When I moved into my flat and out of my house share last year, I knew it was the street gossip I’d miss the most.
I’d lived with my childhood best friends for five years, and although I was sad to leave them, my propensity to be nosey meant that I appreciated my old road and bedroom as if they were old pals too. Perfectly placed in the heart of north-west London’s bustling streets, on an almost daily basis, I’d hear old Caribbean men debating about everything and nothing; smell wafts of peppery smoke from my neighbour’s jerk pan while inquiring passers-by tried to secure their pieces of chicken for later – smug in the knowledge that I could swoop in and skip the queue; see drunk men locked out of their flats, fighting with the sturdy doors that kept them out as if they were sentient; and witness arguments in the street through the crack of my blinds.
You can’t hear – or see – that clearly from the high floor in the tower block where I now live. And in new-builds, especially those designed to protect the concept of privacy to almost ridiculous degrees, the chances of seeing someone kick their husband out of the house, or dance freely in the street for no apparent reason, are slim. But then, there is the building WhatsApp group.
I got more than I bargained for when I joined that forum of utter inanity. While it’s helpful in some respects – for the most part, my neighbours are vigilant, intelligent, fierce and considerate people who just want to ensure everyone is safe and happy – it can be hellish in others.
The paranoia is astounding. Considering these groups tend to be set up as a way to foster a sense of community, they almost always seem to do the opposite. Where I live, parcel thieves have been known to operate in the area, which, aside from the understandable frustration that brings, appears to have whipped everyone into a frenzy. Residents have taken to randomly snapping photos of anyone they deem to be suspicious – almost always people of colour.
On more than a couple of occasions, the subjects of those photographs have lived in the building. On others, they’ve been teenagers doing what kids do – thinking they’re being inconspicuous while they huff balloons in the stairwell, or smoke in the courtyard, in plain view of grumpy adults eager to catch them in the “act” of being young and stupid.
The building paparazzo in chief, as I call him privately in my head, is almost always first on the scene – probably because he always seems to be at home…watching, either through his window or Ring doorbell camera. His updates in the group always get the mob going with red-faced emojis, multiple calls to the police and an increasing propensity to angrily confront children with the fire of a thousand suns.
It can be pretty nasty stuff. And while I have spoken out – especially when it comes to others snapping random neighbours and treating black and brown people with more suspicion – I’ve retreated mainly into incognito mode. Instead I quietly judge the prejudiced weirdos in the group who issue coded complaints about “heavy cooking”, or shamelessly celebrate the impending demolition of cultural venues, or slam the main entrance door in my face as a “precaution”, because you never know who’s a thief, sex worker, or drug dealer.
Street and building WhatsApp groups, much like the website and app NextDoor, always seem to have this vein of hostility and snobbery running through them. Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s in theirs, or has to suffer regular updates of their loved ones’ local WhatsApp groups, has the same issue. A select group of loud, endlessly combative and judgmental voices take charge, set the tone and chaos often ensues. But it doesn’t always have to be that way.
To be fair, sometimes it isn’t. One of the saving graces of the WhatsApp group is how organised some of its leaders seem to be. In the wake of the building safety crisis after Grenfell, that can be no bad thing – at least not in its entirety. In the last couple of months, there have been three fires in my building. While no one was harmed in any, without that WhatsApp group, many of us wouldn’t have been aware of issues with the building’s fire safety procedures, nor would property managers tasked with keeping residents safe have been held accountable.
When the select few who are the most vocal aren’t feeding into their own delusions, residents have been impressive. They’ve put pressure on our shoddy developer to take accountability for ongoing failings, they’re in the process of setting up a tenant association and they closely monitor local council activity, which has resulted in some pretty helpful measures as well as keeping people informed about what’s happening around them. No bad thing in an age in which local services are facing more financial instability and passing on the burden to taxpayers, and when a large proportion of new homes aren’t up to scratch.
It’s not quite the level of inconsequential street gossip I’d get from simply opening my window at my old place – but the group is filling the void, at least a little. My only wish is that it felt a bit more neighbourly. The endlessly paranoid would do us all a favour if they kept their hourly worries to themselves and left the rest of us to take some of the chat off our phones to talk face to face. I’d much prefer an in-person chin wag about a neighbour’s suspected infidelity, or who pissed in the lift, or where to get the cheapest, tastiest, local food anyway.