"Watch out everybody, a white van was spotted in such and such street" and other such pointless panic-mongery

[ImNotACat]

AIBU to be totally fucking sick of the "warnings" on local social media about absolutely bloody nothing?

Yeah, you saw a white van. OMFG the driver got out and left something on a doorstep then took a photo Perhaps he's a delivery driver you thick drama llama.

And what? An Asian woman with glasses was taking photos of an empty house on your street?? Quick, log it with the police. She must be up to something. Or maybe, just maybe, she's a fucking estate agent?

A car drove slowly past as you walked your dog? Yes, BECAUSE ITS POURING and the driver was probs trying to avoid soaking you as they went through puddles.

A van was seen driving very slowly round Labyrinth Close with 2 men in the front peering at the front doors 😱 That would be because the numbers are arranged in some bizarre configuration that makes no sense and it's basically impossible to find your way around if you haven't been before. Every time I have to drop something off to that estate (I do local deliveries for work sometimes) I expect to see a post about a badly dressed woman driving a rustbucket and staring into people's gardens 🤣

I mean I know IABU to care about Facebook really but it's infuriating watching people getting so worked up about fuck all.

@AnneWeber

Our local police force have complained more than once on fb about people who report crimes or suspicious activity on local fb pages without bothering to tell the police. One time someone Facebooked about a vehicle crime and the police said "We were actually patrolling that area at the time and could have followed up if anyone had bothered to report it to us instead of just facebooking about it"

This statement stands out to me. I’m on our local fb group but only as a spectator, it’s full of nonsense like above people complaining about fireworks on 5th November etc. I have however reported a car to the police that had men come out and look under the neighbours car (catalytic convertor crime is an issue here). It didn’t occur to me to post on the Facebook page, although it may have led to the locals updating the police as to the cars whereabouts.

out put

08:16Thewinterofdiscontent. This was Tandridge beat in Surrey. I'm not sure if I remember the dog theft one

@AnneWeber - not the same but in the SE. The poor Police PR guy spent ages replying to people about what constituted their “patch” too. They were getting grief for not sorting dog theft 30 miles away in a different county different council.
People are loons.

@smidgenofaPigeon the 'what time does the post office open' is driving me insane!
People post it on my local page at least several time a day that even i know the hours inside out as they are etched into my brain. I'm tempted to make flyers or fashion myself a homemade billboard to wear with the post office hours in hope that it might stop one more person posting the same question

We had someone post recently that their take-away had been delivered to the wrong address and chastising whoever had accepted it. Completely understandable that the people who’d ordered and paid were angry at not getting their meal. However, the responses were completely ridiculous and increasingly aggressive, wishing truly horrible things on the person who’d accepted the meal, ignoring the occasional posters who pointed out that it was entirely possible that the food was accepted in error or was simply sitting on someone’s garden path completely unnoticed.

It was eye opening to see just how aggressive people in this town can get about something so minor and in no way affecting them. There was a real mob-mentality to it, with each post more unpleasant than the last. All over someone else’s dinner!

Ex DP was foreign, scruffy and drove a white transit. He was accused of EVERYTHING from dog napping to burglary.

@SteveBrexit

YABU

the number of burglaries are absolutely rocketing
tradesmen vans broken into and all their tools stolen - day as often as nights!

catalytic converters - so bad that even the local police is sending warning and free marking kits

dogs stolen right left and centre - next to no consequence for the thief anyway

I'd rather leave in a neighbourhood where people care and are vigilant than a place where my car or house alarm ringing would be completely ignored.

These "dodgy" vans reports have been proven to be quite on point many times.

You must live near me!

I am fortunate not to own a car the cat can be take off easily, but neighbours have had theirs taken, sometimes twice in quick succession.

And van and shed robberies are ludicrously common.

*19:57InconvenientPeg

We have 2 warring local Facebook groups.

One is run by a militant ex pat who impose 9billion rules and hasn't lived in the area for years!

The other is run by the people he threw out in his first cull 😂*

We have this too, the original is run by a middle aged Tory bloke and the spinoff by a trans rights liberal. The sniping about "that other group" is hilarious and constant!

Once on our street Facebook page there was a complaint about someone drilling in their shed too early in the morning (it was DH ). I apologised profusely and it was all sorted until the street gossip had to get involved, posting a hmmm face GIF in reply to my apology. As she lives on the other side of the road at the far end there's no way she heard him, so rather than get in a row I thought it would be fun to post increasingly ridiculous unicorn GIFs every time she said anything. I was ever so disappointed when admin deleted the whole thing.

Our one has lots of "xyz for sale collection only" type posts, fairly standard you'd think, except they are invariably located in the US and we are a small village in England

And a village down the road, where one woman sees the fb group as her own personal page to post all the exploits of her horse, complete with hour long go pro video footage of their rides and daily photos of her kissing his nose. Plus suitably irate descriptions of any car which dares to drive past her.

Ours is also the same, with lots of veiled racism, comments about 'the good old days' when children were made to eat what was given them, got a good smack from any passing adult (eg park-keepers/other 'authority' figures), and could play with unexploded bombs etc. Today's generation are either snowflakes or drugged up youths apparently.
According to them, the UK is full of 'illegals' who are living the life of riley at the taxpayers' expense, and all people need to do to be able to afford a house is stop eating avocados.
They are also obsessed with any blue light activity or the sound of a helicopter.

