2w ago

I don't even know my neighbors real names

(TikTok screencap)

89 comments

I hope my neighbors know me as the slut across the street.

Her neighbor is going to see this and be like "oh It looks like "judgemental removed" made a meme."

Yep. We call some of our neighbors:
Boy-next-door (he’s actually a dude in his 50s)
Stilgar (because he kinda resembles Javier Bardem’s Stilgar)
Boom boom house (because they have those obnoxious subwoofers in their car and you can hear them coming from a mile away)
Barn house (because the paint color of their house makes it look like a barn)
Young couple (they look like our age and have no kids, although I think we’re pretty much older than them)
Karen (no explanation needed. We all have the neighborhood Karen. Thankfully she’s several streets away and we only feel her presence in the neighborhood group chat)
- My neighbor is named Karen. She's absolutely a Karen, but she's my Karen.
  She's actually pretty nice and takes care of her neighbors, but she is all up in the neighborhood's business sometimes.

Yes. Most of them are "fentanyl zombie" followed by a number.
- So do you reuse the number or keep counting up
  
  Number keeps going up
  
  They're mostly interchangeable

This post is a great example of why we lost America. And what is spreading across the world right now.
Hold a goddamn yard sale and talk to your neighbors people, get to know them, PRETEND you care, at least enough so you can exchange phone numbers and watch each other's places when you take trips or recognize each others lost dogs.
I promise, it not only gets easier, it becomes a source of pride and comfort knowing the people around you. We have spurned community because it's more tempting to hide inside and feel miserable and lonely. Losing community was how we lost civics and representation and basic human empathy.
"whaa but my neighbors are all assholes"
I don't care. You should still know their names.
- I agree so much. Sadly it's hard to reach out with how entire neighborhoods are designed. They're designed like solitary domiciles that only exist because employees need a place to be stored when not in use.
  Ours is designed where cars just disappear into garages and only people walking dogs and delivery drivers (or solicitors) use the front door. So everyone hides behind those stupid ring cameras.
  "whaa but my neighbors are all assholes"
  I'll admit: Not all of them!
  Peoples' average temperament indeed seems set on being the "leave me alone miserable and lonely" default though.
  ... Or they're psychos. I live in a particularly transient city though, people move all the time, most rent, and you barely can tell there's completely different people next door one day.
  I deleted all the details to avoid a wall of text, but we've lived through a couple neighborhoods where everyone knew each other, and now it's barred windows and cameras that shout "YOU'RE BEING FILMED" when you're 50 feet away.
  I notice a common toxicity factor seems to be those "Muh property" NIMBYs that see a house as a "real estate investment" instead of a home. The ones who sic the HOA on people they've never met and are mad about everything. (They're probably also on Nextdoor posting about answering their door "with Smith & Wesson." Trolls.)
  I randomly met a really cool neighbor on a bike ride though. He happened to have his garage open! Sadly we don't text a whole ton but he's pretty cool.
  People tend to be pretty alright if you encounter them in the wild but nobody's opening their door to say hi anymore, and I also find that we're under so much immense pressure that just stopping for a chat feels like it eats a chunk out of a day. This is also not healthy...
  I want community, and local friends and all that. But I dunno, I think everybody is just burned out and vulnerability is especially scary these days, especially with the violent polarization of our politics of late.
  But I agree, people would be much less likely to vote to harm and oppress their neighbors if they knew more of them personally...
  
