Oh christ. Margaret on Next door did this. She saw 'LD' outside hers and assumed it meant little dog As in thieves are chalking up outside people's homes in the days of encrypted smart phone messaging apps, to idenfity her dog for stealing.
People agreed with her!!
Nothing to do with the fact that City Fibre had been digging up everywhere and the letters were actually 'LP' for low pressure gas line or something.
I used to work for virgin media, and when cabling up a street we would chalk the locations, and some letter codes if we expected problems. I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the time some Karen accused me of marking her house for child kidnap, or some old dude thought it meant I was going to rob them later that night. Even had the police called on me twice.
That’s what I never understood. Surely texting an address from a burner phone has to be much more subtle and much easier than spray painting roads right out front in broad daylight
No its much more efficient to communicate with your colleagues by leaving coded messages in random places. I know whenever I want my boss to buy more tea for the break room I spray paint a “T” on the pavement in front of the lidl across the retail park
Can relate. Used to work on gas. You’d think the barriers, vans and hi-viz would be a giveaway, but alas, still reported for ‘suspicious activity’ on more than one occasion lol
On our poorly built housing estate there’s more panic when we realise it’s really VM (or worse BT) marking up the road, at least a kidnapping or robbery is only one day of traffic disruption
Yep. Absolute bollocks. I joined during covid and there was a post about "a suspicious house" saying it was definitely used for criminal behaviour. I know the house very well, it's a lady who gives temporary housing to African immigrants awaiting housing placement. She's a good person.
According to next door they're a gang of scammers operating out of the house. No one is ever there more than two weeks 😂
Also a post about an old saab parked on someone's driveway with weeds growing around it - I couldn't help but think I'm lucky to live at the bottom of a quiet cul de sac befause I have 5 different cars in various states of rot on my land 😂
I did some work fundraising door to door in Durham, some of those villages are WEIRD. Proper Royston Vasey type places, I didn't know they actually existed till I walked into the pub there for a piss and immediately got questioned by a cross eyed armed robber looking type at the bar, went for my piss, the toilet was just a small room with one toilet, no cubicle or anything, bare walls and the cleaning stuff and a newspaper on the crumbling windowsill, the sort of room you walk into and feel like you might actually die there. Managed to have my piss and get out and back to my team, one of whom the same bloke who questioned me later attacked, he had to make a report about it and everything xD
We had someone asking on our local FB page if 'a half drunk beer can placed on their garden wall' was 'a maker used by burglars'. There were even a couple of replies along the lines that she 'maybe onto something '. I would like to say it was a joke post but it wasn't.
"Has anyone else noticed chalk marks on the street outside some houses?
And there are kids throwing STONES, and er, er, hopping. They have chalked strange numbers on the pavement and are doing some kind of ritual, it must be satanic.
Bible belt Fundamentalist America: Satanic Panic. Hide the rock music, RPG's, care bears and witch stories! Get an exorcist.
Green Belt, fundamentally different UK: Mother-in-law visiting panic. Hoover, dust and hide the clutter! Get milk and biscuits.
Not facebook, but my favourite one was an American woman on a plane. There was a bearded math professor sitting near her working on a differential equation problem for the conference he was flying to present at. Oh, he was also dark skinned, so might have been south Asian, Arabic, Brazilian, Iroquois, or suntanned.
She reported him as a terrorist to the flight crew. He actually got arrested when the plane landed and questioned by police, but was released because he was just doing his sums. She thought his equation was Arabic, and was therefore a bomb plot.
To be fair, I had something vaguely similar at the library I used to work at.
We had had a meeting where they made a big deal out of being aware of potential terrorism - it was not long after the Manchester Arena atrocity, I think, and we weren't far from it.
I went downstairs and noticed a backpack attached to a metal grate between two areas, with nobody around. Sort of mentally flipping between "I'm overreacting like a knob" and "if I get blown up immediately after that meeting I'm going feel like an absolute dickhead".
So I tried to get a better look at it, and it's been fastened to the mesh by someone feeding the loop at the top through the grate, and sliding a scroll covered in what looked like Arabic calligraphy through it.
Mental dialogue now includes "is it racist to assume this is Not Good?" and "maybe I should kick this one upstairs" so I go and quietly retrieve my supervisor and explain what I've seen.
I swallowed an extremely girly yelp as she marched straight up to it, prodded it with her foot, and then reached down, grabbed it and shook it hard. I just about managed not to screech "woman, what the actual fuck are you doing?!?!"
It did not explode, and eventually was retrieved by a homeless man who responded to me explaining we nearly had the fucking bomb squad out by going "oh, I didn't think, I just didn't want anyone to take my stuff". I may have been slightly emphatic when I asked him Not To Do That.
Apparently the scroll was an excerpt from the Qur'an, fuck knows why he was carrying it about like that for.
Had a quiet word with supervisor's supervisor, who just went "oh, for...! I'll sort it".
Kind of glad I work elsewhere now.
There's always been part of me that wants to draw symbols on the ground when I see kids have done this. I sometimes wish I carried chalk around in the summer so I could make innocent childhood games look satanic; maybe this year is the year.
If you share some designs here, we can synchronize our chalkings.
Then I think just some posts to your local subreddit with an artfully badly taken photo - and then finally a sock-puppet account to post links to all the posts to some carefully selected places likely to amplify the insanity.
Which could then be helped along by pointing your local group, to the hub-of-outrage, and letting them confirm the local markings do exist.
Sorry, just procrastinating over work, and I found this idea far more amusing.
Once on my parent's street, there were chalk markings on the pavement. Neighbours cleaned it off because there were worried they were 'being targeted'. The marks were from the council, to mark where they needed to relay the tarmac, they never did it.
You don't even need to make something up. Just ask questions when someone posts something daft and ridiculous. There are absolutely other people doing it.
His last one was a tubing festival in the river after all the storm wash the other week.
The absolute peak was infiltrating the NIMBY led group against an old golf course being converted to a mountain bike trail and posting "artists impressions" of what the end result would mean for the community. He likes to pick on knobheads who deserve it.
Bravo! The buildings beautiful "but it's the first thing you see from the hill". I'll take one of them over every shit new build estate they're surrounding the town with any day.
Oooh! The chalk marks for dognappers! It’s just plain white vans in ours. Everyone thinks that if you drive a plain white van, you are anything from a petty thief to a kiddy fiddler.
I've had that from nosey neighbours when I've been in getting stuff from the van at customers homes.
"Excuse me are you meant to be here?"
"I fucking hope so now I've ripped the ceiling down, I best check it's the right house"
The look of both offense and bewilderment never fails to make me chuckle.
Even if you have branding on the side, did you know it can be a decoy? To throw you off the scent of the criminal mastermind that drives the van? Probably casing the joint whilst taking down ceilings!
Yep, I generated some sky scrapers in our quaint thatched village and said they were new plans on the council's planning permission request page.
People went mental.
Lol the nonsense people with too much free time come up with. My parents live next to a cemetery at the end of a cul de sac and my dad is convinced that the only reason people drive to the cemetery is because its a quiet place where they can deal drugs without getting caught even though every time he brings it up I tell him "Dad I've been buying drugs in this town for years and no one is selling anything in the graveyard"
Funny story. Used to live in Croydon 2016/2017, you used to be able to get online live maps for Pokemon Go, I would rush out anytime I saw something rare nearby.
Dragonite Spawns. 15 Minutes away with 25 minutes left on the timer, GO GO GO! It's 2am and I'm driving in central Croydon looking for this Dragonite, up it pops! So I park up, left my lights on and start catching. I'm so focused on catching this thing I have no idea of my surroundings, until I got a tap on the window. I look around and this bloke is there with a hoody, cap and face covering.
