this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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Nextdoor and other neighborhood apps are really eye-opening about how paranoid a lot of people are.
So much "This man came to my front door to try to break in!" when it's clearly a door-to-door salesman. And then there's always that one responder that implies they would've had their gun ready...
I had to stop using Next Door entirely.
I set my neighborhood up years ago because I thought it was just a fantastic idea for a place to reach out to people who actually live near you. Reality has not borne that out.
ND seems like the place to go if you hate yourself and your neighbors and you really want everyone to know about it. It was like 70% busybodies and paranoid old people, 20% lost pet reminders, and 10% people being horrible to each other via the comments on the other 90%.
Also, I am now painfully aware of how much people hate the homeless. Just loathe and despise them for the crime of existing; while blissfully unaware that it’s just because they’re scared of how close they are to being homeless themselves.
What keeps me checking every so often is the 1% of the time that it's actually something that people are concerned about.
Like a legitimate garage/car break in, or "Hey, does anyone know who we contact to deal with ___"
I think getting the moderator mails was just too much. Like it’s a platform filled with people racing to the bottom and you get to see all the worst as a direct feed.
I don’t know how Reddit mods do it.
Meanwhile the one I was in out in the country was all potlucks and ‘how do I do this?’ and notes on roaming pets (neighbor had a Great Pyrenees that loved to visit everyone on the mountain).
I wonder if the madness cuts in at a certain density.
I think its moreso that people in more rural/wilderness regions have far more reasons to use that type of app. Meanwhile some dude in the suburbs of LA is more likely using it out of boredom at best, basically the less general utility it has the less sane it gets.
Also, you can't really advertise a "potluck" in a larger town. Randos are just going to come and grab food and leave.
The problem with Nextdoor is that you can't exclude the angry loud people who detract from the neighborhood. For a real potluck, you just don't invite them. Your friend group should not be open by default.
There's a lady that pops up on mine because she replies to anyone's post within 20 miles with unhelpful and unsolicited advice. I call her Peggy Hill.
I suggest you give her a copy of How to be helpful and solicited; it might save someone's life.
I live 2 towns over and I'm staying 2 towns over from that nutter.
Had no idea people were like that before Nextdoor.
I mean, there's always been busybodies and people with way too much time on their hands that spend their days peering out the window too much and making up weird fantasies about what goes on outside. ND just gave them a platform to share their crazy with other people that are just as nuts.
They used to have to listen in on the party line and then call all their "friends" to spread the fresh gossip they just heard. A time consuming process but that doesn't really matter when you have nothing else to do.
One thing the Internet, social media in particular, has done very well is expedite the spread of bullshit. Now the busybodies and gossips of the world can generate drama in record time.
Haha my mom has told me stories of their local party line, sounds wild.
And yeah, it's given everyone their very own megaphone, for better or worse. I think the only thing we can hope for is that social media loses it's appeal in it's current centralized form and people return to more spread out online communities, though that might be a pipedream.
Yup. The proverbial "talking over the back fence" gossip now has instant, world-wide reach.
I didn’t know you lived in my area!