WHO TO FOLLOW: Best of (Not) Nextdoor

Nextdoor is a social networking app that lets users know that your nosy neighbors are also NIMBYs, gentrifiers, would-be George Zimmermans, and/or really concerned with “black-on-black” crime.* Seriously, there’s likely to be more altruism found on Gab. Nextdoor is the type of social networking site that has to ask its users not to call homeless people “animals.” It’s amazing.

That’s what makes the Twitter account @bestofnextdoor so much fun to follow. As of right now, it has fewer than 3500 followers, and could only get better when it gets more followers (and a wider network of readers/submitters), so it is currently criminally-underfollowed.

@bestofnextdoor was created Jenn Takahashi (professionally, she’s the Senior Communications Manager for the online dating app Zoosk in San Francisco). Its logo is perfect, it features the white and green Nextdoor logo but with the Muppets’ resident grumpy old men, Statler and Waldorf.

When I first learned about this account (I made a joke about Nextdoor on Twitter that @bestofnextdoor “liked”), the pinned tweet was about a neighbor wanting to know if he should call the police to give a “stern warning” to someone about the name of their wifi network.

@bestofnextdoor, though, was perfectly positioned to capture the zeitgeist when Takahashi was gifted (on her birthday!) with an epic, 280+ comment thread about a cannon going off in West Seattle whenever the Seahawks score a touchdown that ended with a brawl at the library.

When I tweeted that thing at the top of this page about only following @bestofnextdoor in 2018, I was only looking forward, because I fully expect @bestofnextdoor to get better and better in the new year. If there’s one thing I’ve found to be true being online during the entire 2016 campaign and all of the Trump presidency, I’ve yet to find anyone that has gotten more reasonable or well-adjusted. We live in an era where Rebecca Solnit lends her approval to Seth Abramson tweet storms and Harvard Law professors vouch for Louise Mensch, for some reason.

@bestofnextdoor can only get better in a time when all of us are getting dumber.

• I joined the Lower Queen Anne (the neighborhood where I sleep and receive mail) Nextdoor group to lurk and to possibly send unintentionally hilarious posts to @bestofnextdoor, but I shut down my account after two weeks when a discussion of what to do about homeless people went 50+ comments long and the most popular solution was to audit the Low Income Housing Institute. Nein danke.

*One more thing: Journal of Precipitation is a new, Seattle-area arts and/or culture website that is dedicated to exploring the Pacific Northwest outside of the “usual places” and the cultural zeitgeist. We believe in compensating all of our contributors (even though it is probably modest, compared to larger websites and magazines). If you value what we’re doing, please consider contributing to our Patreon, and allow us to continue to grow and provide coverage of our community.