  I agree with and appreciate your honest, realistic perspective.
  And I maintain that we can break through the challenges of fear and propaganda designed to push people indoors and to stop organizing, to stop creating communities. It's artificial. It goes against millions of years of evolution. People want to be connected and part of a community, but the manufactured fear is stronger right now.
  In fact, this is how I've turned my share of conservatives towards better ways of "thinking" which is understanding that even the person who hates you and everything you stand for, on some level, really, really wants your acceptance. It doesn't sound like it makes sense, but that's just it... our species is loaded with contradictions, it's why we have a reality-TV president and why we have so many people spinning out about wildly unrealistic issues or false-flag stories stoking people's fear and anger. Because we're not rational.
  I often tell the story about how at my first job I volunteered to start taking the difficult clients' calls for my boss, they were so happy to hand that task over they didn't care if some monkey from the warehouse like myself was handling it.
  What I did was listen to the angry client's calls, I listened to their stories and their feelings and their frustrations, and didn't try to fix it all, just listened and said I understand. Then they would call back and ask for me. Still angry, but now seeking the only person who will let them have emotions about it, then over time they did business only with me, and apologized for their temper earlier.
  We can all do this. It's not a jedi trick, but it does take a level of emotional intelligence we're not developing inside on Lemmy and Reddit and Discord. We have to get out more, we have to be the bigger people we think we are. We have to get over our own hangups and fears and insecurities and lead by example. I strongly feel any of us are capable of doing this, even if it's just once, if we all did it we would change our country.
- Speak for yourself. I am not hiding inside so I can be miserable and lonely; I just find social interactions to be energy draining, so I need a lot of time in solitude to recharge.
  
  Me too but it didn't stop me from actually working on that and viewing it as what it is, not an identity quirk but an obstacle towards progress for myself and my community.

I can't remember all my neighbours names (thou I often greet them), but I know their dogs name :-)
- This is me too. All my neighbors names are “Sunny’s Mom” or “Legolas and Gimli’s Dad”
  Also, Gimli is a Corgi and I love their owners so much for this.
  
  Also, Gimli is a Corgi and I love their owners so much for this.
  We all love their owners, now. That is delightful.
- I have helped my neighbor across the halls kid with his gaming PC.
  Couldn't tell ya her name, but the dog below me with a heart problem is named Sophie, the neighbors down the hall have cats named Mink and Stink, and a few buildings down there's a lady with two huskies one named Pogs and the other Skips (Skips has 3 legs)

One of my neighbors is Lucrezia and she offered to spell it for me and I was like "It's cool, I got this, everyone knows the Borgias..."
I couldn't tell if she was impressed or horrified.

I have
Johnny Derp - looks like as if Depp was a recovering meth-head
Thicc Ass - the girl that always lets her poodle out in the back yard to shit
Karen - close enough to her real name but sure acts like it
London bros - they are hicks with no etiquette of living in a community. Also they are actually from Guelph, I think...
Frenchman - he's actually from France and works at a Fromagerie
The Thief - old dude who picks the berries and tomatoes in the alley
- I'd like to meet thick ass

"Sugar"
Because we were working in the garage and she came over. Dressed in tight, revealing clothing with her breasts pushed up, she asks us a few times if we want to buy any sugar. We were certain she wasn't talking about baking, but we weren't sure if she was a sex worker or offering booger sugar. So henceforth, she became Sugar. We're pretty gay, but not sure if she read that. So maybe it was the latter?
- Have you tried being gayer?

I have lived in my house long enough that people around have changed and until I meet them and know their real names they are assigned the last persons name and a version number.
Like Mr. Wilson 2.0

I'm sorry.... Cat killers?
- Hopefully, they just look like people that would be the type to kill cats. Otherwise, they live by psychos.
  
  There's a family a couple of blocks from me that could be called this although I don't think it's intentional on their part. They operate more or less a free range cat colony and the cats keep getting run over because it's a busy neighborhood with narrow streets and cars parked all along them. I drive very slowly here (there are also lots of kids around) but most people don't.
- Long time ago I had one of those "single property renovator man" types move in to replace the nice neighbor girl next door. You know, instantly they freshen up the backyard and put a dozen cameras all over the place.
  We let my kitten out back at night for a little exploring. Walled back yard. Within a span of a few minutes found her dead by our sliding glass door with a head wound. We didn't know what happened at the time. Too shocking to think straight.
  But a few days later, the asshole is plinking beer cans in his backyard with some family members or something. Errant rounds are pinging off our windows and leaving rust stains in our pool.
  We call the police because someone is discharging dangerous projectiles within city limits, at our house, and the lone, bothered, podgy lawman gives us the "Jus' sum good ol' boys, I asked them to take it easy." routine.
  I'm glad I never got this man's actual name. I'm afraid of what I'd do with it now that we don't live there anymore. I figure there's nothing worse I could do to him than the pathetic existence he leads on his way to hell anyway.

