I signed up for it a couple of years ago. What’s usually on it here is . . . effectively nothing. Introduction posts, generally just saying ‘here I am, my name is’. Statewide announcements I’ve seen elsewhere. Lectures about smoke detectors and so on. Occasional ads, often not local. Announcements of the VA dinner. Somebody’s picture of wildlife in some other state entirely. In all that time, one lost cat post, and one found cat post (different cats, I hadn’t seen either of them.) Nobody going on about either prowlers or gunshots, at least.
Today for the first time there was something else – smebody hosting a meeting about ‘how to get back to our pretty village’. I live in the town but not in the village, and I think the level of prettiness is about the same; what the village needs is a real grocery store back. I don’t intend to go to the meeting.
The site takes forever to load, is terrible to navigate, and I haven’t found any way to tell it that I only want to see the local posts.
My Nextdoor used to be full of the usual “I saw a car pull halfway into my driveway, then back out and go the other direction – do I call the police or the army about this obvious criminal?” nonsense but I just looked now (haven’t used it in a long while) and it’s mainly people asking for local contractor recommendations, a couple sad story requests for “help” and the usual “I saw a wolf on Main Street!” followed by two dozen “We’re in Chicago suburbia; that’s a coyote” replies.
Don’t know if there’s a algorithm thing pushing away the nonsense or if the insane people finally snapped under the stress of their Ring cameras.
Some people in my building went on about this recently. I live in a hi-rise. All units have floor-to-ceiling windows. As with much of the country it got very cold here (Chicago). Those windows are not good insulation and everyone has electric heat. Needless to say, the electric bills last month were huge. For the bigger units they were seeing $600-800 electric bills for one month and they were howling about it.
Needless to say, there was no mystery to it and nothing nefarious. That’s what happens when you run your electric heaters almost non-stop for a month.
I got an invitation to Nextdoor when the neighbor two doors up started a neighborhood…whatever it is on Nextdoor. I didn’t join up. I’m hoping the neighborhood one isn’t a cesspool of racism and busybodies, since one of the things I like about the place is that it’s nicely integrated and we mind our own business. The whole reason we all get along is that we wave and smile, occasionally we chitchat over our mailboxes, but we don’t get involved in other people’s stuff.
Every now and then, I’m tempted to check in and see what it’s like, but I really don’t want to get to know the Nextdoor types better.
All of the above, plus heaping amounts of NIMBYism and people with way too much time on their hands calling for protests of everything.
“My neighbor let me know they are going to cut down their beautiful tree…what can I do about it?”
“Have you seen the development plan for high density housing? While I am all for more affordable housing, can you imagine the traffic? Who will join me for a protest on the corner of Main & WAHHH?”
We had Nextdoor in Portland for about 20 minutes and gave up on it as useless nattering. I only have Facebook because of family and I severely limit who I include there.
I don’t use Nextdoor a lot, but I’ll go against the grain a little bit.
We do have the endless lost pet/gunshot/person-in-my-driveway posts. The political stuff is pretty tightly moderated.
I’ve had good luck finding tradespeople for work I need done.
I once put out a call for some emergency assistance after a storm when a medium-sized tree fell on my gate, making egress from the property impossible. Within 15 minutes, I had offers from 2 neighbors to come by and take it off. I accepted the offer from the nearest neighbor, who came and chainsawed the tree off the gate in no time. (No “gas, grass or ass” requested. Jaysus fuck.)
I’ve also met and become friends with a couple of neighbors, whom I wouldn’t have known otherwise. These are rural properties. Many of them are hidden from view, so there are no friendly waves across the fence.
We do suffer some rural opportunistic crime out here, so I appreciate knowing when that’s occurring in my neck of the woods.
I had a Gladys Kravitz image I saved to my phone and would respond to a lot of the Nextdoor posts with that image. I probably overdid it as they eventually kicked me off.
But to the OP, I eventually just blocked Nextdoor emails. The handyman tips were fine but all the other stuff already mentioned in this thread just annoyed me.
I’m often frustrated by Nextdoor posters who have recently moved to Florida from northern states. They seem to be shocked and scared by the wild animals they encounter, and they post pictures of them, asking what they are and how to get rid of them. They act as if these creatures have no right to be in their backyard or neighborhood.
The worst part is that many other newcomers join them in suggesting to “kill it!!!” as if that’s the only solution. Snakes are the most common target of their fear and hatred. Of course, there are some venomous snakes in Florida, such as water moccasins and coral snakes, that should be avoided and respected. But most of the snakes they post are harmless and beneficial to the ecosystem.
These people don’t realize that they are the ones who are intruding on the wildlife’s habitat, not the other way around. Learn to coexist with the native animals, not eliminate them.
There are a few of us (including wildlife experts) who try to educate these naive posters, but our posts often fall on deaf ears.
I’m also a transplant from the north, but I moved here many years ago. I’ve always been curious and respectful of the wildlife here, not afraid and hostile. My motto is: live and let live.
Never heard of Nextdoor until a couple of months ago when one of my email accounts started getting bombarded with ‘invitations’. Originally I thought it was something to do with the local homeowner association (which I detest, by the way, but that’s another topic).
But apparently it’s just some random social media thing which presumably exists as a delivery medium for adverts. Instant delete.
I still get e-mail alerts from a Nextdoor community a few miles from where I used to live.
Apparently, everyone there has their car stolen (or broken into) and stuff filched off their lawn or out of their garage on a near-daily basis. Either that, or someone rang the doorbell at an odd time of day or just prowls the neighborhood looking to be up to no good. Lots of grainy nighttime security camera videos that would be of no help to anyone.
I sort of enjoy the flavor of a crime-ridden cesspool, given that there’s still a highway sign up at the edge of town proclaiming it to be one of “America’s Best Small Cities”.
I like the Nextdoor here. I think it operates like it was intended. ‘I’m feeding this cat, does it belong to someone?’, asking for recommendations for (roofer, podiatrist, you name it), where can I borrow a wheelchair for my visiting uncle, there’s this the new Thai place, I need egg cartons, does anybody want these tickets? Haven’t seen the ranting and CT and fear-posting on mine – very occasionally some one will, but the rest of the posters will shut them down.
It is very helpful when roads wash out or there’s a big accident or there’s a festival on the green, volunteers needed.
