A mentally ill homeless guy walked onto a high school campus in my suburb, wearing all black, carrying a big duffel bag. Now, it’s reasonable to be concerned about that and want to identify who it is, assure he’s not carrying weapons onto the campus, and so forth.
But the community (as, perhaps, poorly represented on Facebook) is coming completely unhinged.
/1
/2 The cops found him at a local Starbucks, identified him, determined he had no weapons, and gave him a trespassing ticket. The community is OUTRAGED. They’re stalking him around the community and taking pictures of him at Starbucks and McDonald’s and demanding that he be kicked out. They want him jailed or institutionalized.
/3 They’ve found his Twitter and Facebook accounts and are printing out the stuff there - kind of crazy, not notably crazy on Twitter — taking it to the police demanding he be arrested. They’re keeping meticulous logs of his activities.
I am considerably more afraid of my neighbors than I am of this mentally ill homeless guy.
/4 The real question is .. will I keep my mouth shut and stay out of the neighborhood group where people are wigging out? Or will I comment?
/5 It is … not going well.
@Popehat as was written in the ancient scrolls :) Not surprised. Good luck Ken!
@Popehat what’s happened now?
@Popehat into the breach!
Much respect to you for taking a stand! Somebody's got to at least try.
@Popehat Do you have a (heated) shed at the bottom of the garden he could sleep in?
That would be fun.
@Popehat
I think your town just met Jesus.
Nobody is smaller than a homeless guy by himself and a couple bricks short of a load. And Jesus said, "what you do for the least, you do for me." So this is a moment the angels will be watching!
@Popehat I had to leave my neighborhood FB group. There are people there who could find something wrong with a sunny day and then bully anyone who says they’re enjoying the sunshine.
@MrSnarkyPants @Popehat That is why I stopped reviewing the posts on Nextdoor!
@MrSnarkyPants @Popehat neighborhood groups discouraged me from having conversations with some of my neighbors .
What an incredible surprise
@Popehat Respect.
“Local” social media, whether Facebook or NextDoor, is the worst of all possible media.
With non-local media, you might be able to convince yourself that the unhinged racist sexist homophobic people who hate the poor are at least people you don’t have to interact with on a regular basis. You can stop loading the page or app and retreat into the warm embrace of the kind-hearted people you interact with in the real world.
With local media, you are forced to confront the reality: it is your neighbors, people who live near you, who are hateful. When you are putting out the trash bin on trash day, and wave to your neighbor, they’re the one calling the police because someone “undesirable” was walking down the street minding their own business.
Maybe it would be better to know, except what are you going to do with that information? It’s not like anywhere else is any better!
The only way to win the game is not to play.
@Popehat
Take him on pro se and file protection orders against them
I once had a project/hobby (which I finished, and donated the pictures to a university archive) to take pictures of a thousand murals in L.A. I very quickly realized that even though most schools had murals on them, I definitely did not want to walk towards a school, say "Oh, cool mural" and take out my camera.
My worst ever experience of this kind was with a mural on a courthouse. Cops converged from 4 directions and quizzed me about which crimelord I had been probably taking pictures of witnesses going in and out for.
this sounds like, a tuesday afternoon on nextdoor
@Popehat yeah wish you luck w/ that situation. uff da.
Sounds a bit like the script from “First Blood”.
@Popehat report your neighbors for wasting police resources with classist bullshit?
@Popehat I can't imagine it possibly could, but it'll probably go a lot worse if no one tries to sanity check the mob
The should contact the FBI as it appears they are able to predict crime before it happens.
@Popehat Nextdoor.com is baaaaaad news. I don't even look at my Pasadena board anymore. It's a magnet for people who haven't learned how to behave on social media.
@junecasagrande @Popehat Nextdoor just hasn't happened here, probably because the German-speaking world is the Land Of Mind Your Own Business and only weirdos and/or possible neo-Nazis would want to scaremonger about the fact that they just saw a brown person walk by.
> the German-speaking world is the Land Of Mind Your Own Business and only weirdos and/or possible neo-Nazis would want to scaremonger about the fact that they just saw a brown person walk by.
Strange, you could replace "German-speaking world" with "New York City" and it would look just as accurate.
@IronCurtain @junecasagrande @Popehat Anyone who lives in a major city but gets freaked out if they see an unusual-looking person is going to be up having a full-on breakdown pretty quickly :)
@m @junecasagrande @Popehat Damn straight! *Especially* one as cosmopolitan as NYC!
@junecasagrande @Popehat truth. Took me about a month to see what a cesspool it can be before I deleted it.
Seems like a Facebook group (see thumbs up graphic, but yeah, same on Nextdoor.)
@FuckElon @junecasagrande @Popehat Half my NextDoor posts related to crime/concerns are about actual illegal behavior or legitimately concerning stuff (thefts, car window smash, 3 a.m. visits to porches looking around & sometimes trying doorknobs, people openly threatening them, sometime son their property) and half wondering why certain people are walking down the street in their neighborhood.
@glennf @junecasagrande @Popehat even the actual crimes are usually “a friend of a friend told me”…
@junecasagrande Same here. People told me it's 'useful'. It is indeed useful for keeping track of which neighbours I should beware of. "A non-white person is walking down my street!" It's a fascinating but horrifying window into society's id monsters.
@wesdym In Southern California neighborhoods, we also get nonstop, years-long, never-ending arguments about coyotes. Ugh.
@junecasagrande it’s the same for my building’s FB group. I was kicked off for speaking out against racist behavior
@Popehat Well, if a stranger acts strangly, I guess there's a legal basis to cage them.
@Popehat Some people are stupid.... then there's Ken's neighbors..
@Popehat Ken White: objectively against murder-by-crazed-mob. You heard it here first, folks.
@IronCurtain @ryanfoxlee @Popehat Evergreen reaction tweet.
@housewarmer @ryanfoxlee @Popehat
except this is *Mastodon*, so it's more of a toot…
@IronCurtain @ryanfoxlee @Popehat lol, old habits die hard…
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat I dunno, that seems like a flat slope with no grease on it to me.
@justindz @ryanfoxlee @Popehat With guard rails on the edges.
Ken needs to preface with 'Prophesy' or 'Prophetic' innit.
precede w PROPHET Popehat ...
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat That's obvious; murder-by-crazed mob is RICO, and we know how Ken feels about the RICO.
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat sounds like a good idea for a hat or a shirt. “Against murder mobs”
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat What a bold place to draw the line!
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat Seriously. Am I the only one that remembers The Ox-Bow Incident?
@ryanfoxlee @Popehat Maybe Ken could write an open letter to his neighbors and we could all sign it.
@ryanfoxlee but crazed mobs have such a good track record...