the ones that do are having fewer children. In their view, the number of White students is decreasing because the number of White children is decreasing, not because White families are leaving MCPS. A number of posters blame the changes on immigration. Along with this were a number of posts blaming Hispanics for a number of ills that plague the schools. Before too long, the thread completely lost its focus on enrollment trends and, instead, simply became a litany of complaints about MCPS. A huge number of posters appear concerned with vaping which has apparently taken over every bathroom in middle and high schools. The most recent posts in the thread are debating which ethnicity has committed the most gruesome crime.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I've already discussed. The Gaza war thread and the thread about frustration with President Biden. The third most active thread was titled, "Safe schools for a Jewish kid." and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster simply asked which schools in Virginia are safe for a Jewish girl. DCUM has seen a host of topics related to anti-Semitism and hostility towards Jews. Such threads have been included in my blog posts (one just yesterday). Still, it remains a difficult topic to discuss. The analytical side of me wants to evaluate threats against Jews and conduct a sort of risk analysis. But, the more emphatic side of me understands that there is an emotional component to questions such as the original poster's to which a non-Jew such as myself is unlikely to be able to relate. Therefore, I am simply not capable of judging threats in the same way a Jewish poster might. Many of those responding appear to lack such awareness. One of the first posters to respond argued that Jews are overrepresented on college campuses, as if numbers alone were enough to address threats. Another poster suggested that Jewish students face no more risk than a number of other minority students. That may well be true in normal times, but these are not normal times. As one poster points out, anti-Semitic as well as anti-Muslim (or anti-Arab) events are both increasing, but campuses remain relatively safe for both groups. A difference, however, is frequent large protests in support of Palestinians. Many of the Jewish students likely are concerned about the safety of Palestinian civilians and they may even oppose the large scale bombing of Gaza. But a noisy and angry demonstration by their classmates can be disconcerting, even if they sympathize with many of the goals of the protest. This can create a feeling of being unsafe regardless of the actual threat they may face (a threat that, frankly, is hard to judge). At any rate, I am fairly certain that few, if any, posters bothered to address the original poster's actual question about Virginia schools. Rather, the thread took off in a million different directions. There was considerable discussion about Cornell, both a professor who made a controversial statement and the wave of vile threats that culminated yesterday in the arrest of a student. Cornell, of course, is not located in Virginia. But that didn't slow down the discussion. Some parents said they would still consider Cornell to be safe for Jewish students because of the large percentage of Jews at the school and the attention to safety being paid by authorities. Despite the threats, this was preferable to being one of a handful of Jews at a school where their might not be much sympathy for their safety. Others argued that there really wasn't safety in numbers. One poster that I want to acknowledge described himself as a Pakistani Muslim. He agrees that it is currently not safe for either Muslims or Jews. But, he recognized that Muslims do not have a "millennia long history of pograms and fear" and don't have the same "historical trauma". At a time when many are eager to compete in the "oppression Olympics", it was refreshing to see the poster make this distinction. Update: After publishing this I returned to the thread and saw that a poster had followed up the post that I praised with an Islamophobic comment (which I removed). Even those who manage to look across the divide are far too often met with hostility.

As expected, the new thread about the Gaza war continued to lead as the most active thread yesterday with over 750 new posts. The next most active thread was somewhat related. Titled, "If things get worse for Jewish people" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the original poster describes himself as not Jewish, but living in an area where lots of people have safe rooms. He doesn't have a safe room, but wonders if people are constructing them due to recent events. The course of this thread may have been predicted by the first two responses. The first response simply said, "Move to Israel". Ignoring, as that poster obviously did, that the original poster is not Jewish, the state of things today is such that it is impossible to tell whether this is meant in the "go back to where you came from" sense or the "Aliyah would be wonderful" sense. Either way, it wasn't particularly helpful. The second response, posted by a poster describing herself as Jewish, was simply, "What on Earth...". Again, it is sort of hard to know the cause of this poster's astonishment. The thread is 35 pages long and I haven't read much of it, but from what I did read things didn't really improve all that much from these two posts. It is clear that many Jews do feel threatened right now. Nobody can, nor should, deny those feelings. There are many posters in the thread who describe their current fears and actions they are taking to deemphasize their Jewishness (for instance, removing mezuzahs from doors). Still, there are posters who don't hesitate to "goysplain" that things are not really that bad. "You are being overly dramatic", claims one poster. Other posters point to events that have impacted non-Jews in order to show, well, frankly I don't know what they were trying to show. There are any number of posters — both Jewish and non-Jewish — in this thread who want to speak for Jews. This doesn't go over well. If there were one piece of knowledge that I would want to leave to the world, it is that groups are collections of individuals. There are obviously characteristics that bind members of the group, but ultimately the members are all different in many ways. A considerable amount of effort is wasted in this thread on debates caused by generalities that may be broadly true, while having a lot of exceptions. Just about the only outcome of these debates is lots of hurt feelings. There is also a dispute that I've found very frustrating about which end of the political spectrum presents the greatest threat to Jews. Is is the White nationalists on the right who chant that "Jews will not replace us" or the progressive leftists waving "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea" banners? I have little faith that any posts of this sort are based on any real concern for the safety of Jews.