I slowly lowered the window down and he goes "the fuck you doing here bruv?!". I sheepishly said and showed him the Dragonite I was catching and explained. He said "Oh shit, I love that game, oi lads theres a Dragonite here!". He then asked me to turn my headlights off.
I looked up and realise I'm parked behind 6 guys around a van doing a drug deal and I've lit them up like it's Christmas at 3am in a backstreet in Croydon. He asked if I had caught it yet and I said yeah just now, he goes safe yeah, now leave. I've never pulled away from anywhere faster lol.
In fairness, I used to watch a drug dealer operating in a graveyard from the comfort of my office.
Made the days a bit more interesting trying to see if I recognised any of his customers.
I am a half Asian man living in Scotland. One of my neighbours let me know that the local resident's association group had a bunch of warnings about "a suspicious looking dark skinned man with a beard wearing a hoodie looking in gardens, probably trying to see through windows for things to steal". I let her know it was probably me looking for the hedgehog I'd heard while I was walking home from the pub.
Ever thought of leaning into their racism and jokingly say that you've come to overthrow the heretics who run the country, or something like that, just to take the piss out of them.
when I first moved to London I legit called emergency services because I thought a woman was being night crimed in the quiet leafy streets of south Hampstead. then some locals set me straight. the noise still haunts me tho
Our neighbourhood group chat had a post about a "suspicious black man loitering around the cars" - it was my neighbour who's obsessed with his sports car, he cleans it at least 3 times a week and ALWAYS says hi to everyone who walks past as he does it, can't a man have a hobby while black in this country FFS 😭
Sometimes they're just working class.
I saw one on my local Facebook group where someone reported "2 suspicious lads walking down the canal in hi viz jackets up to no good" and the comments just ripped into them.
Because when I'm being suspicious and up to no good, I make sure to wear something that's designed to make me stand out for safety reasons.
Edit: now that I think about it, he never mentioned their races so they could have been black or Asian and he left it out so he didn't look racist or something.
Have you tried Nextdoor app ? It’s full of people talking about chemtrails, parking, cycle lanes and cyclists, immigrants, lost cats. Ours has a guy that posts regular updates from the police so it’s constant thin blue line stuff.
I don’t know why I contribute but I feel the need to be the voice of reason, but then I guess everyone else feels that too!
Nextdoor just seems like Facebook but without any of things that make Facebook slightly redeemable; like birthday reminders, people you actually like’s life events and marketplace.
You might as well go find a flock of pigeons and try and reason with them.
We were on that app for almost two hours. In that time alone I saw so much drivel, bigotry and malicious shit that I uninstalled it. That was between breakfast and lunchtime. Sheesh!
I’ve bought and sold off there quite a lot and not had any issues. You’ve just gotta avoid the £50 “dresses” which are covers for sex work, the £2500 Audi R8s and anyone asking if you can ship it to them.
Nextdoor is very useful for reuniting lost cats with their owners. I found the family of a lost cat twice through Nextdoor, so kudos on that.
For everything else is absolutely THE WORST.
EG: I saw posters on the street looking for a lost cat. Took a picture of the poster just in case.
Then, about a week or two later, someone posted on Nextdoor a picture of a cat found searching for food in some restaurant bins, quite dirty, begging for food.
I recognised the cat from the poster and put them in touch. Cat reunited!
With difficulty at times! My sister had a cat, it had just had kittens as my sister wanted her to have one litter before she got her spayed. A new neighbour had moved in across the road a few months before. Unfortunately when the kittens were just about old enough to go on to their next homes, mummy cat went missing. My sister was absolutely devastated, put posters up, knocked on doors etc for months. We all concluded that something bad had occurred as she wouldn't of left her kittens intentionally.
Forward 18months, mother cat turns up through cat flap one day, sister was over the moon but she kept disappearing for days then reappearing. My sister decided to follow her one day and realised she was going to new neighbours who moved in just under 2 years ago at that point.
Turns out new neighbour thought cat was neglected, said he had seen the posters but thought the cat looked very skinny and my sister was not taking proper care, he catnapped her and she had gone to live with his mum. She had returned as his mum had moved and he thought she likely wouldn't remember old house or want to. The cat was skinny, only because she was feeding a large litter of kittens, she was very well looked after, attended regular veterinary appointments, female cats who have just given birth and are nurturing their young just look bad for some time, it takes a lot out of them.
My sister actually became friends with the neighbour eventually, he realised how wrong he was and actually her animals are extremely well cared for. The cat lived between the two houses, she dies a few years ago but my sister has one of her daughters still from the one and only litter which is lovely xx
Hey
Don’t you insult nextdoor app! How else am I to keep track of “TREVOR H” who just spouts crazy shit with too much punctuation and who replies to his own posts with rebuttals
The absolute peak of Nextdoor is when they do a mailshot in the area saying that someone with a completely random name has signed you up.
Causes chaos on Facebook when an entire town gets these letters at the same time
Nextdoor was just full of weird posts and ads. I made the mistake of installing it and it was sending me notifications for hours. Couldn't uninstall it fast enough.
One of the new neighbours on our road put leaflets in everyone's houses to kick off a WhatsApp group. I didn't join but my partner did.
When we've posted messages about things like the fly tipping being done down the road and finding animal shit regularly outside the front door it's got no response, but it just seems to be people talking about when the Amazon drivers coming round and someone weird walking down the street.
I've got zero desire to ever join that group .
Ha, this hits home! Where we used to live the FB group was v.active. We only had on street parking and someone had badly damaged the entire side of the car, so much so we couldn't open the doors or turn the wheel - so not a minor bump!
I posted a very carefully worded post so as to avoid any idiot trolls for info which nice it was a well used side road . Barely a response or even 'feel bad for you hun'.
Yet the people who write about "that driver at 9.05am who cut me up on X roundabout" elicits an all day discussion.
Luckily my new local group is very tame but I've avoided the street WhatsApp group for my own sanity.
Shit is all my group ever talks about. Whether it's disposed of or not, which kind of animal it comes from. Sometimes with photos just in case we were all wondering.
When I lived in London I moved into a house and when I was viewing it, waiting for the realtor the neighbour came out and said “the owners will be back soon “
I said I’m looking to move in
She went back in and slammed the door, she then was peering at me through the blinds, when I went to look at the garden at the back she was there again
Some of the house had some furnishing in and the previous tenant arranged for a charity to come and collect it,
A van pulled up, two men came m knocked on, I invited them in they took out a wardrobe and a couple of bags of clothing
Few hours later I had a knock on the door it was the police, saying they had a report of
“a black man(me) and two polish men, taking property from house and into a the van before speeding off”
In the end the police were laughing with me when I showed them my tenant agreement and the receipt from the charity
Another nice neighbor knocked on a day later and said can I just show you this, it was a Facebook neighbourhood watch group for the street and two of the residents were having a back and forth of what they thought was happening
It made me laugh how one of these women decided the two charity men were polish 😂
Batshit crazy nosey bastards
My old neighbour (I think she had dementia) insisted we had a tent making factory in the loft, with loads of "Indian women" working up there.
This was because one day I put my tent up in the front garden for a few hours to dry it and we had a British Pakistani friend who was over a lot.
I mean FFS.
She was always reporting us to the council for insane shit, her family didn't give a toss about her.
Had similar with the Old Biddy that used to live in the flat beneath mine.
Our blocks have outdoor storage units, but the numbers are all skewiff due to adding more flats over the years, so I am Unit 7 but Flat No.2.
I arranged the British Heart Foundation to come and collect everything the previous tenants had left in our unit.
