Thank God one didn’t decide to just come out and shoot him instead. LOL
Now my neighbors are talking about vandalism to their cars parked outside overnight. Someone has been doing graffiti on the cars with permanent ink markers. I’m glad they posted this, because we sometimes leave a car on the driveway overnight. Now we’ll make sure they’re both in the garage.
Think Nextdoor is outrageous? Welcome to my life. I’m the local official who has to respond to complaints of these sort and determine whether an actual code violation has occurred or if some uptight, busybody…individual simply has their undies in a twist.
I just love it when I take complaints where someone calls dripping with indignation over some perceived infraction. A first cue the complaint is probably going to be bs is when someone prefaces their complaint with some sort of declaratory remark about how this person is a bad egg…of dubious character…selfish…unreasonable…inconsiderate…criminal. So you say they’re parking next to their driveway ON THE GRASS?! Clearly, this is a moral failing on their part. Must be a real bad hombre we’re talking about. What’s that you say this individual also frequently has cars belonging to non-family members parked in front of their house after midnight? Gotta be narcotics involved somehow. [sigh]
How has Nextdoor.com affected this, do you think? Are you in a large city? I’ve noticed that Nextdoor.com makes people think that suddenly all kinds of terrible things are happening, when, really, it’s just that now they know about things that were always happening.
No, not a large city, just under 50k population.
IMO any form of anonymous online reporting encourages the filing of frivolous complaints. Nextdoor is a brick in this wall. Filing frivolous complaints isn’t new, but doing so online anonymously makes it that much easier to do.
I moved from a condo into a house 3 years ago, and I love seeing what goes on in an actual neighborhood. That said, I do think Next Door makes people paranoid. Everyone around me seems to have security cameras, and any stranger walking by is liable to get the neighbors talking. This happens to the point that our postman says he feels like people are spying on him and following him around, which may be true.
I’m a local official. Nextdoor isn’t that big in our area but it’s there. Local Facebook groups - which serve the same function as Nextdoor - are the thing. People definitely post there instead of coming directly to us. Or they’ll post there despite coming to us.
I haven’t seen much in the way of complaining about one’s neighbors and reporting perceived infractions, thank god. There’s a lot of “THE CITY DID…” and “I HEARD THE CITY…” which is usually wrong or wildly mis-informed.
As a city official it’s great to have these easier avenues to get information to people and to see what they’re talking about. But it’s a double-edged sword because it’s just as easy to spread mis-information as it is for us to educate.
If you want to feel better about your local Nextdoor activity, check out the Best of Nextdoor Twitter account. (Tip: It’s actually the worst of Nextdoor)
Except that Nextdoor isn’t anonymous (or isn’t supposed to be). To sign up you give your name and address, and your tag is supposed to be your real name. I have seen a few who obviously weren’t using their real names and I don’t know how they get away with it. You can reveal your address to the public or not as you see fit.
Unrelated to discussion boards, but I once called the local police non-emergency line to ask why a helicopter was circling our condos for an hour shining searchlights everywhere. The police informed me that they had no such operation.
Apparently they thought that meant “go away, don’t ask any questions.”
Upon being informed that the snooping helicopter was not law enforcement, I immediately replied that I would like to file a formal police report of a suspicious helicopter looking into houses and back yards. That quickly drew a correction that this actually WAS the local police helicopter, they were just…uh…not telling us the truth.
Thanks for the link - it’s hilarious! I really want to hear the rest of some of the stories. Like - what’s the deal with the shadow of the horse in the second story window? A couple yankers who post things like “coyote spotted Acme boxes” think they’re being clever, but the really funny ones are from busy-bodies with way too much time on their hands and a cell phone with a camera. Seriously - taking a picture of foxes having sex in her front yard and posting it?
I confess I’m not that familiar with Nextdoor per se, so much as being familiar with online community forums and reporting in general. I had heard one could post anonymously on Nextdoor. In any event, many communities, HOA’s and other neighborhood entities have some form of online posting that allows residents to post notices, file complaints, and/or ask questions. IME these things produce rather higher percentages of frivolous complaints compared to complaints filed in person. As Zipper noted, they really are double edged swords.
The first post on that Twitter feed is about fireworks during Seahawks games! That cracked me up because during football season that battle is constantly raging in my city.
I signed up for NextDoor with a name that is blatantly (and, dare I say, humorously) not my own.
I just read a long discussion on our NextDoor by a guy who was looking for (fictitious) flavors of jams, but wanted a company that didn’t use putter grip butter to seal the jars. Unintentional hilarity ensued.
Whoo, now they’re discussing a local purse-snatching and immediately predicting even direr crime if a planned mosque is built a few miles south of our town. There are a lot of chicken littles in that thread, which I’m sure will get “disappeared” due to the controversial discussion.
Jesus, they’re everywhere!!
Seriously, Scoobysnax, when I saw your post I just assumed you lived in the same corner of Miami-Dade as I do.
A quick check of my local NextDoor shows that the current hot topics are:
[ul]
[li]please buy my old furniture[/li][li]pet lost[/li][li]pet found[/li][li]what was that animal sound last night[/li][li]after-school/track-out activities for the kids[/li][/ul]
One thing I was surprised to not see: golf carts. Past discussions have shown that this neighborhood is pretty much opposed to them, except for that one d-bag that lets his kids drive a golf cart to the pool. This issue has blown up lately in my town; everyone except the Del-Webb crowd seems to be ok with the town maintaining their ban on golf carts being used on public streets.
In my neighborhood, it’s rife with people who have installed Ring and post videos of “suspicious” people who have committed the ultimate offense of walking on the sidewalk late at night, and God forbid, looking anywhere but straight ahead. Or stopping for a second because it hotter than Hell outside or on a steep hill. Then a chorus starts in about what criminal activity they are supposedly up to along with all the “I’m glad you’re safe” remarks.
I live only a few houses away from a park that is a Poke-stop. So I’m used to seeing groups standing on the corner looking at their device. It’s slowed down a lot since the game first came out, but during the summer I’d say I see people there at least once a week.
So far I haven’t seen this being reported, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.
It would of course be Very Wrong Not To Mention Deliciously Evil™ to start a discussion about the “Nerds! Plotting an Anonymous-style hack of checking accounts using their cell phones!!!”
“They’re targeting the elderly, and meeting at the corner of Pico and Alvarado near the park. REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS MEETUPS WITH CELL PHONES promptly to Nextdoor.com. We need to monitor them before Great-Aunt Gertie’s Mahjong money is siphoned off!”
Hopefully none of them are wearing red t-shirts with chino pants because those are probably “gang colors” rather than someone who works at Target.