"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.

I took one of the, admittedly beat up and ancient, vans we have lying around the yard home with me when my work vehicle broke down.
Parked it on the street rather than the driveway because I was home before the husband who likes to keep his precious baby in the garage.
Looked on facebook later to see a photo of it on the local page alongside a message about how a 'strange van' had been 'abandoned' on my street 'probably by p*keys'

There is also the weekly post about a dog that went missing about 2 years ago, always accompanied by a bit about how much their kid is missing it, despite the fact said child was barely 1 when the dog went missing and probably can't remember the actual dog by now

Mine is full of MLM huns
A dog lost in N. Dakota and someone is sharing it to an English Town's group
Sketchy looking white van man
New inhabitants keep seeing a well fed cat. Wants to know who's he is. She's called Tibbles it's her town and she knows where to be at what time for food and perfect sunbathing opportunity's
Holiday makers moaning about helicopters. Next town over has a helicopter port ... go figure

I find mine entertaining, more good than bad. Today we had a goat in someone’s garden and a lost dog.

The goat deserved a post but the dog belonged to someone two doors away and had been out 15 mins, was barking at its own back door to be let back in.

My local group is bad for this but the WORST for when travellers come and pitch up. Absolutely vile stuff, and people celebrating when they drive off, despite the fact that they did literally nothing to anyone whilst there 🤦‍♀️ the “watch out for XYZ” really increases whenever it happens.

I was born and grew up in a very busy and diverse city (which I still work in), so moving to a stupid racist town five years ago has been an adjustment

We have a running report on the whereabouts of a car full of teenagers who sit and eat McDonald's during lockdown some evenings. They're clearly dealing drugs.
It's a totally dead street in Boringsville with only the odd curious neighbour at hand. Who exactly are they supposed to be selling crack to? 80 year old Mary at number 3?
Oh and the pressure to clap for NHS/Captain Tom.. "I was out there at 8pm sharp and only saw half the street" followed by people making their excuses. All mad.

@InconvenientPeg

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 😂

There are regular snidey posts from both sides about the other group.

We have a resident ambulance chaser who reposts every piece of breaking news, updates us all on new legislation and has recently started to give reviews of her lockdown visits to local shops 🤣 she used to do cafes but obvs that's a bit hard right now. She was trying for delivery afternoon tea reviews but the shop ones include how covid aware people are, so make better gossip!

The casual racism is astounding, all hell breaks lose whenever the travellers park up anywhere in the area.

I do love the drama and it's a great place to find out what new shops are opening locally 😂

This sounds EXACTLY like my local group 😂

It's always dog poo or firework complaints round here.

Best one was on bonfire night, one lady asked if anyone was setting off fireworks could they let her know the exact time they were going off so she could sedate her horse, because you know, on bonfire night there's only going to be one person setting them off and they're surely going to be on Facebook checking for these posts.

Christ.

Every single incident which happens is always met with a barrage of ‘this place is getting worse’.

I had a pub in the village pre covid, and 2 of my cats used to roam, and were often seen in the marketplace car park across the road. Used to get fuss off the schoolkids and any passers-by. I got a call off a mate asking me to look at the local vet page.

Somebody had picked up my friendly, well fed and minding its own business cat and taken it to the vets 200 yards up the road and handed it in. Reason given? It was on the street.

Vets were perplexed but plastered it all over fb and I had to go and collect with a pic to prove it was my cat as it wasn't chipped at this point. They agreed they didn't think it was a stray in the least but once it was handed in had a duty of care to find the owner.

Batshit just picking a cat up and handing it in for no reason.

These are brilliant! We live in a remote coastal location and there is a local Facebook group for this whole stretch of coast. It covers about 40 miles. Some posts are very useful: bear sightings, road conditions, etc. But I shake my head when I see “coastguard helicopter is out. Hope everything is OK”. Well, unless it’s a raft clearly something is not OK. Or, “ambulance seen at top speed along the coastal road. Hope it’s nothing serious”. Well, it probably is. Ambulances don’t usually put the lights on and drive at top speed for fun.

And my favorite of all, a photo of a clearly dead whale that had been washed ashore. About half a dozen replies of “hope he makes it” and “has someone called department of wildlife to rescue it?” And “call the country vet. He did wonders with my sick goats last year”.

Test, not a raft!

Sorry, that was replying to a post above about the "this cat is out n about" type posts on local spotted pages but it didn't quote!

On ours, some poor bloke had photos of his car shared, including number plate, saying he was a dog thief. By the time he'd spotted it, it had been shared from village to village.

Apparently there is a special circle of hell reserved for people who give dogs funny looks or worse. Nothing gets as many comments as a dog post. Massive contrast to the community group that were offering meals for children over half term. Apparently feeding children if their families are struggling is controversial. People do seem to care more about dogs than kids round here.

