Neighborhood email lists and Facebook groups can bring out the worst in people. These days, we’re generally seeing folks’ better side online. Even the community bulletin board site Nextdoor has risen to the occasion — at times.
Sure, there was the standard bad information floating around. After Maryland’s March 30 “stay-at-home” order went into effect, one wine shop owner was posting about an imaginary statewide “curfew.”
The busy-body worrywarts who populate these boards finally had something real to worry about. Five-on-five basketball going on, house parties down the block, or any gatherings that violated social-distancing rules took the place of the ordinary pre-COVID posts of people “parking in front of my house” or children rough-housing too much on the sidewalk.
For a select few, though, the widespread worrying provided a great opportunity to complain about anyone having a good time. One woman in Kensington piped up on a thread about social distancing to fret, “I have seen quite a few children, not accompanied by adults, entering parkland and streams. Just a caution that warm weather brings out ticks, snakes, etc, and accidents may happen in unsupervised areas.”
As if being barred from bonfires, basketball, parties, and any social event wasn’t enough.
But the overwhelming story of coronavirus-era community email lists, Facebook pages, and bulletin boards is an uplifting one of unprecedented cohesion and concern for one’s neighbor.
“My block neighbors created a text thread for the first time and started a Friday afternoon lawn-chairs-in-the-street happy hour,” Mercatus Center research fellow Salim Furth wrote. “NextDoor has become tolerable. My church has more people engaged for more hours, especially in small groups, even though everything is virtual. Donations and loans seem to be flowing more easily than ever, in all contexts.”
In Pelham, New York, which abuts COVID hot spot New Rochelle, neighbors used Facebook to form a group dedicated to sewing masks. Other posts identified and applauded healthcare workers who are on the front lines of this war.
Social media generally weakens community by tearing us away from those physically proximate. When a contagious virus has already done the physical separating, it seems social media can serve the good.
