Spamming the "topic of the day" on US PDFs

For quite some time now, certain threads from the "topic of the day" section—where we’re supposed to dive into a fresh subject every single day—have been getting pulled out and turned into their own standalone threads on the forum.

The fundamental issue here is that these topics are being spun off far too frequently—it’s suffocating all the other "organic" threads, if you will.
Every single one of these splintered "topic of the day" threads usually lasts maybe a couple of days before it completely falls into obscurity; they consistently yield very few posts and fail to generate any meaningful, long-term engagement.
In practice, this is just spamming the forum—it crowds out everything else, and frankly, some of our main threads have probably died off specifically because they were buried under this clutter.
At this rate, the forum won't have a single organically active thread left—it'll just be an endless stream of "topic of the day" spam.
Here are the post counts for the previous standalone threads branched off from the "topic of the day," specifically looking at those older than seven days since their creation: 28, 63, 63, 111, 53, 109, 69, 50, 41, 29, 109, 80, 73, 236, 61, 41, 205, 67.

As the numbers show, there's a mountain of threads, but they're all just a handful of pages deep at most. Usually, people drop a post or two over a day or two, and then it's over. Meanwhile, more and more of these are constantly popping up and choking out legitimate discussions.

And don't even get me started on the fact that a good portion of these "topics of the day" have absolutely nothing to do with the Lonely Hearts forum itself—they're basically just random chat fodder.

My suggestions are as follows:
1. Create exactly one (1) additional master thread dedicated to expanded discussions stemming from the "topic of the day." If the whole point of the "topic of the day" is to introduce a new subject every single day, then let's have one central place where those deeper conversations can actually live.
2. Rebrand the "topic of the day" into something like a "topic of the week" to allow room for actual discussion, or at the very least, loosen the rules so a single topic can span a few days if the community actually finds it interesting.

Anyway, I hope the moderators take these suggestions into account—or perhaps come up with a third option—just to dial back this constant spamming.

I think this is a great idea 🤷
It gives people a chance to actually connect 🤔

We could potentially keep certain typical US themes—like political scandals, for instance—at the top.
But from what I can tell, that’s already how things are being handled 🤷

Oh right. I guess the real issue is that out of all those 123456 posts you've made about how life is rigged because you're short, or how girls on Tinder are unfair because they don't pick guys like you, or how everyone just totally gets you wrong... none of them are actually getting any traction anymore. Let's have a minute of silence for that.

Anthony Nguyen81 said:I dig this. 🤷
People actually enjoy having a decent conversation for once. 🤔

Perhaps we could actually focus on some quintessential US themes—you know, things like the classic political scandals—to keep this place from becoming completely stagnant.
Honestly, from what I can gather, that’s just how the whole thing works. 🤷

Don't get me wrong—I’m not saying I have anything against it, just so there isn't any misunderstanding. 🙂
Let people talk—I really don't care. My only actual grievance here is that a brand-new thread gets spawned every single time someone wants to vent. It’s inefficient. Once a conversation actually gains some momentum, the sensible thing to do is just move it over to the chat.
I’ve put forward two suggestions that I genuinely believe make sense—the conversation is flowing just fine as it is—but we really need to stop cluttering up the PDF with a constant barrage of brand-new topics that have the shelf life of a gallon of milk.

dustypilot11 said:Oh, right. I suppose the real issue here is that out of all those endless, repetitive threads you’ve posted—those 123,456 entries about how life is fundamentally rigged against you because you're short, or how women on dating apps are "unfair" because they don't pick you, or how everyone is constantly misinterpreting your intentions—it's simply that none of them are getting the attention they deserve anymore. A moment of silence for that tragedy, please.

What am I even supposed to say to this—aside from just reporting them for trolling?
I’m not short—I’m above average height. Is that supposed to be an insult or something?🤔
I’ve clocked in about 130 posts across this entire forum in the six months since I first signed up.🐔

Following up on this request, I went to check how many threads were actually branched off from the US theme last night.
Well, I checked. 😁

There are 56 threads on the first page.
Out of those, I counted 16 that came from the US theme.
That’s roughly 30%.

If we skip last month and just look at the last two weeks, there were 43 active threads.
Of those, 12 were branched from the US theme.
Still about 30%.

The statistics don't really support this criticism. 🤷

Unfortunately, we can't control whether threads stay active or not.
Threads stay alive when people write in them; they fade away when they don't.
If you find a particular topic more interesting than others, why not just leave a relatively constructive post to keep it going? 🙂

As for the subject matter... I looked into that too. 🙈
I basically found that the topics pulled from the US theme are pretty standard US themes—things like interpersonal relationships and such.

Okay, let's not count the pizza thread... that one was moved to Gastronomy on purpose. 😁

Not to mention that everyone here is free to start any thread they want to discuss. 🙂
I'm not sure why almost nobody does that. 🤷

I'm not really feeling the suggestions, if that makes sense. 😁
First, because a single massive thread would just become a chaotic mess of everything under the sun, and I prefer keeping topics somewhat separated.
And second... we'd lose the whole point of the US theme, which is that the topic changes every 24 hours.

So, yeah. 🙂

I get where hiddenmoose2 is coming from, but I don't think they have a leg to stand on.

First off firstly, those massive catch-all threads on any forum are just a mess. They’re impossible to navigate unless you're part of the inner circle who's been here forever.
Secondly, when a specific conversation from the topic of the day gets its own thread, it actually helps people out. It gives folks a chance to chime in if they missed the original thread—which happens all the time since once a new topic drops at 7 AM, the old one basically becomes dead weight anyway.
And thirdly, we shouldn't be complaining about the front page getting cluttered with stale threads unless someone is pinning them. Pinned threads absolutely kill the subforum feed, so it's smart to avoid pinning stuff unless it's huge. For everything else, priority should go to whatever is actually active. Basically, if the last post on a thread pulled from the topic of the day was two days ago, then any thread with a more recent post should naturally sit above it. Look, if people can't find other threads, it's because nobody is posting in them, not because the topic of the day threads are stealing the spotlight.

Ashley Vaughn79 said:After getting this request last night, I went to check how many threads were actually branched off from the US theme.
Well, I checked. 😁

There are 56 threads on the first page.
On that same page, I counted 16 threads that came from the US theme.
That’s about 30%.

If we skip last month and just look at the last two weeks—there were 43 active threads.
Out of those, 12 were branched from the US theme.
Again, roughly 30%.

The stats just don't support that criticism. 🤷

That isn't even the best "stat" to debunk his critique.

Here's a better one: if you look at the ratio of 13/16 vs 43/56, it shows that the branched threads have actually been more active than the general ones over the last two weeks.

dustypilot11 said:Oh right. I guess the real issue here is that out of all those endless threads you write—you know, the ones where you vent about how life's rigged because you're short, or how girls on Tinder are "unfair" because they don't pick guys like you, or how everyone just totally misunderstands your vibe... well, none of that is getting any traction anymore. Let's have a moment of silence for all that lost content.

🤣🤣

hiddenmoose2 said:What am I even supposed to say to this besides reporting them for trolling?
I'm not short; I'm actually above average height. Is that supposed to be an insult or something?🤔
Anyway, I’ve put up about 130 posts on this entire forum in the six months since I joined.🐔

And all 130 of those posts are on dating apps, whining about how women are privileged and only go for guys who are six-foot-plus.

Back to the point, though—these daily topics are great. At least for me.