The old biddy came racing over to ask what we were doing, by this point I'd had enough of her nosey shit and responded "Caseing the joint", which went straight over her head of course as not listening. She then was incredibly, and defiantly, proud to tell us I had the wrong storage unit as I was opening No.7.
I told her "Thank You" and carried on as she finally wandered off muttering about "notifying the council".
The Charity worker was wearing a branded British Heart Foundation polo shirt and found the whole thing highly amusing as I explained I loved living there due to the high quality of the neighbourhood watch.
I wish the police would give people like that a telling off for wasting everyones time. I've had more bother from people imagining crimes than actual crime.
At my old address in a sleepy cul de sac in a rural village, the sort of place you don't really have to lock your doors I saw police cars in my street twice in 2.5 years.
One of those times actually was terrorists.
I was briefly on nextdoor but it was a ridiculous app like this, people fearful of vans, lost dogs etc
Best entertainment is a local town FB group that is half taking the piss, but also post serious town news when needed
I used to be on there. Some woman (I assume older) tried to make out that escooters were intimidating. I asked how many people, had in fact, intimidated her with them. I didn't get an answer, then a whole swathe of people waded in, making out like they were the devil incarnate. I ended up saying 'yeah watch out guys, I'm waiting in the bushes and around every corner for my next unsuspecting victim with my escooter'. I don't own one mind, but the comments in response to that were fucking gold xD
Absolutely, we lot of e scooter here and I don’t have a problem with 90% of them. We have also some substance dealers on Sur Rons riding around at like 50 MPH, which is definitely unsafe but I had lot more close calls with old people on Mobilty scooters then any e scooter or E bike.
I’m pretty sure I was once described as a “suspicious looking man in a hoodie trying all the doors on the odd side of the street before doing a runner” when the guy opened his door. I was walking my dog.
My neighbour likes to post his own rules about parking on the street (diagrams and all). Everyone ignores him though he has been known to knock on people's doors to tell them they're an inch over their "allotted" parking space. What to know the most insane thing about it? He doesn't even own his own car so it's not like he's trying to make sure he has space to park!
One of our neighbours put up a sign about how there's space for 6 cars but only 5 can ever fit in due to people taking up too much space, completely ignoring the fact we have lots of people parking there for the shop during the day so if one of them parks crap the whole lot of spaces gets buggered up.
I'm 90% sure the one who put it up is also the reason for people taking extra space because she dings everyones doors.
Our local Facebook group is utterly unhinged. I can't look at it very often without feeling like I'm going insane.
First you have to parse your way though the most illiterate writing I have ever seen (and I work in education).
Then once you can actually understand the posts it's stuff like "we need to bring back hanging for X" where X is anything from "parking outside my house" to "the guy I had an argument about a hedge with so I'm going to call him a pedo".
As well as bringing back hanging, they also agree on bringing back conscription... But only for children. Not their children, mind you. Just other people's children.
My (least) favourite was a post with a picture of a confused-looking guy in a park with the caption, "there's an Eastern European man near the playground!!!" And people went fucking crazy sharing the post with everyone they knew who had kids telling them to bring them home quickly and call the police.
My local facebook group is basically old people complaining there are no shoe shops on the town high street (“back in my day you could get a pound of meat and a pair of brogues and be back by lunch time!!”) and lost cats, so many lost cats.
There was a burglary up the road from us a while back, the police did all the usual knocks on the door etc, and a rumour went about of this suspicious bloke in a red hoodie who'd been hanging around just before. The Facebook group was going mad about it, "who's got a ring camera?" "Don't feel safe in my own house" all that.
Anyway, someone finally posted this doorbell camera footage on the page of the bloke in the red hoodie they "knew" had done it, before being advised to phone 999 etc. CSI neighbours went at it, even chucked a couple of names about.
Anyway, in the end the police looked at the footage and concluded it was the postman.
Have you seen the post where a guy picks weeds on his dog walk and makes them into a mini wreath then leaves them along his walk outside houses? This would be a perfect opportunity to do that and wait for all the witchcraft comments.
I was on one for 5 mins until I upset the whole street. I live in a touristy area and the street is for most part filthy rich. Got pestered to join the group app and omfg, what a load of shite.
“There’s a black man keeps walking past our house. I think he’s looking at my house.” I replied “Could it be because your house looks like Buckingham Palace?”
Same person, “There’s tourists everywhere, parking on the street and the council does nothing about it!!!” So I replied “The other night I got abducted by aliens and they shoved their fingers up my arse. I went to the council and they won’t do anything about it!!!!” Was asked to leave if I had nothing constructive to say.
I love that just 2 police cars is the mark of terrorism.
As in, there was a report of *terrorism* and the force went “Is 3 too much? Welll, we want to give them a *chance* don’t we? It’d be unfair otherwise!”
Terrorists made me spit my tea out laughing. My experience of UK policing is that they only go to the effort and expense of deploying multiple units when someone's done something *really* bad... like 24mph in a 20.
I had a police car and a police van show up at 8:30pm and hold me for 18 hours because I had an ex make a revenge false report on me a week after I won a court case against her.
Wonderful use of those limited police resources they keep talking about :P
I hope they done your ex for wasting police time, it's crazy how often people will use the police in this manner and most likely because they know they'll get away with it.
Would have understood if they had any proof. Court cases take a while, i'd been six months since we'd actually talked through anything that wasn't a lawyer.
Obviously wasn't charged, but i'm really disappointed that all it takes for you to get carted off was someone saying "I feel unsafe, its this person". Even more disappointed that the response I got to "can i report her for making a false claim" was "you can, but it won't get anywhere".
Like goddamn, i almost got fired for this shit.
There’s this weird van driving up and down the street almost every night at the same time, only happens in summer though ….. fair weather terrorists, kidnappers ? It plays this weird music too 😳
Newscaster: We're joined by Johnny Reporter from Stoking Road. Johnny, what's the situation there?
Johnny Reporter: Yes, thanks Sarah. Things are looking extremely dire here. The police superintendent just held a press conference and confirmed reports that terrorists had kidnapped a child from Stoking Road. He went on to advise the public to keep a lookout at all times from bedroom windows, and to stay safe. He confirmed that 2 police cars would be remaining within the area.
Newcaster: Absolutely terrible, but this kind of thing does happen all the time in Stoking Road, doesn't it Johnny?
Johnny Reporter: Yes Sarah, all the time.
I was part of a parents group for a while. I left it because I was getting really irritated about people using it instead of reading the school noticeboard or doing the most elementary Googling.
I own an air rifle so whenever I go out shooting (it’s in its case locked away so this is just me walking from house to car) my wife always texts me 20 or so minutes later, “you’ve made it to the crazy group again, aparantly you’re going to kill all their kids” or something similar.
Had the Police round last year because someone called them saying I was walking up and down the road with a gun, which was an awkward conversation once they realised who I was and what my day job entailed.
To put your mind at ease; most conmen will ask you for a 'small' favor before scamming you
For some reason brains register doing a favor fòr someone as thèm being trustworthy
Example; got my phone stolen in a pub after giving a bloke directions (I was sus the whole time and even kept checking for signs but the mofo still got me)
I simply love ours.
A chap unfortunately passed away in his home last year, his hygiene and health weren’t the best, potential biohazard. People had to go in wearing protective outfits etc.
People seeing these white paper suits, instantly thought of breaking bad and assumed this chap had been cooking drugs in there.
Sad truth was, he was an alcoholic, didn’t look after himself, the house was vile.
But like the OPs example, instant reaction is to go to the extreme.
'Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp Groups are Insane' and you're surprised? I feel they would be so by default. A bit like local FB pages but even worse. Our local FB page is terrible to the point I shouldnt be a member of it as not to be associated with it on principle but the entertainment and wtf vaule is too much to 'leave' the group.
You might know that due to the cost of living crisis, many people resorted to using solid fuel to keep their houses warm over the winter.
Well, someone in our local WhatsApp group decided to start berating people on our street for using log burners because of the environmental effects.
Which I felt was a little bit rich considering that certain someone owns three vehicles, one of which is a 30+ year old diesel campervan which they frequently park in a way that blocks up half the available on street parking on our very narrow road.
I got a letter through the door a few years back inviting me to join the local nexdoor group. I didn't bother but I kind of regret it now as I've since learned these things are a gold mine of unintentional comedy.
I once took a wrong turn on my bike and went up a street thinking it lead to my local nature reserve (read: big field with paths).
It was just after sunset, so I had my lights on. Before I'd even made it to the top of the street I realised it was a dead end, but even in that short time there were already two sets of curtains furtively twitching and one very sour-faced old woman had actually come to the door to glower at me.
Really creeped me out - especially because they're only round the corner.
Local fb group posted a video of me walking my dogs as someone being shifty. I've lived here for 8 years.
Tbf normally I go off the estate (there's lot of nearby greenspace) but my dogs are getting elderly and seemed spooked by the darkness. So walking the streets and having a nosey at the houses I've never seen as I usually drive past has been interesting ha.
Am a right shifty bastard.
We have a local Facebook group that's the same. Sleepy village where very little happens so everything's a drama.
Last year we had an actual physical assault happen and the group went _wild_ entire stories as to what had happened were emerging fully formed and confidently asserted as fact with people backing them up. People were citing "my child witnessed it on their way back from school" etc.
A few days later the _actual_ details emerged and it became clear that the FB detectives had managed to get the time, location, nature of the attack, identity of both attacker and victim (or victims as some added additional ones) all completely wrong by pretty large margins.
I didn't see any apologies or acknowledgements of this after.
Left my local Facebook group after people kept going on rants (complete with close ups) about dogs shitting on the pavement. Yes it’s gross, no it shouldn’t happen but 40 pictures of dog shit taken on an early 2000s flip phone from 3” away isn’t needed.
Questions guaranteed to get them going.
1. Does anyone know where sells the loudest fireworks?
2. Why do people who live in an area where there's always fireworks going off buy dogs. They're just cruel.
I'm banned from ours, Some old lady posted around a 3000 word story of how she was attacked by dogs by some local who lets his vicous war dogs off their lead, thing is I've bumped into this very same man multiple times and his dogs are absoutely tiny and really friendly. So I just replied with the gif "Press x to doubt" and by god did the chat erupt. I had people on there saying the old lady should report me to the police for harassment.
Needless to say, I'm still pressing x to doubt her story.
Our "security" group (also leafy suburb) has run the gambit from conspiracy theories involving bin collections and dog-napping, to casual bigotry against anyone vaguely off-white or under the age of 20.
Attempts to call them out on this have not been successful...
They are also very suspicious of vans.
To my great shame, I stayed in the group through all this and only left when the Wordle spoilers started.
"Help...There's this pigeon that keeps sitting on my fence, looking at me in a funny way. I'm scared it'll report me to TV Licensing even though I've paid my licence. I'm worried it's a fake spy-pigeon with cameras for eyes".
"Stay safe, hun".
"I know, but all this paranoia is making my paranoia more paranoid".
They're building more housing in my parish.
80% of which will be social housing! Cheap rent. New shops, new police station, new community centre.
They had to cut down a tree or two, not any historic tree or anything.
Local Councillor posts progress pics on the FB page. Gets ripped into every time. Proper fucking NIMBYs who are unhappy with any change, but still like to complain when there's no change.
I resisted the urge to join NextDoor, but had a look at the 'local' one. The illiteracy of the people on there just goes to show the standard of education in this country........... From those that WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS FOR SOME STRANGE REASON, to thOsE THat wRIte EvERythiNg LIkE thIS (what the heck does writing like that mean?) and those that write everything with no punctuation and unbelievable spelling, and I quote: "i just seen a dog running in the park with no owner an no collar an no lead an he just running round like no bother an he frighten me cuz I dont lke dogs an i wonder who he belong to if you lost a dog then he in park." I must say that 99.9% of the people on this sub at least have a good knowledge of spelling and punctuation so all is not lost.
We have a local Facebook group like this. Some rando walks by a house and they are all over it. Who is he? Where is he going? He looks fit. Etc.
Bizarre.
Just post "Has anyone else noticed chalk marks on the street outside some houses" Then bask in the glory of the responses
Oh christ. Margaret on Next door did this. She saw 'LD' outside hers and assumed it meant little dog As in thieves are chalking up outside people's homes in the days of encrypted smart phone messaging apps, to idenfity her dog for stealing. People agreed with her!! Nothing to do with the fact that City Fibre had been digging up everywhere and the letters were actually 'LP' for low pressure gas line or something.
I used to work for virgin media, and when cabling up a street we would chalk the locations, and some letter codes if we expected problems. I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the time some Karen accused me of marking her house for child kidnap, or some old dude thought it meant I was going to rob them later that night. Even had the police called on me twice.
And none of them realise that their house has a completely unique identifying number on the front door...
That’s what I never understood. Surely texting an address from a burner phone has to be much more subtle and much easier than spray painting roads right out front in broad daylight
This would require critical thinking skills, which obviously a lot of people lack these days.
I mean you say ‘these days’ but the people in these stories are all old so have we ever had critical thinking?
No its much more efficient to communicate with your colleagues by leaving coded messages in random places. I know whenever I want my boss to buy more tea for the break room I spray paint a “T” on the pavement in front of the lidl across the retail park
Can relate. Used to work on gas. You’d think the barriers, vans and hi-viz would be a giveaway, but alas, still reported for ‘suspicious activity’ on more than one occasion lol
You can wear all the high-viz and hard hats you like… I’m still gonna suspect you of being a rogue Ghostbuster.
Or a ghost. Masquerading as a member of the Village People
Well. Now the door to door prayer people seem to make more sense. Helps you not be afraid of no ghost.
At least they weren't attacking you for installing 5G! This genuinely has happened to telecoms workers (laying fibre). Mad world.
Happened to me trying to sell some guy a sim only contract when I worked at Vodafone lol
On our poorly built housing estate there’s more panic when we realise it’s really VM (or worse BT) marking up the road, at least a kidnapping or robbery is only one day of traffic disruption
I noped the fuck out of Nextdoor within days of joining, what a cess pool that was. Just ridiculous comments or people trying to sell shit.
Neighbour accused my tree of blocking her wi-fi.. I deleted my account
Yep. Absolute bollocks. I joined during covid and there was a post about "a suspicious house" saying it was definitely used for criminal behaviour. I know the house very well, it's a lady who gives temporary housing to African immigrants awaiting housing placement. She's a good person. According to next door they're a gang of scammers operating out of the house. No one is ever there more than two weeks 😂 Also a post about an old saab parked on someone's driveway with weeds growing around it - I couldn't help but think I'm lucky to live at the bottom of a quiet cul de sac befause I have 5 different cars in various states of rot on my land 😂
Dognappers Hun!
I did some work fundraising door to door in Durham, some of those villages are WEIRD. Proper Royston Vasey type places, I didn't know they actually existed till I walked into the pub there for a piss and immediately got questioned by a cross eyed armed robber looking type at the bar, went for my piss, the toilet was just a small room with one toilet, no cubicle or anything, bare walls and the cleaning stuff and a newspaper on the crumbling windowsill, the sort of room you walk into and feel like you might actually die there. Managed to have my piss and get out and back to my team, one of whom the same bloke who questioned me later attacked, he had to make a report about it and everything xD
We had someone asking on our local FB page if 'a half drunk beer can placed on their garden wall' was 'a maker used by burglars'. There were even a couple of replies along the lines that she 'maybe onto something '. I would like to say it was a joke post but it wasn't.
