"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.

Our local Facebook group is quite nice actually. They used to have a political day every week where you could post on politics but that went out of control so they stopped it.

Politics*

Our village FB group members are obsessed with two things: 1) groups of teenagers hanging out at the park (pre covid!) and 2) Dog shit!

At the moment nearly every post is about someone not putting dog shit in the bins at the park, or descriptions of people who put dog shit in the normal bins and not the dog bins. I thought the village group would implode once when someone's dog had pooed on the pavement near the school.

Love this, our Nextdoor has the "planning police" with big alerts for everyone to oppose some random field have two new homes. God forbid they knock down a manky 1940s bungalow and build something liveable.. it's just a bunch of older men who are self important twits..

The posts I hate are ones that say "this person just insulted an old lady/mocked a person with learning difficulties/kicked a puppy etc... let's share their picture all over Facebook and shame them." And people just blindly do it! There's never any proof, it's just a photo of someone.

I reported some 'suspicious activity' (blatant drug dealing) to the police once who came out and dealt with it. I didn't realise I should have posted photos all over fb for my neighbours to froth over and accuse them of being forrin. Shame on me.

We had quite a lot of excitement on our local FB page a while ago, when people started asking why the end of the high street was all blocked off and there were police cars everywhere.

Someone said it was an armed siege and everyone piled on saying don't be ridiculous etc.

Then another person who lived nearby posted a photo taken out of their window, quite clearly showing a firearms officer complete with gun, crouching behind a parked car.

itwillbehormones we have those too, every other day it’s ‘please object to this planning application’ and while some of them are probably more justified than others, I really object to the ones which complain about ‘family homes’ being replaced by flats, as if those of us who life in such flats aren’t also families!

Just had one pop on my local community site. Cat got run over, owner wants details of the car, everyone compleing at nutters who speed etc. When I wask why they wanted car details they wer going to confront driver for not stopping.... commented that A The driver might not have known he'd even hit a cat B I'd not have stopped with this lynch mob mentality. I have cats and have lost some under cars, these things happen and cats are little kamikazes

My village group have literally just posted about a red van being seen in the same street within 15 mins and looking suspicious. People are saying to ring the police as “the dogs and the children might not be safe”.

@Covidcorvid

My village group have literally just posted about a red van being seen in the same street within 15 mins and looking suspicious. People are saying to ring the police as “the dogs and the children might not be safe”.

Is it not Postman Pat?!

Our most exciting one was several years ago but is still spoken about now. A Peacock went missing and the owner was basically accusing their neighbour - who had a long running grudge against their Peacocks - of hiring Peacock hitmen who turned up in a van, bumped off the bird in neighbour's drive and drove away with the body (there was photographic evidence of feathers in a gateway). It all came out over a few days with drip feeding of historical anti-animal behaviour from the neighbour and various people adding to the conspiracy to the point that most accept this conclusion as fact (I'm torn, it was believable to be fair). It was the talk of the village for weeks and is referred to in our house as Peacock-gate.

We had this a lot last year. Reports of children over various towns being approached or attempted abductions. It was always someone who had heard this from a friend.. or a friend of a friend.

The police posted on their Facebook page that although concerns had been raised they had received no reports of this happening.

Apparently they were then trying to cover it up..
It eventually fizzled out.

I see a lot of these, typical themes are:

• woman walking dog approached / followed by dodgy male, gets home just in time.

• two men in a van / car try to drag child / woman off street into car but fail.

• as above, but the victim is a dog.

If there were that many in my local area, it appears to be crawling with dognappers and sex offenders.

So many reports of ‘East European men’ in vans up to no good. What a ridiculous xenophobic country we live in.

I wonder what the equivalents of Nextdoor in Poland or Bulgaria are like - who is accused of driving white vans suspiciously around random Polish villages? Roma, maybe?

I remember a couple of years back when we had snow. A man who was with his family (not alone) was stood at the edge of a field taking photos of the whole field where lots of families were playing and sledging.
Que local FB group members approaching him, taking his photo and accusing him of being a paedophile whilst posting this poor mans face on all of the local groups with WARNING! caught this man taking photos of my kids.
It actually escalated and got quite nasty and racist. He was a man who originally came from India and was innocently taking photos of the snowy scene to send to his family out there. People found out his name, where he lived and kept sharing these posts that he was some sort of pervert lurking in parks taking photos of children.
Lots of shared posts about the 'Muslim' man out taking photos of children.
His neighbours where he lived had to try and defend him but I was horrified how these posts travelled and he was abused in the street and threatened.

@halloween88

I remember a couple of years back when we had snow. A man who was with his family (not alone) was stood at the edge of a field taking photos of the whole field where lots of families were playing and sledging. Que local FB group members approaching him, taking his photo and accusing him of being a paedophile whilst posting this poor mans face on all of the local groups with WARNING! caught this man taking photos of my kids. It actually escalated and got quite nasty and racist. He was a man who originally came from India and was innocently taking photos of the snowy scene to send to his family out there. People found out his name, where he lived and kept sharing these posts that he was some sort of pervert lurking in parks taking photos of children. Lots of shared posts about the 'Muslim' man out taking photos of children. His neighbours where he lived had to try and defend him but I was horrified how these posts travelled and he was abused in the street and threatened.

