DCUM Weblog

The thread with the most replies and the most views yesterday was in the "Travel Discussion" forum. Titled "Separating kids and parents on flight", the thread describes the original poster's concerns about flying with three young children and possibly not being able to get seats next to each other. This was sometimes an issue for us when our boys were younger but, as it turned out, it was never a big deal. The kids had no problem sitting in another part of the plane between two strangers and, in some cases, I think they enjoyed it. While I understand that this calculus might be different for other parents, especially those with girls, I would advise the original poster to not be overly concerned. The first posters to reply, however, took a different approach by castigating the original poster for not booking tickets earlier or not wanting to pay enough to get adjoining seats. I haven't read many posts in this thread, but the ones I did read made me never want to travel with DCUM posters. Very little sympathy was spared for the original poster and some posters suggested that the original poster should not bother to fly at all if adjoining seating could not be arranged — they would neither exchange seats to allow a parent to sit next to her child nor want to sit next to an unaccompanied child. My fervent hope is that all of the nasty responders spend their next several flights seated next to crying babies. Extra points if the baby also throws up on them.

Yesterday's thread with the most replies and the most views was one of which I was not aware until just now. Frankly, I sort of wish I still didn't know about it. It's not offensive or anything, but just not the sort of thing we ever envisioned being popular on DCUM. The thread, which is in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, is titled, "Movie lines you repeat among your family". Basically, the original poster lists lines from movies that are used within her household and asks others to do the same. Part of my problem with this thread is that I simply can't imagine families going about their days quoting movie lines in any significant numbers. Once in a while? Sure, but enough to be worthy of posting on DCUM? Not really. Maybe I'm just grumpy today, but given that yesterday the future of US politics was still being decided, inflation was showing signs of improving, the stock market was having one of its largest rallies in memory, and in the midst of that, billions of dollars of the crypto market were being wiped out and a hurricane was coming ashore in Florida, movie quotes are not what I would expect everyone to be discussing. Yet, here we are. Looking at a few pages of the thread reinforces my opinion that families are not really quoting these lines very often. Rather, I think the thread simply turned into posters posting their favorite lines from movies. You can't handled the truth. But there you have it.

Yesterday's most active thread in both numbers of views and numbers of replies was an election-related topic in the "Political Discussion" forum titled, "Democrats Rejoice!" The original poster credited the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade with stopping the predicted red wave of Republican wins. Furthermore, the original poster says that the Democratic performance boosts President Joe Biden's fortunes and calls on Democrats to rally behind his reelection efforts. Democrats are perennial pessimists who should probably replace their donkey mascot with a half-empty glass. There is no group more obsessed with the black lining of a silver cloud than today's Democrats, many of whom were determined to interpret the unexpectedly strong election performance of Democratic candidates as bad news. This trend is apparent in this thread which was filled with replies critical of Democrats. In addition, there is considerable attention given to the age of Biden and other Democratic leaders with many posters wanting younger candidates. There is a saying that, "You can't argue with success" but whoever came up with that expression was clearly unfamiliar with members of the Democratic Party, let alone the posters in this thread. By the end of the thread, it had degenerated to a debate over the qualifications of Hillary Clinton and an indictment of white men. The original poster should have known that asking Democrats to rejoice was a fool's errand. It's not in their DNA.

Yesterday's big event was the US midterm elections and that was reflected on DCUM by election-related threads taking the top two slots in the list of most active threads. In the top position in both numbers of replies and number of views was a thread titled, "2022 election results thread" in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread wasn't created until after 6 pm and still managed to seize the lead in engagement for the day. The original poster of the thread desperately wanted the thread to be limited to posts about election results without additional commentary or debate. Diligent reporting of non-results specific posts kept the thread on track for a few hours, but eventually the flood gates opened and the thread was flooded by DCUM's crack political analysts. By "crack", I mean both those who are very good and those who are apparently smoking crack. Among the latter was the poster who repeatedly posted about results of Virginia races before the polls were even closed or before votes had been counted. Looking through the thread today, it is interesting to see the early pessimism of liberals turn to cautious optimism and then to outright euphoria.

Probably a week into DCUM's existence there were already posters lamenting that "DCUM has changed" and wasn't as good as it used to be. Such sentiments have been posted regularly ever since. I normally don't find them very convincing but, as a result of the Covid pandemic, I really do think DCUM changed and not for the better. The pandemic created divisions that hadn't heretofore existed such as over school closings, the vaccine, or even the origin of the virus itself. Disputes over these topics have brought out the worst in posters, creating lasting resentments and a noticeably more negative atmosphere in the forums. But, the stupidest, absolute stupidest, of these disputes has been over masking. I can understand being upset that someone is not masking in a situation where you believe masking is deserved. But, I simply can't begin to fathom why people are upset when others choose to mask. I'm dumbfounded by the posters who are irrationally angered by the mere thought of a mask outside of an operating room. Threads about masks tend to be nasty, combative, and — above all — repetitive, simply saying the same things as every other thread on the topic. So, when I learned this morning that yesterday's most active thread in both numbers of replies and numbers of views was titled, "COVID and indefinite masking", I didn't know whether to be happy that the thread had somehow escaped my notice until now or upset that DCUM is still plagued by such threads. At any rate, the thread, which is posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum has already reached 14 pages. I'm not going to read them but maybe you have an enduring curiosity about why others wear a mask. If so, you are in luck.