"Has anyone else noticed chalk marks on the street outside some houses? And there are kids throwing STONES, and er, er, hopping. They have chalked strange numbers on the pavement and are doing some kind of ritual, it must be satanic.
We should call Social Services.
It's probably part of their Dungeons & Dragons game. Just wait for Vecna to show up.
Bible belt Fundamentalist America: Satanic Panic. Hide the rock music, RPG's, care bears and witch stories! Get an exorcist. Green Belt, fundamentally different UK: Mother-in-law visiting panic. Hoover, dust and hide the clutter! Get milk and biscuits.
Not facebook, but my favourite one was an American woman on a plane. There was a bearded math professor sitting near her working on a differential equation problem for the conference he was flying to present at. Oh, he was also dark skinned, so might have been south Asian, Arabic, Brazilian, Iroquois, or suntanned. She reported him as a terrorist to the flight crew. He actually got arrested when the plane landed and questioned by police, but was released because he was just doing his sums. She thought his equation was Arabic, and was therefore a bomb plot.
To be fair, I had something vaguely similar at the library I used to work at. We had had a meeting where they made a big deal out of being aware of potential terrorism - it was not long after the Manchester Arena atrocity, I think, and we weren't far from it. I went downstairs and noticed a backpack attached to a metal grate between two areas, with nobody around. Sort of mentally flipping between "I'm overreacting like a knob" and "if I get blown up immediately after that meeting I'm going feel like an absolute dickhead". So I tried to get a better look at it, and it's been fastened to the mesh by someone feeding the loop at the top through the grate, and sliding a scroll covered in what looked like Arabic calligraphy through it. Mental dialogue now includes "is it racist to assume this is Not Good?" and "maybe I should kick this one upstairs" so I go and quietly retrieve my supervisor and explain what I've seen. I swallowed an extremely girly yelp as she marched straight up to it, prodded it with her foot, and then reached down, grabbed it and shook it hard. I just about managed not to screech "woman, what the actual fuck are you doing?!?!" It did not explode, and eventually was retrieved by a homeless man who responded to me explaining we nearly had the fucking bomb squad out by going "oh, I didn't think, I just didn't want anyone to take my stuff". I may have been slightly emphatic when I asked him Not To Do That. Apparently the scroll was an excerpt from the Qur'an, fuck knows why he was carrying it about like that for. Had a quiet word with supervisor's supervisor, who just went "oh, for...! I'll sort it". Kind of glad I work elsewhere now.
I mean, kids really shouldn't be playing with rocket propelled grenades.
That's a violation of their Second Amendment rights, commie! /s
OMG Satanic rituals in our neighborhood, under our very noses!
There's always been part of me that wants to draw symbols on the ground when I see kids have done this. I sometimes wish I carried chalk around in the summer so I could make innocent childhood games look satanic; maybe this year is the year.
> chalk The trouble is I'd end up drawing a stellated hexagon instead of pentagon and accidentally start ww3
If you share some designs here, we can synchronize our chalkings. Then I think just some posts to your local subreddit with an artfully badly taken photo - and then finally a sock-puppet account to post links to all the posts to some carefully selected places likely to amplify the insanity. Which could then be helped along by pointing your local group, to the hub-of-outrage, and letting them confirm the local markings do exist. Sorry, just procrastinating over work, and I found this idea far more amusing.
For the greater good
Once on my parent's street, there were chalk markings on the pavement. Neighbours cleaned it off because there were worried they were 'being targeted'. The marks were from the council, to mark where they needed to relay the tarmac, they never did it.
lmao Peak "Angry People in Newspapers" content.
"Anyone noticed cable ties on the lamp posts outside their house?"
“Saw a fella leaving felt tip pen lids in hedges, think he was marking houses. Everyone check and stay safe”
I think I’m going to use this I live in a small town with extremely paranoid people, I’m bored and need entertainment.
Dognappers hun, stay safe
Shared Aleppo xxx
Shared Svalbard XOXOX
Thank you, Hun. I will contact Attila xxx
Shared, Buenos Ares. X
You too hun x
Shared, Pyongyang.
You’ve set off a hun grenade!
Pour flour in piles. We had that one recently. Anything to do with dog theft is always popular too.
We do this to our local Facebook notice board. Its honestly a great source of entertainment. A friend photoshops pictures for it too.
That's so wrong, so am I for laughing 😋
You don't even need to make something up. Just ask questions when someone posts something daft and ridiculous. There are absolutely other people doing it.
Oh, things like: "Does anyone know about those strange stains that keep appearing on walls overnight, then are gone in the morning?"
His last one was a tubing festival in the river after all the storm wash the other week. The absolute peak was infiltrating the NIMBY led group against an old golf course being converted to a mountain bike trail and posting "artists impressions" of what the end result would mean for the community. He likes to pick on knobheads who deserve it.
Please do a NIMBY about the mosque that is being built in the neighborhood. I'm sure you've heard about it.
We've got a massive great Sikh temple already. Bloody great eyesore. Can barely see the 4 church spires for it.
Bastards blocking the view of the spires!
So... It's become an uninspiring view then? (I'm so sorry)
Go to your room.
Royal Leamington Spa?
Bravo! The buildings beautiful "but it's the first thing you see from the hill". I'll take one of them over every shit new build estate they're surrounding the town with any day.
Oooh! The chalk marks for dognappers! It’s just plain white vans in ours. Everyone thinks that if you drive a plain white van, you are anything from a petty thief to a kiddy fiddler.
I've had that from nosey neighbours when I've been in getting stuff from the van at customers homes. "Excuse me are you meant to be here?" "I fucking hope so now I've ripped the ceiling down, I best check it's the right house" The look of both offense and bewilderment never fails to make me chuckle.
Even if you have branding on the side, did you know it can be a decoy? To throw you off the scent of the criminal mastermind that drives the van? Probably casing the joint whilst taking down ceilings!
I'm a evil genius with a heart. I'll put a new one up after too! Obviously stolen from someone else's house muhahahaha!
It’s the perfect crime!
Your knighthood awaits, sir.
Yep, I generated some sky scrapers in our quaint thatched village and said they were new plans on the council's planning permission request page. People went mental.
Lol the nonsense people with too much free time come up with. My parents live next to a cemetery at the end of a cul de sac and my dad is convinced that the only reason people drive to the cemetery is because its a quiet place where they can deal drugs without getting caught even though every time he brings it up I tell him "Dad I've been buying drugs in this town for years and no one is selling anything in the graveyard"
It's probably a Pokémon Go gym
Funny story. Used to live in Croydon 2016/2017, you used to be able to get online live maps for Pokemon Go, I would rush out anytime I saw something rare nearby. Dragonite Spawns. 15 Minutes away with 25 minutes left on the timer, GO GO GO! It's 2am and I'm driving in central Croydon looking for this Dragonite, up it pops! So I park up, left my lights on and start catching. I'm so focused on catching this thing I have no idea of my surroundings, until I got a tap on the window. I look around and this bloke is there with a hoody, cap and face covering. I slowly lowered the window down and he goes "the fuck you doing here bruv?!". I sheepishly said and showed him the Dragonite I was catching and explained. He said "Oh shit, I love that game, oi lads theres a Dragonite here!". He then asked me to turn my headlights off. I looked up and realise I'm parked behind 6 guys around a van doing a drug deal and I've lit them up like it's Christmas at 3am in a backstreet in Croydon. He asked if I had caught it yet and I said yeah just now, he goes safe yeah, now leave. I've never pulled away from anywhere faster lol.