What's that lady across the streets number?
- 69
  
  Nice

Guy obviously having an affair, wine mom, right wing boomer #42, right wing boomer #43...
I know the names of all their dogs.

My father’s neighbor has always been “Ms Waldi” to me. 10 years after my mom and I moved out from his house, my dad told me when I was visiting that that’s not her real name.
That lady used to have a dachshund. “Waldi” is a common German name for them (or dogs in general), so my mom used to call her that. My dad copied my mom and I my dad. I still don’t know that woman’s real name.
Oh, and my dad’s new one also calls her by that name.

There's rabbit girl, who is this anorexic as fuck lady who runs about 20 miles a day, looks just like a sinewy, starved rabbit hop hop hopping along
- Do you live in Media, PA by any chance? This sounds like the exact description of a woman that runs through my neighborhood and has to be in her 70s at least. It's not even running, it's more of this asymmetrical skip-hopping motion. I've never seen anyone or anything look less healthy.

I'm assuming by the whimsical look on her face that the grandma is a redhead with no plants.
- Granny Firecrotch makes the best ginger snaps

I have killed a bottle of tequila with my neighbor and still don't know his name. Labels are like, just suggestions anyway man.

40 year old child. -seen his dad have to come by and teach his kid how to run a lawnmower.
Lumina guy - at one point had 3 Chevy lumina's
Blue meanie- built like the blue meanies from yellow submarine
Guy fieri- haven't talked to this guy yet, cause I have no interest in going to flavortown with him.

Tractor man, stupid dogs, horse people, fast truck, guy who waves, people across the way.
Yeah, I’m rural

I like the "quotes" sometimes, but this trend of screenshots of people looking around distracts me.
...I mean, at least look towards where the quote is gonna be.

I've got the crazy Germans, the I do yard work and just blow it in the street, the mysterious door dash only guy who might have a harem in his basement, and the fat polite guy who asks if he can park in front of my house so the time.

I don't even know my neighbors enough to assign them labels like that. I just like keeping to myself.

I work IT a fortune 500 company with like 60k-100k employees. Moved in last month and what do ya know, two houses down is a manager for an application I support. What're the chances.
Gonna suck when he comes knocking or giving me evil eyes for issues I didn't cause.

Jan 6er has a for sale sign up up and Carehome's been rather quiet.

I have yet to meet "gorilla-looking dude who yells at his step-son and his lawnmower in public" who lives across the street, or even made eye contact with him. And no, this is not some variant of racism on my part -- gorilla-looking dude is white but looks much more like a gorilla than any black dude I've ever seen.

I'm sure they have nicknames for us, but I think of them as houses before people. "House with loud dog" "The Name House" "The First Name House" "proselytizer house"
First name house and name house are not those families anymore. Those people either died or moved out.

Being friends with your neighbours is OP
Just walking next door for your next game night or drinking and chilling? Fuck yeah

Just the one "asshole on the corner"

No, but I'm a cashier and I have nicknames for my customers.

The junkie cunts across the road.

Say... Can you introduce me to your neighbors?

We remember the names of their dogs, and use those.
So it's "Rex's Mum" and "Fido's sister"

Sure thing 'Lady with glasses who never says a thing'.

The family across the street are Pugsley and Fred West.

Big lady who must wear mumus all the time = moo
Lady with tonnes of kids = baby making machine
Lady who took her kids for ice cream all the time = ice cream mom

This ain't no meme

We use
"Shit neighbours" "The ones with the baby" "Remember, where the British couple lived before"

Meanwhile I keep a spreadsheet of all their names, relations, jobs, etc so I don't forget when I talk to them... <_<

I'd like to know more about "the slut across the street" they sound friendly.

The woman in the apartment nextdoor is called The Slug. She drinks like a waterfall, smokes like a chimney and screams like a cow. Looking like one doesn't stop her from finding men to bring over and bang though.

...... fuck mine are called cat killers.

Every block has one. And if your's doesn't, then it's you.

How does she know the colour of the bush?

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