The thread about the Gaza war has been the most active thread every day since Hamas launched its attack on Israel. On Friday that thread reached 1,000 pages so I locked it and started a part 2. Despite being locked Friday evening, the thread was still tied as the third most active thread over the weekend. The new thread, titled "Gaza War, Part 2", and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, was easily the most active. The thread has already grown to more than 150 pages. There is no way that I can keep up with a thread that is growing at that rate and, as a result, I have read very little of the new thread. Rather than discuss the thread itself, I thought I would provide some of my observations of the two threads. The first thing to understand is that the majority of the participants are pro-Israel. "Pro-Israel" does not mean "Jews". Not all of the pro-Israel posters are Jewish and not all of the Jewish posters are necessarily pro-Israel. Moreover, "pro-Israel" describes a fairly wide spectrum and these posters are not always in agreement with their opinions. For instance, some of these posters are very quick to label almost any criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitism" while others are more measured and less likely to make such accusations. One result of this is constant complaints about criticism of Israel being called "anti-Semitic" and equally common responses by pro-Israel posters saying that they do no such thing. Based on what I've seen, both claims appear to be true. There are quite a few questionable accusations of anti-Semitism and most pro-Israel posters are not cavalierly tossing around the term. My second observation is that some of the pro-Israel posters have been posting incessantly. I noticed one poster who had posted over 200 times in a 24 hour period. That comes out to one post approximately every 7 minutes, but since the poster presumably took breaks, posts were not spread equally over the day. We have mechanisms in place to alert to potential bots that occasionally plague the site and multiple posters have triggered those alerts. They are posting faster than we expect humans to be able to do. Consequently, these posters simply don't have time to read carefully, consider their replies, or compose thoughtful responses. This results in responses that often are simply repeated talking points that generally do a poor job of addressing the post to which they are responding. Moreover, the original post is often misrepresented or distorted. My experience when posting messages that didn't align with pro-Israel views was a bit like dropping chum into a shark tank. There was an immediate onslaught of responses and by the time I had replied to one of those, several more had been added. While some of those responses were serious and clearly were posted in good faith, many were little more than knee jerk reactions that demonstrated little thought and did nothing to further a serious discussion. I was frustrated to see even some of the serious posters take my posts out of context or purposefully ignore the nuances that I had purposely included. I also acquired my own personal troll who followed me from thread to thread posting misrepresentations of my posts in completely unrelated threads. Obviously, many of these same things are happening to the pro-Israel posters, but that just reinforces my criticism of these threads. Posters are prioritizing quantity over the quality of their posts. It seems that a sensible process of "read, think, respond" has been replaced by simply "respond".

