If you’re living in America, you probably have a Nextdoor site associated with your neighborhood. Our lovely neighborhood in Brookline had its own neighborhood site,  posting useful info and townwide and neighborhood events and goings-on. I can’t really compare it to Nextdoor because it was a curated site; if you wanted to post, you had to submit your posting to someone for approval. It definitely wasn’t being used as a social-media-style commentary site.

In recent weeks, residents of our old neighborhood gather in the park to sing every night, with appropriate spacing of course, and there’s a posting announcing the night’s selection each day, selections that have been fun, meaningful, memorial, and topical. We miss their solidarity and their spirit.

In Pleasure Point, all we have is Nextdoor, a social site that is lightly monitored and occasionally useful–I got a free plant once–but mostly used for venting, and as with all social sites, the venomous venters seem to have the most energy and time for posting. Recently an enormous argument has sprung up between member of the Fear Factor, who feel no one should so much as stick a toe out the door without a Good Reason, and  those of the Health and Sanity, who feel that with proper precautions some enjoyment of the outdoors is still possible. I’m mostly staying out of this, but I created those monikers, so you can guess which side I favor.

Recently things have become quite ugly. A person who mildly commented that while visiting the hospital and found it not very busy was attacked so viciously as a virus denier that he removed his post and presumably joined a monastery. The posts of one particular volumizer of vitriol have risen to such a level of virtual screaming that other posters are concerned about her sanity. New flash: Too Late.

Now there is a campaign of taking pictures of people on the shore, posting them to the list, and sending them to the sheriff’s office. The violation of these subjects is they have the temerity to travel to PP to walk along the coast when they don’t in fact live in this neighborhood. This attitude is a bit hypocritical, since, like most Californians, this group has previously been vocal in its commitment to the statewide policy of coastal access and, for whatever reason, local authorities haven’t closed our shoreline parking yet.

Maybe it’s time to start wearing a mask when I leave the house, for purposes of Identity Concealment.