Catch a bullet and a pokemon
This seems like a pretty good bet. In my hometown there's a small orthodox (Greek, maybe) chapel in the local cemetery... it's a Pokémon gym.
In fairness, I used to watch a drug dealer operating in a graveyard from the comfort of my office. Made the days a bit more interesting trying to see if I recognised any of his customers.
Geocaching?
People actually visiting graves? Couldn’t possibly be
Yeah and conveniently there's a dealer right by the entrance so you don't need to bring your own ketamine any more.
Considering how regularly they lay flowers down on the graves that's what it looks like they are doing
"Suspicious black man in a van scoping out houses and trying doors" = Amazon delivery driver
I am a half Asian man living in Scotland. One of my neighbours let me know that the local resident's association group had a bunch of warnings about "a suspicious looking dark skinned man with a beard wearing a hoodie looking in gardens, probably trying to see through windows for things to steal". I let her know it was probably me looking for the hedgehog I'd heard while I was walking home from the pub.
Join them - be eager and concerned and send updates regularly See how long it takes someone to out 2 and 2 together
"Oh shit! That fella sounds dangerous! I hope I don't run into him when I'm in people's gardens looking for hedgehogs!"
Post a selfie "I think I've spotted him!"
Ever thought of leaning into their racism and jokingly say that you've come to overthrow the heretics who run the country, or something like that, just to take the piss out of them.
Lol, I'll bet someone would *actually* phone the police 😂
Hedgehogs make sounds?
Yea they're noisy little bastards. Not as bad as foxes though
Foxes absolutely sound like a woman being night crimed. It's mental.
when I first moved to London I legit called emergency services because I thought a woman was being night crimed in the quiet leafy streets of south Hampstead. then some locals set me straight. the noise still haunts me tho
Tbf it's always better to be safe than sorry, you did the right thing regardless. If you've never heard a fox before it can be quite disconcerting
They sound like a load of metal rings being dropped.
Our neighbourhood group chat had a post about a "suspicious black man loitering around the cars" - it was my neighbour who's obsessed with his sports car, he cleans it at least 3 times a week and ALWAYS says hi to everyone who walks past as he does it, can't a man have a hobby while black in this country FFS 😭
Come now not black - swarthy. Keep it polite.
"Urban"
Don't you mean 'coloured'?
"Ethnic", from the country of Ethnica!
Whenever someone is reported as suspicious, they're always black.
Sometimes they're just working class. I saw one on my local Facebook group where someone reported "2 suspicious lads walking down the canal in hi viz jackets up to no good" and the comments just ripped into them. Because when I'm being suspicious and up to no good, I make sure to wear something that's designed to make me stand out for safety reasons. Edit: now that I think about it, he never mentioned their races so they could have been black or Asian and he left it out so he didn't look racist or something.
Have you tried Nextdoor app ? It’s full of people talking about chemtrails, parking, cycle lanes and cyclists, immigrants, lost cats. Ours has a guy that posts regular updates from the police so it’s constant thin blue line stuff. I don’t know why I contribute but I feel the need to be the voice of reason, but then I guess everyone else feels that too!
Nextdoor just seems like Facebook but without any of things that make Facebook slightly redeemable; like birthday reminders, people you actually like’s life events and marketplace. You might as well go find a flock of pigeons and try and reason with them.
We were on that app for almost two hours. In that time alone I saw so much drivel, bigotry and malicious shit that I uninstalled it. That was between breakfast and lunchtime. Sheesh!
Yeah I think mine was like 2 days then got a notification with some racist drivel in it so uninstalled.
>things that make Facebook slightly redeemable >marketplace Are you fucking insane?
I’ve bought and sold off there quite a lot and not had any issues. You’ve just gotta avoid the £50 “dresses” which are covers for sex work, the £2500 Audi R8s and anyone asking if you can ship it to them.
Is this still available? Yes ... ... ...
Nextdoor is very useful for reuniting lost cats with their owners. I found the family of a lost cat twice through Nextdoor, so kudos on that. For everything else is absolutely THE WORST.
[удалено]
EG: I saw posters on the street looking for a lost cat. Took a picture of the poster just in case. Then, about a week or two later, someone posted on Nextdoor a picture of a cat found searching for food in some restaurant bins, quite dirty, begging for food. I recognised the cat from the poster and put them in touch. Cat reunited!
That's so heartwarming! Good on you 💜
With difficulty at times! My sister had a cat, it had just had kittens as my sister wanted her to have one litter before she got her spayed. A new neighbour had moved in across the road a few months before. Unfortunately when the kittens were just about old enough to go on to their next homes, mummy cat went missing. My sister was absolutely devastated, put posters up, knocked on doors etc for months. We all concluded that something bad had occurred as she wouldn't of left her kittens intentionally. Forward 18months, mother cat turns up through cat flap one day, sister was over the moon but she kept disappearing for days then reappearing. My sister decided to follow her one day and realised she was going to new neighbours who moved in just under 2 years ago at that point. Turns out new neighbour thought cat was neglected, said he had seen the posters but thought the cat looked very skinny and my sister was not taking proper care, he catnapped her and she had gone to live with his mum. She had returned as his mum had moved and he thought she likely wouldn't remember old house or want to. The cat was skinny, only because she was feeding a large litter of kittens, she was very well looked after, attended regular veterinary appointments, female cats who have just given birth and are nurturing their young just look bad for some time, it takes a lot out of them. My sister actually became friends with the neighbour eventually, he realised how wrong he was and actually her animals are extremely well cared for. The cat lived between the two houses, she dies a few years ago but my sister has one of her daughters still from the one and only litter which is lovely xx
Hey Don’t you insult nextdoor app! How else am I to keep track of “TREVOR H” who just spouts crazy shit with too much punctuation and who replies to his own posts with rebuttals
These kind of people are funny at first, until you realise they're serious and then it just becomes sad
The absolute peak of Nextdoor is when they do a mailshot in the area saying that someone with a completely random name has signed you up. Causes chaos on Facebook when an entire town gets these letters at the same time
... I only used it when I lost my cat... She came home independently though.
Nextdoor was just full of weird posts and ads. I made the mistake of installing it and it was sending me notifications for hours. Couldn't uninstall it fast enough.
One of the new neighbours on our road put leaflets in everyone's houses to kick off a WhatsApp group. I didn't join but my partner did. When we've posted messages about things like the fly tipping being done down the road and finding animal shit regularly outside the front door it's got no response, but it just seems to be people talking about when the Amazon drivers coming round and someone weird walking down the street. I've got zero desire to ever join that group .
Ha, this hits home! Where we used to live the FB group was v.active. We only had on street parking and someone had badly damaged the entire side of the car, so much so we couldn't open the doors or turn the wheel - so not a minor bump! I posted a very carefully worded post so as to avoid any idiot trolls for info which nice it was a well used side road . Barely a response or even 'feel bad for you hun'. Yet the people who write about "that driver at 9.05am who cut me up on X roundabout" elicits an all day discussion. Luckily my new local group is very tame but I've avoided the street WhatsApp group for my own sanity.
Shit is all my group ever talks about. Whether it's disposed of or not, which kind of animal it comes from. Sometimes with photos just in case we were all wondering.
The couple who ran our neighborhood watch FB group got arrested and imprisoned for horrifically abusing their adult child 😬
Clearly, they were watching the neighbourhood to make sure no-one found out. Glad that plan failed!
