Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Update on Nextdoor


So I still check in with Next Door from time to time -- you know, just in case scary black people are jogging in my neighborhood, or a strange guy with a big truck is caught digging up people's yards under the spurious claim that he's from the gas company (you can't be too careful these days!).

Anyway, over the past two weeks, my Next Door has been on fire. 

What happened was one of my neighbors put out a request -- did anyone know of a good Christian dentist she could make an appointment with?

An actual dentist replied, wondering why the religion of the dentist mattered. Surely, he said, the skill of the dentist in fixing teeth should be her first concern.

About 9000 people piled on him, attacking him for being "too PC" and for "hating Jesus." Others sent little prayers. Others applauded the original poster for being so "brave" and for "standing up for Our Lord." A very long comment offered to give the objecting dentist a "history lesson" on how this Great Nation had been founded as a Christian Nation.

The dentist replied with his own history lesson, discussing the origins of that "Christian Nation" myth, and adding he knew far too many terrible dentists in the Fort to think religion made you competent.

9000 more comments from furious Evangelicals followed.

Today I got a notice that even more comments were on the thread.

I'm not sure this is an improvement over the racist paranoia posts.





3 comments:

Bardiac said...

How do those people even manage to get out of bed in the morning without hating themselves?

Two observations: it's sad to think that the perfectly sane and probably competent dentist may lose patients from this, even though they were happy with them before.

And, I bet the racism would have come out in force if someone had said something like, "oh, Dr [Name] is both a fine dentist and a fine Christian, and is a vestryman at the AME church in town." (Assuming they know that AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal.)

I'm so sorry you have to live with these scary, nasty people.

delagar said...


My favorite parts were the people calling the dentist "ignorant" and advising him to "learn some history" when his account was 100% correct.

This app is (in fact) lowering my opinion of the people in this neighborhood. It reminds me of the first few times I listened to talk radio -- I'd always thought most people were sane and intelligent, up to then.

Bardiac said...

There are times when I really don't want to know what people are like. But I suppose it's better to know than not?