Yesterday the Gaza war thread continued as the most active. But, with a comparatively paltry 464 new posts — almost half of the previous day's — interest may be flagging. The next most active thread was, like the Gaza thread, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Huge mass shooting incident in Lewiston, ME", the thread was created just after news broke about the mass shooting that took 18 lives in Lewiston, Maine. At first, the thread concentrated on reporting details of what had happened and who might have committed the atrocity. It is a sad reality that in the aftermath of these shootings a significant number of people are poised to spring into action if they can take political advantage from the identity of the shooter. In this case, multiple posters immediately blamed Hamas or Arabs. I removed those posts and I suspect many Arabs and Muslims gave a sigh of relief when the shooter turned out to be a White American with no connection to the Middle East. Once the shooter was identified and details of his background were provided, left-leaning posters began painting him as a MAGA right-winger though the evidence of this was rather thin and based on his meager social media history. Others focused on his clear mental health issues. Gun proponents have latched onto mental health as their primary means of deflection from demands for gun control, but in this case mental health is obviously an issue. Despite the professed interests in mental health always evidenced by gun proponents in the aftermath of mass shootings, they never really seem to do much about it. To the contrary, in 2017 Congressional Republicans passed a resolution, which was subsequently signed into law by former President Donald Trump, to make it easier for those with mental illnesses to purchase guns. As such, it is difficult to assume much sincerity on the gun proponents' part. Predictably, there was considerable discussion of gun control in the thread, but with what has become an equally predictable refrain that after Sandy Hook, posters know gun control is not possible. One poster noted another phenomenon that I've also seen, including in this thread. Whenever gun control is discussed, gun enthusiasts seize the opportunity to flaunt their knowledge of guns and to speak contemptuously of anyone not capable of field striping an AR-15 while blindfolded and correctly naming every component. For instance, if a gun control proponent argues that extended clips should be prohibited, they will likely be met with a response along the lines of "it's a magazine not a clip so your opinion is invalid". One notable development arising from this shooting is that moderate Democrat Jared Golden, who represents Lewiston and who had previously opposed banning assault rifles, changed his position and now supports a ban. Of course, gun proponents will argue that there is really no difference between an AR-15 and a Red Ryder BB gun so it is impossible to draft legislation for an effective ban.

The two most active threads yesterday were both threads that I've previously covered. The Gaza war thread saw somewhat of a revival of interest and gained over 800 new posts. The Speaker of the US House of Representatives thread was second with 325 new posts. The Republicans finally managed to elect a speaker so maybe that thread will see a decline in interest. Both of those threads were in the "Political Discussion" forum, as was the next most active thread. Titled, "When the smallest doubt is treated as support of the other side", the original poster complains that political partisans require full support for their cause of the day and consider the slightest disagreement to be unacceptable. This is a 12-page thread and I don't have time to do more than skim a few pages of it. But, I see that a number of examples of events, political causes, or topics are presented in which this type of thing has occurred. A point with which I agree may have been made earlier in the thread, but I noticed it in a post on the last page. That post suggests that social media and online communication has probably contributed to this phenomenon. In a world in which support for a cause is represented by changing an avatar or through short bits of text, there is little room for nuance. To the contrary, everything becomes very black and white. The response I referenced above also touched on what I think is the other side of this coin which is a hypersensitivity to disagreement. In subsequent posts, the original poster listed a number of things she claims that "you can't say". In fact, you can say them. No law prevents you from saying them. But, if you say them you may well have someone disagree with you and state their objection. As the saying goes, if you can't take the heat, don't go into the kitchen. In addition to the folks who are ready to pounce at anything less than full compliance with their agenda, there are a whole bunch of people who are very heat adverse and don't want to go anywhere near the kitchen. Going back to social media, I think that it reinforces both of these tendencies. The medium does not encourage nuance and polite phrasing is rejected for more directness. But, the type of thing that might be acceptable when said privately between two friends is unwelcome when it is essentially a public rebuke posted on social media. Another aspect of this may be rooted in the American two-party system. Whereas many countries have multi-party systems that provide for a variety of views, our two-party system encourages picking a side. This is reinforced when the media interprets "objectivity" as presenting "both sides". There are many issues that have more than two sides, but those nuances get lost. If increased respect for the views of others could be combined with everyone having a bit thicker skin, we might all be better off.