This is what happens when bunch of hysterical racist cunts get a chance to spread their bullshit. I assume he ended up moving and hoping it won't repeat itself? Poor man.

@halloween88 that's so sad! Scary how quick it can turn into a mob with no evidence to back anything up..poor man!

@halloween88

I remember a couple of years back when we had snow. A man who was with his family (not alone) was stood at the edge of a field taking photos of the whole field where lots of families were playing and sledging. Que local FB group members approaching him, taking his photo and accusing him of being a paedophile whilst posting this poor mans face on all of the local groups with WARNING! caught this man taking photos of my kids. It actually escalated and got quite nasty and racist. He was a man who originally came from India and was innocently taking photos of the snowy scene to send to his family out there. People found out his name, where he lived and kept sharing these posts that he was some sort of pervert lurking in parks taking photos of children. Lots of shared posts about the 'Muslim' man out taking photos of children. His neighbours where he lived had to try and defend him but I was horrified how these posts travelled and he was abused in the street and threatened.

On our local mums and babies Fb group there was similar hysteria a while back because a man was in local park (where there is a playground) near to some ongoing building works with a tripod taking pictures of the children. He was branded a paedophile. He too had his face plastered over social media. He was reported.

Turns out he was doing surveying. And the tripod he had was one of those laser thingies (not sure what it actually is but I know it’s a surveying tool).

Don't these site have moderators surely they should shut this sort of racist behaviour down or are they as rabid as the posters.

I live in a rural market town - this is relevant! We have a local bird lady who goes round all the village ponds massively over feeding the ducks which causes rat infestations and fucks up the ecosystem in the ponds. Obviously if you don’t know this she seems like a well-meaning wildlife defender, and she’s very vocal, so comes across authoritatively, but is quite mad.

She made a post that 100 ducks had been shot on a canal nearby and now all the ducks were gone. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth until all the farming folk came song and pointed out you might be able to shoot one duck but that usually has the effect of making all the other ducks leave pretty sharpish. One guy worked out they’d have had to be a dozen absolute crack shot shooters down there with pin point precision to take out 100 ducks and it’s pretty likely that they’d have been noticed (there are houses down there, it’s not the middle of nowhere and 100 shots going off would provoke interest even here!)

Anyway, then the shitty local rag picked this story up and ran it as gospel! So now all the people from nearby city have waded in and the reasonable comments just got drowned out. No doubt it will go down as a matter of record that 100 ducks were shot there, to be lamented and remembered with sadness, when I’m pretty sure nothing of the sort happened.

DH is apparently an Eastern European scouting the neighbourhood for houses to burgle, or cars to break into. His crime - being caught on someone's ring doorbell at 4am walking to work down a public road. (He's also from deepest darkest Gloucestershire, never lived more than 5 miles from the place he was born).

Response on next door when I pointed it out was, "well he looks suspicious", "why is he walking at that time", "tell him to take his hat off, it is very Eastern European" ... and when I asked them to take his picture down - "It's just a warning to people" - what???? that a man walks on a public road???

(or that there's a twat monitoring the street outside number 45?)

Oh god yes .... I'm in a UK FB group for owners of a particular kind of pet, along the lines of "ferret owners UK". It seemed a reasonably sensible group, a bit quiet, but some interesting posts - until the admin reposted an OLD message, from an American 'ferret' rescue, with horrific images of a badly treated animal that is going to need serious rehab and big vets fees.

Cue the longest, frothiest thread with "report them to the RSPCA" "how is cuddles doing? Can we have an update" "I'll have him, I've had ferrets for 20yrs" plus all the "shoot the scum" posts. No matter how often anyone posts "This was LAST YEAR in DENVER" the outrage continues as though this happened down the road last week..... the admin is unrepentant "people need to know these things happen to ferrets". I think she was bored 😑

Being in London does at least take some of the racist edge off. Although by no means all.

Before lockdown, about once a month there would be a "there are three police cars parked on the main road, what's happening?? Is there a robbery in progress?!" post on the local FB. Actual answer, which could have been picked up if the poster had looked at where exactly the cars were parked: the fuzz are in the local greasy spoon, having breakfast.

Oh lord, this morning we’ve had somebody post a video of a suspicious man ‘trying to break in’ to their home in broad daylight. A suspicious man in hi-vis, with a lanyard around his neck, carrying something in his hand that very much resembles a meter reader.

Despite at least a dozen people replying ‘he’s looking for the meter’ and even a few saying ‘I recognise him, he came to read our meter last week’ the replies are still coming thick and fast, many along the lines of ‘omg hun so glad you’re safe, how do people think they can get away with this, have you reported to the police yet???’

Christ.