"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.

Ours is EXACTLY like this

"What's that high pitched noise at 2am every morning?!"

It's the bloody freight trains! They've done it every day for as long as I bloody remember! It's even been explained in the local paper!

"Must be foxes/ghosts/aliens/gangs".

OR

"What could that really loud foghorn like sound be at the crack of dawn?!"

It's ship foghorns!

"Definitely a time slip."

MADE EVEN BETTER WHEN THE FIRST LINE IS ALL IN ATTENTION GRABBING CAPITALS

@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

Then even later reports gave you a parrot too 😆

Oh I quite like these, generally ours are quite useful

However I’ve learned not to comment when they are not, becayse someone always has a go. It’s generally. And completely honestly. Nearly always Some older woman who does work for the church or charitable stuff. They get right quite cunty. I find it surprising.

They organise all this good work. And then if you say oh I think that’s ok don’t worry, or what about this, they post something that translates loudly to “go fuck your self” which always makes me think, well that’s not very charitable 😂

Another one near me spread a rumour that ‘gypsies’ were stealing children from outside the fish and chip shop when their parents left them in the car to get the fish and chips. It was all ‘lock your car doors!!! They’ll grab them before they’ve even wrapped your haddock’ type posts 😂

Since lockdowns started it's gotten worse, curtain twitchers now feel justified for dobbing on everyone.

We had one where someone saw a man in orange hi-vi prowling the streets, confronted him and was told he worked for the water company and showed his ID.

Busy body didnt believe him, decided the ID was fake and put a picture of this guy all over various town FB pages locally.

It actually ended up in our local newspaper of this poor workman just out trying to do his job and his water company having to confirm that he was, in fact, legit

I love community groups. Moved from a large town to a small village a few years ago and am still on the towns community chat and my local village one. The town is hands down the worst for 'beware of the white van' posts but my village one has some absolutly insane ones.

Two that are now infamous are; the one about a woman complaining about her neighbours tree dropping leaves on her drive in autumn, and my personal favorite about a possible solar farm, when after a long discussion against the plans it was discovered the person objecting on the basis that it would spoil the view actually lived in Cyprus!

This is the best Nextdoor post ever, walking on my labia 🤣

"someone was looking at my dog and now I have noticed a bent blade of grass so my house has been marked by dog kidnappers"

Mine is full of helicopter posts. God forbid a helicopter should dare to fly over my town, half of the residents are promptly on Facebook speculating on why!

The facebook group in my old area wasn't like this but oh, the one in the area we moved to last spring... Sometimes I think the warnings of 'masked youths' have got to be trolling at this point.

Gosh yes. I left a local FB group for this reason.

We had a lost dog one yesterday. Owners were an elderly couple who have recently moved to the area so they were understandably worried.

The dog turned up safe and sound a couple of hours later.

First response was along the lines of "FFS, when I was in my 20s we backpacked around the world and my parents were lucky to get an air mail letter every few weeks".

I mean WTF??!!

We get "found a cat" posts on my local group. Not "found a dead cat" ones, where it would be useful to find the owner, but live cats which are most likely not lost but just doing the normal cat thing called roaming 🙄

Oh yeah, so many ‘anyone know who this cat belongs to? It’s in my garden most days. It looks well looked after so just checking it has a home?’ 😂😂

DH and I got into our local one as we were searching for our cat that had gone missing. Apparently we were a suspicious young couple probably early thirties (nope but I will take that) looking in people's garages. Funnily enough we did find the cat the next day and it was at that house...

One we have all the time is , look at this "picture of some random bit of rubbish". Just found this in my hedge, this will be the dog stealers marking houses again.

Those two men in that white Transit certainly get about, don't they.

We gets loads of these too. However, I live in a really rural area and sadly they often are up to no good - quad bikes, diesel, farm tools, and more recently sheep dogs / pups - disappear on a weekly basis. We have a farm watch group with great links to the police but they often can’t do much... these lads are organised and often violent so can’t really blame the poor coppers for not wanting to intervene. Nearly always on false plates or in nicked vans. I’ve asked DH to just let them take what they want. It’s shit but it’s not worth getting beaten up over an inanimate object. I do really worry about the dogs though.

@SpnBaby1967 I think you must live in my town. I honestly thought he was going to be subject to a vigilante attack.

The ones that really wind me up is when the schools also pass on 'unsubstantiated warnings. They used to be good but my son's school is sending out about 1 every 2 weeks....so now I ignore them all. Especially as the advice post lockdown 1 was to not hang around school and go straight home. The the advice on these is to walk home with a friend.....

We also had a local rumour which kept gathering speed....it was of 3 different events I think...all unverified. People kept posting on the Police page - why haven't you investigated x, y and z. And no matter how many times they were told that x had been investigated, and y and z were rumours with no actual victims it still went on and on....

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.

Ours is very similar, especially the vehicle posts, though to fair we do have issues with thefts and it's a small village.

Best one was a few years ago when someone's peacock went missing. Huge backstory dripfed throughout regarding a certain unnamed neighbour and their hatred of peacocks, punctuated with photos of feathers at a gate and reports of a van being spotted. Overall consensus was evil neighbour who hated the peacock arranged peacock hit men who turned up in a small van and dispatched the bird before driving away with the evidence. This all came out over several days and was the talk of the village for a few weeks. It was glorious (though not for the poor peacock or its owners, obviously) and has since been known in our household as PeacockGate.

Ours isn't too bad but what drives me mad is the duplicate posts "Nottingham knockers in oak Drive at 6pm". Someone else 2 posts later "We just had Nottingham knockers, beware". And EVERY time about the third reply on each of the four separate posts about the Nottingham knockers is "what's a Nottingham knocker?". Ever heard of Google? The other popular response is that they are doing no harm. Someone even invited one in & gave them her dinner

We've got a poo troll on ours.

Usually starts out with foxes or cats, then escalates alarmingly quickly to humans.