I wont diss the van spotting as our town had a lot of reports a while back about a man in a van and he was actually guilty of trying to abduct young teenage girls. Caught out by the local FB page and a load of Ring doorbells it seems.

But on our local FB page the main obsessions are why the police might be at a certain house, and parking. Pictures of peoples parking. At least 2 a day. Daren't park outside the lines in Tesco car park, or park outside one particular old ladies house on the main road near town (even tho its free parking) for fear that mine may end up on there one day!

@GalesThisMorning

We had one recently where 2 "Muslim" men stopped outside of the playing field in my rural Welsh village and approached a woman with her child. She naturally (?) ran away and they stayed where they were standing.

This led to people declaring that there were Muslim men wandering around the village looking to nab children. People on our local Facebook page were going out looking for... brown men in a white van, apparently.

As a long time resident of the village and the mother of brown sons it really upset me.

This has made my heart go into my stomach! People are crap!

I bet your sons are beautiful ♡

My bf is black and the other night he was talking to me on the phone on his way into work. He suddenly said oh I just need to cross the road away from this guy. I immediately assumed he was I'm danger and asked if he was ok. He said yeah I'm fine, it's just there's a white guy walking in front of me and he keeps looking back so I'd better just cross the road so he feels more comfortable :-(

As a white woman dating a black man this made me feel sad. He's lovely.

We went to get takeaway the other night and the woman serving in there glanced up at him and then turned away and ignored him. As he stood there I saw a white guy walk in. She glanced up, saw him and began serving him. My bf walked out and got back in the car with me. He said you can go and try and get served if you like. I said no way, either she serves you or we go somewhere else. We went elsewhere.

Thing is my bf generally says he does not experience discrimination. He says most of the time people are decent and have no issue with him, but just sometimes people are idiots.

Ugh.

My heart feels sore. He is such a lovely man.

Their loss.

We had a good one.

Lots of posts about some kind of paint mark and people stealing dogs.
The police commented to say there was no truth in this and the paint was because of something else 🤣

I can’t see the issue with this. Surely if it prevents a dog theft (which are massively on the increase) or in my case last week stopped the, yes Eastern European men in a white van from rifling around our garden for metal whilst we have a load of building materials around due to halted building work its a good thing?

SpnBaby1967
We had this yesterday only there were 4 men in high viz walking around , we received this from our neighbourhood watch :
One of our neighbours has just emailed to say that 4 men in Hi-Viz jackets are walking around and went onto his property.
When challenged they said they were working for BT.
He’s reporting to the Police on 101.
If you spot them please report on 101 as well.

Surprise surprise, they were from BT

Local fb page warned of two men with a laptop who had managed to clone and steal 2 new cars in my immediate neighbourhood. Makes sense to warn others this is happening 🙄

@TheVelvetiser

I've lived on the same road for about 10 years, as have most of my neighbours. Last summer I got stung on my eyelid, it turned nasty and I had to wear a patch for a few days. I was reported on our local FB group as -'a strange woman,with a patch, peering at houses and looking suspicious' - later reports gave me a limp

Ahahaha! Brilliant. Later stories had you carrying a parrot and singing sea shanties?

And of course umpteen cats and dogs reunited with their owners

@Keratinsmooth

I can’t see the issue with this. Surely if it prevents a dog theft (which are massively on the increase) or in my case last week stopped the, yes Eastern European men in a white van from rifling around our garden for metal whilst we have a load of building materials around due to halted building work its a good thing?

Are you the topic/victim of these posts?

Being the victim of local racists gossips is bad enough, but when those racists decide they need to make posts about you on the internet it is extremely frustrating, especially as their behaviour doesn’t have any consequences. Is your existence considered suspicious?

This thread is so funny!

I especially love @SimonJT "I was the suspicious man" 🤣🤣 fancy, a male on the school run! Tsk.

There's a bit of vigilante justice going on on my old home town's spotted page at the moment. A bunch of teenagers are trying car door handles - which is bad of course. Someone posted CCTV. Another person has commented "comment on this post and I'll tell you one of the names of the little bastards trying car doors maybe we can give him a scare". And LOADS of people have commented "PM me". FFS how is that helpful?! If you know a name call the police, but dozens of rabid toothless freaks descending on a young boy who may or may not have even been doing anything wrong (only one lad on the CCTV has actually trying door handles) is just stupid

Oh and people taking it upon themselves to share "this PEDO is living on Crook Street watch out for your kids" or sharing a missing person plea that isn't from the police. I've often commented on both saying don't trust non-police sources and for good reason and been called and accused of all sorts including being in cahoots with said 'pedo'

There is so much crap about parking on ours...we’re near a major hospital and the council have given NHS staff parking permits, meaning they can park on nearby streets too. This hasn’t gone down well with all the people who seem to think they own the space outside their house. There are so many threads on this it’s ridiculous.

Just had a look on my local one - someone kicking off a out the local Tandoori as they didn't deliver their curry, £30 down the drain, diSGracEfUl.

It turns out they supplied the wrong address and no phone number. And didn't ring the Tandoori, just went to Facebook.

Lots of these are completely ott, but last week these posts did lead to the locating and arresting of a couple of white van men who had been targeting the local villages and farms, so sometimes they serve a purpose.