The concept is good: a social media site for “making neighborhoods stronger, safer places to call home.” Posts about lost pets, community events, and garage sales and recommendations for housekeepers, pool cleaners, painters, dentists, etc., give neighbors a chance to reach out and help. I confess feeling slightly amused when I first joined Nextdoor about the number of lost pets reported. I don’t enjoy their disappearance, but it makes me smile to see their pictures and learn both their names and a little bit about their personalities. The reunions excite us all. We share in the heartache of a missing furry member of our families and cheer their safe return. A chubby bulldog wandered up our driveway one day, and a quick post on Nextdoor brought a swift reunion and much relief to its owners. It made me happy to participate and be useful to my neighbors. Sometimes it’s the little things that unite us and cause us to see our shared humanity. Oddly enough, lost pets on Nextdoor has that power.
I’ve also come to learn that Nextdoor has the power to divide. Our small town is in the middle of a brouhaha about our wildlife. It’s a complicated and heart-touching issue without a solution that’s satisfactory to everyone. It’s not the wildlife that is vexing our town; it’s the amplification of hate, vitriol, and rudeness on Nextdoor.
Nextdoor’s format is different from Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, where you have control over whom you interact with. On those platforms, we mostly follow our friends, people, places, or causes with which we have some interest or relationship. We curate our lists with pleasing acquaintances and contacts. We follow businesses we frequent and enjoy. Negative comments are common, but they also come with some sense of familiarity. When Uncle So-and-So posts his displeasure at a meme or photo, we think to ourselves, Of course! That’s just how Uncle So-and-So is, and we choose to do nothing or take advantage of the options to see less or none of our outspoken uncle. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are highly personal social media sites focused on engaging with people we know well enough to withstand differences in opinion. I find I’m much more forgiving when I know something about the person behind a caustic post. The opportunity to share and see pictures of friends and family all over the world, in my mind, outweighs the negativity.
Nextdoor, on the other hand, places strangers and their tiny and large daily grievances in contact with each other. Much of our community page is innocuous and fairly suburban until serious issues, like our wildlife, are broached. Keyboard warriors, armchair philosophers, second guessers, and conspiracy theorists come crawling out of the woodwork, as do the people so entrenched in their own beliefs they readily insult and abuse those with differing opinions. Y’all, myopia isn’t a virtue. Muting neighbors is an imperfect option because it takes you out of the larger conversation, and shouldn’t we be having rational conversations?
Community-building, not neighbor-bashing, is Nextdoor’s goal. I’ve been called a condescending person, been told people shouldn’t waste their breath on me, and have had completely tame comments reported and removed. The City Council has been falsely accused of not doing their jobs, having hidden agendas, and creating diversions to detract from their real nefarious intentions. The police have been unfairly criticized despite our community being rated one of the safest in Texas. Several wildlife advocacy signs were vandalized, I think by teens, and the conversation turned to how it was unwise to trespass on someone’s property in Texas; the gun-toting implication seemed pretty clear. My kids will never know the harmless joy of toilet papering a house.
A friend, himself a veteran, was accused of having hatred and contempt toward handicap and disabled military. I can assure you he is too busy volunteering his time and energy on city projects to be abusing people in wheelchairs. The mob mentality and high school cliquishness is shameful and sad. Instead of walking five houses down to visit with your neighbor, our Nextdoor page has made the proverbial fences higher and the community more disengaged. Much of the high school mentality behavior could be extinguished with proper intervention by Leads, whose jobs are to moderate conversations. I suppose interpretation of comments can be highly subjective, and on our page the Leads have created their own unsocial network. When questioned about a particularly nasty post, one Lead assured me he felt not only was it within Nextdoor guidelines, its inclusion followed “higher rules and greater wisdom.” Dear sir, I want no part of wisdom and rules based on cruelty.
My own armchair philosophy about impersonal interactions on Nextdoor is loosely based on the Sufi saying about three gates:
Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates.
At the first gate, ask yourself, ‘Is it true?’
At the second ask, ‘Is it necessary?’
At the third gate ask, ‘Is it kind?’
Admittedly, I get hung up at the “Is it necessary?” gate. Clearly this post isn’t necessary, but to me, in a time of such hatefulness and division, it feels important. Be kind, friends. Be kind.
I suppose we’ve come full circle. Animals on Nextdoor are easy to love; some of our neighbors, not so much. Now if someone could just find Fido, the Dachshund wearing a blue, checkerboard collar and return him to his worried parents, I might just crack a smile.
