The black hole that is NextDoor
A local ICE raid once again brings out the worst of humanity. In my neighborhood in Silicon Valley. Same as it ever was.
Yesterday, my wife told me that on NextDoor (ND) that a local raid (at a pizza joint less than a mile from my house) the ICE clowns were camped out back waiting for the shift change (4:00PM or so).
Naturally, she read the comments on this post, and it highlighted all the reasons that caused me to flee the platform after I was on it for about 4 months (circa 2015 when we moved in to our house).
As in, it was a flood of racist fuck-wits who have Christian quips in their bios, yet instead of turning the other cheek, they delight in the misery of the people who clean their houses, pick their produce, make their pizzas (and indeed almost all your restaurant meals) and basically anyone who is brown or black.
Alas, I am not surprised, and I am reminded that all Social Media will eventually revert to the worst fucking take on any current event1.
NextDoor, the “local” social media property is a noble attempt to drive and foster a more connected to communities, and to help find common ground.
A good theory, but in reality, it is filled with outright racist posts. A black kid is walking down a side street, and you will find a series of posts about a “sketchy” individual casing houses (reality: he was walking to school), people reporting some cagey car full of hispanics who drive slowly around the neighborhood (they are landscapers, and they drive between their work sites at or below the speed limit because they have well used trucks, and enough stuff in the back that they don’t want it to fall out.
Or, an Indian family moves into a house, and there is a lot of discussions about how that is poisoning the neighborhood (this was two doors down from me, and people are posting this WHILE THE NEW FAMILY was on ND watching all their neighbors bash them publicly.)
The brief glance at my wife’s feed about the ICE raid gave me PTSD, and reinforced my opinion that NextDoor is still the fucking worst.
When I was in grade school, all my teachers had a mission to teach us to write themes on current events. At the time I thought it was the worst, but now in my 7th decade on this astral plane, I harken back to this as I am a voracious reader of the news covering a lot of areas that are not necessarily related.