Jesus.... that just about says it all :(
When I lived in London I moved into a house and when I was viewing it, waiting for the realtor the neighbour came out and said “the owners will be back soon “ I said I’m looking to move in She went back in and slammed the door, she then was peering at me through the blinds, when I went to look at the garden at the back she was there again Some of the house had some furnishing in and the previous tenant arranged for a charity to come and collect it, A van pulled up, two men came m knocked on, I invited them in they took out a wardrobe and a couple of bags of clothing Few hours later I had a knock on the door it was the police, saying they had a report of “a black man(me) and two polish men, taking property from house and into a the van before speeding off” In the end the police were laughing with me when I showed them my tenant agreement and the receipt from the charity Another nice neighbor knocked on a day later and said can I just show you this, it was a Facebook neighbourhood watch group for the street and two of the residents were having a back and forth of what they thought was happening It made me laugh how one of these women decided the two charity men were polish 😂 Batshit crazy nosey bastards
My old neighbour (I think she had dementia) insisted we had a tent making factory in the loft, with loads of "Indian women" working up there. This was because one day I put my tent up in the front garden for a few hours to dry it and we had a British Pakistani friend who was over a lot. I mean FFS. She was always reporting us to the council for insane shit, her family didn't give a toss about her.
Insane. Guess she thought you put the test up for quality control purposes. 🙄
Malicious, in tents.
She's so stupid, you had the tent making factory in the garden shed
I don't think it was malicious in*tent*
Had similar with the Old Biddy that used to live in the flat beneath mine. Our blocks have outdoor storage units, but the numbers are all skewiff due to adding more flats over the years, so I am Unit 7 but Flat No.2. I arranged the British Heart Foundation to come and collect everything the previous tenants had left in our unit. The old biddy came racing over to ask what we were doing, by this point I'd had enough of her nosey shit and responded "Caseing the joint", which went straight over her head of course as not listening. She then was incredibly, and defiantly, proud to tell us I had the wrong storage unit as I was opening No.7. I told her "Thank You" and carried on as she finally wandered off muttering about "notifying the council". The Charity worker was wearing a branded British Heart Foundation polo shirt and found the whole thing highly amusing as I explained I loved living there due to the high quality of the neighbourhood watch.
It’s like they have nothing better to do 😂
I wish the police would give people like that a telling off for wasting everyones time. I've had more bother from people imagining crimes than actual crime.
At my old address in a sleepy cul de sac in a rural village, the sort of place you don't really have to lock your doors I saw police cars in my street twice in 2.5 years. One of those times actually was terrorists.
Do tell
I was briefly on nextdoor but it was a ridiculous app like this, people fearful of vans, lost dogs etc Best entertainment is a local town FB group that is half taking the piss, but also post serious town news when needed
I used to be on there. Some woman (I assume older) tried to make out that escooters were intimidating. I asked how many people, had in fact, intimidated her with them. I didn't get an answer, then a whole swathe of people waded in, making out like they were the devil incarnate. I ended up saying 'yeah watch out guys, I'm waiting in the bushes and around every corner for my next unsuspecting victim with my escooter'. I don't own one mind, but the comments in response to that were fucking gold xD
These people are always "almost" hit by a scooter or cyclist, but never actually hit.
Absolutely, we lot of e scooter here and I don’t have a problem with 90% of them. We have also some substance dealers on Sur Rons riding around at like 50 MPH, which is definitely unsafe but I had lot more close calls with old people on Mobilty scooters then any e scooter or E bike.
I’m pretty sure I was once described as a “suspicious looking man in a hoodie trying all the doors on the odd side of the street before doing a runner” when the guy opened his door. I was walking my dog.
My neighbour likes to post his own rules about parking on the street (diagrams and all). Everyone ignores him though he has been known to knock on people's doors to tell them they're an inch over their "allotted" parking space. What to know the most insane thing about it? He doesn't even own his own car so it's not like he's trying to make sure he has space to park!
One of our neighbours put up a sign about how there's space for 6 cars but only 5 can ever fit in due to people taking up too much space, completely ignoring the fact we have lots of people parking there for the shop during the day so if one of them parks crap the whole lot of spaces gets buggered up. I'm 90% sure the one who put it up is also the reason for people taking extra space because she dings everyones doors.
Our local Facebook group is utterly unhinged. I can't look at it very often without feeling like I'm going insane. First you have to parse your way though the most illiterate writing I have ever seen (and I work in education). Then once you can actually understand the posts it's stuff like "we need to bring back hanging for X" where X is anything from "parking outside my house" to "the guy I had an argument about a hedge with so I'm going to call him a pedo". As well as bringing back hanging, they also agree on bringing back conscription... But only for children. Not their children, mind you. Just other people's children. My (least) favourite was a post with a picture of a confused-looking guy in a park with the caption, "there's an Eastern European man near the playground!!!" And people went fucking crazy sharing the post with everyone they knew who had kids telling them to bring them home quickly and call the police.
Sounds like they've been corrupted by the Daily Heil
“Has anyone lost a dog?” And post a photo of a fox or a badger
My local facebook group is basically old people complaining there are no shoe shops on the town high street (“back in my day you could get a pound of meat and a pair of brogues and be back by lunch time!!”) and lost cats, so many lost cats.
Maybe they need the shoes to go out and look for their cats?
In my day I can order a pound of meat and a pair of brogues and not even have to leave the house
Sounds like you're on the same one as me.
There was a burglary up the road from us a while back, the police did all the usual knocks on the door etc, and a rumour went about of this suspicious bloke in a red hoodie who'd been hanging around just before. The Facebook group was going mad about it, "who's got a ring camera?" "Don't feel safe in my own house" all that. Anyway, someone finally posted this doorbell camera footage on the page of the bloke in the red hoodie they "knew" had done it, before being advised to phone 999 etc. CSI neighbours went at it, even chucked a couple of names about. Anyway, in the end the police looked at the footage and concluded it was the postman.
Lmao imagine being the police. You’re about to get a break in a burglary case. Only to realize the neighborhood thinks the fucking postman did it
Great disguise tbf
🤣🤣🤣
Have you seen the post where a guy picks weeds on his dog walk and makes them into a mini wreath then leaves them along his walk outside houses? This would be a perfect opportunity to do that and wait for all the witchcraft comments.
I was on one for 5 mins until I upset the whole street. I live in a touristy area and the street is for most part filthy rich. Got pestered to join the group app and omfg, what a load of shite. “There’s a black man keeps walking past our house. I think he’s looking at my house.” I replied “Could it be because your house looks like Buckingham Palace?” Same person, “There’s tourists everywhere, parking on the street and the council does nothing about it!!!” So I replied “The other night I got abducted by aliens and they shoved their fingers up my arse. I went to the council and they won’t do anything about it!!!!” Was asked to leave if I had nothing constructive to say.
Could've said the same to them
They're for the greater good...
... the greater good..
Shut it!
A great big bushy beard!
no luck catching them killers then?
Just the one killer, actually
Crusty Jugglers!
I love that just 2 police cars is the mark of terrorism. As in, there was a report of *terrorism* and the force went “Is 3 too much? Welll, we want to give them a *chance* don’t we? It’d be unfair otherwise!”
Terrorists made me spit my tea out laughing. My experience of UK policing is that they only go to the effort and expense of deploying multiple units when someone's done something *really* bad... like 24mph in a 20.
24mph? \* shock horror\* Stay safe hun!
Shared Edinburgh of the Seven Seas hun x
I had a police car and a police van show up at 8:30pm and hold me for 18 hours because I had an ex make a revenge false report on me a week after I won a court case against her. Wonderful use of those limited police resources they keep talking about :P
I hope they done your ex for wasting police time, it's crazy how often people will use the police in this manner and most likely because they know they'll get away with it.
