What I’ve Learned About Nextdoor

Nextdoor, the social media platform for neighborhoods, gives you some intriguing insights about your neighbors.

You can quickly find out who is conservative, liberal, progressive, religious, or atheist, among other things. 

You can discover that some retired school teachers can’t write a coherent paragraph and seemingly don’t know that paragraphs or grammar are even a thing.

You can find out that neighbors who passed away four years ago still have an active account and occasionally post on the site, or even vote in lead moderation on whether to keep or remove content. It’s much more fun to watch than to spill the beans, as all the while Nextdoor corporate continues to make claims that every user is verified and proven to be living in the neighborhoods they have an account in.

Nextdoor is the closest you’ll ever get to reading your neighbor’s minds. Like drunks at a party that has gone on too long, people tend to post things on Nextdoor that they would never say to their neighbor across the fence while trimming the shrubs.

Wildlife is always a hot topic, with warnings from chicken littles to lock up your pets everytime a coyote is sighted, often countered by the “coyotes were here first” crowd. If a duck or fox corpse is sighted in the street, the Sierra Club fans will immediately start a thread on the murderous driving habits of everyone except themselves, to be countered by the “death-to-small-animals-there’s-too-many-anyway” lobby. All of that pales in comparison to the most heinous of crimes reported on the platform: someone’s dog pooping in someone else’s yard. Apparently there are psychopaths out there who have weaponized Fido with Metamucil-laced kibble for the purpose of planting turds on the lawns of patriots.

When school board elections roll around, you can rest assured one candidate’s supporters will be labeled racists against all non-white people while the other is labeled racist against only white people. The moment anyone starts pointing out non-racial issues the cries of racism and reverse discrimination will overwhelm any legitimate debate in a sea of moral outrage, appropriated cultural offense, and eternal ancestral guilt. Endorsements devolve into the same arguments over the people doing the endorsing, and the candidates fade into the background.

Factions quickly form, and just as quickly break up. Today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies. While the platform proclaims its mission is to bring neighbors together, the reality is mostly the opposite. For some of us, it’s incredibly entertaining. We watch people who have already had their brains hardwired into opposing views argue, insult, and ridicule each other. The cognitive dissonance that blinds them to the futility of their struggle is obvious to those not emotionally invested in the argument.

For mischief makers, Nextdoor is possibly the most lucrative trolling ground to ever arise in the social media landscape. Nobody changes their mind based on an online argument. Sometimes people who haven’t made up their mind are influenced, but they generally silently side with the bullied and beaten down side due to their disgust at the behavior of the winning side.

Then there are those users who constantly post the pretentious platitudes and pleas for everyone to be respectful of each other. Their mimicry of sainthood almost always results in a thread peppered with disrespect and memes of unicorns vomiting rainbows.

It is highly entertaining much of the time, and I have often stirred the pot just for fun, which has resulted in numerous temporary bans from the platform. Sometimes, however, I get this gnawing thought that a lot of folks out there are giving themselves brain damage over it. And I’m becoming more and more convinced that the platform is resulting in more divisiveness and hatred than unity, at least in my nearby neighborhoods.

I don’t know if I’m in the bottom of the intelligence pool or somewhere in the middle, but most of what I read on Nextdoor indicates I should be optimistic in my self assessment.

It also indicates that if I have half a brain I should permanently deactivate my account.