THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

The digital age has put an end to a life of isolation behind high suburban walls

People are selling their wares, jostling for your attention and touting jousting sticks and overhead projectors at a great price. Over there, in the thick of the mud, is the town crier — shouting the odds, with X-rated language about some politician. A crowd is gathering around him, too: some cheering, some booing. The old fishmonger is getting some suspect advice on property valuations from two ladies who live up his street. And someone is freaking out about two men strolling past his house.

Ah, Facebook neighbourhood groups. They’re the modern equivalent of the medieval town square, only with an unsettlingly high proportion of village idiots. A speakers’ corner that gives voice to the paranoid, the narrow-minded, the not-so-smart and the overzealous. Well, certainly that’s what happens when these digital domains aren’t moderated properly. It’s like watching a car summersault across a highway: you know it isn’t going to end well, but you can’t stop watching.

For example, on the Facebook news group for a Cape Town community, one person transcribed an entire conversation she’d had with Table Mountain. Up the Kwazulu Natal coast, one man solicited advice for his wart problems, and another couple in Durban North, looking to rent accommodation, felt compelled to specify they’d rather not rent from serial killers or Nazis. And they were the good ones.

There’s plenty of whining too. “Are you being driven crazy by leaf blowers?” asks one concerned Cape Town southern suburbs resident. Another says: “Hi, group, I am really enraged at the drop in the quality of chicken sausage at the local Spar,” while someone else cries: “The bees attracted by the jacaranda at the corner of X and Y streets are going to kill a child!”

Even those pale in comparison with the racists (who never seem to be aware of their racism), the xenophobes, the sexists and garden-variety bigots.

For example: “I have just spotted a suspicious-looking Bravo and Charlie walking across the park,” posts a paranoid quasi-fbi agent, peering out from behind his or her Terylene curtains at the mixedrace group using the exercise equipment across the road. “Roger that. Have called the security company,” comes the Navy Seal-like reply of a neighbour. Yes: Bravo is shorthand for black, Charlie stands for coloured, and using the phonetic alphabet