The NextDoor Neighbor Feed is Just Ridiculous

P

Pellice

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
Messages
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Good lord, the entries I see every morning ... people are hysterical. And doorbell cameras, far from reassuring them, are causing panic. I've been waiting for the denouement of a saga that began 4 days ago when someone's camera caught a car's occupant stopping the car after dark, walking up a short driveway to throw a small black plastic bag in a trash can, and getting back in the car and driving away. The originator posted the video stating that she hadn't checked the trash can yet. The cries of "call the police" were immediate, then countered by others saying it looked like a doggie cleanup bag. To date, in spite of many pleas to reveal the substance of the mystery packet, the originator has not replied, most probably because it was dog poop or something similar.

There are so many entries like this! Some people truly do stand at their windows watching suspiciously. Or freak out about a wasp nest in a distant corner of their yard. Mixed in with some genuinely useful recommendations and requests.

Have any of you seen some hilarious entries on this app from your "neighbors"?
 
Nextdoor is a cult, just like bogleheads. :LOL:

Yeah, so it has gone a bit downhill over the years. I scan it briefly every now and then because sometimes there is good information like zoning requests.

We have one guy who always tries to joke. He'll create a post like: "Good news, I looked in my trash, and nobody threw dog poo in it!" They are always funny and unfortunately get taken down. The fact that his posts are always taken down proves to me it is a cult of the Ring fanatics!
 
I won't join Nextdoor for the same reason I won't join Facebook. I don't want to know how dumb my friends and neighbors are. I'd rather live in blissful ignorance so I can still enjoy their company.
 
Jeff Daniels had a great line in his TV series "The Newsroom": "We didn't used to scare so easily."
 
I see people bitching how others drive. They love to tell others what their speed is. None appear to have radar guns but they're able to tell who is driving too fast..
 
I just use it to get rid of stuff. Free stuff goes fast and sometimes I’ll even get a few bucks. The actual posts are usually silly.
 
I agree, I used to read and post regularly because I volunteer and have done a lot of my own research into zoning, local regulations, and state and county services. But I agree the signal to noise ratio has been dropping for a while now.

JoeWras said:
We have one guy who always tries to joke. He'll create a post like: "Good news, I looked in my trash, and nobody threw dog poo in it!" They are always funny and unfortunately get taken down. The fact that his posts are always taken down proves to me it is a cult of the Ring fanatics!
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However, in the interest of civil, thoughtful discussion, I will say that posts like that always bothered me because they add to the wrong side of the aforesaid ratio. A truly original or creative joke that also recounts a good or poor experience in our community would be one thing, but the one you quote was a good example of those that I found just uninformative and unhelpful, especially after the 2nd or 3rd time. So the moderators are probably trying to balance the interests of people who may read the site less often or abandoning it altogether due to that kind of thing, and those who enjoy posting or reading those types of comments. (Full disclosure, I've managed a lot of online communities both for fun and profit, so it's hard for me not to think about these things from the moderators' point of view.)
 
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I find Nextdoor to be great entertainment.

Where else can I find posts like these:

everyone is posting what they are in need of sooo I meaaaaan…

now accepting applications for a bonus dad & legit wanna be, teammate ������ must be at least 5’9”, w preferably brown eyeballs ����
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Does anybody know who drives the beat up older blue ford pickup truck with a maroon tailgate? Would like to have a word with him regarding an incident on Thursday.
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You can adjust how often you get notices or even if you get them in the app.
I go on every once in awhile. Sometimes I learn things I didn’t know.
 
LOL. I enrolled thinking it would be a good thing and then discovered a bunch of nut jobs raising hell over idiocy.
 
I have better things to do with my time.

If I want to know what's going on in the neighborhood, I just go next door and ask my 78 year old widow neighbor. If I do that, I plan for a good hour, but she gives me ice cream!
 
MichaelB said:
I thought it was part comedy club and part asylum. One place to always have a good laugh is thr Twitter feed “”Best of NextDoor” https://mobile.twitter.com/bestofnextdoor
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I was going to post this but you beat me to it.

NextDoor is hilarious.

"I saw a gray car parked on my street for five hours yesterday. I doesn't belong in the neighborhood."

"What was the license plate number?"

"I don't know. But I think it was a Honda, Toyota, or a Hyundai."

<SMH>

Saw this in my feed last year. Here's one man's solution for a person that complained about a neighbor having a messy yard and not heeding pleas by neighbors to clean it up.

NextDoor Doorstep.jpg
 
COcheesehead said:
You can adjust how often you get notices or even if you get them in the app.
I go on every once in awhile. Sometimes I learn things I didn’t know.
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No way I would install the app. Just use the web. Same for Facebook -- which I visit once per quarter.
 