Today I'll look at the most active threads over the weekend. The leader in number of replies and second in number of views was a thread titled, "Unique situation if we separate" that was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. It seems like almost every day the relationship forum has one of the most active threads and it also seems like that thread has some connection to divorce. This thread is no different. The original poster explains that her family moved to the District of Columbia for her job. She makes significantly more than her husband who is underemployed, very unhappy living here, and eager to move back to the Midwest. She wants to know what will happen if they divorce, particularly with their three kids. Would her husband be forced to stay here or would one parent have to give up custody? The thread is 24 pages long and I have only read a few posts. But, from what I've seen this thread is more or less just like every other thread on similar topics. Some posters instinctively support the woman, others react by supporting the man, and some simply try to dig for salacious details. Intermixed among all of that are some posts attempting to actually be helpful. The only thing out of the ordinary that I noticed in this thread was a troll jumping into impersonate the original poster and stir the pot a bit more. I removed the troll post and follow-ups to it.

On Sundays I look back at the most active threads of the previous week, skipping any that were mentioned in the daily updates. A thread that was second in number of views and fourth in number of replies for the week was titled, "Elon Musk lights fires under the butts of Twitter's primarily WFH team" and posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. I've noticed over the years that DCUM attracts posters who have an almost singular obsession with a very specific issue. They view nearly everything through the prism of that particular fixation. The original focus of this thread is a good example of this phenomenon. Of the hundred different aspects of the Elon Musk/Twitter story, this poster chose to focus on Musk ending working from home for Twitter employees. There is a small contingent of posters, of which the original poster of this thread appears to be one, who hate working from home and can't wait for every single employee to be forced back to an office. Strangely, other than the subject line, the original post didn't say anything about working from home.

The leading thread in number of replies yesterday was in the "Political Discussion" forum. However, the thread, titled, "Bullet strikes family home of N.C. congressional candidate" was only seventh in number of views, suggesting that the interest in this thread was fairly narrow and likely consisting of only a few hardcore posters. The thread is about the discovery that a home owned by the parents of a Republican candidate for Congress was hit by a gunshot in mid-October. The candidate's Democratic opponent had been running an ad showing the Republican's own home which is located outside the Congressional district. Even though the house that was hit by a bullet was not the house shown in the ad, the Democrat decided to withdraw the commercial. It is not known who fired the shot or whether it was accidental or on purpose. I haven't read this entire thread but it appears the replies are being driven by Republican attempts to compare this incident to the recent home invasion and beating of Paul Pelosi and Democratic efforts to disabuse them of that comparison. Nobody can perform a hissy fit quite like a DCUM Republican who have repeatedly shown themselves to be the hissy fit champions of the world. So if you happen to be a connoisseur of hissy fits, this thread is likely for you.

Once again one thread was head and shoulders above all others in numbers of views and replies. Just like yesterday, this thread was in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "How many women here divorced primarily due to imbalanced, unsustainable home workload?", the thread touches on a theme that has repeatedly come up lately. As the title suggests, the original poster is stressed due to the amount of work that she has to do within her home while her husband does "literally nothing". Among the first responses were several from posters in similar situations who have divorced, are going to divorce, or know women who divorced for similar reasons. Other responses were predictable and expected in a thread on this topic. They include suggestions to outsource the work, encouragement to maintain or establish financial independence, tales of quitting jobs to stay at home, and scolding reprimands describing the success of other women to cope with such situations. As near as I can tell without fully reading the thread, the MRA incel battalion did not show up in force so this thread did not get as crazy as it could have. However, there were proponents of the theory that women are to blame because they are never satisfied with men's house work which is never enough or never good enough. This was countered with the claim that men use incompetence to convince their wives that if they want things done right, the wives must do it themselves. I doubt that this type of household conflict will be resolved in this thread and we will most definitely have many similar ones in the future with which to continue the discussion.

A thread in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum absolutely ran away with lead in both replies and views, more than doubling the number of the second in line. Titled, "What's Behind the Rise of Lonely, Single Men", the original poster linked to a blog post on the "Psychology Today" website describing challenges that younger and middle aged men are having with dating. The original poster expresses concern about this trend and wonders if anything can be done about it. When I first learned of this thread, it had already reached 21 pages. After reading a few pages, I decided to lock it because it had gone completely off the rails. I really can't provide a better description of the thread than that written by a poster on the tenth page which said, "Like all DCUM posts, what started as thoughtful posts on pages 1-3 turned into man-haters and misogynists yelling at each other for the rest of the thread....". My only quibble would be that this does not describe "all DCUM posts", but it does describe quite a few in the relationship forum and certainly this one.