Our village FB group is dominated by one woman who is unfortunately the admin. She has made up rules like you can only post things for sale on Mondays, village history on Wednesdays and event announcements on Fridays. If you post something on the wrong day she'll post a passive-aggressive reminder of THE RULES and either delete the post or block you from the group, depending on what mood she's in.

A lovely member of our village unfortunately passed away and his daughter posted the funeral information on the group. Crazy admin lady deleted it because it wasn't a Friday.

@TheVelvetiser I want to nominate your post for classics never mind the rest of the thread. I keep thinking about it and giggling 😂

Not on Facebook but my parents local paper once ran with the front-page splash of “youth rude to teacher” Another planet sometimes!

We had one on Nextdoor the other day asking if anyone else had been feeling faint and dizzy the last 4 weeks and if so, what was causing it...... Like someone was going to pop up and go "oh yeah, that'll be the radiation from the secret bunker, we've all had it" What she of course got was 100 responses diagnosing her with covid, brain tumours, carbon monoxide poisoning, rare virtually unheard of diseases...

The cat one tonight on FB has had me howling
Photo of cat with a message that two men had thrown it out a car. Lots of OMG is the cat ok/hang them and people going to look for the cat/men
Owner of cat "er that's my children, the cat followed them to the chip shop so they brought him home in the car and put him back on the drive. Here he is, tucked up in bed"
Insert photo of cat snoozing while half the town is searching for cat abusing men

We had a good one yesterday. Woman posts a photo of a local business and tells its customers not to park in her driveway as it’s “so dangerous” when she is trying to pull in with her “two small children” (bingo!) in the car and busses are whizzing past (crawl would be a more apt description).

This guy replied to say his mum in her 70s had pulled into that driveway briefly in order to turn around and park opposite but couldn’t reverse as she was blocked in by a crazy woman screaming abuse at her for using the driveway.

Then everyone chose sides and defended either furious driveway protector or poor elderly lady. Very entertaining.

We get people posting photos of dog poo multiple times a week, accompanied by a rant about irresponsible owners. I get the frustration but do we need to see proof? Scrolling down the group half the photos are of poo!

Great thread. We are moving across the country so had multiple house viewing in a day. I spend some of the down time on thr local Facebook page. Graffiti was spotted in the playground. Xx loves yy. So it was suggested they get to the high school and find everyone with those initials and check their handwriting. Then someone pointed out that this park had recently been frequented by youths from neighbouring, slightly bigger but no less nice town. Now should they waste the time going to the local school when it had been oft observed that local young people (note no youths here) engaged in sport, part time work and volunteer activities in their free time? No, let’s just get hold of the head of the slightly further away school. Then, someone had been to the park in th other town (with full explanation as to why) and they same initials were carved there! Carved when “ours” were just done in marker so we could rest easy they weren’t bringing knives. Then much chatter of how to ensure the council would clean before too many kiddies saw. Was marvellous and more than 100 messages.

@BlackberrySky

There was one on my Next door that said "A suspicious man approached me in the park and asked me for directions to the council offices. They are closed at the moment so I can only assume this was a mugging gone wrong" 😂

I am in tears!!!

Haha, this thread is ace!
My local FB group was a goldmine of nosey parkers etc. Anytime an emergency vehicle had the blues n twos on... a load of people would ask why. Then all the virtue signalling afterwards about wishing anyone in an ambulance well etc

And like others, tons of posts about cats being in their garden. I recall one post about someone finding a small kitten in their garden. Several people encouraged them to remove the post and keep the kitten! All this "cats choose their owners" crap. It is theft, plain and simple. Luckily, the kitten's owner was directed to the group and post.... was devastated people suggested the finder kept it.

A local dog group is full of people saying they had someone talk to them in the park when walking their dog, or that someone was on their phone walking past them... both things reported to the police "just in case". Or empty crisp packet in front garden... must be a marker to show dog thieves that a dog lives there.

This was posted the other day on ours, with the comments section full of people posting photos of the sky and debating whether it's purple or pink.

Yanbu. It amazes me how interested/ nosy people are in what their neighbours are up to.

Someone lets off fireworks. Queue a social media witch hunt.

Constant moans about dog poo/ rubbish. One of the worst was a good old whinge about sealed cans of booze being scattered at the side of the road, until someone pointed out it was the collateral of a serious car accident overnight.

I can’t work out whether they’re very angry people or just cowards masquerading as keyboard warriors.

We had a post about reporting their neighbour who went out every day at 8am and came back at 4pm, should they tell the police ? Sure they'd be interested to know in a woman who's probably school staff.