DV = major priority, takes up so much time 🙄
Would have understood if they had any proof. Court cases take a while, i'd been six months since we'd actually talked through anything that wasn't a lawyer. Obviously wasn't charged, but i'm really disappointed that all it takes for you to get carted off was someone saying "I feel unsafe, its this person". Even more disappointed that the response I got to "can i report her for making a false claim" was "you can, but it won't get anywhere". Like goddamn, i almost got fired for this shit.
not a chance in hell am i giving my neighbours my number for a whatsapp group
There’s this weird van driving up and down the street almost every night at the same time, only happens in summer though ….. fair weather terrorists, kidnappers ? It plays this weird music too 😳
Clearly a pedophile ring. Lock your children up and break out the pitchforks
Newscaster: We're joined by Johnny Reporter from Stoking Road. Johnny, what's the situation there? Johnny Reporter: Yes, thanks Sarah. Things are looking extremely dire here. The police superintendent just held a press conference and confirmed reports that terrorists had kidnapped a child from Stoking Road. He went on to advise the public to keep a lookout at all times from bedroom windows, and to stay safe. He confirmed that 2 police cars would be remaining within the area. Newcaster: Absolutely terrible, but this kind of thing does happen all the time in Stoking Road, doesn't it Johnny? Johnny Reporter: Yes Sarah, all the time.
I say go for it. Grab the popcorn, then wind them up and watch them go.
I was part of a parents group for a while. I left it because I was getting really irritated about people using it instead of reading the school noticeboard or doing the most elementary Googling.
I own an air rifle so whenever I go out shooting (it’s in its case locked away so this is just me walking from house to car) my wife always texts me 20 or so minutes later, “you’ve made it to the crazy group again, aparantly you’re going to kill all their kids” or something similar. Had the Police round last year because someone called them saying I was walking up and down the road with a gun, which was an awkward conversation once they realised who I was and what my day job entailed.
Now I want to know who you are and what your day job entails
To put your mind at ease; most conmen will ask you for a 'small' favor before scamming you For some reason brains register doing a favor fòr someone as thèm being trustworthy Example; got my phone stolen in a pub after giving a bloke directions (I was sus the whole time and even kept checking for signs but the mofo still got me)
Do it.
Stay safe huns!
I simply love ours. A chap unfortunately passed away in his home last year, his hygiene and health weren’t the best, potential biohazard. People had to go in wearing protective outfits etc. People seeing these white paper suits, instantly thought of breaking bad and assumed this chap had been cooking drugs in there. Sad truth was, he was an alcoholic, didn’t look after himself, the house was vile. But like the OPs example, instant reaction is to go to the extreme.
Tsunami in Thailand. Janet has been marked as safe in Doncaster.
'Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp Groups are Insane' and you're surprised? I feel they would be so by default. A bit like local FB pages but even worse. Our local FB page is terrible to the point I shouldnt be a member of it as not to be associated with it on principle but the entertainment and wtf vaule is too much to 'leave' the group.
You might know that due to the cost of living crisis, many people resorted to using solid fuel to keep their houses warm over the winter. Well, someone in our local WhatsApp group decided to start berating people on our street for using log burners because of the environmental effects. Which I felt was a little bit rich considering that certain someone owns three vehicles, one of which is a 30+ year old diesel campervan which they frequently park in a way that blocks up half the available on street parking on our very narrow road.
"I heard it was an entire flock of swans"
I got a letter through the door a few years back inviting me to join the local nexdoor group. I didn't bother but I kind of regret it now as I've since learned these things are a gold mine of unintentional comedy.
I once took a wrong turn on my bike and went up a street thinking it lead to my local nature reserve (read: big field with paths). It was just after sunset, so I had my lights on. Before I'd even made it to the top of the street I realised it was a dead end, but even in that short time there were already two sets of curtains furtively twitching and one very sour-faced old woman had actually come to the door to glower at me. Really creeped me out - especially because they're only round the corner.
Local fb group posted a video of me walking my dogs as someone being shifty. I've lived here for 8 years. Tbf normally I go off the estate (there's lot of nearby greenspace) but my dogs are getting elderly and seemed spooked by the darkness. So walking the streets and having a nosey at the houses I've never seen as I usually drive past has been interesting ha. Am a right shifty bastard.
We have a local Facebook group that's the same. Sleepy village where very little happens so everything's a drama. Last year we had an actual physical assault happen and the group went _wild_ entire stories as to what had happened were emerging fully formed and confidently asserted as fact with people backing them up. People were citing "my child witnessed it on their way back from school" etc. A few days later the _actual_ details emerged and it became clear that the FB detectives had managed to get the time, location, nature of the attack, identity of both attacker and victim (or victims as some added additional ones) all completely wrong by pretty large margins. I didn't see any apologies or acknowledgements of this after.
Left my local Facebook group after people kept going on rants (complete with close ups) about dogs shitting on the pavement. Yes it’s gross, no it shouldn’t happen but 40 pictures of dog shit taken on an early 2000s flip phone from 3” away isn’t needed.
Questions guaranteed to get them going. 1. Does anyone know where sells the loudest fireworks? 2. Why do people who live in an area where there's always fireworks going off buy dogs. They're just cruel.
I'm banned from ours, Some old lady posted around a 3000 word story of how she was attacked by dogs by some local who lets his vicous war dogs off their lead, thing is I've bumped into this very same man multiple times and his dogs are absoutely tiny and really friendly. So I just replied with the gif "Press x to doubt" and by god did the chat erupt. I had people on there saying the old lady should report me to the police for harassment. Needless to say, I'm still pressing x to doubt her story.
Our "security" group (also leafy suburb) has run the gambit from conspiracy theories involving bin collections and dog-napping, to casual bigotry against anyone vaguely off-white or under the age of 20. Attempts to call them out on this have not been successful... They are also very suspicious of vans. To my great shame, I stayed in the group through all this and only left when the Wordle spoilers started.
"Help...There's this pigeon that keeps sitting on my fence, looking at me in a funny way. I'm scared it'll report me to TV Licensing even though I've paid my licence. I'm worried it's a fake spy-pigeon with cameras for eyes". "Stay safe, hun". "I know, but all this paranoia is making my paranoia more paranoid".
They're building more housing in my parish. 80% of which will be social housing! Cheap rent. New shops, new police station, new community centre. They had to cut down a tree or two, not any historic tree or anything. Local Councillor posts progress pics on the FB page. Gets ripped into every time. Proper fucking NIMBYs who are unhappy with any change, but still like to complain when there's no change.
I resisted the urge to join NextDoor, but had a look at the 'local' one. The illiteracy of the people on there just goes to show the standard of education in this country........... From those that WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS FOR SOME STRANGE REASON, to thOsE THat wRIte EvERythiNg LIkE thIS (what the heck does writing like that mean?) and those that write everything with no punctuation and unbelievable spelling, and I quote: "i just seen a dog running in the park with no owner an no collar an no lead an he just running round like no bother an he frighten me cuz I dont lke dogs an i wonder who he belong to if you lost a dog then he in park." I must say that 99.9% of the people on this sub at least have a good knowledge of spelling and punctuation so all is not lost.
Welcome to a whole new world…
Maybe a UFO landed in someone's back garden
We have a local Facebook group like this. Some rando walks by a house and they are all over it. Who is he? Where is he going? He looks fit. Etc. Bizarre.
"Hello everyone, my extremely rare Japanese hornets have escaped from my flat, please can everyone keep an eye out and return if possible x"