Anyone else have a neighbour that monitors everyone?

[Popcorntimewatchingdrama]

So, we finally moved into the new estate have been there for a year. Everyone’s settling in, the vibes are great, and life is pretty mundane… except for our self-appointed “Sheriff of the Estate”. She’s always been pretty active on the WA group, god forbid a bin isn’t emptied on time or something or a dog wees on a lamppost nothing to do with us. We try to live and let live but be really respectful of others.

Apparently, we have a neighbour who has decided—unprompted and unpaid—to be the CEO of her own Neighbour Watch. She’s out there recording cinematic masterpieces of everyone arriving and leaving the estate, we’ve only just found this out.

Things hit a fever pitch this week while we were (thankfully) away. Now, keep in mind: we all have massive drives (2–3 cars easily), wide roads, and plenty of visitor bays. But someone dared to park on the street opposite our house for—wait for it—3 hours and 16 minutes. Absolutely nothing to do with us- our adult and quiet children said our drive wasn’t blocked or hers or anything.

Cue the frantic texts to us. She sent us the “surveillance footage,” mentioned she knew we were on holiday because she watched us pack our rucksacks on Saturday morning (not creepy at all!), and demanded to know whose car it was and exactly when we’d be back.

My husband, bless him, replied: “Not our car. or anything to do with us or our family. Was it blocking you?”
Her response? “No, but I need to know who it belongs to because I’m doing Neighbor Watch for everyone!” 🫡 (News to us... we never signed up for the Premium Stalker Package).
When he asked why it mattered how long we were away & if the house was fine, she hit us with the fact she keeps logs of people coming and going for ‘security’. We have a zero crime rate locally as far as I can see. DH seems to think it might be illegal to record people arriving and leaving their homes / her house the first one into the estate so you have to drive by hers. We are next.

She then took her investigation to the local WhatsApp group, and let’s just say the neighbours haven’t received it well. It’s currently a digital riot of “How dare you film us?” and “This is actual stalking.” 🍿it has properly kicked off and I can see why. We haven’t replied or got involved.

We’re just sitting here on holiday, rucksacks and all, watching the drama unfold from a safe distance we are a 5 hour flight away. Does anyone else have a neighbour who thinks they’re the lead character in CSI: The new estate or is it just us? 😂

We don’t dislike them but I’m sure as hell not telling them my movements or where I am / be back. In an emergency yes but it’s not.

No thankfully everyone seems normal in our cul de sac.

The OP was 100% written by ChatGPT - the ‘tells’ are the extended hyphens and double quotation marks.

Yep
Have neighbours like this.
She looks through her binoclaurs at everyone

I showed her my boobs and i havent caught her looking since
My name wasnt on the Xmas card this year, think i offended her 🤣

Really? I often use double inverted commas and since I'm using a Macbook rather than a typewriter, I sometimes use proper dashes instead of "space-hyphen-space". It's nothing to do with ChatGPT and everything to do with having read "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" about 30 yrs ago. The same author wrote "The PC is Not a Typewriter".

I'm not as fussy about it as I used to be since I retired, I'll admit, but I used to use the appropriate em dash or en dash when I was still writing worksheets for school—it's just a case of holding down the shift key and alt key at the same time as the hypen, so far as the em dash is concerned.

www.amazon.com/PC-Not-Typewriter-Creating-Professional-Level/dp/0938151495

Agree @WearyAuldWumman.

I went back to look at op post. I love double quotation marks …also dots…… not much of a dash user but I do like a //. I fear
someone will accuse me of using AI and some unknown poster will say…oh that’s just lavenderbrown she’s been posting like that for years.

And as always….if you don’t like the post go read another one! You are not the post police and no one is forcing you to read it.

I admit to liking my dots, @Lavenderandbrown. I freely admit to overusing them...

When I was teaching, I dutifully cut them to an ellipsis with three dots, but now that I'm no longer in the classroom I'm free..........