Yesterday, once again the Gaza war thread led as the most active thread. But, with less than 500 new posts, interest in the thread may be waning. The most active thread after that one was titled, "WWYD? Being asked NOT to bring a new spouse and children" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. This thread managed to produce 14 pages of posts in less than 24 hours. I've long been astonished that these threads produce so much interest. A significant number of them turn out to be the work of trolls — another thing that baffles me — and the rest are normally suspected of being trolls even if they aren't. I am convinced that there is a significant number of posters who simply enjoy drama regardless of whether it is real or invented. I guess there are worse passtimes, and I should hardly complain since this one earns revenue for us, but I don't understand it. In this thread, the original poster says that her brother who has children with his first wife is married to a woman who has her own children. His first family does not accept the second and has told the original poster's parents that they will not attend their traditional Thanksgiving gathering if the second family will be there. The original poster asks whether they should invite her brother without his new wife and step-kids. The original poster authored a handful of replies and then disappeared after the first couple of pages. But that didn't prevent the discussion from continuing without her. One of the most common responses was that this was not her business and she should stay out of it. Another common response was that everyone should be invited and the kids could work things out for themselves. But, even more common was for posters to offer their own stories of being in such situations. Some of these posts became subject to more discussion than the original poster's situation. The thread also provided an opportunity for a number of posters to opine on their own views of marriage. On the 13th page of the thread, a poster identifying herself as the original poster provided another response that included details about which posters had previously been speculating. Another weird phenomenon of this and other DCUM forums is posters claiming to be the original poster when they are not. In this case, I can't say whether this was the actual original poster or an imposter. But, frankly, I don't think that matters to most of those participating in the thread.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I have already discussed and will, therefore, skip. The first of those was the Gaza war thread which racked up nearly 700 new posts. The second was the thread about the murders in Fairfax. That was has turned into more of a discussion of au pairs and the family's income than the crime itself. The most active thread after those two was titled, "Student with Gun found at Walter Johnson" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster simply pasted the text of a message from Walter Johnson High School's principal which informed parents, students, and staff about an incident involving a gun that had occurred at the school. Apparently, one student informed school administration that another student was believed to have a gun. Police were called and, when the second student was searched, a gun was found. No information was found suggesting that there was any threat to the school or an intention to harm anyone. Nevertheless, the situation is being taken very seriously. To explain the responses in this thread, a little background is in order. In Montgomery County, there is a group of high schools, including Walter Johnson, that have the letter "W" in their names. A second group of schools are joined in a consortium called the Downcounty Consortium, or DCC. The "W" schools are frequently considered to be better and more prestigious whereas the DCC schools are stereotyped as having more problematic students and not being as academically strong. It is fairly common for posters who are believed to be associated with a "W" school to make derogatory comments about DCC schools. Posters supportive of DCC schools, in turn, have developed chips on their shoulders. This conflict was apparent in the very first response to the original poster in which a poster claimed that she has been chastised for sending her kid to a DCC school and, in light of this incident, the "W" school parents should rethink their "false sense of security and superiority". I wish someone had immediately reported this post so that I could have removed it. But, since that didn't happen, the thread largely devolved into a rehash of the "W" school vs DCC animosity. Intermixed among the airing of DCC grievances were a few posts injecting other hot button topics such as some posters' desire to have metal detectors installed at schools and continued anger over the removal of police officers, or School Resource Officers (SROs) as they are called, from schools. Every few pages there is a post about the incident itself, the main one being that the 17-year-old student will be charged as an adult. But, for the most part this thread is a fight between "W" school and DCC school partisans with a few posts — almost seeming to be off-topic — about the gun incident.

The most active thread since my last blog post continues to be the Gaza war thread which added over 1,600 new posts. The most active thread after that was one titled, "Fairfax County Double Murder" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Several months ago a thread on the same topic was among the most active threads about which I wrote. I eventually locked that thread after it degnerated into little more than lurid gossip. At the time, a poster asked whether a new thread could be created if or when there were additional news on the topic. I agreed that would be okay. But, when this thread was created on October 1st, it was not because of news updates, but rather by a poster asking whether there was anything new. There wasn't, so this thread lingered until this past Thursday when there was a surprise development. First, to review the facts. Nearly seven months ago, police were called to the home of Christine and Brendan Banfield in Reston, VA. Christine had been stabbed and Brendan told police that he had shot an unknown man who was later identified as Joseph Ryan. Also in the home were the family's nanny, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, and the Banfield's young daughter. Ryan was dead when police arrived and Christine later died at the hospital. Exactly what occurred has been a mystery with heated disputes about why Ryan was in the home. On Thursday, police revealed that Christine and Ryan knew each other prior to the event and they announced that they had arrested Peres Magalhaes and charged her with second degree murder in the death of Ryan. Nobody has been charged in Christine's death. The bombshell about Peres Magalhaes unleashed a flury of posts in the thread. Posters speculated about why Brendan had told the police that he had shot Ryan when it now appears that it was Peres Magalhaes. There is considerable speculation about the relationship between Brendan and Peres Magalhaes. According to news reports, Peres Magalhaes has been seen caring for the Banfield's child but it is "unclear whether she was still working in her capacity as an au pair". One poster produced a photo that he claimed came from Peres Magalhaes' Instagram account that showed Peres Magalhaes and Brendan looking quite cozy together in a restaurant. The caption on the photo suggested that the two were in a relationship. There is still no official word on why Ryan was in the home, leading to considerable comment and several theories. The murder mystery aspects of this combined with it being a local story — friends and neighbors of the Banfield's and Ryan have posted — has led to the thread having considerable interest.