Nextdoor seemed like it would devolve into junior high school cliques all over again IMHO. I have avoided it like the plague. But then again, I don't do FB either.

Jerry1 said:
I just use it to get rid of stuff. Free stuff goes fast and sometimes I’ll even get a few bucks. The actual posts are usually silly.
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I have used Freecycle for this in the past. Figured I could avoid the Nextdoor drama.

-gauss
 
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donheff said:
LOL. I enrolled thinking it would be a good thing and then discovered a bunch of nut jobs raising hell over idiocy.
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+1
then I realized I live amongst those nut jobs :)
Sometimes have to shake my head at the posts, so much craziness over a "strange" car driving by or someone coming to their door.

I do check in every once in a while, the local city maintenance always posts which roads, etc will be worked on in the next month, so I can avoid those areas.
 
People still use Nextdoor? Our 'hood has about 30 homes and I think there are about 3 people that use it. I signed up initially, but after seeing the same ridiculous posts over and over and over and over, I pulled the plug on it. In our old hood, I was one of the first to get others to sign up...I was a mod as well. About a year into, things got too much out of control and left the group.

Somewhat unrelated, by MIL had a neighbor who did nothing but snoop about her neighbors...even used to use a scanner to listen to people's cordless phone calls. Paranoid is an understatement. Well, not too long before she moved (because the neighborhood was just getting so bad!!!) we were leaving the hood and I decided I needed to drive by her house...back up slowly, and drive by again. I did that about 4x. Within a minute, my DW got a call from her Mom telling her that the neighbor had called to alert her to a suspicious vehicle and to be on the lookout...yep, me. If she was a Nextdoor used, I am sure her post would have ended with POLICE HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
 
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I use it to post free stuff I want to get rid of.

I also use it to post information on city projects that will have significant local impact. I'm on a couple city working groups - one for the largest infrastructure project in the cities history - Pure Water (aka toilet to tap). Our sole non-freeway means of going north out of our community will be down to a single lane for several months... I posted info about the project, public comment windows, and now about road closures. I'm also involved on a community plan update project (zoning update). I want the my neighbors to be involved since it will impact all of us if the city successfully changes single family home zoning to super dense high rise zoning (currently on the proposal!) Next door is good at engaging the NIMBYs when they need to be engaged. (I'm not a nimby, perse, but believe in activating them when the impacts are extreme enough.)

But most of the posts are as described above- ring camera induced panic and people complaining that someone put bagged pet poop in their trash can.
 
ExFlyBoy5 said:
People still use Nextdoor? Our 'hood has about 30 homes and I think there are about 3 people that use it. I signed up initially, but after seeing the same ridiculous posts over and over and over and over, I pulled the plug on it.
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Yeah, pretty much the same here. I joined about 4-5 years ago, posted a "Hello, I'm new here" message, and haven't used it since. I still get daily email notifications, though, and they are almost uniformly useless. I wonder what it is about ND that makes it so wacky and histrionic, compared to FB neighborhood groups.
 
Sojourner said:
Yeah, pretty much the same here. I joined about 4-5 years ago, posted a "Hello, I'm new here" message, and haven't used it since. I still get daily email notifications, though, and they are almost uniformly useless. I wonder what it is about ND that makes it so wacky and histrionic, compared to FB neighborhood groups.
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I found Facebook in general went in the same direction. On both platforms, they ended up with active people who:

  • Complained about everything when they should MYOB
  • Teachers and preachers about everything
We occasionally get that here, but nothing in comparison to ND or FB. Some people are really on a mission for their favorite cause.

Add to it:

  • Lack of civil discourse
Fortunately here, we are pretty civil. We may all have our moments, but I gotta say on FB and ND people are mean.

Lots of mean people on Reddit, but you don't know them. As others have said, on ND or FB, you know these people and it causes profound disappointment. Better to just talk in person without knowledge of their pet issues.
 
I've gotten a few useful recommendations for service providers there, but like others, find it to be a cesspool of petty people posting paranoid fears or bullies looking for an opportunity to bully.
 
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I get daily email notices, and send them to my trash. When things are slow I poke around to find something really funny. You have to step around a lot of poo messages. Occasionally you forget, and so it goes.
 
I'm pretty active on FB, use it to coordinate/share real life experiences and am active/semi-active in several groups. I don't friend someone until I have a meaningful conversation with them in person (and a few online friends). Nextdoor is proof the idiots on the internet are in the 'hood! I have an account and look once in a while to keep my happiness level in check. lol A nice idea but failed horribly.
 
I turned off all notifications except for urgent category stuff.

Of course, everyone thinks their issue is urgent...

It used to allow me to go and check on posts just from my neighborbood, but it has us lumped in with about 5 other developments, so there's no way to reduce the feed and it has no value for me anymore.
 
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