The estate I live on is pretty diverse. Two distinct ethnic groups (who dont usually interact with one another) abd a few other European families. None of them have my phone number and none of them know my name - unless they are psychic. I had one bad neighbour who thought she was the queen bee and told me I was "only a tenant" (I was renting the house at that time.) I told her to eff off and she never spoke to me again.She has now developed demantia and moved in with relatives. The house has been empty for 2 years. Just how I like it.

I have cctv and a ring doorbell but I dont use it to watch my neighbours - more to monitor whose at my front door so I can ignore them if they dont have an appointment.

M dashes and double quotation marks are used by many of us and don't determine whether something was written by AI or not.

Hehehe, that's me and my next door neighbour! We sit on our adjoining wall and chat and comment on everyone else 😆 It's great fun!

We have a neighbour like this. She also set up a Neighbourhood Watch and dispensed stickers that nobody has displayed in their windows except for her. We call her “Spielberg” because she stands in her bedroom window and films everything on her phone.

She goes absolutely mental if anybody parks outside her house, she thinks she owns the road; she parks her own car outside our house. She has caused so many parking wars with visitors despite having a massive 3 car drive that she never uses.

You definitely have. Why lie about it?

ChatGPT tends to avoid ellipsis. The em-dashes are the real giveaway, as they’re everywhere nowadays (due to AI) whereas lots of people don’t know to use shift-alt-hyphen (this is quite arcane knowledge!).

What a weird thing to argue with a stranger about.

Love a random detail of a thread. Forget the batshit neighbour, the real issue is whether OP used AI. 😂

Also agree. Have to train myself out of using ellipses in my PhD (creative writing, as you know) as publishers hate them, so use them liberally and gratuitously in informal writing and texts. But I am a big user of em-dashes in my writing, though. Brackets are very out of vogue in fiction and, whereas indicating clauses via commas is often sufficient, using em-dashes often change the tone or give more emphasis. I use them all the time.

I hope no-one would read my writing and think it was ChatGTP generated…

They aren't doing it because they are bored, theyre doing it because that's what interests them, its the very opposite of them having nothing else to do

I used to have neighbours like that, not quite as bad but with zero self awareness as they used to say they were happy to live and let live but then complained about where people put their bins or revved their cars too early in the morning

I was not sad to move away

She sounds like she has mental health problems.

I don't think you can stop her from doing what she's doing but if you de-platform her, she'll lose the sense of importance and gravitas it obviously gives her.

I'd suggest politely saying you won't engage in discussions like this on WhatsApp and blocking her from your and your husband's phones, and whoever is the admin of your road WhatsApp doing the same, giving a warning that it makes people feel uncomfortable and she'll be removed if it continues.

Healthy boundaries.

I love an em dash and they are all over my PhD thesis too, thankfully I graduated years before AI because I would have hated having to change my writing style to avoid being accused of using AI. And don’t get me started on ellipses…

Some of us actually like to use our brains and enjoy reading/writing things longer than two sentences with a funny story in them... sad for you if you dont tbh, but no need to be rude to the OP

How would I know? I've lived in the same house for 30+ years, but don't know any neighbours' phone numbers (nor they mine). If there's a WhatsApp group, I'm not in it, nor Neighbourhood Watch. Don't be so free with your personal details! I know it's too late, but just mute/delete the WA group and block the annoying neighbour.

Has she put on the whatsapp that you're away? If so the biggest security risk is her letting all and sundry know that your house is currenlty sat empty!

Could it be the Twitter generation? If it's longer than 300 characters they can't absorb it?

Also, that's a phrase from the past @BillStickersWillBeProsocuted
Although I mis-read it as BillStickersWillBeProseccocuted first.

My publisher is thankfully very forgiving of my desire to use an em-dash and ellipses almost constantly. They haven't yet accused of of using ChatGPT or any other AI system but that could be because I am so vitriolically opposed to AI that I might combust.

I think its just a certain people thing - i meet plenty of people at work of all ages who cannot absorb information if its in longer than 3 paragraphs. I would make a note here about different processing speeds, dyslexia etc but given we pay for AI that could put it into a suitable format for you (one of the perks of AI!) And its literally a person's job and they are not long paragraphs....